Joe's View

With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer

Archive for June, 2010

Why is ‘Knight and Day’ bombing at the box office?

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

The notion of what constitutes a movie star keeps evolving in this transitional period in which the adult audience is more or less focusing on home entertainment and the multiplexes are dominated by action pictures and animated fare aimed squarely at the 25 and under demographic.

The big hits of the last six months or so have not been star vehicles.

“Avatar,” “Toy Story 3” and this weekend’s expected blockbuster “Eclipse” are story- and action-driven rather than character pieces that demand charismatic stars.

Even “Alice in Wonderland” which featured a genuine star — Johnny Depp — was not actually a movie star vehicle but an ensemble piece in which the effects and the 3D technology were the drawing cards.

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are perfectly decent young actors, but the jury is still out on whether or not these “Twilight” leads will be able to sell lots of movie tickets outside of the franchise that has made them well-known.

Hollywood reacted with shock and awe to the abysmal failure of “Knight and Day” to draw audiences last weekend. The movie paired one of the biggest movie stars of the modern era — Tom Cruise — with a very popular actress — Cameron Diaz — who has been attached to many hits since her breakthrough role in “The Mask” (1994).

The reviews were mixed-to-favorable with most critics agreeing the movie was a serviceable summer romp which showcased the two stars well.

The Los Angeles Times ran a long think piece on Monday in which studio executives and marketing people expressed their dismay that a good romantic action comedy with two stars could fail so abjectly. Some people blamed the title, others cited a jazzy neo-1960s poster (below) that didn’t contain pictures of Cruise and Diaz. Another faction said the movie failed because the mass audience has gone cold on Cruise in the wake of that peculiar period a few years back in which he jumped on Oprah’s couch, told off Matt Lauer and generally behaved like a Scientology pod.

The Cruise bashers fail to explain the enormous hit he scored with “War of the Worlds” (2005) smack in the middle of his bad press explosion or how he was able to generate decent grosses for that much reviled Hitler assassination plot drama, “Valkyrie” (2008).

I think the failure of “Knight and Day” is more the result of changes in the summer moviegoing marketplace than any waning of Cruise’s talent or charisma.

I had a ball at the movie but that’s because it reminded me of the sexy and funny thrillers I used to enjoy when I was a kid (frothy fun like “Arabesque” with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren and “Gambit” with Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine). “Knight and Day” carries associations and delves into old movie genres that have no meaning for a kid today.

The commercial movie marketplace was not totally dominated by teens and 20somethings in the 1960s and ’70s and even those of us who were very young then loved to watch the older actors in comedies and action films.

Now the “stars” are roughly the same age as the target audience and their callowness doesn’t have much appeal to people over the age of 30 (It’s laughable to imagine Steve McQueen or Gregory Peck even thinking about developing their chests ala Taylor Lautner — above — of “Eclipse”).

Mature actors have been relegated to specialty films released primarily in the winter for awards consideration (or the occasional sop to the older female audience represented by a film like last summer’s Meryl Streep vehicle “Julie & Julia” or the forthcoming August release “Eat Pray Love” with Julia Roberts).

The resistance to older performers who want to work in big commercial movies will no doubt increase as more pictures are shot in 3D, a technology designed for action and excitement rather than character development.

Another great ‘Broadway Bares’ raises more than $1 million

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

If every fundraiser was as much fun as “Broadway Bares” no charity would have to worry where its next dollar was going to come from.

Make that $1,015,985 — the staggering, record-breaking amount raised for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS by a bunch of hard-working (and uninhibited) Broadway dancers and actors on their night off last week.

Sorry for this late report, but the show was the kick-off for a week’s vacation that just ended yesterday. I saw and did a lot of good stuff while I was away, but spent the best two hours of the week at “Broadway Bares XX: Strip-opoly.”

Roseland Ballroom seemed even more packed than usual on June 20 for the two performances of the annual burlesque fundraiser that was starrier — and sexier — than ever.

What can you say about a show that began with Vanessa Williams and Kristin Chenoweth — both electrifyingly charismatic — teaming up with Euan Morton (above) for “The Best Game in Town”?

There’s always a risk in any show if you start out too high, but director Josh Rhodes managed to keep the energy soaring through one terrific number after another.

It was Rhodes’s first time as director of “Broadway Bares” but he danced in the benefit a decade ago (when he was a chorus boy in “Fosse”) and proved to be a perfect fit.

Rhodes pushed the envelope — in terms of nudity and eroticism — just a tad more than the previous shows, but like his predecessors, he never went over the edge.

The show’s theme of a sexy variation on the Monopoly board game gave Rhodes a tremendous variety of moods. The Parker Brothers classic also sparked some uproariously funny moments, from the letter-perfect “Jersey Shore” spoof in the Boardwalk number — below — to the lesbians-invade-suburbia hilarity in the Connecticut Avenue sequence.

