Thursday, August 06, 2009
A pox on all your award shows
By Edward Copeland
From an early age, I suffered from the unfortunate affliction of awardsmania. Of course, it primarily focused on the Oscars, but it extended to the Tonys, the Emmys and some of the lessers as well. Recently however, the three major awards for achievement in film, Broadway and television have all taken actions that have finally forced me to my breaking point and I say, "No more." If they no longer care about their own supposed status as prizes for honoring outstanding achievement in their respective media but instead have decided they really are nothing more than once-a-year TV shows, three-hour or longer infomercials if you will, then I say fuck them. I can still love great film, great TV and great theater without having to be caught up with the nonsense of the various awards seasons any longer. No more predictions. No more surveys. No more speculation. Oscar, Emmy, Tony: You are all dead to me.
Ruining the Academy Awards
When the Academy Awards originally were created in the 1920s, the original movers and shakers of Hollywood intended the award as a way to paint a coat of respectability on the industry which, even in those early days, was a familiar whipping boy for lowering the nation's moral standards. Throughout the years since the Oscars were first presented in 1929 for the split year 1927-28, the Academy has made many changes, some for the good, some for the bad. Certainly, their choices of nominees and winners always have proved frustrating for film fans, but nothing so awful that they required abandonment. Lately, and particularly this year, the changes have become too awful to ignore and they have been motivated less by the quality of the award than of the obsession about Oscarcast ratings itself. People always have complained about the length with some supposed entertainment journalists complaining about wasting time on awards "no one cares about" such as cinematography or art direction. Oscar freaks such as myself do care about those categories because we are there for ALL the awards, not just the big categories and the stars. The funny thing is the David Letterman spilled the dirty little secret about the broadcast after being tarred and feathered after his hosting stint that the show he hosted was running early and ABC officials told him to stretch so they could get more commercials in.
The Oscars consistently are in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each time they air, but the ratings have declined over the years and that makes ABC unhappy. Of course, what they fail to consider is that the television universe of 2009 is not the television universe of 1989 or even 1979 because there is a vast array of viewing options not just the three networks. Then again, who expects entertainment execs to be rational? So where can they place the blame? First, it started going toward who was the host and the design of the show itself. Here is a little test for you all: Ask any obsessed Oscarphile you know if it has ever made a difference to them who was hosting as to whether they watched the show or not. Some years, they've toyed with how they presented awards, gathering nominees on stage, giving awards in the audience, etc. Of course, most of the time no one knows ahead of time that they are going to do this so, once again, they cannot have any effect on how many people are tuning in to see them. Now though they've decided the biggest problem is that the Academy doesn't nominate huge box office hits for best picture such as last year when The Dark Knight and WALL-E failed to make the final five. The funny thing: Despite their omission from the best picture race or a really huge hit in that category, the show's ratings rose substantially over previous years.
This year, the Academy announced that it is expanding the best picture category from five nominees to 10 nominees. Now in the past, the category has had as many as 12 nominees, but that was pre-1944 when it wasn't a TV show and Hollywood produced a greater number of films. Though denied, rumors say that part of the impetus, in addition to the hope of getting box office hits into the running, came from ABC which threatened to cut the licensing fee it pays the Academy for the broadcasting. Now, is this not a conflict anyways since ABC is owned by Disney which has a stake if some of its film titles can worm their way into a diluted best picture race? The worst change, and final straw to me, was a later announcement that the honorary awards, which have provided many of the telecast's best and most moving moments in recent years will now be moved to a nontelevised dinner in November, furthering emphasizing that they don't give a damn about the history of the industry and intend the Oscarcast as little more than a trade show. As a result, I'm not going to predict or promote the Oscars from now on or any of the precursor awards. The other awards themselves share no guilt, but every move they make basically is meant to try to influence the Academy, so all awards of the movie awards season be damned. Love or hate the films, not their trophy chances.
Ruining the Tonys
Really, the Tony Award itself has had the most integrity while the broadcast has been ruined more and more each year by CBS, sticking the technical award categories to pre-broadcast presentations while loading the show itself with irrelevant crap. It reached the nadir with this year's show where they sacrificed live presentation of awards for presentations of road tour numbers of previous season shows such as Legally Blonde, Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys. However, what made the Tonys unique (and probably why so many of its choices are so good) were that the voters in the final ballot not only included theater professionals such as producers and others with money interests in the outcome but theater critics as well. This year though, it was decided not to allow critics to vote anymore citing their "conflict of interest." Yes, people who review shows have conflicts of interest, but people who make money off them don't. In the press release announcing the move, they even mentioned, as if these were negative choices, that shows such as Rent or In the Heights won over theme park rides such as Mary Poppins that producers think will bring in more cash on the road. New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel wrote a wicked column suggesting ways to seek revenge. It's too bad there really isn't an equivalent way for the Oscars and the Emmys.
