Movie Meme Day 15 - Best musical

There have been quite a few posts about musicals in the past few months.  Monday Musicals will return in a few weeks to be sure.  This post requirement is a bit strange, it doesn't say "Favorite" musical, it says "Best" musical.  Musicals have held fast to a format over many decades, though the successful ones continue to evolve in small ways to adapt to their own time.   The best musical, in my opinion of course, is West Side Story.  Taking the Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, bringing it to New York City, and rather than having two families fighting, it's rival gangs of poor white Americans and poor immigrant Puerto Ricans.  The Jets and the Sharks fight over territory and attempt to stay out of trouble and stay away from the police.  Put to the music of Leonard Berstein, with the longest and best Overture among musicals, it's gorgeous music, that has amazing lyrics by the incomparable Stephen Sondheim.  You can't beat that.   Here's a scene I love.  Enjoy.

Musical Mondays: Little Shop of Horrors

Nick over at Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob shares my love for this musical, and thankfully Netflix shows it on their Watch Instantly service so I didn't have to buy the DVD yet.  When I decided to watch it this week all I really remembered was the music, not so much the dialogue or the look of the movie.  I actually saw the 2003 revival on Broadway (though it's a misnomer given that it had never appeared on Broadway before, only touring companies and regional theater) with Hunter Foster and an Audrey II that grew and reached out far into and above the audience. It was pretty amazing to see, but I like the movie better.

Quick plot summary:  Seymour is a loser who works in Mr. Mushnik's flower shop and is in love with the other employee Audrey (Ellen Greene) who is dating a sadistic dentist (Steve Martin).  The business is failing (partly because it's located on Skid Row) and to help business Seymour puts a "strange and unusual plant" in the window that he found at a market after a total eclipse of the sun.  He names the plant Audrey II.  It does improve business hugely, and Mr. Mushnik insists Seymour make the plant grow.  It turns out Audrey II drinks blood.  Once it outgrows what it can suck from Seymour's fingers, Seymour has to start killing to keep his life going.  In exchange for killing people, Audrey II promises Seymour the world, including his love, Audrey.   Most of the named cast dies, but when Audrey II goes after its namesake, Seymour stops it all and attempts to kill the plant.  The final scene leaves you unsure of whether Audrey II takes over the world or dies.

Rewatching Little Shop of Horrors today, I was reminded of why the movie version is the best.  The three main characters - Seymour, Audrey, Mr. Mushnik - matter, but it's really the supporting cast that can make or break the show.  Particularly the three girls (Crystal, Chiffon, and Ronette - named after girl groups of the '50s) who intro the show, and basically sing back up for much of the rest of the show.  However, they also have dialogue and need to be pretty good scene-stealers to make their short moments in the spotlight stand out enough that you remember them.  The women in the movie are strong enough that they stand out perfectly.  The versions I've seen on stage didn't cast those roles strongly enough and I think the whole production suffers for it.  The other thing that makes the movie work so well is the cinematography and production design.  The scenes could all have been from a 1950s comic book.  The edges of the shot are soft and slightly out of focus, even indoors.  Even scenes at the dentist are sometimes from inside a mouth (that's the girl group behind him) are perfectly crafted to invoke the fantasy/horror of those genre rather than strictly the musical genre, even though it's not particularly scary, just creepy at times.   Also, Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene are perfectly cast as a couple of losers who fall in love, make good and after escaping the plant, live happily ever after (we hope). 

Musical Mondays! NINE

This will likely be the newest musical I review for this feature, but as I just saw it, and would review it anyway, and it's a musical, this seems appropriate.  Nine is based on the stage musical from a few years ago, which was in turn loosely based on the film 8 1/2 by Fellini.  I've never seen the stage version, and I have seen very few Fellini films, and not 8 1/2.  So I went into this film based solely on the strength of the cast and director.  Rob Marshall did a terrific job bringing Chicago to the screen (that will be reviewed soon), so I had high hopes for this.  As it never came to my local theater, I had to wait for Netflix.  However, I'd heard the many unhappy reviews, but took them with a grain of salt given my higher-than-usual tolerance for musicals.  My mom used to say a good measure of a quality musical is whether you leave the theater humming the tunes.  While I did get some of the songs stuck in my head for the evening, Nine was disappointing. 

