Make Me Watch A Musical - A Star is Born

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Last week I told you about Warner Bros. new boxed-set of twenty movie musicals, and had you vote on three I should watch. Here I reviewed Victor/Victoria, and here I reviewed 42nd Street. And now onto easily my far and away favorite of the three.

If you'd have told me a week ago that I'd have run to go and download a Judy Garland album because of this "Make Me Watch a Musical" project I've been plowing through, I'd have call you a dirty filthy lying liar. And I'd have been right, too! Because I didn't do that. But only half right I guess, because after watching A Star is Born I want to go and do that (download the album, that is; not call you a lying liar - never that!). And coming where I was coming from that's not just half the battle, or three quarters, that's really like three thousand percent of the battle. But I get Judy now. I totally get the phenomenon (specifically I suppose of a homosexual sort) of idolizing her. She is idol worthy. And not as just the porcelain figure in a blue-checked dress, pink-cheeked, eyes up towards the sky that she's been for me - as something bigger and notably messier, and all the more wonderful for it.

We should step back and take note of the fact that I'd only seen her in The Wizard of Oz until this movie, which means that I have now seen her in The Wizard of Oz plus this movie, so my new-found understanding is presumably only scratching the surface. (ETA - Oh and Judgement of Nuremberg, I've seen that too.) Oh Oz is beyond reproach in my eyes - like most of us I grew up with it, and it's an inextricable part of me as much as any other movie so foundational to American childhood. What else is there? There are only a handful of movies so universal. So Dorothy was set. And I understood from there the deep sadness under her persona - how simultaneously (paradoxically, competitively, life-ruiningly) delicate and forceful she was all at once. She could put on a happy face and fool you right up until she was breaking your heart.

But man alive that didn't make this adult version of all of that whirlwind jazz any less of a revelation. No doubt she took to a role so steeped in what she was herself going through with conviction, but it's so raw and unexpected at times I could hardly stand to look at the screen. It's uncomfortable and open in that way only something approaching a deeply personal yet unspeakable self-truth can be. I suppose that was part of her problem - Judy (like her daughter, natch) seemed unable to not give and give and give well past the place that was any good for her. She became the tornado. She picked us up and showed us the sights - the bright, the bizarre, the dangerous and the lovely - never heeding the oncoming crash, just spinning around and spinning around, smiling while pulling out her hair, pulling down the curtain on the entire world with her.

Make Me Watch A Musical - 42nd Street

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Last week Warner Brothers released a boxed-set of twenty of their musicals to much fanfare, and since I'm a bit of a musical novice I asked y'all to vote on which three movies from the set I oughta watch and review for you. I reviewed Victor/Victoria on Friday, and here comes number two - 1933's 42nd Street, which was directed by Lloyd Bacon with choreography from the very famous Busby Berkeley. I've actually seen a lot of Berkeley's sequences before, but this is the first time I attempted sitting through one of the actual films that surround them - it was pretty much exactly what I thought it'd be, aka somebody shouting "We're gonna put on a show!" with a cigar in their mouth while chorus girls wave their gams while we pretend not to notice how all the cute chorus guys keep touching each other.

I'm not belittling any of this at all, by the way - it's all a lot of harmless fun. Ginger Rogers wears a monocle for no reason I can discern (it was probably referenced in one of the rat-a-tat witticisms I gave up entirely keeping up with), everybody's constantly hiccuping-drunk, there's a train-full of lesbian sex...

... and the Berkeley number at the end is a dazzler.

Oh yes, it's all lovely, and fine, and in good fun.

All except one insidious horrible beast!

I'm talking to you, Ruby Keeler! Harridan! Horror!

Here are five reasons why Ruby Keeler 

is the worst person who has ever lived.

1. She doesn't knock.

I never wanted to see Dick Powell in his underpants, goddamit. And yet there's good ol' Ruby, traipsing about like she owns the place, and wham my eyes are turned into lava.

2. She just goes to sleep on stage while they're trying to work on the show...

... and then she has the nerve to be all uppity and affronted when they yell at her about it.

3. She can't dance! She's as graceful 

as a pack of elephants stuffed into a chenille slipcover.

4. Yet somehow everybody's blind to her black hole of charisma, so they offer her the lead in the show, and she spends the next five minutes WHINING about their offer. I lost track of how often she has to be shaken out of "it," "it" apparently meaning "everything there is about living, except whining." If you don't want to be there, toots, hit the road!

