The Wiz

 I remember as a child my Mom and I going to the theater to see the film The Wiz. So I attach a bit of nostalgia to it. But there are a few fun facts about it. Such as: It cost $24 million to make, but it earned $13 million at the box office. So, it was a commercial failure. As such, it probably set back the making of all-black casted films a decade or so.

It was a critical failure as well. The casting of Diana Ross as Dorothy was widely panned, as, for example, "cold, neurotic and oddly unattractive;" and bear in mind, this was a role she went over Berry Gordy's head to get (original casting would have been Stephanie Mills, who played Dorothy in the Broadway production). It was called "Joel Schumacher's cockamamy screenplay," and "one of the decade's biggest failures", and, "the year's biggest musical flop." Referencing the film's budget, it was called "expensive crud." It was deemed "too scary for children, and too silly for adults." Ray Bolger, who played the Scarecrow from 1939's The Wizard of Oz, called it "overblown" and said that it "will never have the universal appeal" of the original.

So, when Dad and I were looking for a movie suggestion tonight, what fell out of my stupid mouth?

"How about The Wiz?"

You can't win them all. 

...whenever we go out...

It’s Breakfast Club Day Ya Bastids

To Sir, With Love

First of all, how about them Buffalo Bills, as of today AFC East champions for the second straight season! Let's see who's up Saturday... hmmmmm...Patriots? Chargers?

UPDATE: Patriots.

Second, I was shocked to read about the passing of the world champion of telling the "the Aristocrats" joke, Bob Saget. I really hate it when the funny ones die.

Third, To Sir, With Love.

Propelled by the recent death of Sidney Poitier, after the Big Sunday Dinner, we landed on this for a movie. And, I mean, it's all right. Dated. Kind of weird. Kind of after-school special. Lulu as that generation's Adele. Contrived situations that kind of make no sense. An extended dance scene betwixt teacher and student without even the benefit of John Travolta's choreography. It's kind of a squeaker. Better than Birdman, I reckon.

But without it, is there a Dead Poet's Society?

Yeah, probably. Maybe we should have gone with Lilies in the Field.

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Shampoo

Turner Classic Movies sucked me in early this morning, causing me to watch nearly all of a 1975 film starring Goldie Hawn, Goldie Hawn' mini-skirts, Warren Beatty, juror #7 in 12 Angry Men, and a 17-year-old Carrie Fisher.

Shampoo.

Beatty plays George Roundy, a hairdresser in Beverly Hills who bangs every one of his customers, and follows his attempts to juggle these relationships on the night before the 1968 presidential election. I'll say this, I am certain that Ben Stiller spent some time with this film when he was formulating his Zoolander character.

Such an experience is one reason I keep the silver channels. Through my Saturday, I had on this nutty film, but earlier they played Bad Day at Black Rock, which I'd seen before but is always worth a view. This stars Spencer Tracy as a one-armed guy who stops into a weird backwards town looking for someone. The dude has a bum arm, but he can still kick Ernest Borgnine's ass. Then they showed Gilda, which is the reason men sit up a bit in their chairs when you say the words "Rita Hayworth."

Since I'm thinking about movies, one should probably give a moment to reflect on Sidney Poitier, who, strangely, has been on my mind the past month or so. Lilies in the Field, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, how do movies get any better than these? Poitier died this week but leaves behind a trove of amazing work.

Today.

...on Hulu.

The Hospital

When Paddy Chayefsky was thinking about writing a movie about a news television network, he asked his friend, news anchor John Chancellor, if it was possible for an anchorman to go crazy on the air.

"Every day," Chancellor replied.

The resulting film, Network, is one of those films that seems with hindsight to be less farce than prognostication. You know, like Idiocracy. Well, my DOD was reminded by the news of actor Diana Rigg's death of Chayefsky's previous effort, The Hospital. This we watched today in our ongoing Pandemic Theater series. It's a bit more awkward a film and did receive mixed reviews in 1971, but it did win the Oscar for best original screenplay.

As Roger Ebert pointed out the film's most confounding aspect is that it turns on a dime from farce to whodunnit. But watching this does make it difficult to argue with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin that Chayefsky was "the twentieth century's most important screenwriter." The studio was not altogether happy with the film's yen for algebraic dialogue, but it's the lines that compelled me as a viewer.

Well. That and the oddball premise that someone is lurking around a hospital murdering doctors and nurses.

So, good pick. Once again, it was better than Birdman.

One should note: It's also fun to watch for seeing who is in this little film, starting with Nancy Marchand, who played mother of both Tony Soprano and Frasier Crane. This is not the first time Marchand had appeared in a Chayefsky project, she also played Clara in Marty. Other faces that struck me: Katherine Helmond, Stockard Channing (an uncredited brief appearance), and Frances Sternhagen (another Cheers connection, she played Cliff Claven's mother). Apparently Christopher Guest is also somewhere in this movie as well.

