BEFORE: Both Lady Gaga AND Dave Chappelle carry over from "Quincy", so now you see why I dropped in a documentary in the middle of a fiction chain - I can't resist having multiple actors linking between films. And this gets me back to Bradley Cooper, who will serve as my lead-in to "Avengers: Endgame" on Monday. Both that film and "Quincy" had such large casts, there were probably a thousand different ways to program this week, so the hard part for me was narrowing the focus down to find a little section of the chain that would work for me.
Speaking of which, I'm going to have to change my outro for "Avengers: Endgame" - it's OK, I've still got time. The problem is that I added "The Sweet Hereafter" at the last minute, and though that pushed "Endgame" on to exactly the right day, it also moved everything else on my list down one, so now my Mother's Day film is not in alignment. So I either have to find two films to drop now, or watch 8 films each week between now and Mother's Day. The easier solution is to drop two films, either by eliminating the middle films from a grouping of three or four, or re-working a section by finding another link. Since "Avengers: Endgame" has a cast of (nearly) thousands, the quickest, easiest solution here is just to skip down to the next film in the chain that shares an actor with "Avengers", and whaddaya know, it just happens to be the third film (OK, fourth, but now I can flip #4 with #3 and just continue on.) So I'm delaying two minor films until a later date, but the chain's just going to neatly close up around the hole, and my Mother's Day film is back on the right day. It's as easy as that, but I'll mention the missing films after Monday.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "A Star Is Born" (1976) (Movie #380), "Gaga: Five Foot Two" (Movie #3,015)
THE PLOT: A musician helps a young singer find fame as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
AFTER: This continues the concept of music fame not mixing well with personal relationships, as seen in "Quincy", but also the whole absent father thing that's been building up for the last few days, as seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines", "Moonlight" and "A Wrinkle in Time". Jackson Maine is a successful country-rock singer, but he's an alcoholic, and that's partially because of the way he was raised, with his father as a drinking buddy instead of a strong parental figure. He's got a strained relationship with his older brother (same father, different mothers) who also serves as his tour manager/safety net/enabler, and it all goes back to arguing over which one Daddy liked best.
But when Jackson meets Ally while drinking in a bar (happens to be a drag bar, but he really didn't care, the alcohol there is the same as anywhere else) and Ally is allowed to perform there even though she's a girl, which would seem to be against the rules of a drag bar, but what do I know about it? Lady Gaga's been equated to a drag queen more than once in the real world, I'm sure, and then there were those weird rumors about her (which get totally disproved here during a bathtub scene, but I digress...). Once he finds out that she's really a chick and not a dude, Jackson sets out to find out how talented she really is as a singer and songwriter, though Ally's the one that needs the most convincing.
It's a very cute way for two people to meet, even if it is quite contrived, but hey, any first date that ends with someone icing down their hand with a bag of frozen peas counts as a good one, right? He hears her sing a snippet of a song that she's been working on, and by the next day he's sending a car and a private jet to whisk her away to his concert in the next city, where's he's all ready to perform HER song on stage in front of a stadium crowd, and he wants her to sing it with him as a duet. This is how a rock star sweeps a woman off her feet - hell, he could sweep me off my feet, and I don't even swing that way.
Now, this seems like something I should be complaining about, because it kind of resembles the "riff-offs" from the "Pitch Perfect" franchise - what's the likelihood of her knowing how to sing a song that he JUST finished writing, how is it in her key, how does she know the chords and the changes, etc.? Well, I'm going to allow this here, because he based the song on HER song, or a piece of it, and maybe he heard enough to finish it the way she would have, or in some intuitive way. Yes, there could have been a hundred ways to finish that song, but let's just assume he picked one that was logical, and similar to one she would have chosen. As Quincy Jones pointed out, everyone is working with the same 12 notes, it's just what they DO with them that matters. And this is a far cry from a group of 10 a cappella singers having a mind meld, and somehow all knowing what song to sing next, what key to sing it in, and what word to link off of from the previous song. THIS is believable, and THAT (the riff-off) just isn't.
