The Sound of Music Celebrates its 50th Anniversary

Posted on March 9, 2015 at 8:00 am

A glorious new 50th anniversary Blu-Ray edition of Sound of Music is out this week, featuring commentary, behind the scenes footage, and all kinds of extras — sure to be one of your “favorite things.”

This box-office champ is one of the all-time great family musicals, a Rodgers and Hammerstein triumph based on the true story of the Von Trapp family’s escape from Austria.

Much of the story is true. Maria was a postulant, sent by the convent to become a tutor for one of the ten (not seven) children of nobleman and Naval officer Georg Von Trapp. They got married, but it was seven years before the Nazis took over Austria. Maria always insisted, though, that Georg was not at all like the stern, humorless character of the early scenes. And they escaped by train, not by the mountains. A new book about the real story behind the family and the film is a lot of fun: The Sound of Music Story: How A Beguiling Young Novice, A Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time.

The movie musical is still one of the all-time greats. And you can visit the Von Trapp grandchildren and great-grandchildren at their resort in Stowe, Vermont, where they are still singing.

Their home in Austria is also now a hotel.

A&E Biography did an episode about the Von Trapps.

Here’s a glimpse of the children from the Broadway cast on the game show, “What’s My Line?” (They’re at the end of the show.)

Julie Andrews performed a duet with Maria Von Trapp.

And here is one of my favorite songs from the movie.

Strange Magic

Posted on January 24, 2015 at 5:25 pm

Despite the big names behind it, including George Lucas, who came up with the story and produced, it feels like a straight-to-DVD, about the level of Disney’s Tinkerbell series. It’s bright, colorful, self-affirming, and bouncy. And, likely to be appreciated more by the adults than the kids in the audience, there is a Glee-style mix, or, perhaps re-mix, of assorted songs from the 60’s through today. But that isn’t enough to make it work on a big screen.

It is supposedly inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the only similarities are the forest, the fairies, and the love potion.

It takes place in an enchanted world that is divided in parts, whose generic names are characteristic of the dim pilot light of the creative imagination at work here. The happy, colorful Fairy Kingdom is ruled by a king (Alfred Molina) with two daughters. The Dark Forest is ruled by the gnarled, bitter Bog King (Alan Cumming) who hates the idea of love because it is chaotic. “Love is dangerous. It weakens. It rots. It destroys order. Without order, there is chaos.”

The fairy king’s oldest daughter is the brave and responsible Marianne (Evan Rachel Wood), who, as the movie begins, is thrilled that she is about to marry the handsome Roland (Sam Palladio). She flies through the kingdom singing a sweet, girl pop version of the Elvis classic, “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” Her younger sister is Dawn (Meredith Anne Bull), who has good intentions but is impetuous and a little naive. Her best friend is an elf named Sonny (Elijah Kelley), who patiently listens to Dawn talk about her various crushes and does not let her know that he is in love with her. They have a cute duet to Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

Marianne discovers Roland kissing another girl and breaks their engagement. But Roland wants to be king, and that means he must persuade Marianne to be his wife. He persuades Sonny to cross the border into the Bog King’s domain to get a love potion from the Sugar Plum Fairy (Kristin Chenoweth), who was imprisoned by the Bog King. Sonny agrees so he can get some for Dawn, to make her fall in love with him. Sonny has a lot of adventures on the way to obtaining the potion, and the Sugar Plum Fairy insists on getting out of her cage in return for her services. Sonny gets the glowing green potion, but just as in Shakespeare, it does not work as intended. The Bog King captures Dawn, demanding the potion as ransom. Marianne flies in to the rescue, but so do Sonny and Roland, creating some confusion and misunderstandings. And a lot of singing. The well-chosen tunes include: “What Do You Get When You Fall In Love?,” “Marianne,” “I Want to Dance With Somebody,” “When You’re Strange,” “Love is Strange,” “Sugarpie Honeybunch,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “Tell Him,” and “Wild Thing.”

There is an unexpectedly endearing romance, and the usual kids-film messages about the importance of what’s inside us. But the light-weight storyline is weighed down by sub-standard design and low-level animation that relies too much on algorithms and not enough on imagination.

This is where looks do matter, and this film cannot overcome the clunkiness of its design.

