Freida Pinto looked like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Which I'm not entirely sure is a bad thing...
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Oscar dress analysis.
Don't you think that Miley Cyrus's mermaid inspired dress is Marion Cotillard's 2008 gown ad absurdam?
Freida Pinto looked like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Which I'm not entirely sure is a bad thing...
Freida Pinto looked like a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Which I'm not entirely sure is a bad thing...
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
So life is disappointing?
Cabaret, Theatre Royal, Brighton. January.
Samantha Barks is in town. She came third in BBC's I'd Do Anything competition to win the role of Nancy in Oliver!, and I'm excited about seeing her in the stage version of one of my favourite films.
Samantha Barks is fantastic, incredibly talented and charismatic. In fact her only flaw is the same as Liza Minnelli's - she's too good to be playing a character working in a crummy Berlin nightclub. Here's the terrible Judi Dench playing Sally Bowles as she was meant to be, in the original London production.
Barks aside, I was particularly taken with the actress playing landlady Fraulein Schneider, and I look her up when I get home. Turns out she's most famous for this Shake n Vac advert.
She's moved on to much better songs since then such as the hauntingly apathetic "So What?", one of the many fabulous numbers not included in the film.
But, like the film, this is a piece about the seperation (or not) of entertainment from real life. Even the most basic, shallow areas of popular culture (e.g. musical theatre) reflect society and psyche.
Samantha Barks is in town. She came third in BBC's I'd Do Anything competition to win the role of Nancy in Oliver!, and I'm excited about seeing her in the stage version of one of my favourite films.
Samantha Barks is fantastic, incredibly talented and charismatic. In fact her only flaw is the same as Liza Minnelli's - she's too good to be playing a character working in a crummy Berlin nightclub. Here's the terrible Judi Dench playing Sally Bowles as she was meant to be, in the original London production.
Barks aside, I was particularly taken with the actress playing landlady Fraulein Schneider, and I look her up when I get home. Turns out she's most famous for this Shake n Vac advert.
She's moved on to much better songs since then such as the hauntingly apathetic "So What?", one of the many fabulous numbers not included in the film.
But, like the film, this is a piece about the seperation (or not) of entertainment from real life. Even the most basic, shallow areas of popular culture (e.g. musical theatre) reflect society and psyche.
Monday, 12 January 2009
That’s entertainment!
The Daily Mail once called Brass Eye ‘the sickest TV show ever’ in a master stroke of life imitating satire. Like most people my age I’m not easily shocked or offended by anything on TV (or radio, see Sachs/Brand/Rossgate) but Vanessa Feltz’s latest vehicle has managed it. No, it’s not the curiously entertaining Cosmetic Surgery Live (may it rest in peace), but a program called Top 50 Celebrity Breakdowns on Sky. The mental health problems of celebrities are constantly being exploited for entertainment but the honesty of the title of this show is outstanding. Perhaps television producers finally ran out of ideas for “Top 50” shows and so resorted to making a program about the Best Ever Nervous Breakdowns. Feltz even has the nerve to use phrases like “lose the plot” and “moments of madness” while beaming at the camera, before introducing a bunch of talking heads commenting on celebrities like Amy Winehouse – drug addict, former eating disorder sufferer, and likely candidate for having borderline personality disorder. The sectioning of bipolar Britney Spears also scores highly. “Doesn’t it make you feel good to see celebs paying the price for fame?” Concludes Feltz, salaciously. I’m sick of mental health problems (and that includes addictions) being portrayed in the media as some sort of joke, and not real illnesses.
Monday, 28 July 2008
Love, lulz and space ships
girlhuntballet went to see Wall-e. 6:15pm isn't that late at night, and yet there are only three children in the audience of this popular children's film. I feel a bit sad when I think about how the very long Cbeebies advert that we're subjected to isn't even reaching a significant number of its target audience :( Still, I'm glad the BBC is still employing the voice of Otis the Aardvark. The adverts and trailers are almost the best thing about going to the cinema, the actual best thing about it being the film itself. All the trailers are for childrens films and they all look terrible. Wall-e had better be as good as everyone says, I think, shaking my fist at the screen.
Before the main feature there's a short film about a magician, his rabbit and his "hat of wonder". Wow, I don't think a short has ever been shown in a cinema during my life time. The short is very good silent slapstick. And because its all computer generated animation, no one gets hurt! I'm very impressed by the bravery of having a silent short (when I say silent I mean that there's no dialogue, obviously there's music and sound effects). When the visuals are so advanced, there's no need to overdress a film with dialogue.