We meet Guido Contini (a whiny unsympathetic Daniel Day-Lewis), a maestro of Italian cinema in the 1960s.  He's tortured by lack of inspiration for his new film, and seeks it from the many women in high life.  The movie is mostly about the women, and for that I did enjoy it, but they too are kinda whiny and needy.  Most of the story is told through Guido's remembered fantasies about these women.  The ones who weren't were the ones I liked best: Judi Dench and Fergi.  Dench plays Guido's long suffering costumer.  She talks about her start at the Paris nightspot the Folies Bergere.  She tries to keep Guido in line and get his movies made the way he wants them.  A great big sister.  Fergie (from the Black Eyed Peas) plays the whore who Guido met as a child who gave him and his friends a bit of a show and told them how to treat women.  Her song was easily my favorite, and definitely the best sung song of the bunch.  Her voice and raunchy dance number, "Be Italian", were really terrific.  The rest of the women also each sing a song about their relationship with Guido - Marion Cotillard as his wife, Penelope Cruz (in an oddly Oscar nominated role) as his mistress, Sophia Loren as his deceased mother, Nicole Kidman as the actress from his movies, and Kate Hudson as a journalist interviewing him.  All the musical numbers were performed in Guido's head and on the same stage (save one song by his wife) and the sets did invoke the crazy unfinished nature of Guido's mind.  The costumes were also terrific, and I'm surprised weren't even nominated for an Oscar.  Overall, the movie didn't live up to my hopes, and didn't live up to the incredible cast.  Personally, I blame it on Day-Lewis being improperly cast - somehow I sense another actor could pull it off better.  I think Raul Julia and Antonio Bandares played it on Broadway, and that seems like better casting.  2.5 of 5 stars/lambs

Songs in movies, some thoughts

There are often songs used in movies by particular characters to help convey a message or develop the plot or the characters emotions or desires. Two movies this year have made use of this device: WALL*E and Australia. However, only WALL*E shows how to do it effectively without overusing the music instead of more creative dialogue. Australia uses the song "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. Nicole Kidman's character sings it to Nullah as a bedtime lullaby, but can't remember all the words. Enough of the lyrics capture Nullah's imagination and he hums the song throughout the movie, and the director Baz Luhrmann uses the lyrics to help tell Nullah's story. However, having Nullah actually attend a showing of The Wizard of Oz starts taking the device a degree too far. Everyone watching the film (as it's not meant for children) already got the symbolism, given that it's one of the most wellknown songs around the world. In WALL*E however, the movie benefits from several choices: using a somewhat less well known songs, "Put on your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello, Dolly!, and having the actual music play - the movie plays, as well as Wall*E's recordings of the songs. The characters don't sing the music often, and in particular because they don't speak, the music does a good job as a complement to their emtions rather than just playing repeatedly without obvious context. Wall*E seeks to have a connection, and literally hold hands with someone (EVE) like they do in the movie Hello, Dolly! during "It Only Takes a Moment". Wall*E makes use of the music in a much better way than Australia does, in my opinion. Just something I've been thinking about. Here's a clip from Wall*E with the song they use.

Mamma Mia, here I go again...

I haven't seen the original Broadway show of Mamma Mia! even though it's been out forever, but I've always known the music of ABBA so I was pretty intrigued to actually see how they put all those funky songs into some version of a cohesive story. And I was very pleasantly surprised. I think they did a terrific job taking a stage musical and removing the staging pretty well. Very few moments were flat or like they'd been presented from one view. In this respect, I thought Mamma Mia was actually better than Chicago. The story is very contrived to fit the music, but still isn't totally implausible. It's the story of a young girl (Amanda Seyfried) getting married on a Greek Island and wants to invite her father, but doesn't know which of 3 possible men it might be (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard). They appear on the island and throw her mom (Meryl Streep) into a tizzy. However, she has her 2 best friends (Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) to keep her cool. They used to be part of a hippy girl-group. Seyfried tries to figure out which one might be her dad, but you'll have to watch it to see which it is. There's lots of drama and lots of people bursting into song when they have an emotion to express, but if that doesn't scare you off, it's pretty terrific. But it's a light-hearted funny romp around a Greek Island and through Streep's checkered past. I liked it, 3.5 stars (or LAMBS) of 5. Oh, and Colin Firth is just terrific as always, funny and awkward all the time.