5. I mean, she lies down in the middle of practice repeatedly! And they offer her the lead, and then all she does is WHINE. Ugh Ruby Keeler is the worst person who has ever lived!
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Make Me Watch A Musical: Victor Victoria

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This past Tuesday in honor of their 90th anniversary Warner Brothers released The Best of Warner Brothers - 20 Film Collection: Musicals, a big beautiful boxed-set where they selected twenty classic musicals from their archives and smashed them together in one surprisingly affordable place. You can't go wrong with titles like The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Singing in the Rain, Little Shop of Horrors and Hairspray all in one place, ya know? The Munchkins and The Oompa Loompas together at last!

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poll by twiigs.com

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So anyway I had y'all vote on what three films that I hadn't seen before from the boxed-set that I should watch and write about, and you did. You voted. And here we are.

So I kinda started out of order. Sue me. I began with the most recent film you chose, Blake Edwards' 1982 slapdash sex farce Victor Victoria, which starred Edwards' wife, who was kind of well-known on her own, Miss Julie Andrews. I think she played a bunch of nannies or something in the Sixties? Anyway she has a lovely voice, but man can she not pass for a dude.

That's a lot of hourglass for a boy so skinny. To the film's benefit Victor Victoria does its best to shy away from the moments when everybody's supposed to be convinced that Julie Andrews is really a dude - most of the main characters are all in on it or convinced she's a fraud, save Lesley Anne Warren's walking champagne hiccup of a character.

Warren was fun but maybe a smidge too broad; but then she's in a film that uses that phrase "a smidge too broad" as its foundation, mortar, walls and roof. I was shocked that not once did a cream pie fly in any of the many comical fancy people in tuxes and gowns brawls - I suppose Edwards had to show restraint somewhere.

Honestly my best in show would probably go to Alex Karras of all people; he underplayed his character's arc beautifully, and actually gave his coming out moment and thereafter fallout some emotional heft. What could have been nothing more than a sight gag (and I expected it to be just that) tread softly, thanks to his low-key work.

The film looks great - the giant stage-like rooms look straight outta the thirties movies that it's obviously emulating, and the art-deco everything is spot-on.

But no, in the end, Victor Victoria wasn't really for me. Genre shorthand doesn't get on my nerves so much when say it's in a horror movie - Why is that girl going into the basement by herself? Well duh, that's what they do! - but I find myself less amenable to the flights of fancy that propel these things along. I mean, her stage show is ridiculous! Why is she even pretending to be a man for it? The wig-yanking at the end of every number would get tired really really fast, you know? I could go on picking such nits, but they're really beside the point. And I've got two more movies to get to!
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Judy Busby & Julie

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You have made your picks! The three musicals out of The Best of Warner Brothers - 20 Film Collection: Musicals boxed-set that I will be watching and reviewing are 1933's 42nd Street (with famed choreography from Busby Berkeley), George Cukor's 1954 flick A Star is Born with Judy Garland giving what many people consider her finest performance, and Blake Edwards' 1982 gender-bender Victor Victoria with Julie Andrews mussing up her do-gooder image as a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. These three pulled ahead early on and never looked back. 

I've seen bits of 42nd Street - definitely the Busby sequence at the end, at least. My boyfriend loves him some Busby so it's been around the house before. (And I loathe Ruby Keeler and her smug face, for the record. Team Blondell!) But the other two I'm a total virgin for. So stay tuned! More to come, of the stomping and hand waving and uvula flapping sort, right soon.
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Last Second Seventh Brother

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That is Jeff Richards. He was a professional baseball player who became an actor. His best known role is as one of the brothers in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, which lo and behold is one of the movies that is in the Warner Brothers boxed-set of twenty musicals that we were just talking about.
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There are still a few minutes left to the polls - I'm cutting them off at 7pm tonight, and then we'll see which three of the films I'm watching and reviewing. Unless something drastic happens in the next lil' bit though it's been pretty clear for a day and a half now which movies I'll be watching, and Seven Brides is definitely not the one. So I am taking Kat's advice (hi Kat!) and staring at Mr. Richards right now. There's not very much of him on the internet though. Forgotten hottie! I wanna see him in uniform, dammit.

If Ever A Wonder of Which There Was

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Talk about good timing. Even though it's never been my favorite genre, I've been thinking about doing something about musicals lately. In December for a brief moment I was excited about Les Miserables, it had such a great trailer. (Then of course I saw the movie, and notsomuch.) And then just the other week there was the 40th anniversary of Cabaret, a musical that I unabashedly enjoy. So the genre's have been doing the two-step with some jazz hands across my brain. 

