Mrs. Henderson Presents

Year 2, Day 36 - 2/5/10 - Movie #401

BEFORE: Back to stage productions, to wrap up my review of Fame in all its incarnations. Damn, this movie's set in 1937, it would have made a good follow-up to "De-Lovely" if I had known that little tidbit. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

THE PLOT: Laura Henderson buys an old London theater and opens it up as the Windmill, which goes down in history for, among other things, its nude revues.

AFTER: Well, after 400 films, it's about time we had some gratuitous nudity in the Movie Year! As Max Bialystock said in "The Producers", "I worked very, very hard, and I deserve a toy!"

A British widow (Judi Dench) decides she needs a toy, too - so she buys an old West End theater and hires a manager (Bob Hoskins) to bring an American-style musical revue to London. It's a smash hit, which means that weeks later, all the other theaters have copied their production, and they're hard-pressed to sell tickets. "Well, let's have naked girls!" says Mrs. Henderson, very matter-of-fact, referencing the cabaret acts of Paris, and once she informs the theater manager and the girls what this "nudity" concept is (give them a break, they're British...) the show's off and running again.

But the Lord Chancellor in charge of Parliamentary Procedure and Stage Nudity (Christopher Guest) is of course opposed to the idea - but they strike a ridiculous compromise wherein the nudity will be "artistic", meaning like the art in a museum - meaning that the naked girls can't move on stage, which would be improper. So the search is on for girls who look good nude and can stand still for long periods of time, while surrounded by clothed dancing girls and clothed singing girls.

In the third act, World War II is declared, which means blackouts and air raids, and a question as to whether it's appropriate to watch naked girls on stage while the bombs are falling a few blocks away. It's easy to draw a parallel to New York in September 2001, where we were all unsure if it was appropriate to attend a baseball game, or to watch a comedy show, or to have any fun at all after the World Trade Center fell.

But of course the soldiers need to be entertained, and Mrs. Henderson feels very strongly that they have the right to see a little stage nudity if they're being asked to sacrifice their lives in the war. In hard times, no one's ever lost money by appealing to people's basest instincts - which sort of explains the Burlesque revival that's taken place in New York the last few years.

The stage songs are abysmal, but the love-hate working relationship between Henderson and Van Damm, the stage manager is quite charming. (And there's boobies.)

RATING: 6 out of 10 top hats

Slumdog Millionaire

Year 2, Day 35 - 2/4/10 - Movie #400

BEFORE: Yeah, I've been saving this one, for personal reasons. I'm putting movie and stage musicals about fame on hold for tonight's examination of fame resulting from a TV game show. Watching last year's Oscar winner in the same week they announced this year's nominations...

THE PLOT: A Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums becomes a contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

AFTER: I usually HATE movies that aren't arranged in a purely linear fashion - as it's often a sign of a weak script - but there are exceptions, like "Memento", and movies about time travel. This is one of the rare cases where a fragmented narrative works, as each flashback enhances the action in the present. Actually, the movie bounces between three time periods - Jamal's back-story, the tense moments on the game-show set, and the police interrogation which follows, after Jamal is accused of cheating. So there are flashbacks within flashbacks, but the three narratives each move forward linearly, and unlike parallel lines, are destined to converge at the end of the film.

It's an incredible idea, to see clips of young boys growing up in the Mumbai slums (Jamal and his brother Salim are each played by three different actors, and they did a good job of casting believable look-alikes) and in the back-story, we see occurences which enable the teen Jamal to answer the game-show's multiple choice questions correctly. Of course it's an incredible coincidence that nearly all of the questions relate to his childhood trials - he knows which American figure is on the $100 bill, but wouldn't have known who's on India's 1000-rupee note, for example. But how does anybody know anything, or remember seemingly meaningless bits of trivial trivia?

This is another time where I find myself positioned squarely within a film's target audience. In grade school I learned that I had an affinity for standardized tests, and in high-school I managed to ace tests like the PSAT. I may not have been class valedictorian or the kid with the best grades, but I know for a fact I was one of the best damn test-takers that school has seen. Since then I've been an avid fan of Jeopardy! and the Millionaire show (which ABC managed to over-play a few years back) and I've passed the written test for each show 3 times. I've never made it past the 2nd-stage interview, which involves a face-to-face meeting with a coordinating producer, so either I'm not TV-pretty or I have no personality - anyway, I'll keep trying...winning big on a game show is definitely on my Bucket List.

Also, I play on a bi-weekly trivia team here in the Big Apple, and unlike Jamal, I can't always explain HOW I know what I know...which is OK, because things that can't be explained sometimes resemble magic. Bottom line, I'm used to answering quiz questions - we prefer "quiz" over "trivia", because the latter implies lack of importance, and really, all knowledge is important, and nothing is trivial.

