MM@M: "only you, you're the only thing I'll see forever"

TV's greatest show has a love affair with the movies. So we have a love affair with TV's greatest show. This is Mad Men @ The Movies. Season 4 of the Emmy-winning series begins in 4 days.

Episode 2.7 "The Gold Violin"
It's a rare Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton, left) focused episode (yay!) in which art director Sal is about to get a painful closet crush. Their coworker Harry Crane has a bad case of nerves about a meeting with the eccentric boss. Sal's Ken crush kicks off early when Ken references a musical.

Harry Crane: He wants to see me and only me.
Ken Cosgrove: Isn't that from West Side Story?

West Side Story, my fav film, opened in fall 1961 and played forever becoming one of the biggest hits of all time (adjusted gross of $444 million) and winning 10 Oscars. The soundtrack spent over a year at #1 on the album charts and becoming the best selling record of the 1960s (in the U.S. at least) . It would have been number #1 still in the summer of 1962 when this particular episode takes place.

There's another song reference in this episode "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)", a tune which has its own cinematic moment, albeit infinitely less iconic. Woody Allen resurrected the oldie for Everyone Says I Love You. Skip ahead to the 2:00 mark for the silliness.



Sage advice from the movies, yes?
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Web Site Story

You know, I thought this spoof would be lame and I don't always have a sense of humor about West Side Story, which regularly makes me cry from its genius. But this skit is actually kind of clever. Fun rhymes for tweeting times.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I was worried while I waited
your picture was outdated
and you looked like a dog
now I can't wait
to read about me later
on your blog

TONY Weekend: West Side Story, Garret Dillahunt and Nine to Five

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, yesterday!

My birthday festivities usually fall close to TONY Awards night. So today I can let my inner theater geek out -- is it "inner" if everyone knows about it?. I'll probably tweet the actual ceremony... but if you're into Broadway and you don't mind spoilers there's already people tweeting from the dress rehearsal including Jane Fonda, Just Jared and Broadway World's Robert Diamond . In the meantime I thought I'd catch you up on a few recent stage shows that I haven't really discussed. As per usual, many of them have movie connections. But mostly I'm here to talk about West Side Story which is up for four TONYs tonight: Best Musical Revival, Best Actress, Best Featured Actress (Karen Olivo as "Anita") and Best Lighting Design.

Anita center (she's gonna get her kicks tonii-iiii-iight. she'll have
a private little mix tonii-iii-iight) and her fellow PRs.

West Side Story
Leonard Bernstein's masterpiece continues to shame the vast majority of musicals that came after it. Not for this show, one or two catchy numbers. Every number here is a bonafide classic. I am not one of those people whose eyes well up when moved by Art but when Romeo & Juliet Tony & Maria turned to the audience on top of that balcony fire escape and one of my favorite songs of all time "Tonight" shifted tempo into its genius explosion of hurried love "...with suns and moons all over the place" shivers shot through me. Yes, my eyes welled up from the sheer overwhelming beauty of this Art.

Where did all the invention in musical theater composition, go? Is it just because the money and opportunity dried up? Once you get past the 1960s, rock then pop then hip hop ruled the culture. I guess any new composer with enormous gifts is less likely to consider musical theater as a career option since it's no longer a part of every day life. It's hard to believe now but there was a time when it was. West Side Story spent more than a year at #1 of the Billboard charts in the 1960s. Compare that to Wicked, by all accounts a giant modern crossover success. Its peak position on the Billboard 200 was #138... and that was considered a major accomplishment!

Oh, so what did I think of the show, you ask?

I am never 100% satisfied with WSS stage productions because it's my favorite musical of all time but I thought this was a valiant effort. I loved the new emphasis on the sexuality of the characters, the ease with which the numbers moved in and out of Spanish (an appropriate choice though a long time in coming) and I thought Maria, the TONY nominated Argentinian actress Josefina Scaglione, was superb... that voice! It was perfectly suited to Maria, all sweet, soaring crystalline soprano with undercurrents of power that sneak up on you as the songs escalate in intensity. There were hit and miss choices in the casting elsewhere (we had an understudy rather than the hunky Matt Cavenaugh as "Tony" though so I can't discuss him) but the music, pacing and choreography are so strong I couldn't not love this production. B+

Despite my general love/lust for all things West Side... Hair (reviewed here) definitely deserves the Revival TONY. It took a much much less impressive musical and made it into a damn near unmissable event.

A few other recent shows...

