"Cabaret" Old Chums!

Come taste the wine... Come hear the band... Come right this way start celebrating... ♫

Michael York, Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey & Marisa Berenson. Photo via Daily Mail

That's Michael York, Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey and Marisa Berenson last night at the Zeigfeld, Manhattan's best movie house for festive events like retro celebrations or new premieres. Cabaret's principle cast was gathered for the second time with TCM for this special screening since the Blu-Ray is coming on Tuesday. The restoration apparently cost Warner Bros somewhere between $1 and 2 million but it's worth it. Spend the money if you've got one of the greatest films of all time in your catalogue. The movie looks beautiful and thankfully they haven't scrubbed it so free of its natural grain that it doesn't look like itself anymore.

More about the event after the jump 

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Misérables No More. Les Joking.

You know a depressing drama has achieved deep market penetration when no one can stop joking about it. Is this a communal embarrassment from making ugly cry faces in the movie theater (don't worry, no one can see you.)? Whatever it is, Les Misérables has now joined Brokeback Mountain and Titanic and _____ in the small club of deeply sad dramas that everyone loves to make jokes about.

Have you seen "Les Mean Girls"? The tumblr mashes the musical up with Tina Fey's classic comedy, Amanda Seyfried being the key to all things (no seriously. she's everywhere).

But my favorite current Les Misérables joke is this expert repurposing of the big "I Dreamed a Dream" showstopper as Living FYC Satire. I totally love this even though I think Anne Hathaway is everything in the movie and totally deserves the Oscar.

One Night Only ♪

Have you heard that The Academy is going to honor the renaissance of the movie musical with tributes to Chicago, Dreamgirls and Les Miz during the ceremony on February 24th? I'm never been that big on amorphous "tributes" which usually come in the form of sloppy montages at the expense of time celebrating either specific grand careers (lifetime achievements) or actual nominees. And I can't quite see what the through line is between those three pictures (as opposed to any other modern musicals). But you know I love musicals. Still... this makes precious little sense to me, not when you have a decent current lineup of Original Song nominees you could focus on for once. And not when you're only focusing on three films, two of which had little to do with the musical genres resuscitation.

It's a Musical Diva Throwdown

Everyone knows (or should come to understand) that it was the one-two-three-four punch of Disney's resurrection (The Little Mermaid + Beauty & The Beast) + Dancer in the Dark + Moulin Rouge! +  Hedwig and the Angry Inch from 1989-2001 that reopened the musical floodgates artistically and reminded everyone "ohmygod... look what this versatile genre can do!!!". Chicago (2002) then was the behemoth that came charging down that road that had been pre-paved for it by stronger films, despite how grandly entertaining it was, to claim the trophy for the whole genre.

At any rate the strangest exclusion from their planned tribute is surely Moulin Rouge! which had, if you'll recall, just as many nominations as both Les Miz and Dreamgirls (I guess 8 is the magic number for non-BP winning popular musicals), starred people who are still very much in the cultural conversation, and is already widely regarded as part of the new canon. That's something that none of the three films Oscar is planning to rehonor on the ceremony can quite claim... no, not even Chicago.

Posterized: BAFTA Honoree Alan Parker

Director Alan Parker, who our youngest readers will probably beunfamiliar with, used to be a prestige director. He's been retired for ten years but his taste in material was quite awards-baity. He's receiving the BAFTA Fellowhip (aka career tribute) in February at the BAFTA ceremony. Because the BAFTAs aren't aired live and weirdly only ever broadcast parts of that show who knows if we'll see it.

So I thought we should look back at his career through Posterized. (We haven't done one of those in a while!)

How many have you seen?

Bugsy Malone (76), Midnight Express (78), Fame (80)

Three arguable classics right off the bat? And 11 more movies after the jump

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I Could've Linked All Night

Boy Culture shares photos of 25 stars first and last appearances onscreen. Fun randomness. Greta Garbo & Marlene Dietrich transformations are big whoas.
FilmDrunxx has a funny piece on declining Rotten Tomatoes scores (in this case: The Last Stand with Schwarzenegger). Be warned sensitive Steven Spielberg fans: there's a jab at him at the tail end.
Guardian is asking for mocked up movie posters with title casting and soundtrack suggestions for JJ Abrams proposed Lance Armstrong biopic. My guess is their inbox is already full.

Pajiba looks at 20 interesting facts about Joss Whedon and The Avengers -- I'm not sure what brought this on, now, in January but I enjoyed reading it. 
The Sun Benedict Cumberbatch teases his legion of crazed fans by joking about how tight his Star Trek Into Darkness costume is

You can almost see what religion I am." 

CHUD famed poster artist Drew Struzan has been asked about doing posters for the next three Star Wars films. I approve. Weirdly the article refers to Strusan as "the director"... um... the director of his airbrush and cintiq?
Vogue UK has Miucci Prada sketches for The Great Gatsby costumes 

Small Screen
Pajiba b*tch rankings with Downton Abbey
Advocate recommends FBI vs serial killer show The Following which is supposedly slightly gay-ish horror. Doesn't American Horror Story already cover anyone jonezing for that? 

Devil's Advocate
David Edelstein 'why i hate the Oscars'... the piece, though anti-awards, is much richer than the dumb headline
Telegraph 'why I walked out of Les Misérables' it's another attack piece but I'm linking up because there is stuff of note: like voice goddess Marni Nixon's (Sound of Music, West Side Story, My Fair Lady) feelings on live-singing. This piece has further convinced me that people, in general, whether they love musicals or not, have a really hard time dealing with musicals of any kind, being satisfied by them, knowing even what they expect of the form. I'm still not sure why the genre has such difficulties with audiences given the absolute suspension of disbelief afforded every other genre in modern times. The silver lining for the ongoing Les Miz debate for me though is that more and more people seem to be saying 'why can't they just cast great singers and let them sing great songs' which is reductive but correct and also what I've been bitching about for my entire lifetime since I wasn't alive in that mythical time (post-silent cinema - pre Cabaret) when people loved musicals without shame and without so many hard-to-navigate hangups, caveats and ever-mutating conditions.