Centennial: Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia's voice heals the blind in "St Louis Blues"Mahalia Jackson was born 100 years ago on this very day in 1911 New Orleans as Mahala Jackson (she added the "i" sometime in the early 1930s). After a troubled childhood she moved to Chicago where her music career began in earnest. Despite never recording any secular music -- she refused to -- international fame hit in the late 1940s and she's been virtually canonized sense. Though she's never had a biopic (why not?) her history is closely tied with the story of Black America. She was part of The Great Migration in the 1930s. She was the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall and became famous all over the world. She sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and later at Martin Luther King Jr's funeral. (When she died in 1972, Aretha Franklin returned the favor and sang at hers.)  

As is true with most music icons, there are film connections. Spike Lee's Jungle Fever uses her music prominently and she also appears in archival footage in his documentary Four Little Girls.  Though she wasn't an actress per se, she did appear in films as a singer. You can watch her performance in the musical St Louis Blues (1958) on Netflix Instant Watch currently. (It's a treasure trove of famous African American celebrities: Nat "King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, etcetera). Two-thirds of the way through the film, her voice actually heals a blind man! You have to have a voice like Mahalia's to get away with that even within a spiritually-minded melodrama.

Mahalia's most indelible contribution to cinema came a year later. The Douglas Sirk classic Imitation of Life (1959) halts in its gorgeous colorful tracks to listen to Mahalia's soulful wail to the heavens. "Trouble of the World", indeed.

Her voice is so emotionally acute that even Ice Queen Supreme Lana Turner couldn't help but be visibly shaken by it.

'I Want Love'... and Actors in Music Videos, Please

Justin Timberlake as Elton John in 2001Ten years ago right about now, Elton John's "Songs From the West Coast" dropped. I bring this anniversary up because...

a) I love to celebrate anniversaries
b) music videos are short films
c) an irregularly curated side-obsession of mine is tracking film actors who've appeared in music videos.

For the videos from the album, his last hit-parade album (though not his last album), he used actor/musicians rather than himself, including a pre comeback Robert Downey Jr back when everyone still worried for the actor's very life and he seemed like an open wound... which really worked for this video.

Just love that one, don't you? It was directed by Sam Taylor-Wood before the days of her award winning narrative short Love You More and before she graduated to features with the John Lennon early-years bio Nowhere Boy (starring her future babydaddy Aaron Johnson).

In the follow up videos "This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore" and "Original Sin" Elton John used two pre film-stardom singers: Justin Timberlake as Elton himself and Mandy Moore as a devoted fan. In the latter Elton does appear and drags Elizabeth Taylor along with him in pink-turbaned cameo as "Doris" because, you know, Elton does love to flaunt the company he keeps. Was "Doris" an inside joke of some sort between them? 

Maybe JT got a taste for his acting future right here because he keeps playing important men from the music industry (Sean Parker in The Social Network and now Neil Bogart in Spinning Gold)

What's your favorite Elton John song? And if you were celebrity-aware back in 2001, did you ever dream of such enormous movie stardom waiting just around the recovery corner for Robert Downey Jr.?

All Male Revue: Brad, Andy and Ryan (who is just too Ryan).

The Film Experience is known the world over for its actressy devotions but for this quickie link-list, we've gone Men Only for some reason. Must be all that Best Actor talk in the air... or rather in the internetz. On that front I would like to note that my Best Actor chart is HAUNTING ME. It went the way of the dinosaur once Moneyball hit... rendering past speculations moot and the html coding is suddenly acting up, too. Yes, Brad Pitt vaults up when the charts are all redone on Friday. Weekly updates, however minor, follow from then on. Aren't you excited?

Okay okay. Enough screams and tears of joy for weekly charts. Settle.

Hello Giggles a must-read letter to Ryan Gosling. "You have to stop. Just stop. It’s getting to be too much."
Oscar Metrics Mark Harris in the lonely outfield, doubting Brad Pitt's nominatability for Moneyball.  
In Contention surveys the crowded Best Actor field and talks Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon.
Cinema Blend  Justin Timberlake has already played one man who rocked the rock world (Napster founder in The Social Network.)  Next he'll play Neil Bogart who introduced 70s acts like KISS and The Village People to the world in Spinning Gold.

Towleroad Actor Sean Maher (of Firefly and The Playboy Club) comes out of the closet.
Movie|Line talks to Corey Stoll of Midnight in Paris career-boosting.