Coraline
I've written about this over here. Fans of Neil Gaiman or the Magnetic Fields should definitely check it out. It's very different than Coraline the movie (as it should be) and that's not just because an old woman plays the lonely nine year old explorer, though that casting decision is a good example of its theatrical commitment. Coraline understands, as so few stage shows related to movies do, that the stage is not the screen. Theater is a different beast and requires more imagination and less literal mindedness to function to the fullest of its capabilities. I loved the cat, for instance, who is basically a man in a suit with lots of attitude and only minimally suggested cat movements (the yawning is quite funny). Coraline's matter of fact asides to the audience "I'm outside now" to indicate scene changes also had me smiling.

Nine to Five (The Musical)
Speaking of stage shows that don't remember to be stage shows... I'm not going to pretend like 9 to 5 isn't fun. The movie is so the show is, too. But the Show is the Movie. So why not just watch the movie again? You'll save $100. I love Dolly Parton but like so many famous artists turned Broadway composers she hasn't quite worked out the difference in mediums with her book writer. Like so many movies-to-stage productions, Nine to Five doubles up on talking and singing. You get the story beats and the famous dialogue and the emotional point of the scene and then they stop for a song about it. You don't need both in musical theater. The songs are supposed to be the story, not recaps of the Movie as Play that suddenly remembers it's now a Musical. The best number is (no surprise) something that's not in the movie at all -- the horny elderly secretary Roz (played by Kathy Fitzgerald who was not TONY nominated. sigh) gets a solo in the ladies bathroom that's quite funny, a bit crass and more than a little endearing.

Working 8 to 11... on stage at least

Brains
New York City has a lot of experimental theater and you generally only end up at it if you know someone who knows someone connected to the production. Experimental theater can often be trying, full of barely formed ideas, weird running time decisions, inaccessible drama or unfunny humor. Brains hops over these usual pitfalls with obvious delight in its own absurdity and total commitment to its mix of theatrical dance movement and verbal repetition. The play is about a desperate scientist and the cult that springs up around her when she declares that "The human body has two brains!" It's very funny and the slowly rising dramatic undercurrents only strengthen the desperation of its comedy, rather than capsizing it. Good stuff. I'm not sure when they're performing it next, unfortunately. Here's a commercial.

Things of Dry Hours
Garret Dillahunt is quickly ascending in my personal hierarchy of actors-I'm-always-eager-to-watch. After evocative supporting work in No Country For Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and his creepy contributions to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and this fall's prestige piece The Road, I'm his. In this new play by Naomi Wallace (who wrote the movie Lawn Dogs ... worth a rental) he plays a possibly murderous factory worker Corbin Teel who hides out in the home of a black father and daughter in 30s era Alabama.

Delroy Lindo (who you just heard as "Beta" in Pixar's UP) plays the father/preacher who's hiding his "dirty red" Communist leanings from the violent authorities. Roslyn Ruff (who you just saw as Anne Hathaway's guidance counsellor in Rachel Getting Married -FB nom) is his formidable daughter, a washerwoman who may or may not be falling for the white man suddenly sleeping on her floorboards. The cast is uniformly strong and the play is pretty interesting, too. The triangular tensions are both well executed and multifaceted: the social, racial, spiritual, political, economic and sexual (Dillahunt gets naked for Ruff who in turn, mastering the art of the mixed signals, refuses him and then...?) all factor in.

Have you seen anything on stage recently? You don't have to live in NYC to see theater. Do you often picture what it be like onscreen when you do see a live show?
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TONY Award Nominations / Movie Connections

The Tony Award Nominations are upon us. As is my inconsistent tradition, I thought I'd share a little bit about a movies you can rent or think about to create an unfulfilling celluloid guilty-by-association approximation of the Broadway experience of the 2008/2009 season before the TONYs roll around on June 7th. Not everyone gets to New York to see the shows. And even if you live here, like me, you don't get to them in your financially challenged years. Tony Winners Cynthia Nixon (who seems to be everywhere lately, right?) and In the Height's man Lin-Manuel Miranda are announcing them live any minute now.

If you want a reminder of what's eligible which you can use to see who got snubbed check out this eligibility chart.

P L A Y R E V I V A L
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
This is the 2nd in August Wilson's famous 10 play decade by decade cycle of the African-American experience. The themes are identity and migration. There is sadly no great movie epic about The Great Migration (That's a missed opportunity A list writer/directors. Get on it!). The original production starred Delroy Lindo and Angela Bassett so you can rent one movie from each. Only one (!?!) of Wilson's plays has been filmed: The Piano Lesson with Charles S Dutton and Alfre Woodard in the lead roles.

Mary Stuart
Imagine a whole movie about Samantha Morton's doomed Mary Stuart instead of Cate Blanchett's cousin-killing Elizabeth in The Golden Age. Although maybe you wouldn't like to think about the Golden Age right now or ever again. My apologies!

