Day of Rest

Shhhhhhhhhhhh....

I'm in an emotionally abusive relationship with my blog (it's Rourke / I'm Basinger) and we're both exhausted. Be back in Nine ½ Hours... or, okay, more like 15 hours. Need lots of beauty sleep.

Mix Tape: "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" in It Happened One Night

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, to talk about an impromptu musical number that doubles as a historical document. Frank Capra’s Oscar-sweeping screwball comedy It Happened One Night is naturally best remembered for the cute love story that unfolds (over the course of several nights) between stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

However, it’s also something of a postapocalyptic travelogue, since the odd couple’s odyssey by bus up the East Coast gives them a panoramic view of a nation debilitated by the Depression. They run into purse snatchers, con men, starving children, and crowds of poor families forced together by poverty. For Colbert’s spoiled heiress, it’s a shocking glimpse of how the other half lives. But the world she discovers is not all negative: the bus’s passengers comprise a makeshift community, and it’s one that loves to sing.

So while the bus chugs along, a band suddenly forms in the back—complete with fiddle, guitar, and vocalist—and, apropos nothing, starts playing the decades-old standard “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Soon the whole bus joins in on the chorus, and individual passengers stand up to sing the verses alone. Out of nowhere, a form of communal vaudeville springs up, a show-within-a-show that Gable and Colbert watch with delight.

Everyone gets a chance to shine, including a mincing sailor who gives a lurid emphasis to the line “His eyes would undress every girl in the house!” (It’s a surprisingly bawdy song for such a public performance, but no one seems to notice or care.) The film’s main plot continues during the song courtesy of clever editing, as close-ups on the sleazy Shapely and the distracted bus driver appear alongside wide shots of all the other passengers with the band as their focal point. But this is decidedly a detour, albeit a spectacular one, from the fugitive couple’s episodic progress; it’s a sequence more about setting and the nature of Depression-era bus travel than about plot.

This spell of utter mirth ends, of course, with a minor tragedy, as the bus careens into a muddy ditch. Soon thereafter, Gable and Colbert lose the rest of their money and have to leave the bus for good due to Shapely’s half-baked scheming. But that spur-of-the-moment musical number is still a chance for bonding, as the sheer cuteness of the passengers’ singing cuts through the main characters’ lingering cynicism and world-weariness. (Gable even gets in on the act, passing a flask around to some dancing fellow travelers.)

Maybe it’s an American instinct to respond to times of crisis by putting on a show. Or maybe this is just a manifestation of the cliché that poor people are happier and have an easier time cutting loose—the same one witnessed in Titanic when Rose goes below decks to dance a polka away from her stultifying society friends. (Or in My Man Godfrey, or Holiday, or any number of other Depression-era comedies.) Cliché or not, though, the scene in It Happened One Night feels so alive and strangely naturalistic despite its improbability, because the sailor and all the other participants bring such enthusiasm to their performances. For these few minutes, money and class are meaningless: all that matters is the music.

(Trivia time: the guitarist in this scene is Ken Carson, who would later join the band Sons of the Pioneers. With them, he helped record the theme song for The Searchers and the song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” later used in the opening of The Big Lebowski.)

Tennessee 100

Starting Monday... it's Tennessee Williams Week! The great American playwright's centennial is on March 26th and since his stage work has had such crucial impact on the big screen especially for actors, since Nicole Kidman and James Franco will soon attempt to revive Sweet Bird of Youth on Broadway, and since his writing has influenced other legendary writers or filmmakers like John Waters, Edward Albee, Tony Kushner and Pedro Almodóvar, why not a whole week?

For those of you who haven't seen any of the movies based on his work, why not rent a couple? On Wednesday night we'll celebrate A Streetcar Named Desire with "hit me with your best shot" but other films we hope to touch on include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Fugitive Kind, The Rose Tattoo, Baby Doll, Suddenly Last Summer, Sweet Bird of Youth and Night of the Iguana. If you have a blog, tumblr or whatnot and you do anything to honor him this week... make sure to let us know and we'll check it out.

Netflix has Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Summer and Smoke and The Glass Menagerie (TV version) available on Instant Watch. TCM is showing A Streetcar Named Desire (Tues at 3:45) though strangely they have no centennial programming this month for one of the artistic giants of the 20th century.

Jagged Linky Pill

Grrrrrr. I'm totally not speaking to Critical Condition and Low Resolution right now because they did not include me in their awesome trip back through every track of Alanis Morrissette's "Jagged Little Pill" for its 15th anniversary. I'm going to write a list song about all the reasons I'm mad at Mark and Joe and then I'm going to screech it out unintelligibly over massive pop hooks and sell 14 million copies. I won't share a damn cent with them. They oughta know.

Under Link Swept
DListed Ewan McGregor being incredibly adorable with a puppy
For The Record is another theater event for movie fans in Los Angeles. It's a concert evening celebrating the music of Baz Luhrmann's films with a rotating cast from stage, tv, and screen. Sounds great. Between this and Streep Tease I so need a plane ticket right about now.
My new Plaid Pants loves Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins. I kinda wanna see it but I'm nervous about the intense violence. Audition was a little much for my girlish constitution... I nearly passed out.

