Both Sides Now

When “West Side Story” premiered on Broadway in 1957, it was a milestone in several ways. Essentially “Romeo and Juliet” in New York, the presentation of gangs in a musical was groundbreaking. Rebel Without a Cause and The Blackboard Jungle had been released only 2 years earlier. It was conceived by a giant of musical theater, Jerome Robbins, who recruited playwright and screenwriter Arthur Laurents to do his first musical. Laurents later wrote “Gypsy” as well as two major movies of the 1970s, The Turning Point and The Way We Were, among other projects. For the score he brought in Leonard Bernstein, one of the most important conductors and composers of his time, and paired him with a rookie lyricist – Stephen Sondheim, who would become the premier writer/composer of musical theater for the next 50 years. The musical ran for over two years and snagged two Tony awards, including Best Musical.

It wasn’t surprising that a movie would follow 4 years later, and the Super Panavision 70 production, co-directed by Robbins and Hollywood veteran Robert Wise, was a smash hit, winning 10 Oscars out of 11 nominations, a record for musicals. The only loser was Ernest Lehman, who adapted the screenplay. Lehman was also nominated for his screenplays for Sabrina, North by Northwest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Hello, Dolly, but never won, though in 2001 he did receive an honorary Oscar for his body of work. While it was normal for its time, West Side Story suffered from a bad case of whitewashing, with Puerto Rican roles played by Natalie Wood, who was Russian and Ukrainian, and George Chakiris, whose ancestors were Greek. The only principle of Puerto Rican descent was Rita Moreno, who did take home a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, on her way to becoming the first female EGOT. Also, all the singing was dubbed, even for Moreno, with the go-to dubber Marni Nixon doing the singing for Maria.

Laurents was aware of the whitewashing problem with the musical. One of his last projects was to collaborate with Lin Manuel Miranda to replace some of the English dialogue with Spanish for the Latino characters. In 2019 there was a triumphant reimagining of the musical on Broadway, eliminating the anachronistic feeling and breathing fresh life into the music. Unfortunately, the pandemic ended its run early. Now we have a reimagining of the movie version as well, done by the premier director/producer of his generation, Steven Spielberg. To refresh the script, Spielberg brought in Tony and Pulitzer Award winner Tony Kushner, who’d previously worked with Spielberg on Munich and Lincoln.

From the very first shot, Spielberg expands and deepens the story. We first see rubble, broken bricks, fallen metal fire escapes. Then the camera slowly pans up to show a sign saying that condemned, blighted area would soon be replaced with a new complex to be called “The Lincoln Center.” While the Jets and the Sharks compete for control of their neighborhood, in fact they’ve both already lost to the city’s gentrification and urban renewal. The neighborhood in which multiple waves of immigrants had first found a home would soon be no more. Many of the scenes are played out on piles of rubble that use to be apartments.

Our introduction to the Jets with the song “When You’re A Jet,” has them collecting paint cans and heading to a playground where they deface a Puerto Rican Pride mural. The Sharks soon arrive, chasing the Jets through the streets, finally facing off with them in an empty lot, but the arrival of Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) and Sergeant Krupke (Brian d’Arcy James) stops the rumble before it can truly begin. Riff (Mike Faist), the leader of the Jets, wants to have a major rumble with the Sharks to settle once and for all which gang would have dominance, and decides to set it up with the leader of the Sharks, Bernardo (David Alvarez), during a mixer at the community center that night. However, he wants Tony (Ansel Elgort) with him, as the two had co-founded the Jets and had been best friends since childhood. Tony, though, had recently finished a year-long stretch in Sing Sing because of almost beating another gang member to death in a rumble. He’s now working at Doc’s Pharmacy, helping Doc’s widow, Valentina (Rita Moreno). At first, Tony refuses to attend the dance that night, but then he changes his mind.

Bernardo’s sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), is having a hard time preparing for the dance, but is helped by Anita (Ariana DeBose) to find the proper outfit. Bernardo soon arrives with Chino (Josh Andres Rivera), a studious boy who is Bernardo’s close friend, though he’s prevented Chino from joining the Sharks. The mixer that night is essentially a pre-rumble through dance, but in the course of it, Tony and Maria dance their own pas de deux, setting in motion the love story with its tragic ending.

One major change Spielberg has done with his version is to make New York City a major character in the film. The ’61 version was stuck on soundstages, which made filming easier with the large Super-Panavision cameras. Spielberg has never been constrained in that way. Working with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who’s been with Spielberg since Schindler’s List in ’93 (for which they both earned Oscars), Spielberg found locations throughout the city that breathed life into the music, such as the Jets performing “Cool” in a derelict dock area where they’re dancing over holes in the rotting floor, or “America” moving through the streets with vintage cars passing by.
Having Rita Moreno again involved in the film, this time taking the role of “Doc” from the 1961 version, adds strength to the production. In an interesting change, she performs “Somewhere” instead of Maria and Tony, changing it from an anthem of hope to a world-weary pray for understanding. There’s no dubbing of voices in this version; all the actors do their own singing, and they do it superbly. Besides Moreno, Elgort is the most recognized actor of the cast, having been a teen throb in The Fault in Our Stars and the Divergent series, but he showed his personal chops in Baby Driver. On the other hand, Rachel Zegler is making her movie debut after a casting search that looked at 30,000 actresses. She had performed the role while in school at the Bergen (NJ) Performing Arts Center, but it’s still a tremendous jump from there to a Spielberg fill. She pulls it off flawlessly. The rest of the cast is exceptional, though Arianna DeBose is on another level at Anita, who is the emotional heart of the story. She well deserves her Best Supporting Actress nomination, and it would be wonderful for her to take home the trophy 60 years after Moreno did it for the same role.