A sampling of actresses who've played Mary: Helen Hayes, Vanessa Redgrave, Samantha Morton and Janet McTeer. Scarlett Johansson was set to play her in an upcoming film but that seems to be off her schedule now.

Better yet, rent Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar nominated turn as Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) with Glenda Jackson as her rival. Oscar nominee Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds) is Mary of Scots in the Broadway revival. Further reading about Bess & Mary

The Norman Conquests
This comedic trilogy by Alan Ayckbourn was filmed in the 70s for television but it's not on DVD.

Waiting for Godot
This Beckett classic has been staged countless times and filmed a few times for television. It's so theatrical and abstract by nature (two men wait in vain on an empty country road. The end!) that it doesn't really invite the screen treatment. The current revival stars Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin. When I interviewed Bill Irwin (who shoulda been Oscar nominated for Rachel Getting Married) last year we talked about this a bit. I figured he could handle Nathan Lane what with all that sparring with Kathleen Turner already under his belt. I heartily recommend renting Beckett on Film in which interesting directors interpret Beckett's work. At the very least you'll get to see Julianne Moore doing Beckett's insanely great monologue piece Not I (see previous post)

M U S I C A L R E V I V A L
Guys and Dolls
The 1955 movie version starring Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons isn't really definitive since it's not particularly well loved and there are some singing issues. The current revival stars familiar actors from TV mostly (Oliver Platt, Lauren Graham and Craig Bierko). When they revived this musical comedy in London 4 years ago the Brits got two actors who fill me with glee: Ewan MacGregor and Jane Krakowski. No fair!

Hair
I LOVED this production (see previous post) but if you can't get to NYC to see it, you can always watch the 1979 Milos Forman film version.

Pal Joey
This got the film treatment back in 1957 with Frank Sinatra as star, so you'll want to rent that. Here's two videos to give you a slice of musical heaven this fine Tuesday morning...



Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. That combo is almost too beautiful to look at. Double mmmmm. Stockard Channing and 80s teen star turned ubiquitous Broadway player Martha Plimpton are the "mice" on Broadway.

West Side Story
I really want to see this rare revival of my favorite musical of all time. But I could always watch the movie a gazillionth time.

B E S T P L A Y
Dividing the Estate
This isn't a new play but this family drama from Horton Foote is having its first Broadway run, therefore eligible for "best play". Foote died just two months ago but in his long career he wrote many plays and screenplays, too (including that film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird which marked his first Oscar win). His most successful play-to-screen transfers happened in the 80s with the Oscar winners Tender Mercies and The Trip to Bountiful.



God of Carnage
A friend of mine has already seen this one three times. The play is about two sets of parents who meet to discuss an altercation between their childen. The civilized meeting goes haywire and everyone behaves very badly. The couples are film and tv regulars Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels and awards magnets James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden (yay! my love grows)

reasons to be pretty
This is the latest provocation from Neil Labute also from my alma mater BYU in which a boyfriend's offhanded comment about his girlfriend's beauty-deficiency gets back to her sparking much trouble in their social circle. Thematically this is supposed to close an unofficial trilogy which started with The Shape of Things (which was made into a film with its original cast intact: Rachel Weisz, Paul Rudd, Gretchen Mol and Fred Weller) and continued in Fat Pig. LaBute's film career started strong with the vicious In the Company of Men which introduced movie audiences to Aaron Eckhart (another BYU alum) but lately he's been sliding: Lakeview Terrace and Wicker Man? Really... that's what you got?

33 Variations
This is the play that brought Jane Fonda back to Broadway. It's a story of a mother and daughter relationship and also a story about a composer: it spans 200 years from contemporary New York to 19th century Austria... plays aren't as literal as movies, you know.

Fonda is a nominee for Best Actress. Why can't somebody give her another shot at a third Oscar? Streep shouldn't be the only one giving Katharine Hepburn a run for her 4 Oscar record.

<--- Here's a photo from Jane Fonda's blog of 92 year-old Oscar winning supporting actress superstar CELESTE HOLM (!) visiting her backstage. This photo makes me so happy.

B E S T M U S I C A L
Billy Elliott
You've already seen the movie but why not watch it again. I'm still confused about how it makes a stage musical. If everyone is singing and dancing what makes little Billy so special. He's no longer out of place which was sort of the whole emotional point. That said, reviews are strong so maybe they worked magic.

Oh and yes, this will easily be the Slumdog of TONY night. It's up for 15 prizes including a special 3-way nomination for Best Actor

Film to Stage: It takes three boys to fill Jamie Bell's talented shoes

Next to Normal
A family in crisis (the mother is bipolar)... sings. More than 30 original songs. Alice Ripley (Side Show) headlines.

