Song of the Day: Bitch of Living

It's time for another bad song.  I've been too kind lately by posting really good stuff.  So, now I'm posting crap.  Well at least I think it is, but I am in the extreme minority on this one.   I can't stand this show.  I think the concept is interesting, but poorly executed and completely inconsistent.  The lyrics can at times be poetic and at other times completely amateurish.  And don't even get me started about the shows supposed "choreography" that managed to win a TONY.  I think people of my generation love the show because of how hip it is trying to be and because it fuels teen angst.  And don't you know thats what sells these days.  Enjoy...

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  blah blah blah blah blah.... jesus i love these lyrics!

Dark Knight Celebration

In July I posted the Joker Interrogation scene video from The Dark Knight, but it got pulled from youtube hours later.  I've been searching all over the net to find the scene as it is my favorite in the film.  And today, I FOUND IT!  So, since I'm sure we are all celebrating The Dark Knight becoming the second highest grossing film of all time today I will post the video.  Enjoy.  Hopefully it doesn't get pulled again.

The Films I Love: Dick Tracy

I first remember seeing Dick Tracy back in 1990 when I was five years old.  At the time I loved the film for it's bright colors, flashiness, fun and weirdly grotesque characters, well staged action scenes, and Madonna was in it.  It was a great comic action film that was far more lighthearted than Batman, which had come out the year before.  It was also a film that I could watch with my parents and they would enjoy it as well, but for different reasons.  One of the biggest reasons for their enjoyment of the picture was Al Pacino and Warren Beatty - two stars of the screen that my parents had grown up with and admired for some time.  It wouldn't be till years later that I would discover all the great work that these two actors and sometimes filmmakers had done.  In a way Dick Tracy was a sort of introduction to them for me.  It was also an introduction into the world of comic filmmaking.  Now when I look at Dick Tracy I see it through different eyes than when I was a child, but one thing still remains the same - I love this film.

I remember a few years ago when Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's Sin City came out. Everyone praised the film for being the first to actually look like the comic it was based off of.  Oh how short term everyone's memories must be.  If Dick Tracy features no other cinematic highlight (it has many), one cannot deny that it looks exactly like the comic from which it is based.  The art direction, production design,  costume design, and make-up design are all painstakingly recreated from the comic and given a hyper-stylized cinematic depiction on the screen.  The world that director Warren Beatty creates was unique at the time because it adhered to the groundwork laid out by the comic, but Beatty was able to combine that vision with his own and paint Dick Tracy on a very large canvas.  In this respect the film is extremely ambitious in every artistic detail and as a result it received multiple Academy Award nominations for it technical crew.  Sin City may look exactly like it's comic predecessor, but that is also what keeps the film down.  The directors have no room for cinematic interpretation, Warren Beatty had plenty.

Dick Tracy sports an eclectic cast of characters that are all in some way a bit deformed and wild looking.  You have Lips, Flattop, Prune Face, Little Face etc. and all of them are delightfully silly while also disturbingly scary.  But there are also "normal" characters for the audience to connect with including "the kid" and Dick Tracy himself.  Warren Beatty is perfectly cast (directing himself) as Dick Tracy because of his iconic status as a movie star, but also because of his dead-pan everyman appeal. He is the rock in the film for the audience to fall back on and gives a nice counter balance between all the wild villains and general wackiness happening within the world of the film.  Dick Tracy also has the classic temptress role given over to Madonna in what is probably one of her most memorable screen performances.  That's not exactly because her acting is great, in fact much of the time it leaves something to be desired since everyone around her is so skilled.  She is memorable because of the songs that she is given to sing and because of the seductive costumes and warm lighting that Beatty bathes her in, not to mention her last act twist that gives her character a whole new edge.  It's one of the few times where Madonna was appropriately used in a movie and to generally great affect.

