Beauty and the Beast: The Songs
Posted on March 16, 2017 at 8:55 am
Emma Watson, Josh Gad, and Luke Evans talk about singing in the new live action version of “Beauty and the Beast.”
Love Actually — A Mini-Sequel!
Posted on March 9, 2017 at 8:00 am
Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, and even the slow-wrapping jewelry-salesman Rowan Atkinson are all returning for a special “Love Actually” update, part of a fundraiser for Comic Relief, co-founded by “Love Actually” writer/director Richard Curtis. Emma Freud, producer (and wife of Richard Curtis) has been tweeting some clues about what we might be seeing. It looks like David (Grant) is back in 10 Downing Street and now married to Natalie. The update will be shown on the Comic Relief television broadcast May 24, 2017.
Tribute: TCM’s Robert Osborne
Posted on March 6, 2017 at 3:49 pm
We bid a sad farewell to Robert Osborne, the most gracious of gentlemen and the most devoted and erudite of movie fans.
Osborne’s love of old movies and the people who made them brought a new generation to movies made before their parents were born. His interviews were always fascinating and thoughtful and his books, including a history of the Oscars and a tribute to some of his most cherished favorites, are filled with illuminating insights and insider details.
Adam Bernstein’s touching tribute in the Washington Post noted:
As the suave, soothing public face of TCM, Mr. Osborne delivered revelatory tidbits before and after each screening, and he gently coaxed stars well past their prime (Patricia Neal, Tony Curtis, Betty Hutton) to speak tantalizingly of their career highs and lows.
Erudite without being snobbish, Mr. Osborne conveyed a seemingly limitless ardor for the job. He could enthuse about the 1940 Ann Sothern vehicle “Congo Maisie” as much as the Oscar-winning epic “Gone With the Wind” (1939).
The TCM host worked hard to intrigue first-time viewers, garnishing his segments with stories about backstage affairs and egos run amok amid filmmaking, and he tried to find new approaches to entice more-experienced viewers such as himself.
Like the movies he loved, he brought so much joy. May his memory be a blessing.
Interview: Jon Manning on the Burlesque Documentary “The Glitter Tribe”
Posted on February 28, 2017 at 7:50 am
Jon Manning is the director of Burlesque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe, an engaging and enlightening new film about modern-day burlesque performers who, as one of them says, combine “dancing, sexy, pretty, funny” in their performances. They have great passion for their work, their audience, and their fellow performers and they love what they do. Another one says in the film that when people tell her she will end up a spinster because of her burlesque lifestyle, she says, “I’m going to be a spinster that was a showgirl so I’m okay with it.” The film is in limited release March 3, 2017 and on VOD/Itunes March 7, 2017.
In an interview, Manning talked about what he saw and what he learned.
What makes someone a great burlesque performer?
You might want to ask a performer that question but here goes – a great burlesque performer is one that takes seriously their artform, their performance, their costume, their music, their family of performers, their audience – in the playful presentation of a sexy, sometimes funny 5 minutes of performance art. For, generally, almost no money.
These are the 98% of burlesque performers around the country that are bank tellers, graphic artists and chefs during the day.
This is not relative to (and this film is not about) the small handful of international performers such as Dita Von Tease that create big extravagant Las Vegas style shows, and have major international sponsors.
What goes into the song selection? What makes a song right for burlesque?
I have found that usually bsq performers select a piece of music that is very specific to the routine they are doing – either bc of it’s irony, specific singer or that they are exploring in their performance.
Our film explores “neo-burlesque” which is generally different than “classic” often in the types and styles of music the performers choose.
How does a burlesque performer develop her or his on-stage persona?
It’s usually an outgrowth from an aspect of their own personality. They then begin to see what works on-stage with the audience and slowly they begin to create their own persona that is unique and different than other performers.
Are burlesque performers competitive with each other? Do they enjoy watching each other perform?
I can’t speak to whether or not they are competitive with each other. As dancers and performers I image that they are. We looked very closely at one troupe that works intimately with each other in their chosen burlesque family.
My experience is that they love to watch other dancers/performers – especially if those other performers are at the top of their game!
Some of the performers in the film have always been outgoing and enjoyed being on stage. Others were originally shy and found the freedom to perform very liberating. How does that affect their acts and their relationship to the audience?
No doubt that their fears or assets are front and center in their comfort on-stage. Remember that these dancers are also actors for those few minutes on stage – with narrative and persona being adapted to their routine. So there may be a lot to overcome in who they actually are to what they want to be on-stage.
This is why most bsq performers find it empowering to be on-stage and getting immediate feedback from their audiences.
Who is the audience for burlesque? Is it different from the audience for strip shows?
Everyone can enjoy a burlesque show! A strip club usually has a completely different vibe and intention of from the audience. My experience of a strip club is that it is also very carnal and mostly attended by men. Bsq is kind of the opposite. The sexual aspect is usually done with a lot of fun and tease and usually only at the very end of the performance and my shows I have ever attended are at least 50% women in the audience.