Rock of Ages
This is a head banging musical comedy (lots of famous songs from 80s radio) which unfortunately continues the trend of putting American Idol stars in Broadway roles -- this time it's Constantine Maroulis. Since this is a send up I guess maybe This is Spinal Tap! could be a vaguely connected movie rental choice. Or, go see Anvil! The Story of Anvil in theaters. It's a goodie even if its comedy is less intentional.

Shrek the Musical
I am in the tiny .001 percentile of the population that finds the whole Shrek phenomenon completely overrated and disheartening. I still think it's embarrassing that the movie beat Monsters, Inc to the Oscar . This musical doesn't have a prayer of accomplishing a similar feat, thank goodness. Small comfort because I am tremendously annoyed that my beloved Sutton Foster keeps wasting her bankability and starpower playing roles in mammoth productions that don't need a star of her calibre to sell tickets and for which no one will remember her. If your name alone can generate press and sell tickets why not harness your power for good and support new composers and smaller shows?

Here she is yukking it up at Joe's Pub last year and on Rosie O'Donnell in 2002 when her star first exploded in Thoroughly Modern Millie


(sigh) I love her so. It's so weird to me that she's never made a movie though she has finally done a bit of TV (Flight of the Conchords)

That's it! Whew. I'll talk about the actors and actresses soon (in brief) Have you seen any of these productions? If not, what's the last Broadway or touring show you saw?

I Want to Link You Like an Animal

Topless Robot ogles My Little Pony. This is so wrong
Public School Intelligentsia on the pull of Chlöe Sevigny as "Nicolette Grant" on Big Love.
Wired has a big report on the Watchmen-related new DVDs Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood


StinkyLulu digs deep into Broadway's revival of West Side Story. How does it compare to the classic film and previous Broadway incarnations?
Low Resolution makes a case for the charisma of Ryan Phillippe.
StarEast Asia Zhang Ziyi and camel. Does ZZ act anymore or is all about the shilling of product and the banking of cash?
The Spy in the Sandwich the new Pinoy film from the director of recent Oscar submission The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros has been censored. Shame

And finally... Isn't it Bromantic?

Are Breckin and Ryan about to make out (on DVD)?

My friend Kenneth in the (212) told me that little west coast birdies told him that that awfully dull Studio 54 movie from 1998 -- that one that starred Ryan Phillipe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers and Breckin Meyer -- is headed back to DVD this fall. Here's the good news: it's supposedly the formerly apocryphal Director's Cut version (i.e. much longer and gayer) that is being released. That cut got a surprise screening last summer at Outfest but there was no word of a follow-up DVD release. The initial studio interference with 54 (Miramax... ah, the brothers Weinstein) is one of the dumber movie-making stories from the late nineties: cut 45 minutes of this, reshoot, beef up the more traditional romance. Why anyone thought the target audiences for a movie about Studio 54 would be satisfied with a film that lacked outre behavior, sexual experimentation and excessive drug use... well, I couldn't tell you. Is the new/old version as good as they say? (I hope so. I liked writer/director Marc Christopher's early gay short Alkali, Iowa) Perhaps we'll find out in the fall.

Link Side Stories

Film Ick is disappointed in how The Hobbit (2012?) and The Green Hornet (2010?) are shaping up... or not shaping up as the case may be
Club Silencio can't wait for the banana ranch action in Gael García Bernal's latest
ProBlogger If Marilyn Monroe was a blogger... advice from movie stars on blogging? I love it
ModFab on Obama's first terrible move (before he's even in power. argh)
In Contention 'it's nice to be wrong' Interesting piece but how could anybody not have known that Kristin Scott Thomas as a powerhouse before now?
Nick's Flick Picks a splendid defense of Howards End (and Merchant/Ivory films in general)
Scanners top five cinematic dogs of the year. The good kind of dog
The Daily Have you heard? David Hudson is leaving Daily GreenCine for IFC starting Jan 1st

Finally, the West Side Story obsessive in me is having a mini revival. And just in time: Tapeworthy sees the pre-Broadway run of West Side Story in DC for not much $ and speaks highly of it. Click for details. For those of you who haven't heard they're going for a grittier and more realistic take. The gangs are supposed to be scarier and half the cast (Maria, Anita, Bernardo, The Sharks) will be performing in Spanish. Since WSS is my favorite film ever, I sometimes get nervous about seeing stage productions of it (the last one I saw was ... not so good) but I'm quite excited for this... even if I'll miss half of the prime wit of Sondheim's lyrics since I don't habla español. Another thing I didn't know as I've been out of the theater loop a bit: Cody Green from the reality show Step It Up and Dance is playing Riff.