Parents should know that there is some fairytale peril and violence, including some scary creatures, some mild gender humor including an accidental same-sex kiss portrayed as gross (really? In 2015?), and brief potty humor.

Family discussion: Why did Marianne and Bog have trouble trusting others? Why did Bog start to be nice?

If you like this, try: “The Book of Life” and the Tinkerbell series of DVDs.

Related Tags:

Animation Fantasy Musical

Interview: Meredith Anne Bull of “Strange Magic”

Posted on January 21, 2015 at 3:57 pm

Bog King (voice of Alan Cumming), Griselda (voice of Maya Rudolph) and Marianne (voice of Evan Rachel Wood) are part of a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies and imps in "Strange Magic," a madcap fairy tale musical inspired by “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Released by Touchstone Pictures, “Strange Magic” is in theaters Jan. 23, 2015. Strange Magic © & TM 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved. — Bog King (voice of Alan Cumming), Griselda (voice of Maya Rudolph) and Marianne (voice of Evan Rachel Wood) in “Strange Magic.” Strange Magic © & TM 2014 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Meredith Anne Bull stars in this week’s release “Strange Magic,” an animated musical fairy tale based on a story by George Lucas. She plays Dawn the “young, naive, unaffected and thrilled with life” younger sister of the heroine, Marianne, played by Evan Rachel Wood. She has done voice-over work before, but this was her first time as the voice of a feature film animated character. She says she felt very comfortable working in a recording studio, which is a challenge for some actors who don’t have a musical background. But it was a challenge to create a performance alone in a recording booth, “without the other actors around you to interact with. Sometimes the director will feed you lines and sometimes you are out there on your own and you have to pull from your imagination.” She did get to see some of the movie’s visuals, especially more recently. She began working on the film in 2011, before most of the animation work had been completed. And the storyline changed over the year. But in the last year she got to see some short clips and had a better idea of what the final version would be like. She says her favorite fairy tales are “Red Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks,” which she thinks is “hilarious.”

Bull told me she originally auditioned for the part of Marianne, singing “Thriller” and “Like a Virgin.” They asked her to read for Dawn, though she says it is Marianne who is more like her in real life, more independent, with more of a dark sense of humor. “But they saw some part of Dawn in me. They’re more to her than being irresponsible and flying off the handle. She’s sensitive, and she really cares about her sister. Sometimes she can be self-centered, and she lets her sister down at one point, but you see how much she cares about what her sister thinks of her. She’s not just happy all the time, though that is certainly her go-to emotion.”

The movie has an assortment of contemporary songs, including a duet with Elijah Kelley, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” “They’re not like the typical Prince Charming and Princess. She’s like three feet taller than he is!”

She says the best piece of advice she ever got was from Kelley, who told her not to be intimidated, no matter who she was working with. “This was kind of my first big film. I was not exactly intimidated but a little squirrely to be around these people who are very established. Elijah talked to me about not being intimidated — we are all people, we all have families, we all have insecurities and disappointments. You should never let anyone make you feel less than you are.”

Related Tags:

Actors Animation Interview Musical

Premiering on Fox This Week: Empire with Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson

Posted on January 5, 2015 at 3:56 pm

One of the most exciting new televisions shows of the season is “Empire,” premiering on January 7, 2015 on Fox. It is part “King Lear,” part “Godfather,” part “Lion in Winter,” part soap opera, and set in the world of hip-hop music. Terrence Howard plays a drug dealer turned music mogul named Lucious Lyon who has learned he has ALS, with a life expectancy of just a couple of years. He must decide which of his three sons will inherit his business. One son has the business expertise. One has the musical talent. But he is gay, which makes Lyon uncomfortable. The youngest may be the most capable but he is immature and arrogant.

Lyon’s wife, Cookie, took the fall for their drug dealing and has been serving a prison sentence. As the series starts, she is released, furious and determined to make up for the years — and money — she lost. Henson and Howard had sizzling chemistry in “Hustle and Flow,” and it will be a treat to see them setting off against each other. With Lee Daniels (“Precious,” “The Butler”) and Danny Strong (“Game Change”) writing the series, there is sure to be plenty of flinty dialogue to help with the sparks. And, like “Glee” and “Nashville,” each week will have musical numbers (produced by Timbaland) that will be available on iTunes.

