Soundtracking: "Evita"

It's Madonna's birthday!! Chris Feil looks back at one of her biggest soundtracks...

By the mid-90s, musicals were all but dead, even though Disney created their own resurgence in animated form. Madonna’s career however was always heading toward reviving it: she constantly reinvented the game for the music video and her Breathless Mahoney songstress was Dick Tracy’s genre flirtation device. With her divisive performance in Evita, she brought the cinematic musical back into the popular culture and delivered a hit soundtrack in the process.

And I should qualify that for emphasis: a hit soundtrack to a quasi-opera about propaganda and Argentine political figures when the popular music landscape highlighted Alanis, Tupac, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Madonna did that in arguably the least accommodating musical or cinematic climate, and perhaps only Madonna could have done it. Like it or not, much of the film’s success (even musically) is thanks to her star power, no matter how indelible Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s score remains.

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A League of Their Own, Pt. 4 - The World Series

Here is the conclusion of our 25th anniversary retrospective of A League of Their Own!

Part 1 introduced us to the team and Part 2 showed us their success and struggles on the field. In Part 3, the sibling rivalry between Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) got Kit traded to the Racine Belles and the return of her husband from the war caused an exhausted Dottie to quit the team. Where will that leave the Rockford Peaches as they go on to the first all-women World Series?

Part 4 by Chris Feil

1:30:15 - It’s the first game of the first AAGPBL World Series and it’s our beloved Rockford Peaches against the Racine Belles. And wouldn’t you know Doris has some fawning fans in the stands (including “that guy” actor Joey Slotnick in his film debut)!

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A League of Their Own, Pt. 2: Mae Swings, Evelyn Cries, Jimmy Rants

25th Anniversary Four-Part Mini Series Event

Previously in Part 1: "Dollies" who could also play ball were recruited to save America's Favorite Pastime while the men were at war. But these athletic women didn't realize that they'd still be met with such sexism despite the chance to show their gifts. The final piece of this movie's puzzle was the manager and the job was offered to Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) and that's where we pick back up. How will the Rockford Peaches handle their new arrogant alcoholic boss? 

Batter up...

Part 2 by Nathaniel R

33:40 "Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the first game of the All American Girls Baseball League"... In this case via the establishing shot (Penny Marshall makes good use of those throughout) 'ladies & gentlemen' is a small plural; the stands are mostly empty. 

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A League of Their Own, Pt. 1: Cow Girls & Charm School

25th Anniversary Four-Part Mini Series Event

Welcome sports movie fans. Or, in a pinch, actressexuals who will watch largely female casts do practically anything.

Twenty-five years ago on July 1st, 1992, Penny Marshall's period comedy A League of Their Own (1992) opened in theaters. It wasn't quite an immediate blockbuster but word of mouth was spectacular -- in its second weekend it grossed practically as much as its first, which as you know is exceedingly rare. The female led comedy proved another home run for the director of Big, eventually grossing over $100 million domestically. It ended 1992 as that year's tenth biggest hit, just behind Basic Instinct and shutting Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven out of the moneyed top ten.

For the next few days we'll be revisiting this beloved classic tag-team style like we did with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Thelma & Louise (1991), Rebecca (1940), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Please join in the conversation if you love this movie (and who doesn't?). - Editor

Batter up...

Part 1 by Lynn Lee

01:22 Inside an old-fashioned cape-cod house, a tall, slender, elegant older lady with reddish blonde hair (Lynn Cartwright, but with Geena Davis’ unmistakable throaty voice dubbed) is packing a suitcase.  As we’ll learn, she’s Dottie Hinson, one of the (fictional) first women to play in the (real) All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, and is getting ready to attend a special event honoring the AAGPBL at the baseball Hall of Fame.  She seems oddly less than excited about it, even when her daughter turns up with her old baseball mitt...

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Posterized: Guy Ritchie

The British director Guy Ritchie never finished school and didn't attend film school either but by the time he was 28 he was on his way to making cinematic waves. His short film The Hard Case (1995) attracted the attention of financiers and his debut feature Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) was a scrappy success. Sudden fame for new directors is usually somewhat invisible since it's their names rather than faces that get the publicity. Not so for Guy Ritchie. His rise went meteoric via a marriage to global household name Madonna before people had even really learned his name. They famously wore each other's new products on t-shirts; he pushed her album "Music" across his chest in 2000 as she paraded Snatch, his second film, around on hers.

The marriage soured but his movies got bigger and bigger if not always more successful. Like any regularly working director he's had both hits and misses. His 9th feature King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is now open in theaters everywhere.

Let's look at all his movies via posterized after the jump. How many have you seen? 

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