As for the Tony broadcast itself, Kevin Spacey and others this year finally articulated this year what I've been suggesting for years. If CBS has such little respect for the award, let someone else such as PBS carry the award so that all the awards get their due. Of course, now we realize that not only is the Theatre Wing addicted to its licensing fee, it could care less about whether the best is what is getting honored as well. It's a shame because for a long time the Tony broadcast was consistently the best award show on television. I remember when they used to be able to do numbers from the four nominated musicals and full-fledged scenes from the four nominated plays and still get the whole show done in two hours on the nose. Granted, they have added some categories (the biggest chunk being the recent division of the tech categories into both musical and play categories) but again, it was the addition of more commercials that stretched the broadcast's length.
Ruining the Emmys (further)
To some extent, I've always felt sorry for the Emmys, because they have a monumental task. Even before the explosion of television channels, it would have been impossible for anyone to truly do what it would take to judge the best in TV the way you can judge the best in movies and Broadway. There are a finite number of films and shows, so it is feasible to see all or a good portion of them, but to watch every episode of every series and every special, miniseries or movie that airs on television, that's impossible. The Emmys have tried myriad ways to work with this, settling on series submitting a certain number of their episodes and performers picking out a single episode to highlight. They've played with blue ribbon panels and other groups to try to pick nominees, but nothing has seemed to work. If any award could benefit from letting critics help them at least nominate, it's the Emmys, since they do watch entire seasons sometime and look at things Emmy voters might not take a second look at. However, the endless attempts to fix the process has finally proved too exhausting for me. No matter what they do it's hard to imagine how every single process comes up with a list of nominee that looks like a mimeographed list of the nominees from the year before, year after year after year, allowing such crimes as Scrubs to complete its entire run without John McGinley ever receiving a nomination for supporting actor while the same names show up all the time.
It started last year when they decided that cast members of Saturday Night Live could compete in the supporting categories of comedy series instead of individual performance in a variety, music or comedy series though SNL itself stays in the category of variety, music or comedy series. This year, for some reason, the series acting categories jumped from five to six and Amy Poehler and Kristin Wiig took two of the six slots in supporting actress in a comedy series. Tina Fey's Sarah Palin guest shot also got nominated as guest actress in a comedy series and the category of individual performance was killed outright. I'm not arguing that Poehler, Wiig and Fey aren't talented or deserving, just that they are in categories where they don't belong and deprive nominations from people who actually should be there. The killing of that category was particularly egregious since this eliminates places for nominations for say Hugh Jackman's hosting stint at the Oscars or Neil Patrick Harris' at the Tonys. Still, they were able to add that reality host category last year.
The real controvery this year has come from the decision by the television academy to "time shift" some awards. What that means is that certain categories will be awarded early, taped and edited and then shown in the broadcast later. The idea is supposedly to save time by cutting out the walk from the audience, etc. It sounds good, until you see what categories they are choosing to do this for: movies and miniseries, all dominated mostly by non-network channels. HBO and other non-network nominees are crying foul. More evidence to support their case comes from a category that won't be aired on the broadcast, writing in a drama series, where four of the five nominations went to AMC's Mad Men. The Writers Guild is particularly perturbed by the move. Patric Verrone, president of WGA West, said in a statement:
Imagine when Hill Street Blues upped the ante for what quality on television meant and often took five out of five nominations in supporting actor if ABC or CBS chose not to broadcast that category in a year they were airing the Emmys. It's time for the networks to stop whining that they can't compete in quality because of "restrictions" and admit they are dinosaurs.
Now, I don't expect my diatribe to be the start of a campaign: It'll be hard enough for an Oscarphile such as myself to quit cold turkey, I don't expect anyone else to agree with me or to follow me. I can't unremember all the Oscar trivia taking up space in my brain, but this year and for the time being, I'm not helping them or the other awards play their game any longer by promoting their farces on this blog.
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TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
From an early age, I suffered from the unfortunate affliction of awardsmania. Of course, it primarily focused on the Oscars, but it extended to the Tonys, the Emmys and some of the lessers as well. Recently however, the three major awards for achievement in film, Broadway and television have all taken actions that have finally forced me to my breaking point and I say, "No more." If they no longer care about their own supposed status as prizes for honoring outstanding achievement in their respective media but instead have decided they really are nothing more than once-a-year TV shows, three-hour or longer infomercials if you will, then I say fuck them. I can still love great film, great TV and great theater without having to be caught up with the nonsense of the various awards seasons any longer. No more predictions. No more surveys. No more speculation. Oscar, Emmy, Tony: You are all dead to me.
