la la land

It's difficult not to be dazzled by Damien Chazelle's musical La La Land. It has shades

of Minnelli and vintage-Hollywood romanticism but is placed in a modern-day, distinctive, if slightly highly-pitched, L.A. (Priuses, smoggy sunsets, traffic jams, crudely painted murals of dead stars); it also veers from being Xanadu camp (or far worse, "Glee") through the kineticism of Chazelle's direction, the bittersweet realism of the storyline and the film's two disarmingly funny and charming leads (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone). They've been paired before with dynamite results in Crazy, Stupid, Love. as one of that movie's few highlights, but here, they enter a territory that makes them an unforgettable cinematic duo. What makes them so great and appealing to my particular generation is that you can picture them wincing from that description and yet affably, accepting it. 

Stone plays a Warner lot barista struggling to get callbacks from auditions including one that's "Dangerous Minds meets The O.C." Gosling is a pianist with a feverish passion for jazz who longs to open his own club. What ends up happening to these two characters unravels through a blissful pastiche of song and dance with an indelible score of songs by Justin Hurwitz and organic, not overly flashy, choreography by Mandy Moore (not to be confused with the pop singer / actress). There are homages to the heyday of Warner Brothers and MGM as these two try to realize their dreams, but the film restrains itself from being both overly varnished (like Baz Luhrmann) and overly saccharine. There are shaky, flawed moments here and there (anything involving the supporting players fizzles),

including an oddly-mounted party scene where Gosling plays in an 80s cover band and Stone sips from a can of Mountain Dew but those quibbles are ameliorated by so many fine moments and a particular stride in a paradoxical, brilliant coda where melancholic ache arises out of a re-telling of events with old-school, slapsticky fanfare. By the time we reach the end, we've made a journey--a far cry from the opening, 90s Gap-ad-like sunshiny traffic jam dance tune, into something more sobering and yet uplifting at the same time. 

La La Land hits a sweet spot, I think, at the end of a long, draining year of American tumult and division when many of us aren't feeling that optimistic. So sometimes the arrival of an artistic crowdpleaser feels like one of our country's few miracles to hang on to. Here's to the mess these artists make. ****

-Jeffery Berg

city of stars

As the buzz for La La Land heats up, Stone and Gosling have released this swoony duet from the film.

my fair lady

The most impressive aspects of George Cukor's grand old Warner Brothers 1964 musical My Fair Lady are the immense but intricate sets, the indelible music (adapted from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Broadway hit), and Cecil Beaton's lavish Academy Award-winning costumes and magnanimous hats.  Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) is a brash, naive Cockney flower girl who is groomed and taught speech lessons by phonetician Professor Henry Higgins.  This much beloved film hasn't really dated well--it's overlong, Rex Harrison's priggish Mr. Higgins is nearly unbearable (nevertheless Harrison won the Oscar) and lovely Audrey Hepburn's performance is at times unsteady (and sort of annoying) as she puts upon a Cockney accent and lip syncs for her life (to her dismay, the studio chose to dub her vocals by Marni Nixon).  Neither performer has the seemingly effortless grace and thespian skill of Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller who played George Bernard Shaw's Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.  It's interesting how Pygmalion was filmed over thirty years prior to Lady but seems more modern, more complex and savagely satirical in comparison (I wasn't a fan of Lady's changed ending from Shaw's source material).  Yet it's hard not to resist My Fair Lady and its music and big-budget 1960s Hollywood appeal. Besides winning Oscars for Best Picture, Cukor's direction, Harrison, its warmly-lit cinematography, Costume Design, and Sound (besides the dubbing, many smoothly-handled tricks are done here), the picture also won for Art Direction (credited to Gene Allen, Beaton, George James Hopkins).  There's such beautiful attention to detail from the title cards of flowers to the moldings, the columns, posts, swinging gates, gilded lattice work and the Covent Garden cobblestones--individually crafted and designed.

The most breathtaking moment (and ultimately symbolic) for me is the Ascot Racecourse scene with its spectacular costumes and vocal harmonies. There's something eerie too in watching these upper crust characters as shallow, stiff mannequins, wrapped in black & white satin and silk.  Another highlight is the embassy dance ball where Doolittle is shown off in her iconic bouffant hairdo with a glimmering little crown, necklace and simple beaded white gown.  The middle of the picture becomes more resonant as Doolittle slowly realizes she is merely Higgins' show pony.