It’s hard to remake a movie that won 10 Oscars in its original form, but Spielberg has managed to do it spectacularly.

The Fab One

After starting out in TV comedy in England (“Blackadder,” “Spitting Image”), Richard Curtis moved into films where he wrote some of the best romantic comedies: Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and the Christmas perennial, Love Actually, which he also directed. After 2013’s About Time, he essentially retired from films, only doing shorts or TV. But then fate stepped in. Jack Barth, another TV writer, asked if Curtis would like to read a script he’d written about a world where no one remembered the Beatles. Curtis responded he’d pass on reading it, because he’d rather write it himself. And thus came Yesterday. (Barth has credit for the story.)

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician whose biggest fan is his manager, Ellie Appleton (Lily James). She’s also almost his only fan, as well as his roadie and driver in the evenings after spending her days teaching. After almost ten years with little success, Jack’s ready to hang up his guitar. But then one night there’s a strange, world-wide power outage, during which Jack’s hit by a bus in the darkness. He awakens in the hospital and soon discovers that no one remembers the Beatles except him. (Other things have disappeared from the world, but I won’t spoil the fun of discovering what’s gone.)

He tries to remember all their songs – a running joke is the inability to figure out what phrase goes where in “Eleanor Rigby” – and passes them off as his own. His life takes a major turn when Ed Sheeran hears him on a TV program and invites Jack to open for his European tour. Soon a predatory agent (Kate McKinnon) with a penchant for honesty has her hooks in him. But while his future seems limitless, Jack must face losing what’s truly important to him.

Himesh Patel is a true gem as Jack. He’d started out on the hugely successful English soap opera “EastEnders” and did some other TV, but this is his first starring role. He nails it, not just the acting but also the singing and performing. Patel is ably supported by James, who’s winsome and winning and lights up the screen in her every scene.  Ed Sheeran is Ed Sheeran, but he’s very good at being Ed Sheeran. Probably the weakest aspect of the movie is McKinnon, who goes so far over the top the role has a broad SNL skit feeling to it that’s out of synch with the sly and wry style of the film.

That aside, the story is well told by director Danny Boyle, especially when showing the painful embarrassment every musical artist endures in the hope that lightning will strike. Boyle’s never been constrained by genre, having done Trainspotting, 28 Days Later…, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire, and 127 Hours, among other films. And there are surprising moments, including one scene that throws an emotional wrench into the story.

But the greatest strength within the movie is the music of the Beatles. Around 20 of their songs are included, and it brings home the genius of their writing. While they were the soundtrack of the ‘60s, the music is truly timeless, and it’s a joy to hear the pieces again. The end credits roll to the Beatles doing “Hey Jude,” which is long enough to cover the whole length of the crawl. I sat there letting the brilliant music flow over me.

Every summer, mixed in amongst the big action tentpole flicks, there’s usually one or two small gems that are antidotes to all the explosions or car chases. Yesterday fits that bill perfectly.

His Song

Coming a matter of months after Rami Malek’s stunning, Oscar-winning performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, we now have Rocketman, the biography of Elton John. While they might seem similar on the surface – gay rock icons of the 1970s and 80s – the tone of the two pictures is completely different.

The opening shot says a lot. The camera looks down a corridor to double doors. Suddenly they fly open and Elton John (Taron Egerton) stomps toward the camera dressed as a fantastic and fabulous orange devil, complete with huge horns and wings. He pushes through the next doors, where you expect you’ll find the stage he’s set to perform on. Instead he joins the circle in a group therapy session. And essentially that’s what the movie is, a therapy session, though with a killer soundtrack.

We see John as a child, desperate for even some lukewarm affection from his distracted parents. Mama Shirley (Dallas Bryce Howard) is a self-absorbed ice queen who looks at young Reggie Dwight (Matthew Illesley) as an inconvenience, while Papa Stanley (Stephen Mackintosh) is a stiff cuckoo who retreats into music. The only support he gets is from his grandmother Ivy (Gemma Jones). It’s a horrible situation, but Reggie has a gift that helps him survive – any song he hears, he can play on the piano.

The movie shows the progression of Reggie into Elton John, master musician, and then on to flamboyant showman with a prodigious appetite for sex, drugs, booze, and shopping. There are some fine moments, such as when Elton first meets Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and the close collaboration that grows between them. On the more negative side, there’s Elton’s relationship with agent John Reid (Richard Madden) who exploits him while inflicting psychological and emotional abuse.

Throughout the film, Elton’s song catalogue is used to illustrate the different scenes. Different from Bohemian Rhapsody, which took the music pretty much in chronological order, Rocketman flies all over Elton’s discology. For a scene of a teenage Elton playing pubs while toughs get rowdy, you have “Saturday Nights All Right For Fighting.” But it works. Director Dexter Fletcher deserves a lot of credit for pulling it all together, even outrageous scenes such as everyone levitating when Elton plays the Troubadour, or a scene where he falls into a pool while in a drug-induced stupor and finds his younger self playing the piano at the bottom – a great metaphor for bottoming out. Mostly Fletcher’s been a supporting actor in films, with over a hundred credits beginning with Bugsy Malone when he was 10, but he also directed the well-received biopic Eddie the Eagle a few years back.

The therapy group becomes the narrative anchor, as Elton processes his life and finally reconciles with the good and the bad. It’s a nice touch that as the therapy progresses, Elton slowly loses the devil costume, replaced by sweats and a bathrobe more appropriate for a patient in rehab. Screenwriter Lee Hall is known in particular for originally writing Billy Elliot, but he’s also done War Horse and Victoria and Abdul, along with the upcoming adaptation of Cats.