When the Academy Awards originally were created in the 1920s, the original movers and shakers of Hollywood intended the award as a way to paint a coat of respectability on the industry which, even in those early days, was a familiar whipping boy for lowering the nation's moral standards. Throughout the years since the Oscars were first presented in 1929 for the split year 1927-28, the Academy has made many changes, some for the good, some for the bad. Certainly, their choices of nominees and winners always have proved frustrating for film fans, but nothing so awful that they required abandonment. Lately, and particularly this year, the changes have become too awful to ignore and they have been motivated less by the quality of the award than of the obsession about Oscarcast ratings itself. People always have complained about the length with some supposed entertainment journalists complaining about wasting time on awards "no one cares about" such as cinematography or art direction. Oscar freaks such as myself do care about those categories because we are there for ALL the awards, not just the big categories and the stars. The funny thing is the David Letterman spilled the dirty little secret about the broadcast after being tarred and feathered after his hosting stint that the show he hosted was running early and ABC officials told him to stretch so they could get more commercials in.
The Oscars consistently are in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each time they air, but the ratings have declined over the years and that makes ABC unhappy. Of course, what they fail to consider is that the television universe of 2009 is not the television universe of 1989 or even 1979 because there is a vast array of viewing options not just the three networks. Then again, who expects entertainment execs to be rational? So where can they place the blame? First, it started going toward who was the host and the design of the show itself. Here is a little test for you all: Ask any obsessed Oscarphile you know if it has ever made a difference to them who was hosting as to whether they watched the show or not. Some years, they've toyed with how they presented awards, gathering nominees on stage, giving awards in the audience, etc. Of course, most of the time no one knows ahead of time that they are going to do this so, once again, they cannot have any effect on how many people are tuning in to see them. Now though they've decided the biggest problem is that the Academy doesn't nominate huge box office hits for best picture such as last year when The Dark Knight and WALL-E failed to make the final five. The funny thing: Despite their omission from the best picture race or a really huge hit in that category, the show's ratings rose substantially over previous years.
This year, the Academy announced that it is expanding the best picture category from five nominees to 10 nominees. Now in the past, the category has had as many as 12 nominees, but that was pre-1944 when it wasn't a TV show and Hollywood produced a greater number of films. Though denied, rumors say that part of the impetus, in addition to the hope of getting box office hits into the running, came from ABC which threatened to cut the licensing fee it pays the Academy for the broadcasting. Now, is this not a conflict anyways since ABC is owned by Disney which has a stake if some of its film titles can worm their way into a diluted best picture race? The worst change, and final straw to me, was a later announcement that the honorary awards, which have provided many of the telecast's best and most moving moments in recent years will now be moved to a nontelevised dinner in November, furthering emphasizing that they don't give a damn about the history of the industry and intend the Oscarcast as little more than a trade show. As a result, I'm not going to predict or promote the Oscars from now on or any of the precursor awards. The other awards themselves share no guilt, but every move they make basically is meant to try to influence the Academy, so all awards of the movie awards season be damned. Love or hate the films, not their trophy chances.
Really, the Tony Award itself has had the most integrity while the broadcast has been ruined more and more each year by CBS, sticking the technical award categories to pre-broadcast presentations while loading the show itself with irrelevant crap. It reached the nadir with this year's show where they sacrificed live presentation of awards for presentations of road tour numbers of previous season shows such as Legally Blonde, Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys. However, what made the Tonys unique (and probably why so many of its choices are so good) were that the voters in the final ballot not only included theater professionals such as producers and others with money interests in the outcome but theater critics as well. This year though, it was decided not to allow critics to vote anymore citing their "conflict of interest." Yes, people who review shows have conflicts of interest, but people who make money off them don't. In the press release announcing the move, they even mentioned, as if these were negative choices, that shows such as Rent or In the Heights won over theme park rides such as Mary Poppins that producers think will bring in more cash on the road. New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel wrote a wicked column suggesting ways to seek revenge. It's too bad there really isn't an equivalent way for the Oscars and the Emmys.
As for the Tony broadcast itself, Kevin Spacey and others this year finally articulated this year what I've been suggesting for years. If CBS has such little respect for the award, let someone else such as PBS carry the award so that all the awards get their due. Of course, now we realize that not only is the Theatre Wing addicted to its licensing fee, it could care less about whether the best is what is getting honored as well. It's a shame because for a long time the Tony broadcast was consistently the best award show on television. I remember when they used to be able to do numbers from the four nominated musicals and full-fledged scenes from the four nominated plays and still get the whole show done in two hours on the nose. Granted, they have added some categories (the biggest chunk being the recent division of the tech categories into both musical and play categories) but again, it was the addition of more commercials that stretched the broadcast's length.
To some extent, I've always felt sorry for the Emmys, because they have a monumental task. Even before the explosion of television channels, it would have been impossible for anyone to truly do what it would take to judge the best in TV the way you can judge the best in movies and Broadway. There are a finite number of films and shows, so it is feasible to see all or a good portion of them, but to watch every episode of every series and every special, miniseries or movie that airs on television, that's impossible. The Emmys have tried myriad ways to work with this, settling on series submitting a certain number of their episodes and performers picking out a single episode to highlight. They've played with blue ribbon panels and other groups to try to pick nominees, but nothing has seemed to work. If any award could benefit from letting critics help them at least nominate, it's the Emmys, since they do watch entire seasons sometime and look at things Emmy voters might not take a second look at. However, the endless attempts to fix the process has finally proved too exhausting for me. No matter what they do it's hard to imagine how every single process comes up with a list of nominee that looks like a mimeographed list of the nominees from the year before, year after year after year, allowing such crimes as Scrubs to complete its entire run without John McGinley ever receiving a nomination for supporting actor while the same names show up all the time.