Nobody Puts Gidget In The Corner

A young girl in summer. She is introduced to a new world. She is an oddity in this world, naiive when all the others seem more worldly. She is initially perceived as immature looking, overly-eager, and as an outsider. Even her nickname brandishes her immaturity. Soon, though, despite this underworld's attempts to send her home, she becomes more ubiquitous as days go by. Her parents approve before they know more but later disapprove. She develops a friendship though with this scene's mentor, who begins helping her master the group's essential cultural activity. Indeed, she is invited to a nighttime party that is of the hush-hush variety and is witness to a scene most outsiders do not see, with music and bonfires and dancing. And she is pulled away suddenly. There is conflict and hurt, and she is forbidden by her parents from rejoining this crew. Yet, through happier circumstances, she rejoins her old friends, and the result is surprising.

Is this "Dirty Dancing," or is it "Gidget?"

On The Basis of Sects

"Well, if that’s how you think you want to spend your time.” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg's initial response to her nephew Daniel Stiepleman when he pitched her the idea of making a movie based on the first case she ever argued with her late husband Marty)

So, Sunday my Uncle Hat and I saw a movie. He is here for family business and also for a bit of fun here in Rochester New York. And there are some movies he ain't seen. So we have been going to some movies.

Today we saw On The Basis Of Sex, the new biopic of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Enjoyed it well. I am glad to note that RBG herself finds the portrayal to be mostly accurate, largely because she was profoundly involved in the project. And it is a fine film, though I did find myself going over the laundry list that most biopics seem obligated to tick off. This film does everything you anticipate it to do. Here's her first day at Harvard, where the professor calls on two men before being placed into a force to call on Ginsburg, whose answer is far superior. Here's her fighting with the chauvinistic dean. Here's how she found her landmark case. Blah blah blah. Check, check, check.

Fortunately, this movie does it well. Really well. No Oscar love for this thing--not even Original Screenplay, Academy? Really? Oh, well. Perhaps there's too much RBG power in the nominations with the two nominations of the documentary of that particular honorific. But it is a fine film. A little rote, but well done.

Anyways, since I'm writing movies today, let's for my own reference most of all list all the Oscar-nominated films I've seen...and, go: A Star Is Born, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Vice.

Wow. I've really got some work to do.

Man of Steel versus The Lone Ranger

I have recently seen two superhero genre films that took seemingly ancient and beloved source material and applied the ol' Reimaginer to it, the first, "Man of Steel," an ostensible attempt to rub a little smudge on the Superman myth, as was successfully done recently to Batman, and today, I went to see "The Lone Ranger."

Now, you might surmise from the art that has headed this blog for some years (which my Mother really likes, as she was both costume designer and photographer), Superman has long been near and dear as a story to me. My first allowance, in fact, was twenty-six cents per week, offered so that I could go up to the local five-and-dime and purchase the very latest Superman comic. I took interest in other costumed crime fighters, of course, but Superman was the core hero to me.

So of course I was intrigued by the notion of giving the "dark knight" treatment to our man from Krypton, and I was equally crestfallen to find that these moviemakers' idea was to take the Superman story and to apply it liberally with "Transformers" level CGI and encounter upon punishing encounter among super hero and/or villains. "Man of Steel" was the kind of film where I sat there begging for its end. It is not so much a bad film as it is a self-inflicted punishment.

And can we please tamp on the breaks with films that now feel free to appropriate September Eleventh imagery? Attention, directors: It's still too soon. We lived through it; you think we need to see it gussied up and ruling the big digital screen? "Man of Steel" is particularly egregious with this.

"Man of Steel" gets it right in spots, as in, it offers another viewpoint of the man Clark Kent was before he donned the cape, it bothers to reflect on what it would mean to be out in the world possessing that kind of power, and, for a while, it realizes that Clark Kent is just as interesting a character as is Superman, if not more interesting.

And, by the way: This isn't an "S," where I come from, it stands for hope? REALLY? FU, "Man of Steel." What a horrible back-bend of bizarre conceit.

So, how could that movie make 2.5 hours seem so painful, while yet my selection today effortlessly held my captive attention for the same time period?

"The Lone Ranger" is a marvel. It is a nearly perfect movie. I have been champing at the bit to see it for months, and it was not as good as I had expected it to be. It was 12 times better. This is a film that adores its source, that paces its story, that plays the action like a well-strummed theremin, that is comedic and dramatic and entertaining and that hits every note perfectly right on through the coda.

Much of this is a credit to Johnny Depp of course, to the point that the movie could probably be re-titled "Tonto." Casting the story with the sidekick as the brains of the operation is a brilliant turn of the wrench, and, when you think about it a minute, makes a lot more sense anyway. And it's this kind of rethinking of story, this wonderful effort at more heavily detailing this canvas, that makes "The Lone Ranger" a more than welcome update.

I know, I know, I know. Some reviewers have panned "The Lone Ranger." I have seen such reviews, and I do not understand them. What I know is that I have seen two perfect movies this year, the first being "Django Unchained," and the second, this wonderful, fun, thoughtful film that reinvigorates a show I watched in reruns on the tube as a kid and that gathered reverence from guys like my Dad and my Uncle Hat.

Eschew the reviews. Go see "The Lone Ranger." And, do not waste your time with "Man of Steel."

Next on my list: "The Heat" and "20 Feet from Stardom."