Taron Egerton’s best known for Eggsy in the Kingsman movies, though he also played in Fletcher’s Eddie the Eagle. (We’ll forget about his appearance in the most recent incarnation of Robin Hood; nearly everyone else has.) His embodiment of Elton is perfection and is matched by his voice. At the climax of the film, Fletcher switches from Egerton to one of Elton’s classic videos, and you’re not sure if you’re seeing Elton or if Egerton’s been digitally inserted. It helps to have Elton as a producer and resource for the filmmakers. During the credits, there are photographs from Elton John’s career that inspired the shots Fletcher uses.

The main difference in the feel between Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman is, at the end of Bohemian you’re wrapped in wistful sadness, knowing that Freddie Mercury only has a few years left in his life. With Rocketman there’s more triumph, with Elton celebrating decades of sobriety and embracing happiness with his husband, their children, his charity work, and his retirement from performing. Sometimes you make it to the end of the Yellow Brick Road and find your home.

A Classic Improvement

When the animated Aladdin came out in 1992, it was the third major hit for the resurrected animation department at Disney. Worldwide it did better than both The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, helped along by a performance by Robin Williams that captured the breakneck speed and wild jump-shifts of his standup style. There was also a note of wistfulness, as it marked the final song collaborations by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, following Ashman’s death from AIDS complications in March 1991. (Tim Rice substituted for Ashman to finish writing the lyrics for Menken’s music.)

The film wasn’t without its controversies. One review described it as racist, while Roger Ebert criticized its stereotypes, writing: “Most of the Arab characters have exaggerated facial characteristics – hooked noses, glowering brows, thick lips – but Aladdin and the princess look like white American teenagers.” No culturally correct actors were hired for the roles, and a line in the opening song was eventually changed for the video release because of cultural insensitivity. Also, Williams was furious with Disney since he’d agreed to do the Genie for the scale $75K fee (instead of his usual $8 million) with the condition his name not be used in marketing and the image of the Genie wouldn’t be the main feature on the poster. He had another movie being released at about the same time and didn’t want the marketing to compete with it. Disney chief Jeffrey Katzenberg reneged on the agreement without paying Williams his due, leading Williams to quip, “The reason Mickey Mouse has three fingers is so he can’t pick up the check.” The breach between Williams and Disney wasn’t mended until Katzenberg left and the new studio chief apologized publicly.

When it was announced that Aladdin would be remade as a live-action film with Will Smith as the Genie, the internet was filled with negative comments. Some charged that, based on early stills, the filmmakers had abandoned the blue skin for the Genie. There was also a rumor that for crowd scenes, white actors were made up to fill the background, echoing the racial insensitivity charges from the original. Disney responded: “Diversity of our cast and background performers was a requirement and only in a handful of instances when it was a matter of specialty skills, safety and control (special effects rigs, stunt performers and handling of animals) were crew made up to blend in.” In fact, the film was delayed because the producers sought to put culturally appropriate actors in the roles. In the end the cast was a blend of heritage, including Egyptian, Iranian, Indian, Tunisian, and Turkish.

It seemed odd that Guy Ritchie was chosen as director and co-screenwriter. He’d made his initial splash with hardboiled London crime stories that were saturated with the subculture of the city. Also, his last success was the sequel of his 2009 hit Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr. He’d had a so-so outing with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 2015, followed by the bomb King Arthur: Legend of the Sword two years later. Helming a musical set in ancient Arabia didn’t seem like the way to get back on track with his career. But then, you know what happens when you assume.

Instead, Ritchie instills the film with a vibrant energy along with a crackling good script. The film roughly follows the plot of the animated film, though underline “roughly.” Ritchie and the other screenwriter, John August, have streamlined some parts while expanding and deepening others. (August had written the 1999 indie hit Go, then worked with Tim Burton on several films, including Big Fish, The Corpse Bride, and Dark Shadows.)

The story opens on a ship where the Mariner (Will Smith) begins to tell the story of Aladdin to his two children. Soon he breaks into the opening number, Arabian Nights, while the camera flies over the water to Agrabah, gives a brief tour of the city, then heads out into the desert to the Cave of Wonders where the Sultan’s Grand Vizer, Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) sends a “volunteer” into the cave to retrieve the magic lamp. The Cave has warned that only a “diamond in the rough” can enter, and the volunteer quickly vanishes.

Back in Agrabah, street-smart thief Aladdin (Mena Massoud) exists by his wits and his fast hands, with the help of his accomplice, the monkey Abu. When a disguised Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) gives two hungry children loaves of bread without having the money to pay for them, Aladdin jumps in to get her away from the authorities. He assumes Jasmine is a handmaiden to the princess, and Jasmine plays along, giving her name as Dalia, her own servant (played by Nasim Pedrad). Abu almost breaks the connection Aladdin’s made with Jasmine by stealing her gold and jeweled wristband, leading Aladdin to break into the palace to return it. He’s seen by Jafar, whose parrot Iago (Alan Tudyk) identifies Aladdin as the diamond in the rough Jafar’s been searching for. Jafar’s guards capture Aladdin as he tries to leave and transport him to the Cave, where Jafar outs Jasmine and promises Aladdin enough wealth to give him a chance with her. Aladdin and Abu enter the cave, where Aladdin makes a friend by freeing a magic carpet that was stuck under a rock. As Aladdin gets the lamp, Abu takes a jewel and breaks the protective spell. Stuck inside, the carpet points Aladdin to the lamp as a way out. He rubs it, and things get crazy when the Genie (Smith) appears.

