Johnny Simmons

All the world’s a stage…it’s only one of the gazillion or so quotes that Shakespeare is noted for. The thing is, people remember the beginning and forget that the monologue is actually about the seven ages of man. Marc of Go See Talk is hosting a blog-a-thon which has a brilliant idea – imagine yourself to be a theatre owner, what would a week of double features at our theatre look like? He’s given us the opportunity make up our own rules and so, I dedicate my seven days to Shakespeare’s seven ages of man…with a twist…each day showing a classic and a contemporary film.
             

Monday: The Second Childhood
I’ve inverted the ages so that we begin with the end. Instead of carrying the audience from beginning to end we’ll begin with the close and reverse, and what better film to kick it off with than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It’s all about the body going in one direction, and the mind in another. It’s not about second childhood in the most typical sense, but for a vast portion of the film the boyish Benjamin is trapped in an old man’s body. It will double with On Golden Pond Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda’s Oscar winning film. It’s a true ode to the beauty of growing old with someone you love.

Tuesday: The Pantaloon
What is a pantaloon, you ask – essentially he’s an aging buffoon? It’s not quite old age, but it’s getting there. This double feature features films which hinge on their men – Hopkins in a Merchant Ivory film, and Hulce and Abraham in the Forman epic. Hopkins butler isn’t quite a buffoon, but he acts it at times and Salieri ends the film well on the way to madness. The films are only a decade apart, but for me Amadeus is undoubtedly a classic and no one will do contemporary period films as well as Merchant/Ivory.

Wednesday: The Justice
The age where man bequeaths justice…Judgment from Nuremberg is a fine docudrama on the Nuremberg trials and I can’t have a day of Kate Hepburn without a day of Spencer Tracy (although it’s Maximillian Schell and Judy Garland who really floor me). I could have gone with a number of modern legal dramas, but to cheer you up after the sadness of Nuremberg we turn to My Cousin Vinny. Pesci’s barrister is unorthodox, but he and Mona Lisa Vito will fight for justice.

Thursday: The Soldier
There are so many films on war to choose from, especially since even those not about war often have it as a back-story but in the end the choices were not that difficult to make. The Messenger doesn’t take place on the battlefield, but I find it to be a provocative look at war and when paired up with From Here to Eternity it only becomes more interesting.

Friday: The Lover
It’s ridiculous for me to use Shakespeare as a paradigm and not have a Shakespearean flick, thus it’s a no-brainer that Zefferilli’s lush Romeo and Juliet is the one that I’m choosing. It’ll be paired up with the equally LUSH Bright Star and perhaps you’ll be depressed after this one-two of dying heros, but c’est la vie. My theatre, my rules.

Saturday: The Schoolboy
Perhaps, Lindsay Lohan and James Dean don’t have much in common but who can say no to a double whammy of Mean Girls and Rebel without a Cause. Both of them have protagonists dealing with new schools and both manage a knack for the zeitgeist without being overwrought.

Sunday: The Infant
For obvious reasons movies about babies are difficult to pull off…they don’t act. And I must admit when I saw that we needed three films for the final day, I got worried. But, I’m a boss at sidling out of sticky situations. I’ll begin with Rosemary’s Baby, follow it up with Children of Men and close with the guilty pleasure Look Who’s Talking. and, perhaps, only one is explicitly about infancy, but you know you want to see all

Go check out what's going on at The Mad Hatter's theatre who I first saw the blog-a-thon on....

           

It’s been a few weeks since the 2010/2011 television season has been officially over and the Emmy nominations set to be announced tomorrow will be the culmination. I know that not all my readers are as interested in television as some, but I’m sure that most of them at least watch one show. I’m always curious to see what that show is and in anticipation of the Academy announcing their favourites tomorrow I thought now is as good a time as any to announce my blogging venture. It’s not necessarily about choosing your favourite show, as the name suggests it’s about episodes...

What’s your favourite scripted television episode of the last TV season? Did something from Mad Men’s arsenal leave you with voluminous praise for the medium? Or was it Michael’s goodbye trajectory? Or Community’s paintball massacre? The rules are slim – any show that’s scripted and any episode which aired from June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011 is fair game, create a post celebrating your favourite episode. It probably will be difficult narrowing it down to just one, but you’ve got three-and-a-half weeks to make your decisions – the list with be posted on August 6th. Just send me an email at dangerous.liaison231(@)yahoo.com when your link is up.
         
Can you remember your favourite episodes?

And speaking of flying monkey attacks: when the Simeon minions swarm and attack our heroes in the haunted forest, they totally get after it. They're all pouncy and rippy and flyey and kidnappy -- they take out some of the scarecrow and throw him over there and take out some more and throw it over there. Just very violent and graphic -- if you're made out of straw, but still.

The perfect confluence of song, dance, sugar-spiked romance and Hollywood satire, the film is one of those rare Hollywood musicals without a flaccid note, number or scene in sight, utilizing its well-rounded cast and catchy verses to win us over time and time again.

Cukor was of course one of the most skilled comedy directors of the forties, which in turn makes him one of the most skilled of all time. And he’s able to keep the film from becoming a slog, putting in some deft comic scenes that never feel out of place, including one nice sequence that turns a killer running gag out of the simple phrase, “Glad to have you with us.”

West Side Story is a movie that achieves the impossible – to bring the aliveness and thrill and feelings of the stage production to the screen. Isn’t it thrilling to sit an audience and watch dancers do the dance at the gym right in front of your eyes, on a stage where you can see the brilliant movements so closely?