What the movie gets EXACTLY right is the fact that a quiz show is a test of a contestant's long-term memory. Sure, you can put world capitals on flash cards or memorize the order of U.S. Vice-presidents the night before the test, but that's only putting things in your short-term memory. You have to care about a piece of information before your brain places it in long-term, accessible storage, and linking bits of information to important people and events in your life is an excellent way to do that. If that fails, you can usually use logic to eliminate one or two of the more unlikely answers, and also use what you know about the person who wrote the clue. And if all that fails, well, I've found that it helps to be a really good guesser.

If I have any complaints about this film, the backstory becomes a little repetitive, as Jamal is repeatedly losing track of Latika, his love interest, and always trying to track her down. Finding her again and again is increasingly unlikely, given the population of India. Also, one could say that the love story is a little forced and contrived - it just didn't compare to the tense moments in the police station or on the game-show set for me.

(At one point, Jamal makes the mistake of saying "I know the answer's not A" just before using a 50/50 lifeline - OF COURSE the computer's going to remove A as one of the choices - he just threw away a lifeline! Dude, that's as bad as saying what you think the answer is before you poll the audience - you can very easily skew the audience's opinion that way, making the lifeline effectively useless.)

But even if I remove a point for each of these offenses, the film still nets a very, very respectable score.

RATING: 8 out of 10 Final Answers

Hairspray (2007)

Year 2, Day 34 - 2/3/10 - Movie #399

BEFORE: Continuing with another musical, a bit of a filler film before I hit the big #400 tomorrow. I'm not even sure why they re-made this film just 19 years after the original - I guess they added material when it was turned into a Broadway show?

THE PLOT: Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad teaches 1962 Baltimore a thing or two about integration after landing a spot on a local TV dance show.

AFTER: Well, I understand now that the music is completely different from the 1987 film. So it's as justified as re-filming "The Producers" in 2005 after it's successful Broadway run, or the film version of "The Phantom of the Opera" based on the Broadway musical.

The remake is wall-to-wall music and dancing, which is to be expected, and the budget is clearly greater, allowing them to afford a couple A-list stars like John Travolta, Christopher Walken and Zac Efron (from "High School Musical", I think...)

But the post-production effects, while visually interesting (singing a duet with a photograph of Traci, for example) also remove the low-rent charm that the original had, the sleazy production values that are the trademark of a John Waters film. It's not the same without Divine, Ric Ocasek, Sonny Bono, Pia Zadora, and Mr. Waters himself. The only actor that carries over is Jerry Stiller, who played Mr. Turnblad in the original film, now playing Mr. Pinky, the manager of the large-women's clothing store. And Sonny Bono's character got eliminated completely!

Christopher Walken excels as the new Wilbur Turnblad - and I guess the new Tracy is OK, if a little too sunshiny. But John Travolta in a fatsuit and dress? Slow-dancing and making goo-goo eyes with Christopher Walken? Now I need mental floss... I know the Edna Turnblad role was created by famous transvestite Divine, and traditionally played on Broadway by men (Harvey Fierstein, Bruce Vilanch, George Wendt and Michael McKean are a few of the actors who have played Edna on stage) but Travolta's maybe a bit too over-the-top, with a weird accent and some strange facial expressions.

Then we've got the complicated issue of integration - some of the characters talk about what a long struggle the civil rights movement has been. Then, of course, the whole issue gets solved in about 10 seconds at the end of the film, just by allowing black kids to dance with white kids. Great, thanks to the magic of dance, all our problems are over, and there's no more racism!

Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes, with cameos from Allison Janney and Paul Dooley. John Waters has a tiny appearance in the opening sequence as the local "flasher", and a group of talent agents at the end of the film are played by Ricki Lake (the original Traci), producer Adam Shankman and composer Marc Shaiman.

Look for the next version to be released in 2026, with an all-new cast including Justin Long as Edna Turnblad, Bruce Willis as Wilbur, and Beyonce as Motormouth Maybelle....

RATING: 4 out of 10 whoopee cushions

De-Lovely

Year 2, Day 33 - 2/2/10 - Movie #398

BEFORE: This biopic of Cole Porter ran on cable last week, so it arrived too late to be viewed with the other films like "Ray" and "Walk the Line", and maybe that's for the best. Last night's film ended with Kevin Kline playing the piano (if you ignore the group finale number) and tonight's movie begins with Kevin Kline playing piano - I do love it when something like that happens.

For more movie synergy, check out the list of films that Turner Classic Movies will be playing in February - for their annual "31 Days of Oscar" promotion. I want to keep plugging for TCM, because they've been invaluable in helping me catch up on old movies, which they run uncut and commercial free, usually with insightful commentaries before and after each picture. Anyway, the gimmick is that for 31 days, every Oscar-nominated film they run will share one actor with both the movie before it, and the movie after it.

