it's not his fault he's so ugly

Beauty and the beast (1987)

Chosen by me as part of my musical week 

and because I fell a little for Carmela Marner in Puss in Boots

A story of a woman going from one co-dependant relationship to another.

Again, like Puss in Boots the songs are almost an afterthought and add nothing to the rather dull plodding affair.

There is no level of Christopher Walken-like performance here, no sense of fun.

The Beast's make up is not too bad but John Savage brings nothing to the role that would explain why Rebecca De Mornay would finally answer yes to his repeated request for marriage.

I'm not sure what the message of Beauty and the Beast is meant to be? It seems to suggest it is about seeing beneath surface values but instead mostly just rewards everyone for not changing at all (here have another bucket of coins) and being ok with the imprisonment of an innocent woman.

I am a most strange and extraordinary person.

Cabaret (1972)

Another one reviewed from memory after not seeing it for quite a few years.

In high school I had a lead role in an original musical written by our drama teacher. Despite not being able to sing (when told to sing an octave lower I asked 'what's an octave' and got told to mime - I had no solos so no real problem). It got selected to go to The National Student Drama festival held in scarbourough, which was kinda cool. And whilst there I think one of the things we saw was a production of cabaret. I barely remember it. It left no lasting impression. I was still stubborn in my distaste for musicals (even though I was in one). 

But a couple of years later I went to university and saw Bob Fosse's take on the material and fell in love.

Along with Top Hat, seen a week earlier and reviewed yesterday, this really changed my opionion on what film can do.

Top Hat was sort of classically classy. Old school. Cabaret showed me what else musicals could do.

Musicals did not have to make you feel happy. Musicals did not have to be about trite feelings of love.

Musicals could be passionate about politics, reveal life in it's myriad forms and explain to me exactly why Liza Minelli was a thing (and by golly she is good in this in a way she had never equalled since).

Is there a more perfectly pointed scene showing the rise of tyranny than 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me'?

Though explicitly about the fascism created in post war Germany, it's message is timeless. We are never too far away from the creep of abused power and scapegoated minorities.

But the misery is never overpowering, it remains an enjoyable, exquisitely crafted tale with toe tapping numbers and terrific choreography. That's it's strength. And it's lasting legacy.

You blasted fool, you can't rub a girl with butter!

Top Hat (1935)

Chosen by me for musical week. I've been pretty tired lately so haven't watched this one for many many years so am reviewing from memory so it'll be even more vague than usual.

I really wasn't into musicals for a long time. I didn't get them, but then I did a film and tv studies course at Derby University. We were lucky enough to have a small independent cinema in the building the course was held and we got to see a lot of interesting things there. Over two weeks we saw this and another film (which I will probably cover tomorrow) which simply changed my mind over what musicals were.

I haven't watched this one for a long time so barely recall the plot but what I do vividly recall is coming out of the cinema elated. I dont dance, but I wanted to tap everywhere to 'Cheek to Cheek' - the standout number in this wonderful film. 

Astaire and Rogers were a revelation to me, a graceful, charming double act but funny and sparky.

I also realised that musicals were not all that different from something else I had got into shortly before getting to university - Hong Kong action cinema (and even a bunch of westerns). The trappings were different but the effect was the same.

A grand love for movement, a heightened emotionalism, plot can be perfunctory but character can be revealed through the moves they perform rather than dialogue. 

The thrills they offer reach the same part of the brain and in many ways are pure distilled cinema.

I'm the only one in here I've never heard of.

Sweet Charity (1969)

Chosen by me for Musical theme week 

(I didnt have time to rewatch it so I'm doing this from more distant memory)

One of my favourite musicals.

It is too long, and perhaps too slight but this remake of Fellini's Nights of Cabiria is a pure delight.

Shirley Maclaine is amazing as a worldly but naive proto Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Her big difference being she is the main character so although like most MPDGs, she does not get love at the end, she is not just there to teach some boring man about it either. 

And the end is defined by her hopefulness rather than despair.

But of course the real joy here is the numbers. 'There's Got to be Something Better Than This' a real stormer with Maclaine, Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly blazing up the screen in red, yellow and purple.

Sammy Davis Jnr is very funny as a strange hippie like church leader and then there is Suzanne Charny.

Charny just blows me away with her dancing in the very silly, brilliant Rich Man's Frug section. With Bob Fosse's choreography every part of her becomes a tool for dance. Hair, fingers, the way a back is arched. She's astonishing.

People love what other people are passionate about.

La La Land (2016)

Chosen by me because I go to the cinema a lot for Musical theme week (might be a bit vague as going by memory, having seen it in january)

I used to hate musicals. Just did not get them. 

Now I see them as pure cinema. If a film has a song and dance number in it normally goes up in my estimation. 

I don't dance or sing at all. I am the world's most boring person. But I love seeing people dance.

I especially love singing and dancing about/within mundane things. Across the Universe has a scene set in a high school field where it uses the Football players exercises as the dance choreography.

La La Land opens with a scene set in a traffic jam. The song itself sets up some of the themes perhaps but is otherwise fairly pointless beyond just being fun. And that is more than enough. It's a catchy number too.

There's many beautiful moments in the film, where the sexiest thing is two people holding hands in a cinema.

It perhaps loses a little steam as it goes on, and almost forgets it's a musical. The relationship drama over taking the hollywood fantasy.

Also for a movie all about jazz, it's not so good on the actual jazz. And could barely be more white (having Gosling telling everyone how jazz should be is maybe a little galling).

Still, an absolute delight.

Two feet... They're not as easy as I thought they'd be, Master.

Puss in Boots (1988)

Chosen by me from netflix because Christopher Walken is awesome. 

There was some recent moaning about the two leads in LaLa Land not being good song and dance people. I like that movie a lot (and may cover it here soon) and actually really like that Gosling is not the best at, you know, the musical bits (I think Emma Stone is perfectly good). Romance and Cigarettes is another musical I really like with less than talented performers (also, as it happens, featuring the Walkmeister). There's something about throwing yourself so fully into a thing that you dont mind how bad you look that appeals to me. It's endearing.

I dont sing or dance. At all. I can't even sing happy birthday to people. It's an issue and I hate it about myself. Once I went to a club with some friends (a very rare occurrence) and one of them, that I just assumed would be good at dancing, was just terrible. But it didnt matter, he had fun, people respond to that. I have a perpetual rod rammed so far up my backside you can see it if I yawn. 

Christopher Walken is my friend at the club.

It doesn't matter that his singing is pretty awful, that his dancing is not much better. He is having an absolute blast and it almost carries the movie.

Unfortunately it's let down by a couple of things - no-one else is all that great either (Jason Connery has a dubbed singing voice - Nick Curtis - and it's still bad, why bother getting someone else to do it then?) except the astonishingly beautiful Carmela Marner and that the songs are generally pretty dull.

One, a double duet split over two locations is pretty witty though not especially interesting tune wise and anytime Walken throws himself into a song you can't help but be pulled along with it.

I'm not too knowledgeable with the Puss in Boots story, so dont know how this differs, but just as I was finding it iffy using deception to get someone to marry you, Connery comes clean to Marner and she is instrumental in pushing him forwards with his lies to get what she wants (even if that thing is just a man) which whilst not exactly a strong feminist stance is at least giving her some agency. 

And she gets the funniest bit of business in the film, when she fake feints and tries to shoo Connery away in the confusion.

A bit too bland and a shade too long to be a lost classic children's film but fun in parts and worth seeing for Walken's sheer delight in playing a musical cat.