That's pretty ironic, as the four's own bickering is what led the group to self-destruct and go their own ways once they were no longer forced to go together in the same direction by their hectic tour schedule. The only real idyll they have in "A Hard Day's Night" is in the antic "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence, where, in a rare moment of freedom, they caper about a play-field, which Lester films in an eclectic helter-skelter array of techniques, formal and informal: sped-up, slowed down, from the air, and hand-held.** Even that ends with an admonition ("I suppose you know this is private property!").

With musical theatre the score must either be so good that the listener appreciates the quality of the writing (see just about anything by Sondheim), or you need to leave the auditorium toe tapping away (try anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber). I won't pretend the music in My Fair is particularly well written, but by God it does make you want to join in.

Fantastic, mesmerizing (despite, as I assume ya'll know, shitty subtitles), surreal, colorful in that way only Godard in a good mood and the sixties can produce. Aided by the fanciful performance of Anna Karina and the half-lovestruck, half-bemused Jean-Paul Belmondo, an unexpectedly catchy song is performed by the two, that might've been an in-character way to pass celluloid had not been for the burst of music the background.

I suppose Cabaret is not so much a story about what happens as it is a story about how it happens. Fosse has always has his reputation for being an especially stylistic man, and Cabaret represents the zenith of his talents. For, in many ways, Cabaret is a bit like an allegory. We’re transported by the bawdy music and scintillating dances so that by the time tragedy is at hand we’re surprised, even though it’s been sneaking up on us for the entire film.

The screenplay is the highlight, without a doubt one of the best ever written. Yes, I stand by it: so many excellent one-liners, the dialogue is fabulous and funny and the story just makes sense all around. It is Blake Edwards’ greatest achievement and one of Julie’s Andrews best performances.

The real fun of Krush Groove is in the performances. About half of the film is scenes of rappers and singers performing either on stage for an audience or just out in public with a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic music. In one scene, The Fat Boys sing their song "All You Can Eat" while scarfing down pizza at a Sabarro. It might sound like a Weird Al music video but this is what hip-hop was like in the mid-80s.

Still, “Be Prepared” is a powerful little number. Not only is Jeremy Irons freakin’ amazing delivering his lines (“And soon I’ll be givin’ my due!”), but it’s also been suggested that Jim Cumming may have filled in for him when he got a throat ache (and wasn’t able to finish the song). in under three minutes, with a hauntingly demented yet charismatic voice, and iconography borrowed from source I was too young to understand at the time, the musical number managed to do what no amount of ranting or raving or threatening from any Disney villain before or since could do: it convinced me that Scar was irredeemably evil. Sure, he’d go on to throw his brother into a herd of stampeding wilderbeast and (in an act even more evil) convince his nephew Simba that he was responsible, but this musical number was the first hint that something was truly and deeply wrong with the cartoon lion.

The themes of looking for love, being in love, and being in relationships with the wrong people, are common in almost every single Woody Allen film. Yet there is a more optimistic, and whimsical, feel in this particular film than is more prominent than his other works. Everyone from the upper east side elite to the two-bit gangster is struck by cupid’s arrow.

It wouldn’t be a really good musical, without THE BIG FINISH or a big musical number to get your toes tapping. Chicago won’t disappoint you. After much tap dancing and legal maneuvering, Bill Flynn (Gere) helps both Roxie and Velma beat their murder charges. Unfortunately for Roxie, her trial’s publicity doesn’t bring closer to her dreams of stardom. It is as true in Jazz Age Chicago as it is today: People are always looking for the next big thing.

Among the songs in the film my favorite is Roxie, sung by Renee Zellweger who is just perfect as the jazzy baby turned murderess who comes to start enjoying her infamy. Much of Chicago's success is thanks to Zellweger who carries the film with her funny, sexy, and all around luminous performance. It's her understanding of the character and her vocal/dancing abilities that make everything work.

I will forever hope that the Phantom is able to be with Christine. My whole life, since I first saw the play, I would listen to those songs, feel his pain, hear Christine's longing for him and would be moved to tears by the music, the story. It is about passion, music, love, fear, anger, rejection, lust and mystery. In my minds eye, Christine always chooses to stay with the Phantom, to love him and sing with him...to be his angel of music.

Most musicals are bright and colorful, I prefer dark and moody. So Sweeney Todd works on that level for me. And since it's directed by one of my favorite directors and features one of my favorite actors, that also works.

The film is really entertaining and I think it works, although the "bursting out into song isn't realistic" thing sometimes becomes too noticeable and sometimes it lacks the soul of the original production. But the music is flawless. There are so many great songs and so many that I love!

The great music, dancing, and acting aside (and I didn't even mention the fabulous costumes and art direction!), Hairspray is the "perfect musical" because of the feeling that you get during and after you watch it. I saw the film three times in the theater (the most I've ever gone to one movie in the theater, by the way), and at least 3 times on DVD, and every time I just feel so happy and uplifted.

By taking this story of a chubby girl chasing her dreams out of the John Waters universe and brushing aside inside jokes and obscure cultural references, the message is as simple and touching as ever: Never give up hope; dreams are not selective and anyone with the courage to reach for them has the tools to catch one.

 Their songs rain from the depth of their personality. They exude the screen. Define the mood. Create the world. Breath life into each and every moment. The musical is a form of auditory art, in which the vocals, soul, and visuals must align so rightly. Loudness, and gimmick, cheapen this to the point of blandness. Musicals that fail to capture the heart of their own characters sit well with me not.