Watch at Home: What/If life were a Cabaret, Greta?

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's available to you now to screen at home.

New on DVD/Blu-Ray
• Climax - Gaspar Noe's latest provocation about an orgiastice dance troup on drugs
• Greta - Opinions are split on this femme thriller at TFE HQ but yours truly is on the 'Did Neil Jordan forget how to make movies?' side of said split. 

Notable iTunes 99¢ Deals
• Cabaret - OMG you guys. See Bob Fosse's masterpiece (well, his first masterpiece. There was another one seven years later) for only a dollar...

Click to read more ...

Posterized: Liza Minnelli

by Nathaniel R

Some people's talents are so supersized that they're destined for fame. Others are born right into it. In the delicious nutty case of Liza Minnelli it was both. She was famous at birth, being the first child of a superstar couple (Movie star Judy Garland and celebrated director Vincente Minnelli) but later her talents proved that she would have become LIZA even if she'd been born to a phone operator and a brick-layer.

Liza is currently back in select movie theaters as herself in the documentary Halston (2019). But we're here to look back today. You can actually catch baby Liza (uncredited) at the end of the Judy Garland musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949) but her film debut proper came in 1968 in the Albert Finney comedy Charlie Bubbles. 

How many of her movies have you seen? Every poster is after the jump but since she's an all platform star we included notes about other major work where it applied... 

Click to read more ...

Aladdin Pt 3: Free at last! A 'Whole New World' awaits.

In Part 1 Ben introduced us to the romantic heroes and their evil nemesis. In Part 2 of our re-watch of Disney's Aladdin (1992) Timothy took us into the Cave of Wonders where our 'diamond in the rough' met the whirlwind vocal performance of Robin Williams as the Genie. He discussed stylistic, color palette, and comic choices in the storytelling on the fantastical journey. We return to the film just as Aladdin has dropped his pompous prince pretenses and admitted that the Princess is not a prize to be won and promptly jumps off her balcony just as she requested.

Part 3 by Nathaniel R

- Startled by his sudden humility and agreement, as well as the not so mundane matter of magical carpets, Jasmine drops her own defenses and becomes curious about this new prince. She can't shake the feeling that she knows him.

- Does Jasmine have facial blindness that she can't remember the only man she ever almost kissed in her life? The one from the day before no less!

-Aladdin moves at quite a clip but we know it's been no more than two days due to the plot business because she has only three days to get married by the laws of both Agrabah and childlike-attention-spans-of-target audiences. 

- Tim spoke of Aladdin's intuition and it is a beautifully realized aspect of his character. He's not aware of it, per se, the way he is in regards to his other physical and mental skills, so he's more of an idiot savant when it comes to emotional intelligence. He instinctively gets the Genie's pride / Jafar's competitiveness / and Jasmine's need to roam. He harnesses all three in the course of the plot, the latter not to manipulate her like the other two but to free her spiritually/romantically though he isn't thinking of all this when he asks...

Click to read more ...

Aladdin Pt 1: The 'street rat' and the princess with an edge

Three-Part Mini-Series
Occasionally we'll take a movie and baton pass it around the team and really dive in. If you missed past installments we've gone long and deep on Rebecca, Silence of the Lambs, Thelma & Louise, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A League of Their Own, and Rosemary's Baby in the past.  -Editor

Part 1 by Ben Miller

Welcome to Team Film Experience's Aladdin Retrospective.  This film was a big part of my childhood and I’m proud to join in on the fun to revisit it with you before the live-action remake hits.  Disney in the 1990s might have been the animated studio's peak.  They were coming off the surprise success of The Little Mermaid in 1989 follwed by the monster hit and then-historic Best Picture nominee of Beauty and the Beast in 1991.  The massive success of Aladdin the very next year felt like a commercial/critical apex (at least until The Lion King arrived two years later).

0:00:26 – Alan Menken probably does not get enough credit for the score he put together.  Yes, he won an Oscar for it, but it doesn’t get put into the conversation enough for GREAT animated scores.

Click to read more ...

Stage Door: A startling new take on "Oklahoma!"

by Deborah Lipp

Gabrielle Hamilton, nominated for a Chita Rivera award, for a very different take on the dream ballet in "Oklahoma!"

Wow, that was a lot.

Leaving the new Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, a reconceptualization of the show that pulls no punches, I felt a little staggered, like it was too soon to have a celebratory dinner afterwards. (Context: I’m assuming you know the basics of this classic of musical theater, and I won’t consider any of its points “spoilers”. I will hold back potential spoilers, though, for this version.)

Daniel Fish’s unique production changes not one word, either spoken or sung, but it all feels very new...

Click to read more ...