Smith was worried about playing the Genie, since it is so identified with Williams, but as with Shakespeare’s plays there are many ways to play even a great role. Smith finds his own groove that works beautifully, without trying to recreate the Williams performance. The rest of the cast is wonderful as well. Massoud fits the diamond in the rough teenaged Aladdin beautifully, while Scott shines like a diamond herself. In the animated version, Jafar was an imposing but standard bad guy. Kenzari’s performance gives a rich texture to the role, and the story underlines that it wouldn’t be hard for Aladdin to end up becoming a Jafar. Where Iago in the original was over the top – about the only way it could be with Gilbert Gottfried’s voice – Tudyk keeps him parrot-like while revealing an underlying malevolent intelligence. A delightful surprise is Nasim Pedrad, whose Dalia steals almost every scene she’s in.

The basic question is, though, does this live-action adaptation improve on the original. With Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, the answer was yes, though the new version of Dumbo earlier this year was a misstep. So where does Aladdin fall? Definitely in the former group. The movie improves on the original, with thrilling action – Agrabah essentially becomes a parkour course for Aladdin to run while escaping the guards – and a message of both taking responsibility and female empowerment. Jasmine isn’t just a romantic interest but shows her strength to lead, particularly in a powerhouse performance of a new song written for the movie, “Speachless.” It’s also great to have a positive, delightful presentation of Mideastern culture at this time.

Happily, the movie has found box office success, taking the top spot domestically and doing over $250 million in business worldwide in its first week. It’s thoroughly enjoyable and stands up to multiple viewings. One fun bit of trivia – the voice of the Cave of Wonders is provided by Frank Welker, who did the voice in the original film. That makes him the only actor to perform the same role in both the original animated movie and the live-action remake – at least until The Lion King opens this July and we again hear the majestic James Earl Jones as Mufasa.

A Super “Star”

A Star is Born is now on its 5^th iteration when you count George Cukor’s 1932 version What Price Hollywood? The others have all taken the name of the 1937 Janet Gaynor/Frederic March film, directed by William Wellman. The setting of the story has changed, from straight Hollywood drama for the first two, to Cinemascope Hollywood musical for the 1954 version, again directed by Cukor, that served as a comeback vehicle for Judy Garland. Barbra Streisand’s 1976 version moved it to a straight music world story, which suited her well. For the new Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga version, nods are paid in the screenplay credits to the middle three films, including to William Wellman and Moss Hart (who wrote the Garland version), even though they’ve been dead for 43 and 57 years respectively. Jon Peters, who produced Streisand’s version, also gets producer’s credit here (he’s happily still alive at 73 to enjoy it). However, even with its long pedigree, Cooper, along with his writing partner Will Fetters and the estimable Eric Roth (Forest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) have managed to blend the past into a beautiful, compelling, and fresh version of the story.

Cooper demonstrates his Renaissance man skills by acting, directing, co-screenwriting, producing, composing many of the songs, and then singing them with a skill that could make him a recording star in his own right. His embodiment of country-rocker Jackson Maine has a deep whiskey rasp and a self-destructive relationship with booze and pills, partially motivated by progressing deafness. (His name is a nod to the Frederic March and James Mason versions of the character, Norman Maine.) Yet he’s also open and vulnerable, making you root for him.

While Lady Gaga’s stage shows are cinematic in design, she’s been honing a straight acting cred as part of Ryan Murphy’s stable of players for “American Horror Story.” (Her very first acting credit on IMDb was as “Girl in Pool” on a 2001 episode of “The Sopranos.”) She strips away the glamor of the Gaga persona, including dying her hair back to her original medium brown color, and in the role of Ally gives a bare, beautiful performance.

One weakness of the ’76 version was that the music scenes felt small, with extras filling up confined venues for the concert scenes. Bradley captures the feel of an actual concert by filming at major festivals in between acts. In a perfect bit of symmetry, one of the acts who gave them time was Kris Kristofferson, who starred with Streisand in the ’76 version. It helps, too, that Cooper’s backup band in the movie is a real band: Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real, led by Willie Nelson’s son. Lukas co-wrote much of the music (with Cooper and Gaga) and it has a gravitas to its sound that you don’t normally get in a film.

Cooper has assembled a strong supporting cast. Chief among them is Sam Elliott as Bobby, Maine’s older brother, a performer in his own right who never broke through like his sibling. There’s also a surprising turn by Andrew Dice Clay as Ally’s loving and supportive father, Lorenzo. In a nod to his first major role on the series “Alias,” Cooper has Greg Grunberg and Ron Rifkin in small but meaningful roles.

This is a star-making turn for Gaga, but it’s also a major coming out for Cooper as a force behind the camera. It’s clear that he used his time working with David O. Russell and Clint Eastwood as master classes in filmmaking. One example is at the end of the movie, when you expect a big emotional cathartic moment, he instead makes it intimate and devastating. It’s a bold choice you wouldn’t expect from a first-time director, but Cooper pulls it off.

I’ll be surprised if A Star Is Born doesn’t pull in a slew of nominations during the upcoming awards season. Best of all, it deserves them.

Gotta Sing. Gotta Dance.

Last night I watched one of the best musical films ever made: Singing in the Rain. The switch from silent films to talkies, the focus of the movie, made musicals possible. To date ten musicals have won the Best Picture Oscar. Now, with La La Land there’s a chance it will become eleven.

La La Land works both as a neo-musical as well as an homage to the genre. In Singing in the Rain, you have the meet-cute device of Gene Kelly jumping into Debbie Reynolds’ car, then Debbie jumping out of a cake in front of Kelly. La La Land gives these a decidedly modern-day twist – Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) first sort-of meet during a minor moment of road rage, and it takes two more incidents before they finally get together.

Mia and Sebastian have both come to Los Angeles to pursue their dreams. Mia wants to be an actress, though the closest she’s gotten to the business is working as a barista at a coffee shop on the Warner Brothers lot. Sebastian is a jazz pianist who’s reduced to playing background music at a restaurant. When he slips in some of his original compositions, the owner (J.K. Simmons in a sparkling cameo) fires him on the spot. His dream is to open his own club where he and others can play jazz, the most American of all musical styles. Fate brings the two dreamers together as they pursue their dreams, but can the relationship survive success?