Wall-E is also mostly silent for the first half an hour. Who would have guessed that children would have the patience for that? But they do! The establishing (opening) shot is of the entire universe - quite ambitious, as establishing shots set up the theme and location of the film. Wall-e is a meditation on loneliness. Most of the universe is empty, nothing, but its also all there is. Over these shots of outer space plays "Put on your Sunday clothes" from Hello, Dolly! which has lyrics that say something like "out there...". This opening scene ticks so many of my boxes that I begin to tear up a little.
Wall-e is the only robot that the humans forgot to turn off when they left Earth. He lives a futile existence compacting and piling up rubbish. But he has a collection of interesting things he finds in the rubbish and takes 'home'. His favourite of these is a VHS of Hello Dolly, and he listens to his favourite showtunes as he works. One of my favourite bits in the film is when Wall-e finds a hubcap that he uses as a makeshift hat so he can attempt the "Put on your Sunday clothes" dance routine.
Wall-e, both the character and the film, seem to be based on silent comedies. He uses objects for other than which they were intended like Buster Keaton. He has round, black framed eyes (cameras?) like Harold Llyods glasses.
There's always a girl to be pursued in silent comedies, and in Wall-E she is called Eve and she looks like an i-Pod. She's not so much frigid as a soulless robot. But of course he wins her eventually. There's also plenty of slapstick - Wall-e gets blasted by the flames of a space ship, Wall-e gets electrocuted, Wall-e falls over - to give us epic lulz. And there's nothing funnier than a fat man falling out of his chair. Love, lulz and space ships... to coin a phrase.
No one can help but relate to the character of Wall-e as he breaks out of his solitary life, stops hiding behind rocks, and finds love. Even the little girl in the row behind me remarks "just like me in the morning!" when Wall-e's solar charge runs down.
This is one of the most sweet and touching films I have ever seen. It's as good as Life is Beautiful, seriously, it is. And it's the best thing Disney has done since er... Enchanted, six months ago, which I also loved.
At the end of the film, the fat (lol) captain of the space ship thats been keeping all humans from Earth for 700 years brings everyone back to their planet to clean it up, and start living without technology doing everything for them. Thats how they got so fat, you see.
The Captain does this because, as he declares, he doesn't want to survive, "I want to live!"
"And that is all that love's about..."
Before the main feature there's a short film about a magician, his rabbit and his "hat of wonder". Wow, I don't think a short has ever been shown in a cinema during my life time. The short is very good silent slapstick. And because its all computer generated animation, no one gets hurt! I'm very impressed by the bravery of having a silent short (when I say silent I mean that there's no dialogue, obviously there's music and sound effects). When the visuals are so advanced, there's no need to overdress a film with dialogue.
Wall-E is also mostly silent for the first half an hour. Who would have guessed that children would have the patience for that? But they do! The establishing (opening) shot is of the entire universe - quite ambitious, as establishing shots set up the theme and location of the film. Wall-e is a meditation on loneliness. Most of the universe is empty, nothing, but its also all there is. Over these shots of outer space plays "Put on your Sunday clothes" from Hello, Dolly! which has lyrics that say something like "out there...". This opening scene ticks so many of my boxes that I begin to tear up a little.
Wall-e is the only robot that the humans forgot to turn off when they left Earth. He lives a futile existence compacting and piling up rubbish. But he has a collection of interesting things he finds in the rubbish and takes 'home'. His favourite of these is a VHS of Hello Dolly, and he listens to his favourite showtunes as he works. One of my favourite bits in the film is when Wall-e finds a hubcap that he uses as a makeshift hat so he can attempt the "Put on your Sunday clothes" dance routine.
Wall-e, both the character and the film, seem to be based on silent comedies. He uses objects for other than which they were intended like Buster Keaton. He has round, black framed eyes (cameras?) like Harold Llyods glasses.
There's always a girl to be pursued in silent comedies, and in Wall-E she is called Eve and she looks like an i-Pod. She's not so much frigid as a soulless robot. But of course he wins her eventually. There's also plenty of slapstick - Wall-e gets blasted by the flames of a space ship, Wall-e gets electrocuted, Wall-e falls over - to give us epic lulz. And there's nothing funnier than a fat man falling out of his chair. Love, lulz and space ships... to coin a phrase.
No one can help but relate to the character of Wall-e as he breaks out of his solitary life, stops hiding behind rocks, and finds love. Even the little girl in the row behind me remarks "just like me in the morning!" when Wall-e's solar charge runs down.
This is one of the most sweet and touching films I have ever seen. It's as good as Life is Beautiful, seriously, it is. And it's the best thing Disney has done since er... Enchanted, six months ago, which I also loved.
