Film Experience Blog

Today's Birthdays 11/09
<--- 1869 Marie Dressler is awesome. She gave one of the most aggressive Best Actress winning performances evah. If you haven't seen Min & Bill (1933), you must. You must, you must, you must.
1883 Edna May Oliver feisty character actress
1886 Ed Wynn Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins. He loves to laugh... long and loud and clear. Audiences were always ready to laugh along with him
1922 Dorothy Dandridge first black woman to be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars (Carmen Jones) and what a neat coincidence that she was portrayed by the first black actress to eventually win the Best Actress Oscar (Halle Berry) in the bio Introducing Dorothy Dandridge
1948 Bille August Danish director of The Best Intentions and Pelle the Conqueror fame
1955 Fernando Meirelles director of declining films: City of God, The Constant Gardner, Blindness. I'm not trying to be mean. But... um... do you have faith he'll pull out of it? Discuss.
1974 Giovanna Mezzogiorno of Vincere (2009) hoopla
1988 Nikki Blonsky I don't know about you but I could hear the bells when she sang in Hairspray

And finally let's hear some love in the comments for Hedy Lamarr, one of the most beautiful actresses of the 40s and one of the first to go nude on film in Ekstase (1933)


Where's her biopic? Or miniseries even. Seriously... you can practically see the scenes spanning the genres: (war drama) Austrian-Jewess Hedy drugs her own maid to escape her husband and Vienna in the 30s, then helps invent frequency hopping. I mean, how many actresses can claim the origins of modern ubiquitous technology? (romance) Hedy marries and divorces six men. (movies about movies) Hedy films one of the cinema's first sex scenes, Hedy's movie banned in Hollywood but they recruit her anyway, Hedy loses the "Ilsa" role to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Hedy stars in Samson and Delilah! This is a biopic I would gladly watch... even if they framed it in that stupid end of her life looking back way.

Amanda Seyfried (22, so pretty ~ I've entered a pretty trance ~ p r e t t y p r e t t y) ... and some other girls* walk along the beach for Vanity Fair


* Oh, don't take offense "other girls". It's just that I only have eyes for Amanda. And Anne and Kirsten and Lauren and Amy and Evan and Scarlett and... Amanda's photographic BFFs (they probably just met) would be Emma Roberts (17, Julia's niece and Nancy Drew), Blake Lively (20, of Gossip Girls) and scary Kristen Stewart (18, of Panic Room, Into the Wild, Jumper). What? She scares me. She just exudes need onscreen... whether it's the need to jump Emile Hirsch's bones or just the vague need for an undefinable something. I feel as if she might reach out of the screen and just >cling<>some gaping need' desperation kinda freaked me out in Jumper (previous post) and I think she was onscreen for about 16 seconds all told. s-c-a-r-y.

I get sick of hearing about Gossip Girls but I like Blake a little more upon hearing that her three favorite movies are Wizard of Oz, Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet. The girls are posing for Vanity Fair's annual Teen Hollywood issue. Which I had kind of forgotten about and which is vaguely distracting from my Vanity Fair retrospectives of plain ole' "Vanity Fair's Teen Hollywood". (Another one of those coming your way very soon)

You can see all eight of the photo spreads here... or, you know, buy the magazines. There are things called stores and they sell photos that you can touch on this stuff called "paper" it's really... well, it's something! I included this photo of Jonah Hill (Superbad, left) with Rachael Taylor (Transformers) and Amber Heard (Friday Night Lights) because it made me giggle in how well it illustrates that Hollywood top fetish 'schlub gets the hot chicks!'. Jonah can be hilarious but try to imagine this photo with Nikki Blonsky. It just wouldn't happen.

Now you can see rare celebrity portraits of larger women surrounded by hot men (I remember one of Rosie O'Donnell back in the day) and I'm sure there've been a few others but it's always portrayed as a kitschy gag and the men are of the nameless shirtless model variety. They'd never drape two of Nikki Blonsky's male peers over her. They just wouldn't. [insert Joan Cusack Addams Family Values voice here] "But what about Debbie's Nikki's needs?"

I've doctored a photo for you just to demonstrate the improbability.

This past weekend Adam Shankman, Hairspray's director and choreographer, introduced Nikki Blonsky at San Francisco's Gay Pride and she performed "Good Morning Baltimore" for the crowd. I'm sure it was a highlight of the day and I'm also sure that the west coast gays can't get that song out of their head this week (that song is so damn sticky)

Speaking of sticky. This photo op. Oh the levels...


The out gay director of a very gay project that's under threat of ban by some pockets of the gay community takes his young starlet to Gay Pride. So far it makes total sense. But they brought along cutouts of their two closeted *ahem. allegedly closeted, sorry, movie stars with them? To Pride (!) ??? What was the impulse? I'm not sure whether to giggle, get snarky, or feel slightly embarassed for all. I mean couldn't the cutouts have been someone less mixed messagey? Pfeiffer, Walken, that boy who performs in high school musicals... no, wait.