Related Tags:

Musical Race and Diversity Television

Into the Woods

Posted on December 24, 2014 at 5:55 pm

Copyright Disney Studios 2014 — Copyright Walt Disney Pictures 2014

This is not a Disney movie. Oh, well, yes, it is a Disney movie in the sense that it is produced by Disney, which is the only possible explanation for the PG rating (and the slightly sweetened storyline), but this is not the happily ever after fairy tale story time we are used to from Disney. You didn’t remember that in the original version of Cinderella the mean stepsisters sliced off pieces of their feet to try to fit into the slipper the prince was using to find his true love? That’s because it was, well, cut out of the classic Disney animated version as well as most contemporary printed versions. But it’s back here, in a complicated, challenging retelling of classic fairy tales where having your wish granted may leave you worse off than you were before.

Parents looking for a movie for the family for the holidays need to know that this is not this year’s “Frozen.” It is a sung-through (almost no spoken dialogue) and there are characters who are injured and killed, including parents of young children. It is a darker take on fairy tales. The characters struggle with the consequences of their wishes and of the actions they take when they want something desperately. They lie and they steal to get what they want. And they learn that no one is all bad or all good. “Though scary is exciting, nice is different from good.”

Writer James Lapine says the idea came from a conversation with his frequent collaborator, Stephen Sondheim, who wanted his next project to be about a quest. Lapine wanted to write something about fairy tales. And so “Into the Woods” became that project, a mash-up of many different classic fairy tales with a witch, and giants, and a dark place where the paths are not clear, a place for people who are yearning for something and willing to take some risks. “I wish,” they all sing as the movie begins. Cinderella, with her evil stepmother (Christine Baranski) and mean girl stepsisters, wishes to go to the festival held by the royal family. The baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) wish for a child. A boy named Jack (Daniel Huttlestone, who has a voice like a bell), wishes his milky-white cow would give milk and his mother (Tracy Ullman) wishes they had money so they could have enough to eat. And a girl in a red riding hood (the very gifted Lilla Crawford) wants some bread to take to her grandmother (and some pastries for herself).

And there’s a witch (Meryl Streep) who wishes for something, too. She tells the baker and his wife that she will remove the curse that is keeping them from having a child if they will bring her four things: a cow white as milk, hair gold as corn, a cape red as blood, and a slipper pure as gold. The problem is that all of these items are essential props in other stories. If the baker and his wife take them, then Jack will not have a cow to trade for magic beans, Rapunzel will not have hair to let down so her prince can climb the tower, Red Riding Hood will not be able to go to her grandmother’s house, and Cinderella’s prince will not be able to find her. What happens to wishes when they cancel each other out? When one person’s wish is another’s nightmare? And when the handsome prince explains that he was raised to be Charming, but not necessarily Sincere? Is there any good in being good?

The characters explore themes of innocence, and the competing urges to protect children by keeping them from knowing about the dangers of the world and to protect them by making sure they understand those dangers. “How do you say it will all be all right/When you know that it might not be true?”

Even the witch tries to protect her (stolen) daughter from the scary world outside her tower. But children do not listen. They will grow up and want to leave, even if it means learning “secrets I never wanted to know,” as Red Riding Hood sings thoughtfully, after she is rescued from the belly of the wolf. On the other hand “children will listen,” sometimes when we don’t want them to, so we need to be careful in setting a good example and in taking care of them. And somehow, it is in taking care of them we become most fully ourselves. “Fairy tales understood us before we understood them,” we are told. This exploration of fairy tale themes shows us that they still understand us better than we understand ourselves.

Parents should know that this film includes fairy tale/fantasy peril and violence with some characters injured and killed (including two parents of children), some disturbing images and troubling situations, mild sexual references and non-explicit situations with some kissing.

Family Discussion: What is your favorite fairy tale and why? In the song where everyone blames someone else, who is right?

If you like this, try: Revisionist fairy tales “Ella Enchanted,” “Stardust,” and “Ever After” and, for more from Sondheim, Six by Sondheim and Sondheim: The Birthday Concert