Speaking of songs, one of the things that I have grown to admire about the film the older I get is it's use of music.  Stephen Sondheim was brought onto the project to write various numbers for the club scenes in Dick Tracy, most of which were to be sung by Madonna (He had previously written the score for Beatty's Oscar winning REDS).  But Beatty isn't content by keeping these songs in the background.  Instead he weaves them in and out of the entire picture and they very much become a character in and of themselves providing commentary on the actions and motivations of the characters and events.  It's a brilliant move by Beatty and it is completely unique to this comic movie.  As a result, Dick Tracy becomes a sort of comic action musical.  Sooner or Later, which is Madonna's big number in the film, won the Oscar for best song.  But for my money the best song in Dick Tracy is a duet between Mandy Patinkin and Madonna titled What Can You Lose?  It comes at a perfect spot when everything seems to be going to hell in Tracy's life and the story is coming to it's eventual climax.

And even after all the film's technical and musical achievements won me over, it was ultimately a performance that would make Dick Tracy unforgettable.  That performance comes from Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice.  To me, this is the last great performance that Al Pacino ever gave.  It's silly and stylish, but hardly one note.  Big Boy is a villain that you love because how much of a moronic brute he is.  His interaction with Tracy and Madonna's character Breathless, is at times hysterically funny.  This film also marked the time when Pacino started using his now infamous screaming fits on screen. Looking at Dick Tracy now it seems that Pacino may be up to his usual shtick, but at the time it was fresh and memorable.  His performance along with Beatty's direction gave credibility to what could have easily been seen as a silly, but stylish comic action picture.  

Dick Tracy is not looked at as favorably as it was when it came out.  Many critics cited it as a unique vision and step forward for comic filmmaking.  Now in the wake of all the summer comic blockbusters in the past ten years, Tracy seems dated and old fashioned.  But I still look at Beatty's film as landmark in comic filmmaking and a unique adaptation of a comic story.  In fact, I would list it along side of the original Superman and the most recent Dark Knight as one of the best comic films ever made.  If you haven't seen Dick Tracy I would recommend giving it a look.  If you have seen it, but haven't looked at it in a few years then I would suggest you pick it back up.  It may just put a smile on your face and make you remember how blockbusters used to be a sort of cinematic art form and not just the moneymaking whores of the industry as they are today, minus The Dark Knight :)

Dick Tracy (1990)

Dir. Warren Beatty

105 min.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound

Winner of 3 Academy Awards including Best Art Direction, Best Make-Up, and Best Original Song

The Dark Knight Becomes the 2nd Highest Grossing Film in History

It's official.  The Dark Knight has surpassed Star Wars to become the 2nd highest grossing domestic film of all time.  The question now remains how much more money can The Dark Knight make?  Can it break Titanic's box office all time dominance, or come in just below?  Right now I'm thinking it's going to come in just below Titanic, but don't count The Dark Knight out.  It has already broken almost every other record set before it.  After four straight weeks atop the Box Office it has finally fallen to the number two spot with Tropic Thunder reigning supreme this weekend.  What's really ironic is that the same weekend that The Dark Knight outgrosses Star Wars to become the second highest grossing film, it also comes out on top of the new Star Wars animated film at the box office.  Oh, how Lucas must be hating Christopher Nolan at the moment. Bravo! Dark Knight.  And keep on truckin'. 

Song of the Day: What Can You Lose?/Not a Day Goes By

Today's song of the day is a bit of a hybrid.  It's two Sondheim songs arranged together and sung by the beautiful Audra McDonald.  The first song is What Can You Lose? from the film Dick Tracy, which Sondheim wrote a few songs for.  The second is from Merrily We Roll Along, which is one of Sondheim's biggest musical flops, but the score is pretty well loved.  It's a powerful combination of songs and one of them just happens to tie in to my Films I love articles, which will be updated today.  Enjoy.