Flashback: Cher Feels Pretty ... Oh So Pretty

The Muppet Show moment I had two days back got me thinking about variety shows and their absence from pop culture. The closest thing we've got these days is Saturday Night Live and its copycats (all long past their prime) and maybe shows like 30 Rock or Pushing Daisies (and Ally McBeal before them) that mix surreal out-of-nowhere touches into their comedy and throw in occassional musical numbers courtesy of their Broadway-bred actors. Whilst thinking about this artform, my friend shot me a link to an old Sonny & Cher show classic [correction: or is it? I guess I'm not sure]. It's Cher performing my favorite film West Side Story. She plays all the parts.



Cher is gonna have her kicks tonii-iiight. She'll star in a private little mix toniii---iiight. Well she began it. Well she began it. And she's the one to stop it once and for all...

Maybe Cher out to have another farewell tour or another Vegas show that includes this old chestnut.
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June Weddings

Maria Nunez became the bride of Tony Wyzek on June 2nd, 1957. The bride and groom have asked that their parents names be withheld. The closed ceremony, in which bride and groom sang identical vows, took place at Lucia's Bridal Shop on the west side. Maid of Honor was Anita Palacio. Best Man was Riff Lorton. The bride wore a pale yellow work dress with a traditional bridal veil. The bride is a seamstress at Lucia's. The groom is a stock boy at Doc's Candy Shop. The couple, each currently residing with their parents, plan to leave the west side immediately.

[excerpted from the New York Times June 3rd edition. Corrections were later printed (Anita and Riff had not actually attended the ceremony). The groom and his best man were also featured the following day, albeit in a different section of the news paper.]
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MMWAM: West Side Story

The following review, while appearing on The Film Experience blog, is decidedly not the opinion of Nathaniel Rogers or The Film Experience blog, but belongs solely to his crusty guest contributor, JA of My New Plaid Pants. Its appearance here does not indicate any approval, agreement, vetting, endorsement, or anything of the sort, or really probably even coming close, by Mr. Rogers and his fine establishment.

With that firm caveat outta the way, let's get down to it. Y'all voted to make me watch a musical. And I did.


West Side Story... 1961, directed by Robert Wise, who directed my much beloved The Haunting only two years later (and my much-fallen-asleep-during The Sound of Music two years after that). Music by Bernstein, lyrics by Sondheim. Screenplay by the great Ernest Lehman from the play by Arthur Laurents with an uncredited assist by ol' Bill Shakespeare. Titles and "visual effects" by maestro Saul Bass (recently showered with affection by my co-guest-blogger Thombeau here)... I think by "visual effects" they mean that moment when I became convinced I was having an acid-flashback and Natalie Wood morphed into a pirouetting kaleidoscope, right?


Anyway, that's a massive assemblage of talent right there. And it certainly shows - this beast of four-hundred backs managed through sheer force of talent and will (and a good dollop of cheeseball charm, something I'm never too immune to, try as I may) to beat my initial doubts and fears - which were many - mostly into submission.

I do believe the correct terminology is "Stockholm Syndrome."

As is fairly typical in these sorts of hostage situations, things didn't start out too pretty. The film begins with one of those "Let's set the tone with ten minutes of a blank screen and the score's many moods blaring" openings (sidenote: there's got to be a more efficient name for these things, right? Help?) that inevitably force my finger to the remote control (if Lawrence of Arabia gets the fast-forward here, then so does West Side Story). And then... comes the dancing. The... fight dancing. Sigh. To be honest - and that's what I'm doing here; turn away, dance fans! - this was rough. West Side Story and I did not get off on the right foot. Or the right left foot. Or the right tippy toe spin into a finger-snap of silly menace, for that matter.


Still, to skip ahead a bit, the film has its charms - yes, Rita Moreno is tops amongst these - and by the end I found myself fighting off a hint of tear. So what did it? What swallowed my soul and made me give in, at least a little? Here's my highlights.

Rita Moreno - To call her a firecracker would be keeping approximately within the realm of racial sensitivity the film adheres to, so I shall - what a firecracker!


It was during the "America" number that I first found myself first smiling, and she appears through the film often enough, and with enough constant moxie, if you will, to keep that goodwill freely flowing. Indeed, whenever she was onscreen - and, forgive me Nathaniel, especially when she was onscreen opposite Natalie Wood - she was all I saw, and I loved her for it. I mean, what else can you look at in this moment:


I think even the cinematographer had a Moreno bias. She's all I be lookin' at.

The costumes - Blame (or thank) this influence on my boyfriend - these are the sorts of things I never noticed before him - but a good chunk of what kept my eyes fixed to the screen was the beautiful shirts and ties and suits worn by this supposed bunch of ruffians.


