Birth of the Blues. Is It, Though?

In Birth of the Blues, Bing Crosby, Brian Donlevy, and Mary Martin invent the blues. Well, slightly more accurately, they learn the blues from Black folks and then they teach white people to love Black music. (In other words, we don't get the birth of the blues in this film; we get its rise in popularity among white people.) 

There is only a mere wisp of a plot, and the movie itself is honestly not that interesting. How can it be when the stakes are will people understand that blues music is awesome or not? We know they're going to. In fact, the entire film is premised on the fact that we already know the blues are great. Much of the film's humor comes from white people being confused by the blues; the audience is supposed to feel superior to these fools.

Still, there are some solid numbers in Birth of the Blues, including a gorgeous rendition of "My Melancholy Baby" sung by Bing, and a breathtaking "St. Louis Blues" sung by Ruby Elzy in her final film performance.

Something to Sing About (1937)

I like Cagney as a gangster. I have a tougher time buying him as a song-and-dance man, even if he is a good dancer. In this picture, though, he barely even does that. He doesn't really even have a single number all to himself, despite being billed above the title. In fact, this film is pretty far up Cagney's ass, I have to say. This film thinks Cagney is amazing in a way that began to leave a bad taste in my mouth. The music is pretty good, but there isn't much comedy. The highlights of this film were the obviously gay makeup man (who of course was the butt of many jokes and insulted by Cagney's character) and Philip Ahn who has has a supporting part as Cagney's manservant – he has a thick accent that he can shed whenever he wants and he tells Cagney that his previous employers liked it better when he spoke bad English and bowed too much. It's a fascinating bit of racial performance.

2 1/2

If I am honest, I will tell you that I do not love all of Fellini's films. I am not crazy about Amarcord, really, and I couldn't really get into 8 1/2 even though it has some very cool stuff in it.

I have decided, however, that I do not like Rob Marshall's films. This evening I saw the newest one, Nine, and I was... well... in a word: bored.

And now, nine thoughts on Nine, because it seems fitting:

1. Rob Marshall is known for making musicals. He made the Best-picture-winning Chicago, which supposedly rehabilitated the movie musical. And yet, both that movie and his newest star-studded musical, are constantly apologizing for being musicals. The man is sold as the best thing to ever happen to the movie musical, but his films appear to wish that they were not musicals. Instead of happening in the stories of his movies, musical numbers in Marshall's films always happen in characters' imaginations. We are forced to leave behind the world of the film and enter into the hyper-make-believe world of the musical itself. So the films actively reinforce the idea that musicalness is phony, that emotions that could only be expressed in song are just too unrealistic to be a part of real life, and yet the film cannot seem to make the "real-life" scenes as realistic or as interesting as its musical numbers, and it seems to be ashamed of its stock-in-trade. We all came to see Nine, in fact (or stayed away, as the case may be), because it is a musical. Yet the film constantly tries to make us forget the fact.

2. I know this is cinema. I know that we need movie stars to make people come to the movies. But how about making a movie star out of someone who is also a great singer? The casting in Nine is very clever and very cosmopolitan (Australia, Spain, Italy, Britain, France, and the U.S. are all represented), the actresses are all fabulous. Honestly. But this movie needed singers. Bad. And that goes for Mr. Day-Lewis, as well.

3. Nicole Kidman is my favorite thing in the picture. She is gorgeous and she has a couple of really fabulous scenes where she talks about women in film, fantasy, and basically what it means to be an actress. It's really fascinating. It's intercut with a musical number, which kind of gets in the way, and it's really the first (and only time) where I was sorry there was a musical number to interrupt a real-life scene.

4. Marshall sort of teases the audience with Fellini references. Sometimes these are fun, and sometimes not that interesting. I really wished Nicole Kidman had gotten in the fountain and done an homage to La Dolce Vita.

5. Penélope Cruz is delightful. A great actress. She is engrossing and compelling in all of her scenes. The film isn't really all that interested in her in the end, but I was rather sorry it wasn't.

6. Dion Beebe knows how to light a movie, let me tell you. You probably already knew that, of course, but it bears repeating. The musical sequence after the screening room scene is absolutely extraordinary.

