LONDON ROAD brilliantly uses the unreality of ordinary people breaking into song to evoke the unreality of a serial killer on the loose on the otherwise unremarkable eponymous street in the otherwise unremarkable small town of Ipswich, England. Based on the Royal National Theatre production, original cast intact, that was, in turn, based on the… Read More »
MAMA MIA!
ABBA, the songsters behind the soundtrack for the musical MAMA MIA!, play and now film, composed bouncy little ditties often revolving around a catch phrase or even just a catch word. Add safe, bubble-gum music and the results were songs that weren’t so much great art as something that would burrow into the listener’s brain… Read More »
NINE
NINE, the film adaptation of the musical adaptation of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is an interesting film for many reasons. The most striking is the one that sinks the venture, and that would be discovering that Daniel Day Lewis, an actor of considerable power, has his limits. Astounding with only his left foot to work… Read More »
BURLESQUE
BURLESQUE is a heaping helping of corn pone laced with a glittering cascade of glitzy production numbers. Start with a fresh-faced Iowa farm girl, Ali (Christina Aguilera), take her to the bright lights and broken dreams of Hollywood, and in the time it takes to show the montage of her hitting the streets in search… Read More »
FANTASIA/FANTASIA 2000: 2-Movie Collection Special Edition
Finally together and on both DVD and Blu-Ray format, the deluxe, 4-disc, release of FANTASIA and FANTASIA 2000 is more than the chance to see both features in all their glory. It’s a chance to marvel that the old-fashioned hand-drawn animation, for all its limitations, has none when it comes to imagination. It is the emotional… Read More »
LORD OF THE DANCE 3D
It was not the most intuitive hit of a road show, traditional Irish folk dancing, both classical and tweaked into modernity, married to the slightest wisp of an overbaked melodrama based in Irish folk culture. Yet in the hands and flying feet of Michael Flatley, LORD OF THE DANCE sold out performance after performance in… Read More »
JOYFUL NOISE
JOYFUL NOISE has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately its like a neighbor with his or her heart in the right place, the one who responds to news of your car breaking down by volunteering to drive you somewhere and accidentally runs over your cat while backing out of the driveway. Not even Queen Latifah and… Read More »
CHICAGO
Just when you thought we’d lost the knack for producing a live-action musical film here in the States, along comes CHICAGO. Set in 1920s in that toddling town, this hard-as-nails tale of sex, politics, fame, and most of all jazz, is a big, splashy, brassy confection wrapped up in a bow with enough bugle beads… Read More »
THE SINGING DETECTIVE
Translating a first-rate concept from one medium to another is always a risky business, even a remake of a film carries with it the seeds of its own destruction as iconic stars and situations are recreated only to be endlessly compared to the original. Thus it is that THE SINGING DETECTIVE, so superb as a… Read More »
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Joel Schumacher and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a match made in cinematic heaven. The key to successfully producing a screen version of THE PHANTOM is creating a visual feast that is on par with the extravagance of the score. Its a sweeping, soaring thing with crescendos that spill over the audience like so… Read More »