Such fine tailoring for hoodlums!

The music - This is where I'm most grateful to y'all for finally making me plunk down to watch this one - I was familiar with the majority of the songs from this film, but before watching it I couldn't have told you what they were from. "Tonight," "America," "I Feel Pretty"... sure, I'd heard them before, but when they actually came falling out of character's mouths I had one of them lightbulb moments, and now I can claim knowledge I didn't have before. So thanks for that!

The "One Hand, One Heart" number - This is the song that was sung during Tony and Maria's fake-wedding, right? I include this as a highlight because I was a bit exhausted by this time in the movie, and it gave me a good ten minutes of sleep.


Thanks, boring song!

(Oh, snark. You couldn't stay away too long, could you?)

The final half-an-hour or so of Nathalie Wood's performance - Around the time that Maria stood waiting on a rooftop for Tony to come to her after stopping the rumble - a feat he failed so spectacularly at, of course - and Wood does her little "I am such a happy girl in love!" dance whilst waiting, well right around then I found all the dislike I was having for Wood in the film up to this point start to slip away.


I was told by my boyfriend that I could get away with calling Wood "mis-cast" and not get hate-mail sent to me, but after this point in the film I really did find myself starting to like what she was doing. In all honesty, I found the Tony/Maria scenes to be cripplingly boring, and I never warmed to Richard Beymer as Tony. But Wood sold me on the last arc of their doomed love story much better than I anticipated, and even though the finale was positively drowning in cheese, I was still somewhat moved by her performance.

The darkness - Ah darkness, my sweet friend. Thankfully, to even out some of the more saccharine flavor of the film, West Side Story did have a few unexpected detours into darksville that obliged from me some respect. Mostly I speak of the attempted rape of Anita by the Jets, which was not somewhere I thought the film was going to go, and felt truer than most everything that'd come before. It might have been the excessive goodwill Moreno's performance had built up in me, but this was the sort of actual, harsh reality these kids lived within that I felt the film could've used more of. One of my main issues with the dance-fighting sequences was the over-stylization stole any actual fear of what was happening from my understanding of the moment. Instead of finding the battle to the death between Riff, Bernardo and Tony frightening, the choreography and exaggerated facial tics of the actors -


- kept me at a distance. But the attempted rape on Anita felt much harsher. It might've been the enclosed space which kept the camera somewhat tighter to the horrible action, or like I said it might've been how much I was digging Moreno, but this scene balanced out a lot of my distaste for the the arch superficiality of the story. Specifically this bit of unexpected choreography within the scene -


- hit me in the gut, and up until this point I didn't think the film would go somewhere quite this dark. These are the supposed "good guys" about to gang-rape the girl whose boyfriend one of them just murdered! And the film goes there; it doesn't just hint at what they might do.

Really, right after the deaths of Riff and Bernardo, the film stepped up a lot in this respect and went several places I didn't think it had the, ahem, cajones for. Like here:


Hussies!

Okay, so I think I hit enough of what I didn't like about the film there within discussing what I did like to leave it be, and not end this review on a downbeat list of negatives. Nobody wants that! There was much to admire. I'm glad I saw it, and thanks be to all of y'all who voted to force my hand on this one; I really might never have done it without you. Next up on Tuesday will be my review for Singin' In The Rain (which, if you'll allow me a moment of self-crucifixion over, Netflix did screw me over with and I actually went out and bought a copy of it so I could see and review it before Nathaniel returns from afar... not that I'm saying nothing here, but there is a PayPal link on my blog if anyone maybe wants to donate five cents here or there towards the "JA buying musicals, of all JA-forsaken things" Fund...).

And tell me in the comments what you love most about West Side Story. Am I nuts for thinking Tony was a snooze-fest? For ever finding anything redeeming within Natalie Wood's performance, or for not finding enough? Is Rita Moreno really universally adored by everyone on Earth? And were A-rab and Baby John supposed to be boyfriends or what?

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Marni Nixon is My "Kathy Selden"

For the "Performance That Changed My Life Blog-a-thon" hosted by All About My Movies

Marni Nixon in West Side Story

Toward the end of Singin' in the Rain (1952), which chronicles Hollywood's seismic shift from silent films to sound production, a hilariously dim and screechy movie star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) gets her comeuppance. She has cruelly locked the sweet voiced Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) into a contract to provide her a suitable movie voice. Lamont is after self-preservation: she can't make sound movies with her own unappealing voice, but she also cruelly takes pleasure in preventing Kathy from pursuing stardom. At a live performance Kathy stands behind a curtain, her dreams in tatters, as she sings for Lina. But Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) pulls the curtain on the act in progress, rescuing his new girl from obscurity and dooming his former co-star to a fast fade.