It started last year when they decided that cast members of Saturday Night Live could compete in the supporting categories of comedy series instead of individual performance in a variety, music or comedy series though SNL itself stays in the category of variety, music or comedy series. This year, for some reason, the series acting categories jumped from five to six and Amy Poehler and Kristin Wiig took two of the six slots in supporting actress in a comedy series. Tina Fey's Sarah Palin guest shot also got nominated as guest actress in a comedy series and the category of individual performance was killed outright. I'm not arguing that Poehler, Wiig and Fey aren't talented or deserving, just that they are in categories where they don't belong and deprive nominations from people who actually should be there. The killing of that category was particularly egregious since this eliminates places for nominations for say Hugh Jackman's hosting stint at the Oscars or Neil Patrick Harris' at the Tonys. Still, they were able to add that reality host category last year.
The real controvery this year has come from the decision by the television academy to "time shift" some awards. What that means is that certain categories will be awarded early, taped and edited and then shown in the broadcast later. The idea is supposedly to save time by cutting out the walk from the audience, etc. It sounds good, until you see what categories they are choosing to do this for: movies and miniseries, all dominated mostly by non-network channels. HBO and other non-network nominees are crying foul. More evidence to support their case comes from a category that won't be aired on the broadcast, writing in a drama series, where four of the five nominations went to AMC's Mad Men. The Writers Guild is particularly perturbed by the move. Patric Verrone, president of WGA West, said in a statement:
"This action of the board of governors is a clear violation of a longstanding agreement the writers guilds have with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences regarding their awards telecast. It is also a serious demotion for writing and a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of writers in the creation of television programs."
Imagine when Hill Street Blues upped the ante for what quality on television meant and often took five out of five nominations in supporting actor if ABC or CBS chose not to broadcast that category in a year they were airing the Emmys. It's time for the networks to stop whining that they can't compete in quality because of "restrictions" and admit they are dinosaurs.
Now, I don't expect my diatribe to be the start of a campaign: It'll be hard enough for an Oscarphile such as myself to quit cold turkey, I don't expect anyone else to agree with me or to follow me. I can't unremember all the Oscar trivia taking up space in my brain, but this year and for the time being, I'm not helping them or the other awards play their game any longer by promoting their farces on this blog.
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Labels: Awards, Disney, Hugh Jackman, Letterman, Mad Men, Oscars, Spacey, Television, Theater
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Monday, February 23, 2009
Oscar post-mortem
By Edward Copeland
They promised a "new" Oscarcast, determined to enliven a moribund show and (hopefully) attract those long sought-after young viewers. Did they succeed? The show may have been a Rorschach test, because skimming comments from average folks, it seems split (as it always is) with some loving it and some hating it. My opinion: eh.
First off, it was clear Billy Crystal wasn't there or he would have rushed the stage and kicked Hugh Jackman in the balls as he did a variation of his best picture medley bit, only adding props that included Anne Hathaway.
Hugh Jackman was fine and personable and served as a really good Tony Awards host. Unfortunately, the Oscars were the awards being handed out. Now, I've complained for years about the production numbers surrounding the song nominees, but what's the point of condensing the songs into a four minute or so segment if you are gonna kill more time that that with a completely irrelevant number with Jackman, Beyonce, a couple of those High School Musical kids and the young lovers from Mamma Mia! under the premise that "The musical is back!" at which point all the young viewers either turned their Wiis back on or started fantasizing about the new Grand Theft Auto.
Producer Bill Condon also said at one point that supposedly this Oscarcast was supposed to have a narrative, to tell a sort of story. If anyone out there noticed one, please let me know. The clip packages usually defied reason and because of the staging and camerawork were sometimes impossible to read. My dad asked me after the show what was up for best picture, because he couldn't tell from the clip montage.
My big question was what the hell Butch Cassidy had to do with Benjamin Button.
In the In Memoriam section, you couldn't even see some of the names, let alone figure out the plentiful list of notables they left off. As with every year, I have to complain that they don't turn off the mics in the audience so it turns into a popularity contest. More applause for Paul Newman means they like him more than that other dead guy. Also, while in theory I don't mind the idea of someone singing a song, is "I'll Be Seeing You" the right choice? Not unless you are barely hanging on and are seeing the white light.
I was surprised Jerry Lewis gave such a short speech. I couldn't tell if he was in pain or pissed off. Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black gave the best speeches of the night. I haven't seen Waltz with Bashir, but I don't know why everyone was so surprised it lost. Where did it belong? Foreign film? Documentary? Animated feature? All three? If it can't be easily categorized, it's too difficult for the voters to wrap their heads around.