Before long, Ally's out on tour with Jackson, singing duets and playing keyboards, what I'd call the "Linda McCartney" role, except that she's actually got talent, even if she's afraid to believe it. For her this all could go away on a moment's notice, except then she gets approached by an A&R man, who offers her a record deal of her own. And during this offer, Jackson is...where, exactly? If a headliner saw a record guy approaching a member of his band, he should step in and shut that down, right away. But here he's about as effective as a defense lawyer on "Law & Order", who suddenly forgets to tell his client to NOT confess to the murder - maybe he was off drinking somewhere, I wouldn't put it past him.
When you're dealing with a story that's been filmed before - or THREE times before, in this case, you'd better bring something new to the table, and take it to a place that's farther or better than the time before, and I think they did that here. I'll have to re-read my review of the 1976 version with Kristofferson and Streisand, but I remember thinking how outdated it was, by about 30 years. So naturally I agree that this story was in need of an update. I think even though the story of one person climbing the ladder of fame while the other is hitting every rung on his way down has been told before, when I compare the endings of the two versions, this one really took that concept to a new level.
I found the acting here top-notch, like I think the best acting comes when you can't even tell that people are acting, when they're closer to BEING than acting, and that can be tough to do - or maybe it's easy, any nearly everyone else is over-thinking it. All of these people just ARE and they do what they do, and than can be tough for some, but they all make it look easy. And to give you an idea how these people disappeared into their characters, for the second time this week I went nearly the entire film without recognizing one of the stars, even though it's an actor I've seen many times before. To be fair, he's changed his look since the old days, but I knew that, and STILL I didn't recognize him. I just thought, "Oh, I wonder who that actor was who played Ally's father, I should look that up on IMDB after the movie..." and then I saw the name in the closing credits, and my jaw dropped. And I do this for a living, practically. Nope, didn't even recognize him, though I should have got it from his voice alone - I'm always recognizing voice-overs in car commercials, whether it's Jon Hamm or Trace Adkins. (And I'm not talking about Sam Elliott here, duh, I'd recognize his voice anywhere.)
Now, here's where I stand on the films nominated for Best Picture in the last decade - for the 2010 films nominated (award given in 2011), I've got a perfect score, 10 for 10, now that I've recently watched "127 Hours". For the 2011 films, I've seen 8 out of 9 (have not seen "The Tree of Life"). For 2012, I've seen 7 out of 9 (have not seen "Amour" or "Beasts of No Nation"). For 2013, another perfect score, 9 out of 9. For 2014, I've seen 7 out of 8 (have not seen "Selma"). For 2015, 8 out of 8, for 2016, 9 out of 9 after watching "Moonlight", and for 2017, I'm only 5 for 9, but the missing four films ("Call Me By Your Name", "Darkest Hour", "Dunkirk" and "Phantom Thread") are all on my DVR, I just have to link to them.
After watching "A Star Is Born", I've still only seen 3 out of 8 (this one plus "Black Panther" and "Vice"), but I'll watch "Green Book" in about 2 weeks, then I'll be at the halfway point for 2018. "BlackKklansman" is on premium cable now, and I can watch the others on screeners. If I'm only short 12 nominated films for the decade, then I've seen 85% of the films nominated for Best Picture, that's not too bad, I might as well try to watch them all. Then I can check my scores for each year to see if I agree with the winning film, if I consider the award well-deserved. For "Moonlight", that was a definite "no".
Also starring Bradley Cooper (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Sam Elliott (last seen in "The Hero"), Dave Chappelle (also carrying over from "Quincy"), Andrew Dice Clay (last seen in "Pretty in Pink"), Anthony Ramos, Michael Harney (last seen in "Erin Brockovich"), Rafi Gavron (last seen in "Celeste & Jesse Forever"), Rebecca Field, D.J. Shangela Pierce, William Belli, Greg Grunberg (last seen in "Star Trek Beyond"), Ron Rifkin (last seen in "Boiler Room"), Lukas Nelson, Eddie Griffin (last seen in "The Last Boy Scout"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "Stolen"), Michael D. Roberts, Drena De Niro, Gabe Fazio (also last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), with cameos from Marlon Williams, Brandi Carlile, Don Roy King, Halsey, Don Was, Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Paris Can Wait") and Luenell (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2").
RATING: 7 out of 10 Japanese horse races
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