Lina's evil plan is about to be spoiled in Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain is many things: a true musical masterpiece, a stellar romantic comedy, and the best movie Hollywood ever made about Hollywood (give or take Sunset Boulevard). It's a completely absorbing viewing experience but for this: Every time I see it my mind drifts away to Marni Nixon during this particular scene. Kathy's story isn't exactly Marni's. Marni wasn't forced into submission as the silents were dying. But she was the songbird woman behind the curtain for beloved movie musicals and she was born in 1930 as the silents were emitting their death rattle (Hollywood studios had halted silent film production by 1929. Only a few emerged in movie houses of 30s, most notably Murnau's Tabu and Chaplin's City Lights). Marni Nixon was to be a famous voice but not a famous face ...just like the almost-fate of the fictional Kathy Selden.

Marni (pictured left, looking very Julie Andrewsy!) started in showbiz early. She sang as a child and though trained in opera her instrument proved extremely versatile. Movie audiences first heard her as the voice of the angels in the Ingrid Bergman version of Joan of Arc (1948). That's a rather appropriate debut since her voice sure is heavenly. But her true claim to movie fame came in that decade long stretch from 1956 through 1965 when she was Kathy Selden to three (non-evil) Lina Lamonts: Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn in The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady respectively. Nixon put the cherry on top of her filmography by appearing in the flesh in Sound of Music. She was Sister Sophia.

I was obsessed with West Side Story as a child (still am) and watched it on TV every chance I got. I don't remember exactly when it was that I was told that Natalie Wood was not doing her own singing but at first I didn't believe it. The singing had the same accent. It sounded like the same voice. That's my Natalie Wood. I was very possessive of my movie stars even as a young brat. It's a mark of both my never ending love for the movie and the generosity of Nixon's career --so much contribution, so little acclaim -- that when I did finally accept this, it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the film but only added to it. Now I had Marni Nixon to love, too.

I think it bears noting that she is a true actress in song. You can occasionally hear the seams from her voice to the actresses (I blame the sound work of the time) but she was doing extraordinarily difficult work with laser like precision, looping and adapting her instrument to the vocal tones, accents, and lip movements of non-trained singers. All that plus she was truly acting the songs, lending matriarchal warmth to The King and I, reinforcing the flush of new love for West Side Story -- boy can you hear Maria falling deeper and deeper -- and aiding in Hepburn's transformation from street urchin to high society prize in My Fair Lady.

If that weren't enough, Nixon was doing touch up work for still more actresses. She sang for Margaret O'Brien, Janet Leigh, and even this: it's reportedly Nixon's voice you're hearing when Marilyn Monroe belts out the one line "these rocks don't lose their shape" during "Diamond's are a Girls' Best Friend." Marni Nixon even played the animated geese in Mary Poppins. Basically it's like this: Only with your DVDs on mute can you watch a 50s or 60s movie without Marni Nixon secretly contributing to your enjoyment. She's a stealth giver.

Marni was the first non-movie star non-director that I recognized as important to the cinema. I knew her name before I ever became devoted to watching end credits or following the careers of costume designers and cinematographers. She's come to represent to me all the unsung backstage heroes and heroines of film, the thousands of unfamiliar names and faces that help shape these great things we call movies.

Marni is 77 years old now. She lives right here in New York City and teaches voice lessons and occassionally performs (I've yet to see her, damn). Imagine the stories she could tell. In addition to the movie work she toured with both Liberace and Victor Borge and her son even composed the Golden Girls theme song "Thank You For Being a Friend". Craziness.

I'd be absolutely starstruck to ever meet her... a strange realization since I may have passed her on the street without even blinking. Her chameleon voice, a thrilling transcendent soprano, is completely embedded in my soul. I heard it 'round the family stereo (we had the vinyl on all of her musicals), I heard it in revival houses in Detroit (her musicals were sell outs), I hear it now whenever I think about the movies (often). I've been hearing her my entire life. I'm pretty sure that the Joan of Arc production got it right. I'll hear her after I die, too. She's the voice of the angels.