La La Land was a passion project for writer/director Damien Chazelle, who also explored the dedication necessary to succeed as a musician in his 2014 film Whiplash. In the era of Singing in the Rain studios turned out dozens of Hollywood-style musicals every year, but now if you eliminate animated films you might get one or two a year, most of them adaptations of Broadway shows. Since 2010 you have Les Miserables, Rock of Ages, Annie, and Into the Woods, with the middle two being rightly forgettable. La La Land embraces the break-into-song-or-dance motif of the classics, while grafting it into the modern world. The opening production number is staged during a traffic jam. Chazelle lets his camera follow the action in long, flowing takes.

The score by Justin Hurwitz, with song lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, is gorgeous, and accounts for three of the film’s 14 Oscar nominations: Best Score and two Best Song noms (“City of Stars” and “Audition,” which becomes the climax of the film). It’s also an excellent argument for the place of jazz in music today, as well as a real introduction to the genre for people these days who casually say they don’t like jazz.

A personal kudo to Ryan Gosling for learning the proper fingering for the music he plays. I don’t know if he actually plays the piano or if he just fakes it incredibly well, but Chazelle doesn’t cheat as many movies do by not showing the keyboard. That’s a pet peeve for me, kind of like Neil DeGrasse Tyson being upset when a film shows the incorrect alignment of stars in the sky. It’s not something most people will notice, but if you are one of those people it becomes a major factor. Gosling, though, nails it.

I don’t know what will happen Oscar night. Both Stone and Gosling have been nominated for their roles, and deservedly so. They have a definite chemistry on screen. This is now the third time they’ve been paired, along with Crazy. Stupid. Love. and Gangster Squad. Could they be the next Hepburn/Tracy? I wouldn’t mind that. But their categories have strong competition with Denzel Washington, Casey Affleck, Andrew Garfield, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, and living legend Meryl Streep all in the running.

If people want the Hollywood ending, Gosling and Stone would walk away with their golden statues. But you don’t always get a Hollywood ending, and real life is more complex, messier, and usually more satisfying.

Thankfully La La Land has both options covered.

Fractured Fairy Tales

Growing up, I loved the cockeyed humor of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” One of its segments was called “Fractured Fairy Tales,” where common stories got twisted like a balloon animal. Now there’s a grownup version of it playing on the silver screen – Into The Woods, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago).

The musical is one that Stephen Sondheim wrote during a ten-year partnership with James Lupine. Sondheim is a genius of musical theater, having written the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” and then both the music and lyrics for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “A Little Night Music,” and “Sweeny Todd.” During the years 1984 to 1994, when he collaborated with Lupine, they produced three musicals: “Sunday in the Park with George” in 1984, “Passion” in 1994, and in the middle “Into The Woods” (1987). While they were interesting, even audacious stories and were honored with several Tony awards, they didn’t match the success of Sondheim’s earlier work. “Passion” had the shortest run of any winner of the Best Musical Tony.

Into The Woods mashes together several of the classic fairy tales. You have Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) and her Prince (Chris Pine), Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) and her own prince (Billy Magnussen), Jack of beanstalk fame (Daniel Huddlestone, who played Gavroche in Les Miserables) and his mother (Tracey Ullman), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and her Wolf (Johnny Depp). What binds them all together is a baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt). A witch (Meryl Streep) who lives next door tells them that they’ve been childless because she cursed the baker’s family after his father (Simon Russell Beale) stole magic beans from her garden. That act also twisted the witch into an old crone. But for the next three nights the moon will be blue, and if the baker and his wife can gather four items, one each from the fairy tale groups above, the curse will be broken.

For the first act, the fairy tales progress pretty much as known, except with the baker and his wife stepping into the stories as they gather the needed items. But Sondheim is not a “happily ever after” kind of writer, and in the second act the story turns very dark. In truth, the actual tales, instead of the Disney-fied versions of them, can be scary, horrifying, and deeply creepy. (Strangely enough, this movie is produced by Disney.) But Sondheim goes beyond even those elements of the tales and has the characters face death, sexual betrayal, and loss, even as a rogue giant (Frances de la Tour) is destroying the woods.

The movie’s screenplay was written by Lapine, and he’s cut down the second act so it’s not quite as bitter and sad as the original musical. Marshall does a decent job keeping the production moving along, though with the cuts (or maybe because of them) the movie lags at the end. Film does allow for more interesting staging of on the songs. For Cinderella’s main song “On the Steps of the Palace” she can actually performed it on the palace’s steps, and Marshall’s staging of “Agony” is a standout.

The production has received a couple of Oscar nominations, including Streep’s 19^th (!) for acting. To put that in perspective, over the course of the entire history of the Academy Awards, Streep’s been nominated for over a fifth of those years. While it seems gaudy for one actress to rack up that many nominations – and three wins – the problem is she deserves them. The witch is a fascinating character who flows through a whole river of emotions. The role was originated on stage by Bernadette Peters, and she won a Tony for her portrayal.

Anna Kendrick showed her pipes in Pitch Perfect (and on the singles chart with “The Cups Song”), and she handles Sondheim’s music like a Broadway veteran. It’s a pleasant surprise that those in the cast who aren’t known for their musical talents, such as Chris Pine and Emily Blunt, have gorgeous voices to go along with their acting prowess. James Corden isn’t familiar to American audiences (unless they’re Doctor Who fans – he’s appeared in two episodes during Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor), but in England he’s well-known as a writer and producer as well as an actor on both stage and screen. He won a Tony in 2012 for the play “One Man, Two Guv’ners.” His anonymity should come to an end because of this movie as well as his replacing Colin Ferguson on “The Late, Late Show” later this year.