I did enjoy the Judd Apatow short, if only because I think people should be laughing uproariously at parts of The Reader.
As for Jackman as a host, for the most part, he did what I think a host should: Open the show and then stay mostly the hell out of the way the rest of the night. Why do the Oscars even need a host? The Globes do without one. Want to save some time? No host. Announcer introduces presenters. They give awards. That's it.
Of course, the usual critics whine about categories they don't care about: the shorts, makeup, etc. However, the true Oscarphiles such as myself love each category. The Academy and the network it can't tear itself away from would be better served if they stopped obsessing about expanding their audience and worried about catering to the audience they already have before they give up the Oscars in exasperation. Movie buffs and those obsessed with celebs and fashion always will be there. Your average youngster never will be and why would you even want them? You make the same mistake that most newspaper publishers and editors make: You seek an audience that doesn't exist.
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Labels: Apatow, Awards, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Lewis, Newman, Oscars, Sean Penn
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Did you hear the one about the blonde who went to law school?
By Josh R
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury…
Before hearing evidence in the matter of Legally Blonde vs. The Court of Public Opinion, I’d like to take this opportunity to make a few opening statements. It is true that we live in fractious, divided times. Despite the heroic efforts of my colleague, Mr. Edward Copeland, there are many denizens of cyberspace who will never have occasion, or the inclination, to seek out an inaccurately named blog with several voices and looks at TV, theater, books and music as well (at this point, we would like to enter Edward Copeland on Film into evidence as Exhibit A).
The reasons for this are two-fold. In the first place, some people just have no taste. Secondly, there are many who, for reasons that remain inexplicable to me, would rather spend the hours they log in front of the monitor seeking out baseball scores, trolling for porn or engaging in spirited chat room debate centered around the latest ejection from American Idol. These people have about as much vested interest in the fate of a Broadway musical as I do in whether or not Barry Bonds has enough human growth hormone coursing through his veins to give Shamu a heart attack. We are a country divided by values, interests, and conflicting notions of what is important.
Enough is enough…let us put an end to this discouraging trend of cultural divergence! The time has come for us, as a people, to find common ground, and embrace the simple truth that the things that unite as are far greater than those which divide us. In spite of our seeming incompatibility, we all have one glorious thing in common: We all love watching other people fail.
Oh, c’mon, you know it’s true. What sports fan doesn’t chuckle malevolently when the opposing team gets routed, to the tune of an embarrassingly lopsided scoreline? Who doesn’t chortle with glee at the ongoing trials of Britney Spears, whose increasingly bizarre lapses in sanity seem specifically engineered to make Liza Minnelli seem like a functional human being in comparison? Who doesn’t love a train wreck? (At this point, we would like to enter the mere existence of The Razzie Awards — and indeed, the entire film career of Pia Zadora, such as it is — into evidence as Exhibit B.)
And so it is on Broadway, where the arrival of a genuine, cubic-zirconia-studded disaster is greeted with about as much enthusiasm by the New York drama critics as a visit from St. Nick. When it was announced that a musicalization of the featherbrained popcorn movie Legally Blonde was Broadway bound, a sense of craven, bloodthirsty anticipation pervaded the air. You could practically hear the knives being sharpened.
Well, the knives are going to have to go back into their sheaths, at least for now. As a card-carrying member of the cult of disaster, it is with regret I must report that there is more that is right than is wrong with Legally Blonde, the enjoyably silly new musical currently in previews at The Palace Theatre. Frivolous though it may be, it keeps its platinum-highlighted head on its shoulders even when playing it dumb.
By now, everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the past several years is familiar with the story of the smart-dumb-blonde Elle Woods, a sort of latter-day Private Benjamin who becomes an unlikely success in the hallowed halls of Harvard Law School. The 2001 film version, which catapulted Reese Witherspoon onto the A-List while grossing more than $100 million in the process, caught the public’s attention by offering a dippy new twist on the classic tale of the underdog. Elle Woods — sorority sweetheart, homecoming queen, and the living embodiment of the MTV Barbie Doll fantasy tragically misguided teenage girls eagerly aspire to — is a born winner who winds up on the losing end of the stick. Shunned by her callow boyfriend, who doesn’t take her seriously enough to regard her as marriage material, she has to learn to retool her act, find her inner brainiac, and prove to all the doubters that she has what it takes to be more than just a cutie-pie with great fashion sense, a killer bod and follicular flair.