Oh and only because I know I'll forget. A very happy 50th birthday to Andy Lau tomorrow. He's been super busy lately what with festival appearances, multiple new films and headlining the Hong Kong Oscar submission A Simple Life which stars Deannie Yip (Best Actress Venice) as his life long nanny who suddenly needs him to caretake. Please to remember that Lau was Matt Damon before Matt Damon was Matt Damon in The Departed by way of the original film Infernal Affairs. Have you ever seen that one?  

Here's the subtitled trailer to his Oscar entry A Simple Life.

Linknesses

Just Jared The Rum Diary gets a Johnny Depp-centric poster, opens in October... "absolutely nothing in moderation" tagline. What'cha think?
IndieWire Millenium buys Rampart and aims for an Oscar push for Woody Harrelson this year. My my my Best Actor is getting crowded, right?
Fandor's blog Keyframe just hosted a Guy Maddin blog-a-thon. Check it out.
Movie|Line talks to Sigourney Weaver about supporting Taylor Lautner through the action genre minefields with Abduction. (What a world, right?)
Wow Report Mia Farrow makes a LOL. Best tweet ever?

Cinema Blend Katey interviews Andrew Haigh the writer/director of Weekend. I really enjoyed talking to him too (my interview if you haven't seen it) but I love the bit about his dialogue writing that she gets him to discuss 9/10 minutes in. Very interesting process he has! I should've asked him about that. The bane of interviews is always thinking of things later that you really wish you'd asked.
MNPP James Dean's brotherly love screentest for East of Eden. 
Ultra Culture makes a funny with the Meryl Streep poster for The Iron Lady 

OffCinema
Sociological Images Elizabeth Warren is my new hero. Finally, a Democrat who can convey message in a clear, confident, convincing way.
Drawn If you're an artist reading, this lengthy video on celebrity caricature is super interesting in terms of technique and how to capture likenesses that are always so manipulated. This bit on Conan O'Brien's hair is choice.

I will draw his hair how we expect it to look, as if it had its own anatomical structure."
-John Kascht 

75th Anniversary! 
Have you played with this current Google Doodle honoring Jim Henson's birthday yesterday? (Shame I forgot about this one for blog purposes. Grrrr).

It's fun to play with though it's a bit difficult to replicate the two best surprises. 

Shanghai Surprise?

Last night while Lady Gaga was living through an entire MTV VMA evening as "Jo Calderone" her male alter ego, I began to wonder if she could ever transfer to the big screen? In the past I'd always dismissed the notion but I think she pulled off that bit of theater last night. At the very least she sure is committed. And doesn't it seem that every major pop star eventually tries the silver screen. Britney Spears, who was also honored last night, did. Remember Crossroads? She didn't. For every Cher or Justin Timberlake who make a real honest go of it, there are dozens and dozens of musicians that fail at it or do okay but move on any way and their efforts are, generally speaking, quickly forgotten.

Which got me to thinking about Shanghai Surprise, which opened 25 years ago on this very day. No joke!

Madonna and Sean Penn, the early years

...though many thought the movie was.

Shanghai Surprise was Sean Penn and Madonna's first and last film together and it premiered just a year after the media explosion that was their wedding and subsequent volatile marriage. I haven't seen Shanghai Surprise since the 80s and the only thing I remembered about it before I took a wee peek today was that Madonna played a missionary who at one point just stripped into a white slip and seduced Sean Penn.

As missionaries do.

The reason Madonna was never much of an actress is that she was always too aware of the camera. It's a bit of an irony, since great film acting is all about an actor's relationship with the camera, but they really can't show that they're aware of it unless they're wildly talented and doing so on purpose. Otherwise, the audience just gets uncomfortable. 

God Nathaniel, why are you reminding people of a rare failure?!

Still, for all of Shanghai Surprise's badness, whenever two colossal careers meet in some disastrous way that's recorded for posterity, it's kind of fun to witness / remember. Take the moment Madonna first sees Sean Penn above. She is prim and proper and he is a totally drunk, half naked man who's screaming at people in Chinese.

Madonna's only had a couple of lines before this, all of them entirely wooden. But when she stares at him in disgust and confusion, it's hard not to feel a bit sympathy as soon as you are also staring at him. Penn was already, by 1986, an acclaimed and wildly confident actor.  

And he's ACTING enough for both of them, trust.

Look at that. [Displaying tattoo] He didn't even finish the nipples on my little sweetheart!"

Have you ever seen Shanghai Surprise? Do you ever think about which pop stars could make it as actors?