Curiously, Johnny Depp has been promoted as a main part of the cast, even though he has only two scenes and one song. While the role is short, it is both memorable and enjoyable. That’s a stark contrast to his recent starring roles in The Lone Ranger, Transcendence, and the current release Mortdecai, where the roles are long but the movies are eminently forgettable and painful to watch.

Into The Woods has done decently at the box office, surpassing $125 million, and it stayed in the top 10 for over a month. But there is an inherent weakness in the production that is deadly for a musical. It doesn’t have a “Send in the Clowns” or a “Tonight” or a “No Business like Show Business” – or to make the point with a recent movie, it doesn’t have a “Let it Go.” While the music is good and the lyrics witty, there’s no song that the audience will be humming on the way out of the theater. Regardless of the strong work of Marshall and his cast, Into The Woods will remain a minor example of a great talent.

Not So Miserable

Spoiler Alert: I’d like to discuss how Les Misérables was adapted for the screen, which will include discussing plot lines, so if you have not seen the musical, or listened to the cast album, or read the book, or watched a previous filmed version of the story (or the 25^th Anniversary concert that is shown by PBS during every pledge drive these days) you should stop reading now, get in your car, and drive to the theater where the movie is playing.  Make sure you bring tissues with you.

It’s hard to think of someone not acquainted with the story.  “Les Misérables” has been in print since 1862.  (It is one of the longest novels ever written; at 560,000 words, it’s just a bit shorter than “War and Peace.”)  The story has been filmed for the big and small screens at least once a decade since movies were first made.  Since its London premiere in 1985, the musical version has played around the world – and it’s still running in London after 27 years.

It is the masterpiece of Victor Hugo, who’s as important to French literature as his contemporary Charles Dickens is to English literature.  Hugo’s work is even more diverse, though.  Besides novels he was (and still is) beloved in France for his poetry, and he was a prolific dramatist.  One of his plays, “Le Roi s’amuse,” was used by Verdi as the basis for his classic opera, “Rigoletto.”  Hugo’s “Notre Dame du Paris,” which became “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” when translated into English, is a classic itself, and has been filmed nearly as often.

Hugo was also deeply involved in politics.  He helped Prince Louis-Napoleon become president of France in 1848, but when the president became authoritarian and dictatorial, Hugo broke with him.  After the coup d’etat that put Napoleon III in charge of the 2^nd Republic, Hugo went into exile, living mostly on the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey until Napoleon III’s fall in 1870.  It was during the exile that Hugo completed “Les Misérables,” which he’d begun in 1845.  It spans the years 1789 to 1832 and covers the broad spectrum of French life during those years, even including a chapter on the battle of Waterloo.

The musical did an excellent job of putting the novel on stage by focusing on the main story plot, although it required a marathon length of three hours.  But a musical is designed to communicate to an auditorium filled with people.  Subtlety is lost in the bravura of the format.  With movies, the camera can look into an actor’s eyes to see the character within.  Screenwriter William Nicholson has experience with stage-to-screen adaptions.  He wrote the Tony-nominated play “Shadowlands” and did the screenplay for its movie version, and he adapted the musical “Sarafina!” for the screen.  In his script for Les Misérables, he’s put in nuances from the book that couldn’t be communicated on stage.  It makes this the most faithful adaptation of the book out of the many that have been done over the years.

Director Tom Hooper won the Best Direction Oscar two years ago for another period piece: The King’s Speech.  He’d worked in the era of Les Mis before when he did the four-part series John Adams for HBO.  Musicals are not an easy genre, but he carries it off beautifully.  His decision to have the parts sung live, accompanied by a pianist heard through an earphone, allows the actors to integrate the emotions of their performances into the music.  Normally they’re lip-synching to recordings made months before the filming.  It refreshes the musical.

The story is divided into three sections.  In the first, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) receives his parole after serving 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving children.  As his jailer Javert (Russell Crowe) points out, he’s not free; he must report to the authorities and carry a yellow passport that will forever brand him a criminal.  Valjean almost slips into a life of crime except for an act of mercy by a Bishop (Colm Wilkinson).  This causes Valjean to rip up the yellow passport and recreate himself.

Those familiar with the musical will be surprised at the first line of dialogue in the movie – simply because there is dialogue.  The musical was operatic with all the parts sung.  With the intimacy of the camera, this change was both necessary and helpful.  Jackman is a musical theater veteran, having done “The Boy From Oz” on Broadway, and is wonderful in the role of Valjean.  Valjean’s soliloquy “What Have I Done,” which ends the section, begins at a whisper then rises to a roaring climax.

In this section, Crowe’s voice seems light, though he communicates the physical bearing of Javert.  While he’s a newcomer to musicals, he has had his own band “30 Odd Foot of Grunts” in Australia for years.  A gift to audiences is casting Wilkinson as the Bishop.  He originated the role of Valjean both in London’s West End and on Broadway, where he stopped the show with “Bring Him Home.”  Decades on, his voice is just as clear and strong.

Section Two takes place several years later in the town of Montreuil.  Valjean has become the factory owner and mayor of the town, M. Madeleine.  A factory employee, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), is caught up in an argument when the other factory workers discover she’s hiding a daughter, the result of an affair with a young student who then abandoned her.  Here’s one place where the movie incorporates more of the book, clarifying the story.  In the original musical, Valjean walks in on the argument and tells the foreman to sort things out with patience.  Instead the man, who’s lusted after Fantine, sacks her.  In the movie we see Valjean is distracted to see Javert, the town’s new police chief, waiting in his office.  Javert doesn’t recognize Valjean, but his suspicions are raised when Valjean saves a man from being crushed by a cart.  Javert’s only seen such strength before in the prisoner, now fugitive, Valjean.

