It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!
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RIP Deanna Durbin
What’s your favorite movie scene featuring a teacher in action?
Sometimes you just want a stupid, fun gay movie with some nice full-frontal. Longhorns is that movie, and it’s streaming on Netflix.
First, the good:
- Anne Hathaway was just perfection in every possible way. I had some issues with the art direction around her character — more on that later — but her performance was masterful.
- Aaron Tveit is maybe the only person in the entire film who gives an entirely satisfying vocal performance without sacrificing his acting or his beauty one bit. (Yes, yes, Hathaway sings fine, but she still prioritizes acting over singing; Tveit manages to act the fuck out of his bits without ever making a sound that’s less than beautiful.)
- Daniel Huttlestone, who plays Gavroche (quick, remake Oliver! before this kid gets too old!)
- Isabelle Allen, made young Cosette the least annoying she could possibly be
- Pretty much everything with the Barricade Boys
- The score reorchestrated without a single synthesizer in evidence. (I didn’t love everything about the orchestration, but all those strings! Yes, for the love of God, yes!)
- I really liked the costumes and most of the sets.
- Great cinematic renditions of “At The End of the Day” and “One Day More.” Big chorus numbers are hard — remember when Tim Burton just cut them all from Sweeney Todd? Tom Hooper really pulls them off.
- The cameos! Colm Wilkinson! Bertie Carvel! Hannah Waddingham! Frances Ruffelle! Linzi Hateley! etc. etc. etc.
- Sacha Baron Cohen & Helena Bonham Carter are perfect as the Thenardiers, which is a feat given how much the writing for those characters annoys me in the show.
- Eddie Redmayne’s Marius is probably the most interesting performance in the film, and the one that I’m most interested in seeing a second time. I didn’t leave the theater gushing about him — actually, I turned to my friend and said I didn’t think he was hot enough to be Marius — but he made the most of a fairly one-note character.
The bad behind the cut.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are divorcing after five years of marriage, according to People. Although there has been no official word explicitly stating the split from either camp, Holmes’s attorney did address the matter in a statement to the publication.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images; AP Photo/Wally Santana)
It appears their contracts are getting shorter and shorter. Perhaps whomever gets cast in the role of Mrs. Cruise #4 will only get a three-year deal.
Yesterday I told you about the off the panel comments that Joe Quesada had to say about Marvel movies with female leads. Today I bring you more no on the panel comments. Reporter Abby Chandler who writes for the Badhaven site states Quesada told her that:
A script for a Ms/Captain Marvel movie is ready to go. They just needed an actress. Marvel are having a meeting in a couple of weeks and will be ready to announce some films then … He said we’d be pleasantly surprised.
The ongoing Captain Marvel by Kelly DeConnick starts in July so that would be good timing and good publicity.
So there’s the character. But if you remember Quesada said that he couldn’t think of a an actress to for a tentpole film. Let’s help him! Cast Carol Danvers.
(art by)
Anna Torv, please and thank you.
I know they’d never go for an older Captain Marvel, but I’d kill to see Felicity Huffman take on the character, with a script modeled after Brian Reed’s run on the book that had Carol as an older hero looking back on a life of being second-best and deciding to try for a second act that could outshine the first.
I’ve said this before, I’m sure, but I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that in 2008 a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States, and the first movie about the campaign is about the lady who was the vice-presidential candidate on the losing ticket.
MIchael Feinstein & Rosemary Clooney: “Ten Feet Off The Ground” from The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, from Feinstein’s album Pure Imagination - one of my favorite recordings of a Sherman Brothers song.
RIP Bob.
I can’t remember a year when I’ve been less excited about the Oscars. I am particularly annoyed by the treatment of the Best Original Song category, which first suffered the indignity of having only two nominees thanks to a tweak in the rules behind the process, and then had insult added to injury with the decision that those songs would not be performed during tonight’s ceremony.
So to pass the time as I’m home sick today, and to help pull myself out of the Oscar doldrums, I’m going to post all of the previous best song winners, or as many of them as I can find before I get bored.
To start, though, why not revisit one of the best Oscar production numbers in the history of the broadcast: Steve Lawrence and Sammy Davis Jr. celebrating the songs that were “Not Even Nominated.” (Or revisit my post featuring Lorna “Judy’s Other Daught” Luft’s rendition of same.)