The Broadway incarnation is reasonably faithful to the template, with the same superficially amusing qualities that made the film such agreeably diverting fluff. It is by no stretch of the imagination the most interesting, adventurous or innovative show on the boards right now — in the musical category, one need look no further than Spring Awakening or Grey Gardens for evidence of that. But it preserves — and in some instances, actually improves upon — the qualities that made the original click, and there’s no law that says a show needs to be bold, challenging, or even particularly smart, in order to be good. Broadway’s Legally Blonde is the theatrical equivalent of a 20-foot miniature of the Statue of Liberty made entirely out of pink-frosted cupcakes — it’s definitely not art, but has an ersatz charm that will leave you with a stupid, silly grin on your face even if you can’t help feeling that your inner aesthete ought to know better. Entertainment value, in and of itself, is just as valuable a commodity as anything else the theater has to offer, and with all due respect to Spring and Gardens — better shows, overall — I’m guessing this crowd-pleasing confection is the one that audiences have truly been waiting for.
The process of bringing a new musical to Broadway is a treacherous journey, and the producers might have hedged their bets by contracting a commercially viable star to bolster ticket sales against the possibility of negative reviews (Exhibit C: The Boy from Oz, starring Hugh Jackman). Asking the role’s originator to reprise her pre-Oscar-winning performance might have been reaching for the stars, but they certainly could have gotten a Hilary Duff, or even (God forbid) a Jessica Simpson if they’d been willing to pony up the cash. Instead, they decided to risk it all on Laura Bell Bundy, a virtual unknown whose biggest previous credit was creating the role of teen villainess Amber von Tussle in the original cast of Hairspray. In that performance, there was nothing to suggest a presence dynamic or distinctive enough to build an entire show around; in all fairness, short of being Carol Channing, you’d need to brandish a scimitar onstage to avoid being bullied into the background by Hairspray’s collection of scene-stealers.
Anyone who feared that Ms. Bundy wouldn’t be equal to the task of carrying a show can stop worrying...the hunch has paid off. She is charming, funny and, as luck would have it, a good actress, putting her own stamp on the role while investing it with more depth of feeling than it probably required. Bundy tempers Elle’s unflappable perkiness with a wistful, goofy sweetness — even decked out in Paris Hilton’s wardrobe, she’s still wholesome enough to qualify as the girl next door (albeit one who lives next door to the Spellings). The show’s creators have made the character’s development somewhat more convincing — in the film, it was never clear what Elle responded to in the study of law that she couldn’t just as easily have gotten from going to med school, becoming a nuclear physicist or branding her own line of hair care products. Here as in the movie, she comes into her own as a confident, independent woman who the commands respect of others, but she’s also finding a genuine sense of purpose in becoming a lawyer. Being written off as a just another dumb blonde heightens her awareness of the injustices that exist in the world at large — injustices which she has the power to correct (even though the wrong to be righted may be something as trivial as helping a pet-lover regain custody of her pug). Of course, I could have done without the tepidly inspirational ballad in which Elle tells us how much she’s grown, but I suppose in the age of Wicked, songs like that — and the one in which all the female characters convene for a peppy anthem celebrating Girl Power — are to be regarded as inevitable. I object!
Given these quibbles, I suppose now is as good a time as any to put on my stern professor hat. Book writer Heather Hach goes in for a lot of obvious jokes, some too much so for my taste — in that respect, her libretto functions more or less on the same level as the screenplay on which it's based. The score, by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin, consists mainly of the sort of generic pop that can be heard in any one of a dozen Broadway tuners of the last five years (one glorious exception is a Gilbert-and-Sullivan inspired patter number in which an entire courtroom stops to ponder whether a witness is “Gay or European”). There are a few sequences that feel like tired recapitulations of things you've seen in other shows, and others in which the silliness is overemphasized. Even in a musical that strives for irreverence, the bouncy production number in which fitness guru/alleged husband-killer Brooke Wyndham (Nikki Snelson) leads the orange-jumpsuit-clad inmate population of a women’s correctional facility in a high-octane, rope-jumping workout session is too dopey by half. Apart from occasional lapses such as these, the production rarely lags, and director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell keeps things moving along at a breezy clip. It’s too bad there isn’t a Tony Award for best employment of a golf cart in a dance sequence — he’d win in a landslide.
One of the best decisions the creative team made was to bulk up the role of Emmett, Elle’s new love interest; the creators take the time to develop an odd-couple relationship which evolves convincingly from tentative friendship into a pairing with real chemistry (as played by Luke Wilson in the film version, the character registered as little more than a handsome afterthought in a corduroy jacket). Christian Borle, an engaging performer with comically outsized features and an impish grin, makes a nice foil for Elle’s flightiness, grounding her in the realities of being a law student just as she induces him to come out of his shaggy shell — he goads her into hitting the books, she drags him to the men’s department for a new wardrobe. As the lovelorn beautician who serves as the heroine’s confidante, Orfeh can’t really match the divine weirdness of Jennifer Coolidge, the screen comedienne who always comes across as some kind of dazed visitor from another planet; nevertheless, she scores with a daffy ballad about how listening to Irish muzak stimulates her daydreams, and her side-splittingly inept interactions with a studly UPS deliveryman (Andy Karl), who struts the stage like a Chippendales dancer, make her a clear audience favorite. A trio of sorority sisters (Leslie Kritzer, DeQuina More, Annaleigh Ashford) serving as a traveling Greek chorus would steal just about every scene they were in if Bundy weren’t on her game — even if the gimmick is overused. The other principals — Richard H. Blake as the self-infatuated heartthrob who sets the story in motion by breaking Elle’s heart, Kate Shindle as his upper-crusty new girlfriend, and Michael Rupert as a smarmy professor — lend solid support. The energetic ensemble — which includes two performers of the canine variety — seems to be enjoying itself, and the audience plays right into their hands.