It's like the world's largest movie chain, and since the list begins and ends with films starring Kevin Bacon ("Only When I Laugh" to "Diner"), it's great if you really want to show-off playing that "Six Degrees" game. Someone over at TCM had a lot of fun putting this list together, I'll bet - and I'm showing restraint by only adding 18 of these films to my viewing list...

I'm proud to say that of the 360 or so films on their Feb. schedule, I've already seen 43, with another 9 in my collection. But add in the 18 that I'll be recording, and that's still only 20% of their line-up.

Check out the full schedule here, you won't be sorry:
http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/2010/31Days/finalsite_v1/_pdf/31DaysSchedule.pdf

You're welcome...

THE PLOT: Inspecting a magical biographical stage musical, composer Cole Porter reviews his life and career with his wife, Linda.

AFTER: This was a different sort of format for a biography, a little like what they did in "Beyond the Sea", with the central character reviewing scenes from his life, as if seen on stage, and then transitioning into the full movie scenes. Here Cole Porter sits in a theater's audience with a mysterious figure named Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) and together they comment on Porter's life, giving stage directions as needed.

As you may know, Cole Porter was married to Linda Lee Porter (Ashley Judd), but preferred the company of men. They had an open marriage, at least for him, and appeared together on the social scene and at his musicals' premieres. So it was a complicated partnership, but the movie depicts a loving relationship, if not a passionate one.

They meet in Paris, and then live in Venice, and Linda gets Irving Berlin to arrange for Porter's first musical on Broadway - so they move to New York, and Linda's happy to get Cole away from his European boyfriends. It's not like there's a big gay scene in New York or anything...

So later she puts pressure on him to compose music for films, and they move to Hollywood. Smart move, since it's not like there's a big gay scene in Los Angeles...

Cole Porter's one of those composers who's written many more songs than I realized - and the movie takes advantage of this by dropping in some of today's artists in cameos, performing Porter songs on stage, in nightclubs, at parties, or in underground men's clubs. So we get to see Elvis Costello perform "Let's Misbehave", Sheryl Crow sing "Begin the Beguine", "Let's Do It" done by Alanis Morissette, plus Diana Krall, Robbie Williams, Natalie Cole, etc. It was a clever way to put a modern spin on some music that the kids today might not know.

With Porter's backstory in place, it's amazing what he got away with in his music - some of the songs seem very subversive without being blatantly sexual - but it gives a new layer of subtext to songs like "Anything Goes", "Love for Sale", and "Blow, Gabriel, Blow". Or is my mind just in the gutter?

Anyway, the film is all about appearances - who did Cole Porter appear to be, as opposed to who he actually was? But I'm not sure that the story really got behind the scenes and into his head. Like we got the who and the when, but not the WHY.

RATING: 6 out of 10 cigarette cases

A Prairie Home Companion

Year 2, Day 32 - 2/1/10 - Movie #397

BEFORE: Sticking with the radio theme, this was director Robert Altman's last film, a last-minute addition to the list. IFC ran this last week and I figured I'd pick it up.

THE PLOT: A look at what goes on backstage during the last broadcast of America's most celebrated radio show.

AFTER: I didn't really get this at all, I guess I'm not in the intended target audience since I've never listened to "A Prairie Home Companion", or anything on NPR for that matter.

Some of the songs were entertaining, especially the ones performed by cowboy act Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly) and the Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin) but too much of it was delivered with this Minnesota down-hominess that was just too cutesy and charming for its own good.

Of course, radio-man Garrison Keillor was at the center of the show, and he's not without charm - I liked the fake commercials for products like biscuits and local pizza parlors - but is his whole act a put-on? I wasn't sure if I could take him seriously at any point, is the Midwestern act genuine or just something like Spinal Tap or the Folksmen? Is it a satire of Midwestern values, or a winking celebration of them?

Then there were parts that just confounded me - the presence of Lindsay Lohan, for example. She can't act or sing well, so what's she doing there? And Kevin Kline plays "Guy Noir", who acts as the show's head of security, but seems like he just stepped out of a cheesy detective novel. Which raises the question - when does this take place? Is it 1980, or 1930? We can't tell, and is that part of the point? That the music and folksiness of Minnesota is eternal?

In a way, it reminded me of "Synecdoche, New York", but with more music. The stage show is intended to be a microcosm, so the actions on stage are representative of life - we're on stage for a short time, we sing and dance, but eventually the show has to end, and so do our lives. If we're lucky, we managed to entertain and connect with people during our time in the spotlight.

Virginia Madsen appears as a mysterious woman who claims to be an angel, and Tommy Lee Jones plays the axeman sent by a corporation to close down the theater. Apparently there's nothing in the Midwestern value set that prevents doing harm to the axeman in order to save the show...what kind of "angel" does that, the angel of death?

