Burning Questions: Broadway's Cinematic Potential?

Michael C. here in the aftermath of the Tony's to return the focus to where it belongs: Movies.

The film version of Porgy & Bess (1959) is rarely seen. Audra McDonald & Norm Lewis in the Broadway show, with movie star looks and thrilling voices, suggest its cinematic potential

As I've written before in this column, as a rule I don't go in for the sort of rose-colored nostalgia that assumes pop culture is on some kind of inexorable decline into the sewer and if only we could return the Golden Age of the 30's or the 70's or whenever then we would experience some kind of artistic renaissance. It is now as it ever was - a little quality, lots of junk.

But one trend I do resist, one that I mark as the undeniable decay of the natural order of things, is the movement toward reverse-engineering successful movies into Broadway shows and away from the reverse. I will fight this trend to my dying breath, or at least I will stand outside the stage production of Ghost and shake my old man cane at it like Carl from Up. 

Yet there is hope. With Les Miserables finally landing in theaters this December, and August: Osage County getting the Streep treatment as we speak, maybe there is still a chance to return to the glory days of stage to screen transfers the way that Thespis intended. But with only so many big Broadway titles left unfilmed that brings me to this week's Burning Question: Are there any current Broadway shows that deserve the big screen treatment? 

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Burning Questions: Are We Ignoring Wes Anderson's Dark Side?

Michael C. here to try to look past the standard take on one of our leading filmmakers. 

Steve Zissou: This is going to hurt.

I have decided that I am no longer interested in reading reviews of Wes Anderson films that contain the word “quirky” in the opening paragraph. Same goes for “twee”.

Over and over I read that, what do you know, Wes Anderson has gone and made another Wes Anderson movie. It’s about time, don’t you think, that people take a more substantive look at a one of the most distinctive bodies of work of the last two decades? A body of work whose deeper currents are often ignored amid the same old talk about flat compositions and diorama sets. Anderson’s movies have a lingering impact that defies those would dismiss his carefully composed world as emotionally detached. Right below that carefully composed surface are the deeper currents of a director preoccupied with death, loss, and alienation.

With all the focus on his signature colorful style are we ignoring Wes Anderson’s dark side? 

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Burning Questions: When Will America Get Animation For Adults?

Day of the Dead comes with Lively ColorMichael C. here. Eyebrows were raised when Pixar recently announced their slate of upcoming films. After two projects we already knew about – a dinosaur focused film now titled “The Good Dinosaur” (May 30th, 2014) and the film that takes place inside the mind – there was a new project, intriguingly described as Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos.

The idea of the full resources of Pixar set to work on an animated film about the Mexican Day of the Dead is enough to get any film lover’s expectations soaring. Obviously, there is no promise the film will be any more artistically daring than the spooky yet family-friendly likes of Henry Sellick’s Coraline. But for now it is reason enough to hope we will soon have an affirmative answer to the question animation lovers have asked for decades:

When will mainstream American cinema finally accept adult animation?

I will not subject you to another rendition of that familiar tune about the rest of the world not holding our country’s prejudices about cartoons being just for kids. Suffice it to say the end of American animation’s extended adolescence is long overdue. 

Disney appeared poised to take the plunge back in the Nineties. I am still stunned anything as mature as the tortured Catholicism of Hunchback’s “Hellfire” sequence found its way into a film with Happy Meal tie-ins. More after the jump

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Burning Questions: Romantic Comedy Pet Peeves

as tempting as it is, we can't blame everything on Kate Hudson Michael C. here with some constructive criticism for the rom-coms of the world. Is there any genre in more dire straits than the romantic comedy? If you counted the genuinely great recent examples on your fingers you would be back in the 90’s before you ran out of digits. 

I’d love to write a post outlining a scenario where the rom-com is saved but I don’t see that happening. Not unless the current movie industry is demolished wholesale and replaced with a system that doesn’t release a shamelessly mediocre product in the hopes of turning a modest profit before forever banishing the title to the murky depths of Netflix Instant. Such daydreaming is fun but let’s be serious. Better to ask the more practical question:

What are some quick fixes for the Romantic Comedy? 

I’m not asking the world here. Hollywood can keep the meet cute, the gay best friend, and running to the airport. I’m talking a few pet peeves that if eliminated could lift the genre up a notch or two. Amy Adams’ time is valuable. Let’s not waste it. So with that in mind here are a few plot devices that rom-coms should cease and desist using immediately...

Dream Girls, Opposites and Whack Jobs with Wacky Jobs after the jump...

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Burning Questions: Can Horror Keep a Straight Face?

 Michael C. here to talk horror and I left the spoilers back in civilization where they can't be reached. If Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods ends up the cult favorite it is so clearly destined to be, it will not be simply because Whedon’s acolytes turn up automatically or because the film is a hoot that efficiently presses every horror geek button known to man. Cabin has a lock on cult status because it so perfectly captures a moment in time.

Cabin in the Woods can't stop looking at Horror's reflections

If Scream’s purpose in ’96 was to take the piss out of the slasher movie, Goddard's film uses the slasher flick as a jumping off point to take on the whole horror genre, top to bottom. In this era, when even non-horror fans chuckles when the dead teenager clichés make their appearances on cue, Cabin pulls back the curtain on the machinations of the whole show until it resembles a viral supercut of the horror genre’s interchangeable, formulaic parts, and it expects the audience to laugh with recognition at each one. 

So if audiences are as savvy as the Cabin's filmmakers expect them to be one wonders: Have horror movies lost the ability to play it straight? Have they given up trying to surprise a fanbase that is perpetually in on the joke?

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