Audience response, it should be noted, is not an automatic guarantee of success…this is Broadway after all, not the multiplex. An infamously cranky jury of professional theater critics has yet to weigh in, and it is their verdict that will determine the show’s ultimate fate. Somehow, I suspect this blonde will emerge unscathed — if you can make it through Harvard Law, you can survive just about anything, and Ms. Woods is making a pretty good case for herself as The Girl Most Likely to Succeed. Case dismissed!
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Labels: Hugh Jackman, Liza, Musicals, Theater
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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
One step forward, two steps back
By Edward Copeland
I really miss Al Swearengen. After getting to watch Ian McShane's masterful work as Al on the three brief seasons of HBO's Deadwood, I can only hope that his career will produce better parts than the one he was saddled with here in Woody Allen's Scoop.
After coming back a bit from a more than decade-long slump with 2005's Match Point, Allen tumbles backward a bit with Scoop, though it is at least watchable and nowhere near as painful as some of his other recent efforts such as Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Celebrity.
Allen casts Scarlett Johansson for the second film in a row, this time in a comic mystery as well as in a role that bears many similarities to Woody himself. He's done this tact a lot, but it always seems odd when he also appears in the film in question. Johansson plays an aspiring journalist visiting London and Allen plays a magician, who for some reason has been performing his act in London.
The two meet when he pulls her onstage as a volunteer for a trick where she enters a box only to disappear and then reappear. The catch? While in the box, she encounters the spirit of a prominent journalist (McShane), recently deceased in a car accident, who gives her the tip that a prominent member of British society (Hugh Jackman) also is the notorious Tarot Card Killer, who has been terrorizing the city's prostitutes for quite some time.
Since he can't land the story himself, he picks the young woman to be his surrogate and she drags the magician on her quest. Since the suspect in question is, after all, Hugh Jackman, Johansson inevitably falls heads over heels for him. With this light a confection, obviously the mystery isn't a puzzler or an attraction, so what's left is the comedy which, unfortunately, is tired. You see the jokes coming with almost as much clairvoyance as the best psychic solving the mystery.
That said, Scoop isn't painful to watch. It's still somewhat sad to see Allen struggling through this work without remembering the glories of his past. In one sequence, when he's driving a tiny silver car, it's hard not to think back to Sleeper and how much you'd rather be watching it. Still, what elicits the most sadness is McShane's presence. He's fine, but it's a nothing part and just makes any Deadwood fan long for the further episodes that we deserve.
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I really miss Al Swearengen. After getting to watch Ian McShane's masterful work as Al on the three brief seasons of HBO's Deadwood, I can only hope that his career will produce better parts than the one he was saddled with here in Woody Allen's Scoop.
After coming back a bit from a more than decade-long slump with 2005's Match Point, Allen tumbles backward a bit with Scoop, though it is at least watchable and nowhere near as painful as some of his other recent efforts such as Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Celebrity.
Allen casts Scarlett Johansson for the second film in a row, this time in a comic mystery as well as in a role that bears many similarities to Woody himself. He's done this tact a lot, but it always seems odd when he also appears in the film in question. Johansson plays an aspiring journalist visiting London and Allen plays a magician, who for some reason has been performing his act in London.
The two meet when he pulls her onstage as a volunteer for a trick where she enters a box only to disappear and then reappear. The catch? While in the box, she encounters the spirit of a prominent journalist (McShane), recently deceased in a car accident, who gives her the tip that a prominent member of British society (Hugh Jackman) also is the notorious Tarot Card Killer, who has been terrorizing the city's prostitutes for quite some time.
Since he can't land the story himself, he picks the young woman to be his surrogate and she drags the magician on her quest. Since the suspect in question is, after all, Hugh Jackman, Johansson inevitably falls heads over heels for him. With this light a confection, obviously the mystery isn't a puzzler or an attraction, so what's left is the comedy which, unfortunately, is tired. You see the jokes coming with almost as much clairvoyance as the best psychic solving the mystery.
That said, Scoop isn't painful to watch. It's still somewhat sad to see Allen struggling through this work without remembering the glories of his past. In one sequence, when he's driving a tiny silver car, it's hard not to think back to Sleeper and how much you'd rather be watching it. Still, what elicits the most sadness is McShane's presence. He's fine, but it's a nothing part and just makes any Deadwood fan long for the further episodes that we deserve.