I understand the showbiz types, and how performing is in their blood, and who they are. But a bunch of people telling stories about the good ol' days of showbiz didn't exactly make up an exciting movie for me. And even if you acknowledge jokes as bad, it doesn't excuse them or make them any better.

RATING: 3 out of 10 banjos

Talk Radio

Year 2, Day 31 - 1/31/10- Movie #396

BEFORE: I had blocked out the whole month of January for these entertainment-related films, but it looks like I'm going to run over, by at least a week.

THE PLOT: A rude, contemptuous talk show host becomes overwhelmed by the hatred that surrounds his program just before it goes national.

AFTER: Another movie that struggled with telling a visual story, about a non-visual medium. Oliver Stone directed, and didn't really do much to make this a very visual story, but fortunately the speech of late-night radio host Barry Champlain (Eric Bogosian) is very engaging.

There's an obvious parallel to Howard Stern, someone who achieved his greatest success once he realized that he had to forget about censors and talking down to his audience, and just engage in brutal free-form conversation.

However, someone talking on the radio with strong opinions is going to create both kinds of fans - the fans who agree, and the "fanatics" who will disagree, but yet still keep listening for some reason. So this movie is also about Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton, Hannity, Colmes, etc.

And perhaps more than any other film I've watched this month, it illustrates the dichotomy of fame - Champlain wants to be a big star, yet is unwilling to compromise in the way that would make him most successful. He wants to be syndicated nationally, but not at the cost of his act. He has contempt for his audience, but what is that except self-loathing that's directed outwards? He's heard by thousands of people nightly, but how many friends does he have?

It's the sad reality of this crazy business we call show - you show up, entertain America, and if you've done your job well, what do you win? The chance to show up the next day and do it all over again.

Also starring Alec Baldwin, John Pankow, John C. McGinley, and Ellen Greene. I tried to identify the voices calling in, figuring they were cameos like on "Frasier", but the only one I was able to name was Park Overall. After checking the IMDB, I feel redeemed after learning the other actors weren't famous, except for that guy who played Wilson on "Home Improvement".

RATING: 6 out of 10 death-threats

Death to Smoochy

Year 2, Day 30 - 1/30/10 - Movie #395

BEFORE: From the cutthroat world of network news, to the cutthroat world of children's television. This movie got really bad reviews, but I swore that I wouldn't pre-judge. Anyway, if it's that bad, I'd like to watch it and get it off of my list.

THE PLOT: When he is fired, the host for a children's television show plots revenge against his replacement, a rhino named Smoochy.

AFTER: Back in the day, I worked for a company that filmed segments for Sesame Street, and I've had several friends who've worked at MTV Animation and Nickelodeon over the years, so I know that more goes on backstage at these kids shows than most people realize. Jeez, I might be this film's target audience, which is a scary thought.

While it's not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, neither is it as bad as I thought it would be - it's certainly not as bad as "Radioland Murders", for example.

Robin Williams plays the disgraced host, Rainbow Randolph, who plots revenge against his time-slot replacement, Smoochy, aka Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton). There's a clear parallel meant to be drawn between characters like Pee-Wee Herman and Barney, though I don't know of any real-world direct conflict between those two.

If the movie had just been about the conflict between Randolph and Smoochy, it could have been a lot more interesting. Mopes/Smoochy comes along with his plan to control his character, teach kids the benefits of organic foods and the evils of refined sugar, and tries to sing songs with positive messages, like getting along with step-parents. Edward Norton plays the guy as a straight arrow, and is very believable - while Robin Williams plays Randolph as a loose cannon, someone one step away from the edge, and of course he's very believable at doing that...

With the current campaigns to remove high-fructose corn syrup from restaurants, and soda and sugary snacks from school lunches - and at a time when even Cookie Monster is being seen on TV eating vegetables, I actually found some of this movie's content to be very timely.

I think there was a solid idea here, but it got lost in a plot that just has too many villains, too many ex-kiddie show hosts, and too many reversals. Between the Irish mafia, the evil charity ice-show sponsors, evil agents, evil network executives and a number of psychotic killers, it's tough to keep all the players straight.

Also starring Catherine Keener (last seen by me in "Synecdoche, New York"), Danny DeVito (who also directed), Jon Stewart, Harvey Feirstein, and character actors Vincent Schiavelli, Robert Prosky, Danny Woodburn (Mickey from "Seinfeld") and Martin Klebba ("Pirates of the Caribbean").

Between my knowledge of "Star Wars", "Time Bandits", and the show "Little People, Big World", I probably know more than the average person about tiny actors, or LP actors. This is the kind of movie that employs them, in that difficult acting period between St. Patrick's Day and the Christmas season. This is the kind of stuff that fills my brain, yet never comes up in trivia contests...

RATING: 5 out of 10 cowbells