Soundtracking: "A Star is Born (1976)"

Last week Chris Feil looked back at Judy Garland and A Star is Born's musical beginning. This week, it's Streisand/Kristofferson...

Some viewers have chastised the current remake of A Star is Born’s presentation of pop music, but it kind of pales to the cynicism and condescension to 70s rock and roll in the Streisand/Kristofferson version of 1976. What had previous been told as a saga of the film industry is transplanted into rock arenas, the emptiness of fame represented by a ravenous crowd of thousands acting a fool. Know a little something about Streisand’s skittishness with (sometimes rabid) crowds and you can begin to understand the film’s boorish presentation of fandom, so some grace can be granted. But nevertheless, fame suddenly seems all the more vacuous here in the face of Real Artistry.

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Posterized: A Star is Born

by Nathaniel R

How many versions of the oft-remade A Star is Born have you seen? There have been four now, five if you count What Price Hollywood, often forgotten because it has a different title but so alike in story beats that the first official A Star is Born was clearly lifting from it wholesale. Since the Judy Garland version they've all been musicals and as of the Barbra Streisand version, the Grammys replaced the Oscars as the key awards show moment when the new superstar wins big while her husband hits rock bottom. But more on all this later maybe..

WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (1932) Director George Cukor 
Starring Constance Bennett & Lowell Sherman (1 Oscar nomination for writing)

A STAR IS BORN (1937) Director William Wellman (Cukor declined)
Starring Janet Gaynor & Fredric March (7 nominations including Director, Actor and Actress, 1 win for "original" writing even though the plot was lifted from the 1932 film!, 1 Honorary for its color photography in a then mostly black-and-white world. This is the only version that was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars)

A STAR IS BORN (1954) Director George Cukor again but this time it's a musical
Starring Judy Garland & James Mason (6 nominations: Actor, Actress, Costume Design, Art Direction, Score, Original Song "The Man That Got Away")

A STAR IS BORN (1976) Director Frank Pierson
Starring Barbra Streisand & Kris Kristofferson (4 nominations including Cinematography, Sound, and Score, 1 win for Original Song "Evergreen")

A STAR IS BORN (2018) Director Bradley Cooper
Starring Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper (Oscar fate to be determined)

Since the space inbetween each A Star is Born movies is growing each time, the sixth version should arrive around 2070. Mark your calendars! ;) 

Review: A Star is (re) Born

This piece was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. The movie was first screened at TIFF but he hopes to see it many times. 

Overnight success is a myth. Great artistic success in show business generally comes from working hard and learning the craft, often for years, so that you're ready should a big break ever come. 'Overnight'  is only just that moment when the world suddenly notices your long-standing gifts. A Star is Born as a franchise always synthesizes this myth and this truth for something like a fairy/cautionary tale; just as quickly as a star rises, a star can fall. Talent is never the question, but the starting point; whether the world notices and for how long, is out of your hands. The screenplay for the latest telling of A Star is Born, emphasizes this last point, as Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) urges Ally (Lady Gaga) to give it her all because the world might not always be listening. 

For those who've been living under a cultural rock the story of A Star is Born is ancient and simple: One already established successful showbiz man 'discovers' an absurdly gifted but basically unknown female performer and takes her under his wing. They fall in love but as her fame rises, his falls, plagued as he is by personal demons in liquid form. The story never has a happy ending so if you need a good cry, queue up...

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Soundtracking: "A Star is Born (1954)"

Chris Feil's weekly look at music in the movies will be revisiting all of the musical remakes of A Star is Born in coming weeks. Here is 1954 and Judy Garland...

Musicals are known for their required suspension of disbelief, the fact that we must buy into a reality where people simply burst into song. But the legacy of A Star is Born has its own kind of suspension of disbelief: the notion that whatever legendary songstress that leads each version is some undiscovered talent. George Cukor’s 1954 version (the first to properly musicalize the story birthed in William A. Wellman’s 1937 original) requires the greatest leap. But there are few cinematic superstars in history as immediately convincing in their gifts as Judy Garland.

Casting such a powerhouse as a woefully undiscovered talent is absurd on paper, as if the film exists in some fantasy land where maybe she’s never opened her mouth or humans have ceased to have ears. Our buy-in to the conceit of the plot has to be as momentous as her implacable voice...

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Ansel Elgort...is a Jet 'til his last dying day.

by Nathaniel R

The first casting announcement has hit for Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story: Ansel Elgort will play doomed romantic Tony, a sensitive white boy who falls for Puerto Rican Maria in the mean streets of NYC. Tony can't quite extricate himself from his friendships with local gang The Jets in order to live happily ever after. 

Elgort has definitely proved that he can move onscreen (Baby Driver was basically a musical without songs) and he sings, too. In fact he has already tried to start up a dual career as a singer and this might not be his only upcoming musical role as there was also talk of him headlining a Hans Christian Anderson bio earlier this year. But the West Side Story news will probably rankle a lot of people, if not me, because any remake of my favorite is suspect to begin with -- more after the jump...

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