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Labels: 00s, Deadwood, HBO, Hugh Jackman, Johansson, Woody
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
You have to get your hands dirty
By Edward Copeland
As the election season winds down, the campaigns seems to get deeper into the dirt. If voters think 21st century politicians can be underhanded, they should consider what feuding 19th century magicians could be capable of, at least in director Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.
After scoring with an Americanized version of the great Norwegian thriller Insomnia and infusing Batman Begins with his own particular sense of style, Nolan has produced his best film since Memento put him on the map with The Prestige, a twisty account of rival 19th-century magicians (Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman).
Initially, the magicians are a team, working for a behind-the-scenes man (Michael Caine) and a tired stage magician while awaiting their own shots at stardom. However, when an act goes dreadfully wrong, it ignites a lifelong feud between Bale and Jackman that seems to raise the stakes each time the other makes a move.
While the film's twists really aren't that crucial to the film's success, I'm going to refrain from much in the way of further details to avoid spoiling anything for future viewers, though I will mention that I pretty much figured things out about midway through the movie.
Nolan, with a script co-written by his brother Jonathan and based on a novel by Christopher Priest, scrambles the chronology quite a bit in The Prestige, but it's seldom confusing. What really makes this period piece soar are the performances, especially from leads Bale and Jackman.
Caine gives one of his best turns in quite some time and there also is notable work by Andy Serkis, for once getting to actually physically perform a role without digital covering, and David Bowie as real-life famed scientist/inventor Nikola Tesla.
Because so much of The Prestige does involve the plot's unfolding, it almost limits what you can write about the film except for its ideas that float around the edges such as the assumption that people want to be fooled (WMDs anyone?) and man's reach always exceeding his grasp.
In one scene, Caine explains that making something disappear isn't the key to a trick, you have to bring it back. Christopher Nolan hasn't gone anywhere — but The Prestige does seem to be more like a reappearance of the filmmaker who made Memento.
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Labels: 00s, Caine, Christopher Nolan, Hugh Jackman
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
X misses the spot
By Edward Copeland
I've never picked up an "X-Men" comic in my life, but the first two film installments directed by Bryan Singer made me a fan of the film franchise at least. I loved the original and thought its sequel, X2: X-Men United, was even better. The films went beyond the usual heroics and added layers of metaphor I found unusual for comic-based films ranging from explicit allusions to the Holocaust and more implicit ones to people who think homosexuality can be "cured." Of course, quality control in Hollywood never proves to be an easy accomplishment and the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, wore out its welcome, with me at least.
The series that made Hugh Jackman a star as Wolverine finally had reached its limit — with the prevalent humor of the first two installments hardly present and the metaphors to other issues wearing thin.
Not familiar at all with the comic versions, I've often asked people who were whether I was wrong based on the first two films not to see Magneto (the great Ian McKellen) as the villain he's supposed to be. Honestly, his point of view that mutants need to fight attempts to annihilate them seemed to make a lot more sense than Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his rosy dream of peaceful coexistence with humans who can't move things with their minds, control the weather or shoot fire or ice from their hands. The third installment does try to paint Magneto in a bit more villainous terms, but I'm still more on his side, even when I'm not on the side of the movie itself. The premise this time concerns a scientist (Michael Murphy), the father of a mutant (Ben Foster) who discovers a "cure" to mutants' special abilities.
While the film tries to posit the case that the mutants don't need to be cured, they need to be accepted, there doesn't seem to be much maliciousness on the part of Murphy and other characters. In fact, Rogue (Anna Paquin) embraces the idea, which makes sense since I never quite saw the advantage of a mutant power that caused anyone you touched to die, because she wants to be able to make out with her boyfriend.
One thing that this installment improves upon though is the character of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who apparently died in the second installment. We learn that not only did she survive but that she's always had a split personality, the other being Phoenix, the most powerful mutant of them all and one with a nasty streak. The change gives Janssen a chance to sink her teeth into the role in a way the first two films didn't allow.
It also presents a problem as to the arguments of Xavier. He's suspicious of the idea of "curing" mutants, but we learned he constructed some kind of mental block on Jean when she was a child to keep her Phoenix side at bay. Is there really that big a difference between his actions and the desires of the government? Again, I think Magneto has the moral high ground on this one.
It's tempting to attribute this film's weaknesses to Singer's exit to make Superman Returns and the placement of Brett Ratner in the director's chair, but really, the screenplay takes the blame here. There are some interesting action sequences and many top-notch CGI effects, but those elements are not the ones that made me such a fan of the first two X-Men movies.
On top of that, Wolverine's would-be laugh lines, which usually worked in the first two films, mostly play like watered-down Schwarzenegger one-liners from his 1980s action films. Oh well. I guess it was too much to hope that the series could maintain its high standard of excellence, but one thing is for certain: X-Men: The Last Stand definitely plays as if it's the end of a trilogy and based on this movie, I think that's probably a wise decision they should stand behind.
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Labels: 00s, Hugh Jackman, Schwarzenegger, Sequels
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