7. You cannot expect a love story to emerge out of nowhere. We are not going to be attached to Contini's wife if all she does is sit around and look sad and miss him and be angry that he missed her birthday. Particularly if the man's mistress is as much fun as Penélope Cruz is in this movie.

8. The best musical number in the film is Fergie's song "Be Italian." It's fun, it's sexy, and there's sand everywhere.

9. What is this movie about? Why is there singing and dancing? Does Contini (the main character) make musical films? Why isn't any of this explained? Is it because he loved the Folies-Bergère as a kid? I don't get it. Nine, more than anything else, is interested in the derrières of its female stars and extras. This is fine, certainly (Fellini was a breast man, of course, but that's just picking nits), but the movie--like the filmmaker the movie is about--cannot decide what its story is. Is it a movie about a man's love for his wife? Is it about his relationship with his mom? Is it a movie about movie-making (8 1/2 certainly was.)? Or is it a movie about buttocks? A movie about buttocks is a good idea, I think, but if Nine is about that, we need to dump all of the other baggage. For a film that seems to understand that female movie stars act as fantasies for male viewers, it spend a lot of time investing in those fantasies.

P.S. The title of this post is out of five.

Movies I've Seen Recently That Have Been Sort of Crap

WarGames. Lame. I love Ally Sheedy, but this movie was lame.  I wish I could save the world with a game of tic-tac-toe.

Havana.  Must we always see Cuba with a backdrop of 1958?  The reason for this is that Cuba after 1959 doesn't include any white people.  I'm tired of looking at this period in Cuba's history.  Let's see something else.  I still love Lena Olin, though.

Is Paris Burning?  This was supposed to be a star-studded extravaganza.  No.  The audio is horrible, but that's beside the point because this movie (clocking in at 172 minutes) is fucking boring.

Down with Love.  Down with this movie.  It was cute for the first 40 minutes and then it went south in a real hurry.  I really disliked Renée Zellweger in this film.  Her acting is just bad.  Ewan McGregor, however, can trick me into believing he's an astronaut any day of the week.

First Love.  Boo to Deana Durbin (who looks exactly like Renée Zellweger would look if she ate every once in a while), and boo to this partial retelling of the Cinderella story and partial ripoff of Victor Schertzinger's One Night of Love.

Hero.  Pretty... and pretty sentimental.  I love Zhang Yimou, but this movie was boring.  Hopefully his next film, House of Flying Daggers, is better.

It's a Wonderful Life.  Whatever.  This movie was good for a little while.  But it's sooo sentimental and schmaltzy.  I know everyone will say I have a heart of stone, but giving up your dreams to make other people happy is not "a wonderful life."  It may be noble, and he may feel some sort of righteousness, but he's still not living his dream and he's still not happy.  Jimmy Stewart was great, though.  I have to admit.

The Bostonians.  I usually like Merchant/Ivory.  At least I think I do.  The main problem with this movie is the always boring Christopher Reeve in the lead role.  Thank god he doesn't do movies anymore.  The lead girl and he have no chemistry and the lead girl is annoying in her own right.  I can't remember her name because I'm trying to forget it.

This evening, after getting off of work, I headed down to Beverly Hills to see One Night of Love with Grace Moore, the opera singer.  She was lovely, and she had a beautiful voice.  The film was a rather thick romantic musical with Lyle Talbot and some other guy I didn't know.  It was actually pretty much the same plot as My Fair Lady, but with singing opera instead of talking reg'lar.  I had a very nice time at the Academy, even though most of the people there are septuagenarians.  They're not so bad as long as they keep to themselves.  I even heard two very old women in front of me talking about gay marriage and why it should be legal.  (I was listening to their conversation, if you want to know, because they said something about Rudolph Valentino marrying two lesbians in a row!) 

This film series is the best thing ever!  I swear.  It's $3 a show and each of these movies is a really good print of an old classic.  Plus they show all of these little shorts and newsreels and things before the picture.  Tonight's short had Bing Crosby (heavily made up, for some reason) and Gary Cooper and Mary Pickford and Richard Cromwell.  So cool.  Bing even sang.