AFI: The New Top 100 List

The Revised Greatest American Films List
I'm happy to see Blade Runner, Nashville, and Cabaret added. They all hold high rank in my own favorites listing. What say ye about this new lineup? (To be helpful I've added their previous AFI ranking to the right --big changes in bold)

1. "Citizen Kane" (1941) same
2. "The Godfather" (1972) 3
3. "Casablanca" (1942) 2
4. "Raging Bull" (1980) 24
5. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) 10
6. "Gone With the Wind" (1939) 4
7. "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) 5
8. "Schindler's List" (1993) 9
9. "Vertigo" (1958) 61
10. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) 6


11. "City Lights" (1931) 76
12. "The Searchers" (1956) 96
13. "Star Wars" (1977) 15
14. "Psycho" (1960) 18
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) 22
16. "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) 12
17. "The Graduate" (1967) 7
18. "The General" (1927) new
19. "On the Waterfront" (1954) 8
20. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) 11

21. "Chinatown" (1974) 19
22. "Some Like It Hot" (1959) 14
23. "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) 21
24. "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) 25
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) 34
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) 29
27. "High Noon" (1952) 33
28. "All About Eve" (1950) 16
29. "Double Indemnity" (1944) 38
30. "Apocalypse Now" (1979) 28

31. "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) 23
32. "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) same
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) 20
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) 49
35. "Annie Hall" (1977) 31
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) 13
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) same
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) 30
39. "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) 26
40. "The Sound of Music" (1965) 55

41. "King Kong" (1933) 43
42. "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) 27
43. "Midnight Cowboy" (1969) 36
44. "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) 51
45. "Shane" (1953) 69
46. "It Happened One Night" (1934) 35
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) 45
48. "Rear Window" (1954) 42
49. "Intolerance" (1916) new
50. "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001) new

51. "West Side Story" (1961) 41
52. "Taxi Driver" (1976) 47
53. "The Deer Hunter" (1978) 79
54. "M*A*S*H" (1970) 56
55. "North by Northwest" (1959) 40
56. "Jaws" (1975) 48
57. "Rocky" (1976) 78
58. "The Gold Rush" (1925) 74
59. "Nashville" (1975) new
60. "Duck Soup" (1933) 85

61. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941) new
62. "American Graffiti" (1973) 77
63. "Cabaret" (1972) new
64. "Network" (1976) 66
65. "The African Queen" (1951) 17
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) 60
67. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) new
68. "Unforgiven" (1992) 98
69. "Tootsie" (1982) 62
70. "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) 46 (i still don't understand how this one qualifies as American)

71. "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) new
72. "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) new
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) 50
74. "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) 65
75. "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) new
76. "Forrest Gump" (1994) 71
77. "All the President's Men" (1976) new
78. "Modern Times" (1936) 81
79. "The Wild Bunch" (1969) 80
80. "The Apartment" (1960) 93

81. "Spartacus" (1960) new
82. "Sunrise" (1927) new
83. "Titanic" (1997) new
84. "Easy Rider" (1969) 88
85. "A Night at the Opera" (1935) new
86. "Platoon" (1986) 83
87. "12 Angry Men" (1957) new
88. "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) 97
89. "The Sixth Sense" (1999) new
90. "Swing Time" (1936) new

91. "Sophie's Choice" (1982) new
92. "Goodfellas" (1990) 94
93. "The French Connection" (1971) 70
94. "Pulp Fiction" (1994) 95
95. "The Last Picture Show" (1971) new
96. "Do the Right Thing" (1989) new
97. "Blade Runner" (1982) new
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942) 100
99. "Toy Story" (1995) new
100. "Ben-Hur" (1959) 72

<---they're tearing him apart: James Dean lost BOTH his spots on the top 100. And Monty Clift too. Argh. The films that fell out were...Doctor Zhivago #39, North by Northwest #40, Birth of a Nation #44, From Here To Eternity #52, Amadeus #53, All Quiet on the Western Front #54, The Third Man #57, Fantasia #58, Rebel Without a Cause #59, Stagecoach #63, Close Encounters of the Third Kind #64, The Manchurian Candidate #67, An American in Paris #68, Wuthering Heights #73, Dances With Wolves #75, Giant #82, Fargo #84, Mutiny on the Bounty #86, Frankenstein #87, Patton #89, The Jazz Singer #90, My Fair Lady #91, A Place in the Sun #92, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner #99

weirdest entry: Sophie's Choice... almost never listed in any "best of", apart from Meryl Streep's astonishing performance, is in the top 100 --They collectively name it the 6th best of the entire 80s decade. Whaaaa?

lesson learned: nothing below the top 30 is ever safe. It all depends on who they poll and which way the winds blow.

20:07 (When You're a Jet)

Each morning a screenshot from the 20th minute and 7th second of a movie

So what are we gonna do, huh, buddy boys? I'll tell you what we're gonna do...

In the Musicals

Since the TONY AWARDS are arriving Sunday (another actor showcase later today) showtunes are playing on a loop in my head. So with that in mind...

Thursday Triple: Movie Musicals


(my hearty apologies to the glorious Singin' in the Rain which I love almost as much as these three but still in copious amounts)

Those are my three favorites movie musicals of all time: West Side Story, The Wizard of Oz and Cabaret. If you had to choose only three, what would yours be?