Howard Keel Centennial: "Calamity Jane"

We're celebrating musical star Howard Keel's Centennial this week. Here's Tim Brayton...

Presenting a musical in which Howard Keel plays the obnoxious gunslinger love interest to a famous woman from the Wild West. My apologies if you feel a little bit of déjà vu from that logline: Nathaniel did, after all, just write about Keel's breakout performance in 1950's Annie Get Your Gun, about which every word of that sentence equally applies. And that's absolutely no accident. Warner Bros. had fought to get the rights to that stage musical as a vehicle for its up-and-coming singing star Doris Day, but lost out to MGM. When that film proved to be a hit, Warner's responded by developing an original Western musical based - oh so very loosely - on the life of Calamity Jane, famous frontierswoman and scout.

So eager was the studio to recreate that Annie magic that they even went to the trouble of borrowing Keel from MGM for the span of this one production. Not that you could tell any of this just by looking at 1953's Calamity Jane...

Click to read more ...

Howard Keel Centennial: "Annie Get Your Gun"

Our Howard Keel Centennial celebration begins. Here's Nathaniel R...

What is the lasting legacy of Hollywood's biggest musical of 1950, Annie Get Your Gun? The best remembered thing about it may well be its place in Judy Garland's storied career; she was infamously fired well into production, marking in some ways the nadir of her career, and fueling the mythology of that comeback of all comebacks with A Star is Born (1954) after a four year absence from the big screen. But that's not the movie as it exists today, only what could have been. And "could have beens" are many with this troubled production which lost its original star (Judy), its first two directors (Busby Berkeley and Charles Walters) and one key supporting cast member (Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill, who died after filming began) on its way to its final cut.

The first shot of Howard Keel in "Annie Get Your Gun"

Though "Annie Get Your Gun" has had a long healthy life on stages, big and small (including three Broadway runs: 1946-1949, 1966, and 1999-2001) it's most lasting cinematic contribution is the introduction of Howard Keel as a leading man...

Click to read more ...

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" Teases

by Nathaniel R

After two absolutely hideous photoshopped posters (we can't even post them they're so ugly) we were beginning to worry about Quentin Tarantino's Manson-era Hollywood tale starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt (as a famous actor and his stunt double) and Margot Robbie as Roman Polanski's late wife Sharon Tate. But the teaser has restored hope...

Click to read more ...

SXSW: Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in "Booksmart"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from the SXSW Festival

Everyone loves a buddy comedy – usually. It’s rare that such films are both crowd-pleasing and critically well-received, since entertainment value doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with quality. Though its detractors would surely disagree, Superbad is a great example of a film that, while inherently stupid, manages to be intelligent and funny in its portrayal of two teenagers trying desperately to have sex before the end of high school. It’s fitting that Jonah Hill’s younger sister Beanie Feldstein, who is close to the age he was when he made that film in 2007, is one of the two stars of a new buddy comedy that feels particularly forward-focused.

In Booksmart, Feldstein plays Molly, the class president and valedictorian whose need to point out other people’s mistakes and shortcomings earns her few friends. She has the only friend she needs in Amy, played by Kaitlyn Dever, who shares her passion for homework and whose social skills are only moderately more palpable...

Click to read more ...

SXSW: Jesse Eisenberg in "The Art of Self-Defense"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from SXSW

How seriously are we supposed to take a movie about Jesse Eisenberg learning karate? Watching The Art of Self-Defense, from director Riley Stearns, there are many different answers to that question. Eisenberg’s lanky frame and token physical awkwardness make his training in martial arts a laughable concept from the start, though its origins are brutal. At the beginning of the film Eisenberg’s Casey is mugged and beaten by masked assailants while walking home with a bag of dog food. This film feels like a parody, but one that's trying to mock too many things...

Click to read more ...