Song of the Day: Finishing the Hat

To counter yesterday's song of the day I am posting what is probably the greatest song that Sondheim ever wrote and the reason for that is because of how personal it is.  Finishing the Hat is from Sunday in the Park with George, which just received an outstanding revival treatment this past season from the Roundabout Theater Company.  It's a show about art and artists and how difficult that life can be.  It's an inspiring show to many a musical theater fan because it touches our heart and makes us look at our dreams and aspirations realistically while telling us to continue chasing them.  I cannot think of another piece of work in any medium that has captured the joys, triumphs, and heartbreaks of being an artist of any kind so vividly.  I've yet to meet a true artist of the musical stage who doesn't list Sunday as one of the greatest shows ever written.  Finishing the Hat is the ultimate embodiment of what Sunday is all about.  Sondheim lost the Tony for score to Jerry Herman for La Cage Aux Folles, but it was more than made up to him when Sunday won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.   I'm posting two versions below.  The first is the original George from Sunday - Mandy Patinkin and the second is from the revival version of the show starring Daniel Evans.  Both were nominated for their performances but walked away empty handed.  A shame really as they are both brilliant.  Enjoy

Note of Interest:  the head of my department at Columbia College is Sheldon Patinkin who just happens to be Mandy's cousin... pretty cool huh?

Song of the Day: I Am What I Am

I'm posting this at 1235 in the morning because I wont be around all day on Friday to post much of anything.  Today's song is I Am What I Am from the musical La Cage Aux Folles by musical stylist Jerry Herman.  This became a sort of gay anthem in the 80's during the AIDS crisis.  It's a poignant song that is inspiring without being trite (which is an accomplishment considering its Herman).  Jerry Herman is a composer of simple tastes, but he also wrote some of the most memorable and well loved Broadway scores of all time.  Here he has the great George Hearn helping his music along.  Enjoy.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince DELAYED

Yep, thats right.  The geniuses over at Warner Brother have decided to delay the film until July of next year... and their reasoning?  I'll let them tell you in their own words.

"Our reasons for shifting 'Half-Blood Prince' to summer are twofold: we know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent pole release, as proven by the success of our last Harry Potter film, which is the second-highest grossing film in the franchise, behind only the first installment. Additionally, like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers' strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films-changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of. We agreed the best strategy was to move 'Half-Blood Prince' to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer."

"The release date change does not alter the production schedule for this or future Harry Potter films. Post-production on 'Half-Blood Prince' was completed on time, and the studio's release plans for the two-part 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' will not be affected by this change. We know Harry Potter fans are eagerly anticipating seeing the final chapters unfold onscreen. In fact, the good news for them is that the gap will now be shortened between 'Half-Blood Prince' and the first part of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.'"

So basically what they are telling us is that the film is basically done and that they are not moving it to improve the picture, but instead so they can make more money... ARE THEY FUCKING KIDDING????? This movie would have made plenty of money in November.  Hell they could release it in January and the film would still make hundreds of millions of dollars. Basically this is a move to bring the film's release date closer to that of the final part of the series so the wait isn't so long... and to make some extra cash since it will be summer time... like they need it.  To me, this is just a bad idea.  Releasing Half Blood Prince this year would have ensured that people would be eagerly awaiting the final installment (or two since its being split in half) of the series.  Now with the film moved to 2009, a full two years after the release of the final book, excitement may start to wain... Now I know that these books and these films are a phenomenon, but now that the book series is over many fans have moved on to greener pastures, which include the new obsession with the Twilight vampire book series.  Franchises like this come and go, and many may say that Harry Potter is forever and they might be right. But in the end Warner may end up losing a bit of money.  I hope they use this opportunity to make the Half Blood Prince better.  They have a full extra 8 months.  Re-shoot some shit, make the fx better, spend a long hard time on editing decisions.  In short, make this worth while for the fans... because if this film comes out and it doesn't live up to the hype, people are going to be pissed.  Do be greedy Warners just because The Dark Knight became much bigger of a hit for you than you originally thought.  Do the right thing and make this a great movie.