Perhaps because this isn't musical of dance, it comes off a bit stodgy at times, and it's clearly meant for the big screen, yet My Fair Lady is an essential, sometimes exquisite relic of bloated, dazzlingly hand-crafted Hollywood epics that would eventually fade within the changing mores of sixties cinema.  One of the era's seminal events even occurred while filming "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," when Hepburn got word of JFK's assassination. She announced his passing to the crew and requested a moment of silence; then they all walked off the set and went home.  ***

-Jeffery Berg

musicals in france

Gigi and An American in Paris share many similarities: they are both Best Picture-winning musicals directed by Vincente Minnelli and both are extremely fluffy. In An American Paris Gene Kelly winningly plays an upbeat but struggling American painter who lives in a tiny Paris flat. An aging heiress (played with great ease by Nina Foch--my favorite actor in the film) discovers him on the street one day, and decides to sponsor his work. By happenstance at a bar, he falls in love with an elusive and elegant Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron in her splashy debut) who may already be attached to someone else.

The plot is creaky and any tension, mostly set up between Kelly and Foch is quickly evaporated by the familiar love story. Yet the movie is a visual and aural delight. The music of George Gershwin ("I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," "Strike Up the Band") soars against the vibrant Paris backdrop (the film was filmed on elaborate sets not actual locations). Gene Kelly slinks his way through it but from a modern standpoint, the film is no Singin' in the Rain. The love story just isn't that compelling. It's not until the climax--an explosive, gorgeously lit ballet sequence--that the film really dazzles. It's one of Minnelli's and cinema's all-time great set pieces. ***

His overstuffed bonbon Gigi is far less successful--a plodding (and too tame) adaptation of Collette backed by an uneven Lerner and Lowe score. Leslie Caron plays the title character (her vocals were dubbed), a young girl who is being groomed to be a courtesan by her protective aunt (a perfectly cast Hermione Gingold). The handsome Louis Jourdan plays her suitor, who falls in love with her, not merely as an object of desire but as a young woman.

Again the visuals take center stage: impeccable and lavish period detail in costuming (many of the pieces are now iconic) and art direction. The film is nice but unlike Minelli's superior (and best) musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, Gigi lacks intimacy. There were moments where I wish the camera had gone in for some close-ups (even some medium ones!) but it remains a wide shot movie, too busy showing off all the artifice and decor. **

-Jeffery Berg

(un)cool cats

What is Cats about really? It requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and marveling at people dressed in feline costumes. It is indeed even more bizarre that its basis is T.S. Eliot. The song "Memory" has become standard for covering all the thematic bases of Broadway: lost hopes and dreams of performing, and aging.

I used to really love the Cats soundtrack as a child (listened to over and over on cassette). I would dance around my room to "Jellicle Cats" and "Mr. Mistoffelees." Little did I know I would grow to learn that this is considered the nadir of popular musicals.

Years later when I saw a production of it at the Roanoke Civic Center, it seemed to have lost a lot of the luster I remembered it for. It was actually kind of irritating.

But secretly I still like some of the songs.

Are there any guilty pleasure musicals you can think of?

sugar daddy

Sometimes I wish Stephen Daldry was my boyfriend. He is 6'2 and has pretty hair. I also appreciate his artistic vision. When The Hours came out in theaters, I saw it five times. I also loved The Reader which was in similar vein: cross-cutting different eras, somber, and unsentimental. A veteran of the theatre, Daldry's experience is evident on film: he gives the actors space to move around and speak long (borderline pretentious) David Hare passages, with strict control of their appearance (costumes, fake noses, prosthetics) and surroundings (period detail and lighting).

I was lucky to catch Billy Elliot at the Imperial Theatre last night. Daldry's musical is superior to Daldry's 2000 film. The dance sequences are lithe, energetic and beautiful to look at especially when meshed with the bleak coal mining strikes of its setting: 1980s England. The young lead (played by 3 different actors--in this performance, Kiril Kulish) and his salty dance instructor Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne) are excellent. There isn't a "Memory" or a vocal powerhouse number but Elton John's songs move the show along nicely. The producers have kept the integrity of the show, with its complex gender and social issues, without watering it down for America. I can't think of a recent musical as good.

Like the subject matter and characters of his work, the nature of Daldry's sexuality is ambiguous. After a long relationship with a male set designer, he married a woman and had a child. He told The Advocate: "We're allowed to do everything. I refuse to be boxed in to the idea that 'Oh, no, I can't have kids 'cause I'm gay.' I can have kids if I'm gay. And I can also get married and have a fantastic life...To all questions [having to do] with my marriage, the answer to everything is yes. Do I have sex with my wife? Yes. Is it a real marriage? Yes. Am I gay? Yes."

Stephen, I wish you the best in love and art (forthcoming adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay) but if you ever want to move on, I am here.