Hooper and the creative team switched the order of the songs “Lovely Ladies” and “I Dreamed A Dream,” putting “Ladies” first.  It’s boisterous and a stark contrast as Fantine falls to the depths of society as she tries to still provide for her daughter, selling a prized locket, then her hair, and finally a tooth.  The tooth scene wasn’t in the original musical, but is in the book.  Finally she lands in prostitution.  When Hathaway sings “I Dreamed A Dream” after Fantine’s first customer, it’s no longer a beautiful song of lost dreams; it’s a raw nerve ending, filled with rage as tears flow down her cheeks.

Later Fantine is seen by Valjean fighting off an abusive customer.  Javert wants to arrest Fantine, but Valjean intercedes, only to be stunned when Fantine rips into him for being responsible for her fall.  He takes the sick Fantine to a hospital and learns her daughter is in a small town being cared for by the innkeeper Thenardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter).  Valjean promises the dying Fantine that he’ll care for Cosette, though at the same time he’s had to confess his true identity to save a man, thought to be him, from being thrown into prison.

Hooper stages “Confrontation” as an actual duel between Valjean and Javert, an excellent choice that heightens the tension.  It’s here that Crowe’s singing strengthens to match Jackman.  That strength continues in his solo “Stars,” which Hooper films with Javert walking along the parapet of police headquarters in Paris, creating a visual that encapsulates Javert’s legalism and judgment on those who “fall from grace.”

The Thenardiers were comedic relief in the stage version, but Hooper cuts down on their buffoonery during the song “Master of the House.”  With the camera he can show their thievery in ways that could only be suggested on stage, though some may wish the kitchen part of the song was a little less graphic.  (One interesting bit of trivia is that Bonham-Carter’s family tree includes one of Hugo’s main political adversaries.)  With less cartoonish glee here, it increases the threatening nature of the characters later in the story.  We briefly see their daughter Eponine as a child.

Young Cosette, the daughter of Fantine, is played by Isabelle Allen, making her acting debut.  She looks like she stepped out of the original illustration of Cosette that was used in the musical’s marquee.  Valjean and Cosette’s escape from Javert is another case where more of the book has been added into the musical.

Section Three jumps forward to 1832.  Cosette (now played by Amanda Seyfried) catches the eye of the student Marius (Eddie Redmayne), who’s immediately smitten by her – and she by him.  To find her, Marius turns to his friend, the now-grown Eponine (Samantha Barks).  Valjean has a run-in with the Thenardiers as well as with Javert, who is now assigned to Paris.  He realizes he and Cosette won’t be safe until they leave France.  Marius meets Cosette in the garden of Valjean’s house, where they pledge their love in “A Heart Full Of Love” while Eponine mourns her unrequited love of Marius.  Thenardier and his gang arrives after Marius leaves, planning to rob Valjean, but are foiled when Eponine screams a warning.  Valjean fears it’s Javert looking for him, and moves Cosette to another apartment for safety until they can leave for England.  Cosette leaves a note at the fence for Marius, but it’s intercepted by Eponine.

Seyfried has come a long way from her ditzy first movie role in Mean Girls.  She’s sung before, in Mamma Mia!, but the role of Cosette requires a pure soprano voice that she nails.  Eddie Redmayne came to prominence as the male lead in last year’s My Week With Marilyn, holding his own with Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench.  Marius isn’t an easy role, having to convincingly portray love that blossoms with Romeo speed, but he carries it off.

The sparkling gem of the movie is Samantha Barks, making her film debut.  She’d done Eponine on stage in London and sang it for the 25^th anniversary concert, but it’s not always easy to make the transition to film from stage.  Barks does it seamlessly.  Moving up “On My Own” to right after she foils her father’s robbery highlights Eponine’s conflicted love of Marius as well as her isolation.

Another shining role is Gavroche, played by Daniel Huddlestone.  He’s also making his film debut, after doing a supporting role in “Oliver” in London West End recently.  The role’s always done with a thick Cockney accent that he does beautifully, and his singing of “Look Down” and “Little People” is a delight.

Marius is a member of a student league that is incensed by the injustices of society.  Under the leadership of Enjolras (Aaron Tvelt), they prepare a rebellion, hoping that their actions will cause a wholesale uprising.  Here one weakness to the adaptation becomes clear.  There are a couple of times, such as during “Do You Hear The People Sing,” when the music is restrained, losing the crescendos of the stage version and the cast recordings.  It weakens the role of Enjolras, so it’s not the star-maker it was on stage.  That said, “One Day More” works even better on film since it cuts between the characters, rather than having them all come together to sing.

Eve Stewart, the production designer, assisted by the set decoration and art direction teams, has done an excellent job throughout the movie, even with London standing in for Paris.  The barricade in the narrow streets fills out the musical’s bare staging, while the later scene in the Paris sewers drives home the reality of what Hugo wrote, where in the stage version the scene was rather antiseptic.

Eponine takes a bullet meant for Marius.  As she lays dying, she finally gives him the note left by Cosette, and Marius sends Gavroche to Cosette with a final letter, confessing his love as he prepares to die.  Valjean intercepts the letter and determines to try to save Marius for Cosette.  He makes his way to the barricade where he comes face to face again with Javert, who had tried to infiltrate the students but was identified by Gavroche.  In an act of mercy that Javert can’t understand, Valjean releases him.

I’m afraid I will always hear “Bring Him Home” in Colm Wilkinson’s voice, having seen the original cast on stage in London back in 1986, but Jackman comes close to matching it with his rendition.  What the movie brings out clearly is the tragedy of the students’ sacrifice, starting with Gavroche’s death and flowing through the destruction of the barricade and Enjolras’s death.