At the end of the film, the fat (lol) captain of the space ship thats been keeping all humans from Earth for 700 years brings everyone back to their planet to clean it up, and start living without technology doing everything for them. Thats how they got so fat, you see.
The Captain does this because, as he declares, he doesn't want to survive, "I want to live!"
"And that is all that love's about..."
Everything old is new again...
Everyone's getting freaked out by this Lynx advert, and posting their own attempts on youtube.
Silent film Comedienne Colleen Moore was doing it way back when - its just simple split screen technology.
Well done Colleen!
Silent film Comedienne Colleen Moore was doing it way back when - its just simple split screen technology.
Well done Colleen!
Friday, 27 June 2008
A review of the Imperial Ice Stars "Sleeping Beauty"
How could Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, be improved? It’s a question I’ve only rarely pondered, but one that the Imperial Ice Stars answered anyway – STAGE IT ON ICE.
I’m not sure if I will have an enjoyable evening when dry ice and people in velour leotards and goth/rave face paint flood onto the stage for the prologue. My seat is in the front row of Brighton’s intimate Theatre Royal, which results in me being sprayed with ice as soon as the show starts. There’s also a heart-stopping moment when a member of the company is swung by her partner and her bladed feet come too near to my face for comfort. I move to a vacant seat near the back of the venue as soon as possible.
The show is more child-friendly than traditional, non-ice versions of the ballet that I have seen. It’s reduced to two acts and lasts only two hours including a twenty-minute interval (in which a man in a baseball cap came onto the stage to mop up, somewhat spoiling the fairytale atmosphere – couldn’t they have put the curtain down for that?). And there’s a narrator who tells us what will happen in each seen before we see it, very helpful for those not practiced at following a story through only music and dance.
Velour leotards aside, the level of talent on display is absolutely outstanding. My knowledge of ice dancing doesn’t go much further than watching the Figure Skating Championships on TV every Easter. But in a 2 hour show with 29 performers there was only one unintentional fall – the maths speak for themselves. The choreography is incredibly beautiful and tells the story well. As the show goes on and I get drawn in, I realise that the ice is not a camp marketing ploy to distinguish this from every other production of the ballet; it really adds to the grace and elegance of the piece.
"Why do we have to lose things to find out what they really mean?"
When I found out that Cyd Charisse, undoubtably the greatest female dancer of the musical's golden age, has died I decided to compile a list of my favourite Cyd Charisse movie moments.Broadway Ballet - perhaps Cyd's most famous film role was this one in Singin' In the Rain, even though she appeared for less than 10 minutes and didn't speak! This number is a perfect example of the creativity going on at the Freed Unit at MGM at the time, referencing everything from gangster movies to Dali. This routine could only have been performed so perfectly by Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly. http://www.youtube.com/wat
Fated to be mated/ All of you. Apparently Silk Stockings was Cyd's favourite of her films, and I think it's probably mine also. This is my favourite Charisse-Astaire number ever. Warning - difficult to appreciate without the context of the rest of the film http://www.youtube.com/wat
Red Blues. Another one from Silk Stockings. The film was a remake of the 1939 Greta Garbo film Ninotchka (also a wonderful film if you can get to see it), about a female Soviet Union official who falls in love with an American man. here cyd and her russian comrades are making a song and dance about the repressive Stalinist regime under which they live! http://www.youtube.com/wat
Dancing in the Dark - With Astaire again, this time from the Vincente Minnelli film "The Band Wagon". I love how it starts with them falling into step and slowly becomes a full-blown dance routine, subtly merging the line between the realistic and the expressionistic - all too often done clumsily in movie musicals.
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Silk Stockings - from the film of the same name, Cyd gets this number all to herself. It's about the joy of allowing yourself a little luxury, even if you are supposed to be a straight-laced Stalinist.
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Girl Hunt Ballet - another number with Astaire form the bandwagon, Cyd's red dress is iconic. Here's an excerpt http://www.youtube.com/wat
The Heather on the Hill - Brigadoon is a cruelly overlooked film, and in my opinion far superior to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the other big MGM musical of 1954. http://www.youtube.com/wat
Baby you Knock Me Out. Thought I should include something from the sublime "It's always fair weather" -It's not available on DVD to my knowledge but pops up on TCM occaisonally. Charisse was underused in this film, but this number is unusual in that neither Astaire or Kelly are anywhere to be seen! (Although Gene Kelly was in the film) - http://www.youtube.com/wat
And here's a treat - a deleted number from the same film
http://www.youtube.com/wat
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