(As for those wondering what I thought of Hairspray... I'll review soon but in short: a ton of fun)

What are John Travolta and Nikki Blonsky doing here exactly?

a) rehearsing their Hairspray lines
b) making fun of Marissa Jaret Winokur & Harvey Fierstein
c) undergoing couples counselling...with props
d) auditioning for Todd Haynes next feature
e) none of the above (explain in the comments)
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Those three of you interested in the "Original Song" Oscar category --arguably the Academy's strangest category: song writing is a skill worthy of the movie industry's highest award but casting and stuntwork are not (?) --should take note: Hairspray's soundtrack listing shows three songs that weren't in the Broadway show. Only one song, "The Big Dollhouse", has been cut. It was a comedic number sung in prison by Tracey Turnblad (the hero), her mother Edna and various other female characters. Contrary to original rumors there's no new song for villainess Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer) though her equally evil daughter Amber (Brittany Snow) gets one, "The New Girl in Town". This leaves Pfeiffer with the Broadway show's least successful song "(The Legend of) Miss Baltimore Crabs" --the tune is weak and applause was limp the night I saw it on Broadway --the other songs tended to provoke berserk applause.

The other two new songs have gone to Tracey's beau Link (Zac Ephron) who gets a ditty called "Ladies Choice" and there's a group number led by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) "Come So Far (Got So Far To Go)" Maybelle already has one inspirational tune. Now she'll have two? Seems like overkill... especially when you stop to consider that another new song "I Can Wait" written for Tracey has been cut from the film and the CD. Essentially the important supporting players have been given an extra number but there's no new songs for either the heroine or villain. I've listed the characters in rough descending order of their importance to the show and in parenthesis their number of solos/duet or group songs. Tracey Turnblad -Nikki Blonsky (2/5), Edna Turnblad -John Travolta (0/3), Link Larkin -Zac Ephron (2/3), Amber Von Tussle -Brittany Snow (1/0), Velma Von Tussle -Michelle Pfeiffer (1/1), Motormouth Maybelle -Queen Latifah (2/2), Wilbur Turnblad -Christopher Walken (0/1), Penny Pingleton -Amanda Bynes (0/2), Seaweed -Elijah Kelley (1/3) and Corny Collins -James Marsden (2/0). Alison Janney plays Penny's hysterical conservative mother (one variation on a stock character in John Waters ouevre) Prudy Pingleton but she has no songs.


The coolest track of the CD is likely to be "Mama I'm a Big Girl Now" given that it features three Traceys: the original Ricki Lake (from John Waters classic 1988 comedy) Marisa Jaret Winokur (a TONY winner for creating Broadway's Tracey) and this film's debuting big girl Nikki Blonsky. What does that mean? I'm guessing that it's been cut from the narrative and it's the closing credits song. But still, that's a potentially awesome number and a nice tribute to Hairspray's long journey from wonderful cult comedy to moneyed mainstream musical.

Sometimes you see something that sets off so many different feelings in you that you don't even know where to begin. Such was the experience of watching Oprah's gushfest with the cast of Hairspray last week. She gushed so much I feared she would be rushed to County General for dehydration treatment.

She didn't just love the movie. She loooooooovvvvveed it. She loved it with several exclamation points. Either that or she owns stock in it. See for yourself...



I rarely watch Oprah but now I understand why Tom Cruise was jumping on couches. I thought she might be impersonating Arsenio Hall what with all the artificial whooping. John Travolta, a close personal friend of Oprah... and she wants you to know it, charmed the crowd and himself. He loves the accent he created for Edna Turnblad. He loves it so much that even after spending an inordinate amount of time talking about it, he brought it up again after the commercial break. Unfortunately one of Edna's most famous lines --the one about her diet pills wearing off --is almost unintelligible under the affected Baltimorean. I love what he says about the difficulties of musicals, that's a smart answer. But when he's talking about the accent all I can think of is the scene in Waiting for Guffman where Corky St. Clair tries an accent on for size.



Based on the scenes shown we know Hairspray is colorful and bouncy. It looks like a lot of fun if suspiciously frantic in proving itself so (breathe a tentative sigh of relief). Musical comedy works best when you can't feel the heavy lifting. Hopefully the fatsuits, accents, wigs, and uneven score won't cause the talent to sweat.

Following Travolta was Michelle Pfeiffer. Ahem. After my heart stopped pounding (SO good to see her again. It's been years) I started giggling and feeling for her. She still hates to be interviewed. She hates it with exclamation points. She is one of the great movie stars but when it comes to playing herself? That aint her forte. She can't form sentences. She doesn't want to answer questions. She was not made for forced patter. My mind lept back to her very uncomfortable interview with Barbara Walters back in the day. It was chilly in there. And here on Oprah, sandwiched between the eager to please Travolta and the warm charisma of Queen Latifah, the temperature dropped a bit, too.

Here is the Michelle portion plus a bit o' Queen and Nikki Blonsky.



My favorite part is the last bit. Oprah realizes Michelle has been quiet and no one has been addressing her and she tries for an olive branch. The response is the most relaxed Pfeiffer gets. "Someone has to play the villain."

Indeed.

They're beating the drums early for this potential crowd pleaser, aren't they? It doesn't open until July 20th and it got a full hour on Oprah two months prior. That's a lot of time to fluff some cotton candy. It better be sweet.
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