Hooper opens up the scene with the filming, though he still manages the iconic image of Enjolras at the end.  He also uses a silent moment of Javert looking at the dead, including Gavroche, to make the policeman’s suicide understandable.  On stage, his jump from the bridge is suggested by the use of a strobe light and sound, but in the movie the scene is played to its full operatic potential.

Redmayne’s rendition of “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” matches the power of the stage version without resorting to the ghostly images of the fallen.  Hooper gives us a satisfying resolution for the Thenardiers.  They crash Marius’s wedding to Cosette, trying to extort money with information about Valjean, but Marius has them thrown out.  “Beggar At The Feast” turns from a wink at their comedy to a final payment for their treachery.

Hooper foreshadows Valjean’s death, as the wear of the years finally takes its toll.  If you haven’t been in tears before, you will be at “Finale,” with its climatic reprise of “Do You Hear The People Sing.”  Film allows for a much broader canvas on which to paint this scene, and Hooper does it beautifully.  He may not be nominated for an Oscar – he was shut out of the Golden Globes – but it’s a sterling accomplishment to bring a beloved musical to the screen and make it even better.

Some reviews of the movie have been savage, such as Entertainment Weekly grading it a C.  However, EW readers gave the movie an A-.  As the song said, this is a time to “hear the people sing” its praises.

Striking The Right Note

When musical theater began in the US, it was theater with musical numbers thrown in.  That all changed with Showboat in 1927.  From then on, musical theater incorporated song and dance to tell the story.  The great movie musicals, such as The Sound of Music, Singing in the Rain, Oklahoma, followed that style, and they will soon be joined by Les Miserables.  But there’s also a place in movies for the quasi-musical that features singing or dancing as part of the plot.  Recent examples of this would be Dirty Dancing, Honey, and Step Up.  They’re comparatively inexpensive to make, so they’ll often spawn sequels – Step Up 4 came out in July.  Pitch Perfect could have been another of those movies, but the makers decided to twist the genre so it’s close to a Christopher Guest mocumentary, with a dash of Monty Python.  In the process they’ve created a fresh and funny film.

Barden College is a center for a cappella music and has two groups competing for the national title at the Lincoln Center.  The men’s group, the Treble Makers, are powerhouse performers, led by Bumper (Adam DeVine), while the women’s group, the Bellas, are old school and boring – at least until their performance goes horribly wrong in a way that will guarantee its success on YouTube.  Fast forward to the next school year, and only Aubrey (Anna Camp) and Chloe (Brittany Snow) remain from the previous Bella group.  They are desperate for singers.

New to campus that fall is Beca (Anna Kendrick) who’s a DJ and an aspiring music producer.  She’s constantly working on mashups of songs, blending beats and rhythms, and wants to be in LA pursuing her dream.  Instead, her estranged father Mitchell (John Benjamin Hickey), who’s a professor at Barden, offers to pay her way to LA if she will come to school and participate in its activities.  Beca becomes an intern at the school’s radio station, but that’s not enough to satisfy her father, so she goes out for the Bellas.

Chloe had heard Beca sing and is glad to have her, though Aubrey – who was responsible for the Lincoln Center fiasco – is less enthusiastic.  Beca does stand out among the rag-tag Bellas, that include Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), a transplant from Tasmania; nymphomaniac-in-training Stacie (Alexis Knapp); punk lesbian Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean); and the volume-challenged Lilly (Hana Mae Lee).  Aubrey is determined to squeeze these square pegs into the traditional Bella circular holes.

Beca meets Jesse (Skylar Astin) at the radio station.  He mounts a charm offensive, but Beca has pushed away from relationships with people all her life.  It also doesn’t help that Jesse has joined the Treble Makers, and the Bellas forbid any fraternization between the groups on pain of expulsion.

Kendrick has already done good work this fall on the screen as Jake Gyllenhaal’s love interest in End of Watch, after making a splash – and received an Oscar nod as best supporting actress – in 2010’s Up In The Air.  She began her career on Broadway, where she became the second youngest person nominated for a Best Actress Tony (at age 12) for her role in High Society.  She has also performed Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Jeremy Irons in a production by the New York City Opera.  She shines as Beca, both with the wit comedy and in the singing.

Rebel Wilson was memorable as Kirsten Wiig’s roommate in Bridesmaids.  Here she’s essentially a distaff version of John Belushi in Animal House, and she carries it off beautifully.  For Hana Mae Lee’s character Lilly, the running joke is how soft her voice is, but it’s worth straining to hear what she actually says.  (It will likely require viewing the DVD with the caption option activated.)

Some of the musical performances are cringe-worthy on purpose, especially the standard Bella performances, but when a performance is supposed to be great, it brings the house down.  Special mention must be made of John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as the broadcast commentators at the regional and national shows.  They do for this movie what Fred Willard and Jim Piddock did as commentators for Best In Show.  (Higgins is a Christopher Guest vet, having appeared in A Mighty Wind as the leader of the folk-singing cult.)

Director Jason Moore, like Kendrick, is a Broadway musical vet, having directed Shrek: The Musical, Avenue Q, and Steel Magnolias.  While he’s done TV directing before, this is his first movie, and he crushes it (as Rebel Wilson says in the film).  He’s helped by a literate and hilarious script from Kay Cannon, a veteran of 30 Rock doing her first movie script.  It’s based on a non-fiction work by Mickey Rapkin about competitive a cappella singing in colleges.  Non-fiction to comedy has happened before; Mean Girls was based on a sociological study of high school students called Queen Bees and Wannabes.

There is one out-take included midway through the credits.  The movie’s trailer also features a scene that’s nowhere in the movie (a la Twister), but that just means that the DVD will have some killer deleted scenes.  What is in the movie is tight, delightful, and – have to say it – pitch perfect.