Basket of Kisses checks in with the Mad Men cast during this agonizing wait for ANY news of a Season 5.
Vulture Billy Crystal will maybe possibly he'll think about it host the Oscars again if they have less statues handed out. F*** you Billy. I like seeing Costume Designer and Art Directors and all the rest win. Seriously, F*** you.
Socialite's Life Sandra Bullock is looking kind of deglam on the set of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Kenneth in the (212) starts a funny rumor about Bradley Cooper.
Cinema Blend has some drawings of Mother Gothel before she morphed into the Mother Gothel we know from Tangled which comes to DVD/Blu-Ray real soon.

That's a wee sample. We trust you'll remember that we're happy with the Gothel we got.

Blogs of Entanglement
The Guardian does some frightening though highly plausible thinking about end game of the new world order of film journalism (i.e. fannish blogging).
Pajiba, in light of last week's Tech Crunch vs. Cinematical scandal, pats itself on the back for not playing the PR game. See I'm not the only one navel gazing this week about how I blog! Must be something in the air.

For the record I've never been told by anyone to tone it down -- though I do get the rare nasty e-mail from people in the biz about certain comments I have made about certain actors and actresses -- but I kind of wish the studios were giving me money so that I could theoretically be asked to tone it down. I'd welcome an ethical challenge for money. ;)

 Supposed Former Celebrity Junkie
PopEater has a really interesting piece from Jo Piazza's CELEBENOMICS on Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan's mutual disintegration and why Charlie Sheen seems to be benefitting from his downfall financially whilst Lohan's fortunes and fandom continue to dwindle.

She theorizes that it's about branding and embracing of your flaws, or... "Make your mess your message." Good read but I still think the way these things usually play out this way is basic cultural sexism. Think for a minute how many anti-heroes the culture embraces to the point of total amoral adulation (Hi the entire gangster movie genre!) and then try to think of how many criminal women are similarly adored / emulated. Another thing that's totally not discussed is their respective talent. Lohan's self-immolation is SO much more depressing because to get where she's, uh, not, now, she had to cast aside real movie star presence (super hard to come by else every working actor would have it) and acting chops. Why shouldn't Sheen embrace his mess as a message? What else has he got? It's not like he was ever that magnetic on the big screen or particular genius at small screen comedy despite earning gazillions from those laugh tracks on Two and Half Men.

You Oughta See
My god. I keep forgetting to share this. You've probably seen it by now...

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

I think the best thing about it is how it trusts the audience to infer some of the titles, since the openings are so iconic. Like that flash insert of Rosie Perez shakin' her thang for Do The Right Thing or all those snippets of credits that are just names rather than the title itself. It's a beauty, huh? If I could ever figure out how to rip DVDs in a simple way (last time I asked it seemed to involve about 5 different programs for one task) without spending a fortune I would make such great edits. I know it must be much simpler than I understand since everyone and their dog does it, some with natural talent like this, others with expensive software but less artistry.

"in your satin tights, fighting for your rights... ♪ "

She makes a hawk a dove, stops a war with love, makes a liar tell the truth. She's a wonder, wonder woman.

Yes, it's the first official photo of 27 year old Adrianne Palicki (Tyra from Friday Night Lights) as the new Wonder Woman. I'm not sure what the rights issues are for this Big Three DC character but they've been rejecting movie concepts forever, whilst the the DoubleW watches Supes and Batman get multiple big screen reboots. So why not TV again for the Amazon? THR has some extremely vague details on the show. Cary Elwes will play the CEO of the company Diana owns and Elizabeth Hurley a rival CEO and thus, we assume, the Big Bad. David E. Kelley, aka Mr M. Pfeiffer, aka TV's favorite legal dramedy hit-and-miss machine is the man flying this particular invisible plane. Invisible for now that is...

And maybe forever. You never know with TV shows. Movies don't have "pilot season" in which entire crews and casts and production happens before studios decide whether or not to give the property a go. They'll do their pilot and NBC will take a looksee at this (and all the other pilots) and in May they'll order some of them to series. So if they say yes, we'll see it. TV is so volatile. Movie studios have to order basically the same amount of stuff every year. TV does too but whether or not it's new stuff is a different equation. All of the new pilots will only be competing for the open slots after all so they're all undoubtedly hoping for several series to be cancelled so that there are more slots to fill.

But for now we have the new costume to ogle. I know people are going to hate it but I think it's okay. It's not like Wonder Woman can be uncheesy. Her costume requires tiara, lassos, bracelets, and multiple colors so it's always gonna be busy. It also requires patriotism which is the final straw; ever noticed how silly people look when wearing their national flags? So for what it needs to be, I kinda like it. But I'm not trying to make your opinion for you. Do you?

Here's all the spins from the original "Wonder Woman"s second season with Lynda Carter.

 If the new Wonder Woman doesn't spin, I'm out. That's always the best part.

NBC is promising that this is a serious and non campy take on WW, but I'm hoping that Kelley manages to shove in a few musical numbers because that's always endeared me to him. The best part of Ally McBeal was that he found a way to gave every cast member the opportunity to belt their little lungs out at least once.