johnnesche

Bill Condon's excellent adaptation of Kander & Ebb's CHICAGO (despite changing the core POV from Velma to Roxie) made him the obvious choice to adapt and helm the filming of their KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, another all too timely examination of the dark underside of the modern world sparked in the original production by a dazzling Chita Rivera performance. ...SPIDER WOMAN, with its multiple layered story, proved to be a more difficult task (mirroring the tortuous road to Broadway of the original) and leading lady Jennifer Lopez, while giving the best performance one can imagine short of having a Chita recreating her role, comes across as cross between a Dolores Grey and Cher, moving and singing well in her dual role (production numbers like "Where You Are," even if not the equal of the stage original, are as good a reinvention of them as Hollywood has ever managed of any stage original) but feeling a tad old for it at the same time. The male leads could hardly be improved upon, and are a marked improvement on the award winning original straight movie originals. Yes, too much of the terrific stage score (numbers not performed within situations where songs would appear "natural" to non-musical fans) have been omitted, but the best are cleverly alluded to with their characters humming them (as "real" people would) during scenes - as with Molina's "Dressing Them Up." With a domestic administration behaving increasingly like the Venezualian dictatorship pictured, few recent films have been more timely (one almost wonders that the original setting was held to), and the literal visual fidelity to Molina's description of his Technicolor fantasy film jarring the contrast with the drab prison setting more than the darker production numbers on stage, this is STILL a more satisfying film transition for those of us who like *some* faithfulness to the property being advertised than the wildly successful Bob Fosse film of CABARET, and a d*mned good film by any standard. Stick around for the "exit music" under the final Technicolor credits! It is every bit as excitingly melodic as the stage original and may have even the most resistant audiences dancing in the aisles.

The Cohen Brothers and one of their best casts had all the makings of a definitive satirical look at "Golden Age" Hollywood but no one had the guts to tell them that the disastrous right wing Red Scare years that destroyed so many lives was still not funny, probably never would be, and treating the HUAC charges as if they were grounded in reality only made it worse. There's wonderful, funny, surprisingly accurate stuff here, but the title sub-plot is an insult to some of Hollywood's legitimate greats, not satire and sunk the original release as thoroughily as the Brothers did the ransom money in the mistaken belief it would "take the curse off" the big lie in the subplot. 🙄 Channing Tatum's tantalizingly gay dance for a film about sailors about to ship out is a hilarious highlight and the charming "singing cowboy" makes you wonder why the lad has not had a more major career. His performance and story were all the film should have been.

On paper this must have sounded like a wonderful idea! An animated tab version of Gilbert & Sullivan's best known work, THE MIKADO, cut down for a youth audience and starring Australia's clown princess, Anna Russell, who had already (in 1954) sung the Witch in a claymation version of Humperdinck's HANSEL AND GRETEL, as the Mikado's daughter-in-law intended, Katusha. How well I remember the first records I ever owned were plastic on cardboard picture discs of songs from THE MIKADO and H. M. S. PINAFORE! What could possibly go wrong? Well, start by turning the project over to Australia's version of Rankin and Bass, America's premiere poverty row animators who's supreme achievements were the Mr. Magoo cartoons, and allow them to shuffle the characters and "update" W. S. Gilbert's best known comedy lyrics with no sense of period or humor. Then reorchestrate the whole thing to sound like a bad John Denver special (not that there's *anything* wrong with a John Denver special(!), but his musical period and musical phrasing sound nothing like Sir Arthur Sullivan's!). What you are left with is essentially THE GENTLEMEN OF TITIPU; an attempt to retell the classic tale from the point of view, apparently, of the Mikado, with almost none of the original wit or musical sense. "Mia sama, mia sama..." indeed! ...and what a pity. This might have been a rare delight.