In an era where everything is available online, what is it that brings the audience to a burlesque show?
People are realizing that life is bigger than their phones. There is a whole vibe and excitement at a bsq show. You have to be in the audience to feel it. You can also usually talk with the performers afterward a show.
So many of the performers have day jobs and other commitments. Why is burlesque so important to them?
Love of performance, empowerment, chosen family. Did I mention that is was a bawdy and raucus good time?!
Interview: Ash Brannon, Director of “Rock Dog”
Posted on February 24, 2017 at 2:42 pm
Ash Brannon directed “Surf’s Up” and co-directed “Toy Story 2,” two of my favorite animated films. He took on quite a challenge writing and directing the endearing new international production “Rock Dog,” inspired by a Chinese graphic novel about a sheepdog from Tibet who wants to be a musician. I was lucky to get a chance to talk to him about it.
Like the surfing penguin story “Surf’s Up,” “Rock Dog” is the story of an animal character who is passionate about something unusual for his species. “Characters with big dreams, impossible dreams, those are always a place to start when you are making the movie, aren’t they?” Brannon said.
He especially enjoyed working on an international production that came from China. “I hadn’t heard of the comic book. It was very big in China but not outside of China so the producer on the show told me about it and I was kind of intrigued by the challenges of the show. Doing something with fewer resources of time and money and a chance to build my own front-end team to put the story together. Also, I thought it would be fun just to work with some different cultures and discover what we have in common, what we don’t have in common when it comes to making movies, and so that’s kind of the long and short of it. The pleasant surprise was that stories like this work pretty much all over the world. Especially the musical theme shows music as universal, a thing we all have in common. It’s a really magical story, too. When you see a kid bang on pots and pans or strum a guitar or play the keys on a piano for the first time and discover that they can make sounds and eventually pleasing sounds that can really touch the hearts of people, that’s an amazing magical thing. And so, I wanted to tap into that and I discovered in working with the Chinese artists that they feel the same way. So, it was nice to kind of transcend some boundaries in making this movie.”
The film is inspired in part by the real life of the rock star who wrote the graphic novel. “He’s pretty much like Bodi in this story. He was going to go into international finance. He was in business school and then he heard a Bruce Springsteen song one day in college. This is back in the 80s or 90s, so you can imagine what kind of bootleg it takes to get Springsteen songs into China, but he fell in love with music and asked permission from his mom and she said, ‘Yes, go follow your dream.” He went off to Beijing, taught himself music. He was busking in the parks and he went from a very, very modest beginning to quite a fortunate career.”
The look of the movie is also very different from the graphic novel. “One great gift that Michael gave the team, because it was entirely an American team of artists who put the movie together, was his generosity and his trust in letting us go where we thought we needed to go and adapting the graphic novel and that extended to the designs. One reason we had to kind of depart from it was to simplify the characters because of our budget and make sure that nothing was too complicated so everything went in a simplified direction for that reason.”
One of my favorite things in the movie was the opening sequence, done in a dreamlike collage style. “It was something that the partners in China really wanted. I think they liked the opening of ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ for example, kind of a 2D graphic style. We really wanted to set up very quickly and bring you into the story almost like a book to help you understand the setup of this village of sheep and the guard dog and how Bodi’s father ended up locking up these musical instruments away for fear that his son would stray from the path of making sure he grew up and became the next guard to protect the sheep. So, it was a nice shorthand way of doing that and that’s kind of how we approached the opening.”
The rock star voiced by Eddie Izzard in the film lives in a fabulous mansion, and Brannon explained that they took advantage of one of the benefits of animation — there is no limit to imagination because what they create does not have to built. “We had a fantastic art director named Christian Schellewald who I met at DreamWorks and I let him run with the concept of what a rock star’s house must look like when money is no object. So we went outlandish with the enormous waterbed and the massive living room and the over-the-top music recording room. It was fun just to do things you can only do in animation that would look kind of crazy in live action.”
He said that in casting the voice actors, who include Sam Elliott, Luke Wilson, and JK Simmons, “naturalism is key. I really like actors who embrace improvisation and who can really act through their voice only. I mean when you think about it, live action actors bring so much to their performances visually, right? Their facial expressions, gestures, and so forth and their looks. When you take all that away sometimes actors don’t have anything left. So I look for actors who can really bring a texture that is interesting to listen to, people who can emote entirely with the voice alone.”
The movie features a rock ‘n’ roll park based on a real-life park in Japan. “These kids are amazing, as talented as anybody who’s getting record label deals. They are singing their hearts out. You can go anywhere even in America and you find these musicians in New York or LA, San Francisco, anywhere they have such passion for making music you almost feel like if they could not make music they wouldn’t survive, it’s like breathing for them or eating or drinking. So, that was the thing that struck me and its universal. People need to make music. It’s part of what sustains us on earth. And that’s the feeling I wanted in our movie.”