And then suddenly what should arise but, in honor of the 90th anniversary of Warner Brothers, a big beautiful new boxed-set of 20 of WB's most cherished musicals. The Best of Warner Brothers - 20 Film Collection: Musicals is out on DVD tomorrow. Look at the movies that are on it!

The Jazz Singer 

 Broadway Melody of 1929 

42nd Street 

 The Great Ziegfeld 

Wizard of Oz 

Yankee Doodle Dandy 

An American In Paris 

Show Boat 

Singin In The Rain 

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers 

A Star Is Born 

The Music Man 

Viva Las Vegas 

Camelot 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 

Cabaret 

That’s Entertainment 

Victor, Victoria 

Little Shop of Horrors 

Hairspray

I mean there are five movies that I've not only already seen but I love on that list, and with my musical-batting-average that's an astonishing percentage. But then there are fourteen films that I haven't ever seen! And now's my chance.

A few years ago I did a couple of posts at The Film Experience wherein I had you the readers pick a musical for me to watch, which I'd then review, and I think it's time to trot out "Make Me Watch A Musical" again. I am giving it to you, the people, the choice - which three musicals from The Best of Warner Brothers - 20 Film Collection: Musicals should I review? (I'm leaving out the films I have already seen.)

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poll by twiigs.com

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poll by twiigs.com

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poll by twiigs.com

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The polls close at 7pm on Wednesday, February 13th.
Choose wisely, keeping in mind my delicate constitution, please.
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Do Dump or Marry - Jet Jet Shark

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Admittedly musicals ain't MNPP's usual bag, but way back when I reviewed West Side Story for The Film Experience so we've got some past history with this one. And so I thought what with the 50th Anniversary Edition coming out on BluRay today we'd step outside our self-appointed song-n-dance-less box and give something unexpected a little bit of love. I mean, it appeals to us on some levels after all.

So let's have a thought experiment. Plunk yourself down into West Side Story's technicolor city dream-scape of brown-painted tough guys and the brown-painted dames who love 'em. Look, there's feisty Bernardo (George Chakiris), the leader of the Sharks and loving brother to moon-eyed Maria (Natalie Wood). And there's feisty Riff, the leader of the Jets, and best friend to Tony (Richard Beymer) who only has moon-eyes for Maria. 

You're in this world, you're snapping your fingers in alleyways and you're kicking your heels on rooftops, and you've gotta choose. You'll spend a single illicit neon-lit evening with one of them, you'll send a switchblade into the belly of the second, and you'll saunter off into the day-glo orange sunset with the third. Place your picks in the comments, daddy-o.

I Am Link

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--- Today's the last day my nefarious fingertips can wind their way into The Film Experience as Nat's back tomorrow; I just posted my second installment of Make Me Watch A Musical, in which I review the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain. I had a much easier time with Gene Kelly than I did with Richard Beymer, that's for sure.

--- Mo' Buffy - Joss Whedon spoke to Awesome Aussiello at TV Guide and left the door open ever so slightly for former Buffy actors to perhaps show up on his new show Dollhouse. He says:

"I've read a couple of people [from the Buffyverse]... but I'm not going to say who."

That's enough to get my salivating glands into hyperdrive. (thanks Joe)

--- Schadenfreude - Jeff Whitty, the Avenue Q scribe, has got his gayest look ready for Jay Leno.

--- Watch out for those pesky Demonic Demons - One of these days I swear I'll really join in on the Final Girl Film Club festivities... alas, not this month. But head over to read Stacie's thoughts on the 1988 flick Scarecrows - sounds like a must-see! - and get linkage to more.
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I Am Link

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--- Moreno Reigns - I watched and reviewed West Side Story over at The Film Experience this weekend for my Make Me Watch A Musical feature whilst Nat's away. I was much kinder than I expected to be (and I was kinder than I could have been). I didn't loathe it, though. Well, not all of it.

--- Sunnydale Revisited - AICN has all the goods from last week's Buffy Reunion that you could ever need. Except a time machine and a ticket, of course.

--- I think, what with the Rosemary's Baby remake hanging over my head Damocles-like, I'm a little fixated on the Polanski film, since this is like the 20th Horror Roundtable in a row that my answer has had to do with it. I need to get some fresh air, man.

--- Next up on David "Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman" Eick's plate for reimagining? A series based on Children of Men? The same Children of Men that Alfonso Cuaron made into my favorite movie of 2006? Yes, that one. (via Sean)

--- Train Delay - Looks like Clive Barker adaptation The Midnight Meat Train is being delayed until... nobody knows. I hate everyone.
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