Jerry Mitchell — the director-choreographer who created the benefit two decades ago — showed up in the finale, looking great in the Willa Kim Indian costume (left) that he wore as a dancer in “The Will Rogers Follies” (the skimpy outfit that gave him the idea that showing a little skin might be a perfect way to raise some money for BC/EFA).

It was Mitchell who set a million dollar goal this year — after last year’s proceeds failed to match the amount raised in 2008. The benefit’s executive producer pushed his dancers and sponsors to work even harder this year on a few small downtown bar shows that paved the way to “Strip-opoly.”

It’s a bit sad that so much imagination and talent converges for a show that is only seen twice on one night and then vanishes forever, but then again that’s what makes “Broadway Bares” such a special night out in New York City.

(For complete coverage and archiving of the fundraiser, visit www.broadwaybares.com)

‘Promises’: new recording of underrated 1960s musical

Monday, June 28, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

The Burt Bacharach-Hal David-Neil Simon musical “Promises, Promises” was a financial success in 1968 — running for more than two years and earning a Tony for its star Jerry Orbach — but the show fell off the Broadway radar in a way that very few hits do.

The score was widely dissed by Broadway buffs and the first cast album is considered a disaster in many circles (with claims that Orbach and co-star Jill O’Hara sang badly at a recording session that should have been rescheduled).

“Promises, Promises” opened when critics were wondering how the pop music explosion of the 1960s would impact Broadway.

While everyone seemed to focus on rock musicals such as “Hair” (which opened off-Broadway in 1967 and transferred to Broadway the following year), Bacharach and David brought an equally fresh pop sound to Broadway.

In collaboration with orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, the composer and lyricist demanded a new kind of pit band (more like the musician set-up they had worked with on their hit records) and an elaborate new sound system for the singers and musicians.

“Promises, Promises” pointed the way to a real integration of pop and Broadway that could have been much more lasting than the occasional rock musical success — Bacharach and David were two of the very few hit songwriters who were willing to take the time away from their lucrative recording careers to work on a musical comedy.

The lukewarm response to the score pushed Bacharach and David back into pop songwriting and no doubt discouraged such obvious Broadway-potential composing talent as David Bowie, Billy Joel and many more to steer clear of writing for Broadway (where a fast flop could erase months of work on a song score).

A few months ago, the first Broadway revival of “Promises, Promises” in 42 years opened to the same sort of lukewarm critical response (but solid audience reaction) and once again the score was shortchanged.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been enjoying the Masterworks Broadway CD which captures the wonderful singing and acting of Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth in the roles created by Orbach and O’Hara.

(I happen to like the original recording with the quirky vocalizing by Orbach and O’Hara, but must admit that the new stars have much stronger voices.)

Chenoweth has one of the best — and most versatile — instruments in musical theater and she nails the beautiful “Knowing When to Leave” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.”

The creators of the show also did a very smart thing by adding two Bacharach-David tunes to the score — “I Say a Little Prayer” and “A House is Not a Home” — to give Chenoweth more to sing. The songs are from the same period in the duo’s career and fit into the show perfectly.

Tunick returned to tweak the orchestrations — pumping up the late 1960s sound of Bacharach and David a notch or two — and the result is a treat that can be enjoyed by those who have seen the revival and those who simply want to savor an excellent recording of one of the most underrated scores in musical comedy history.

Rent it now: Chicago theater star Stuart Gordon’s ‘Re-Animator’

Sunday, June 27, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Chicago theater director Stuart Gordon’s debut film, “Re-Animator,” was an audience-divider in 1985, because of the way it mixed over-the-top gore and comedy.

Lots of people want their horror movies straight, but I’ve always liked pictures that mix thrills and laughs.

Deadly serious horror pics like John Carpenter’s early 1980s remake of “The Thing” or more recent gore-fests like “The Ruins” tend to leave me cold because they never acknowledge the basic silliness of a movie that goes, “Boo!”

The thing that makes “Psycho” so much fun to watch the second or third time around is all of the little jokes Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano planted especially for the repeat viewers, lines such as Norman Bates’s, “Mother isn’t quite herself tonight.”

When the low-budget “Re-Animator” debuted in 1985, it played the dumpy theaters that usually showed straight-on slasher movies, but word quickly spread that Gordon had mixed gross-outs and slapstick comedy in a unique manner. The result was one of the very last pre-video cult movies.

The movie got a big boost when The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael saw it and raved: “The picture is close to being a silly ghoulie classic — the bloodier it gets, the funnier it is.”

Gordon based the film on a story by H.P. Lovecraft about a demented medical student named Herbert West who becomes convinced he has found a serum that can re-animate dead animals.

The Chicago director rounded up theater actors who knew exactly how to play this borderline material. Kael was right to compare the results with the work of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York during the early 1980s.

As Kael wrote 25 years ago, “Stuart Gordon’s debut film carries something intangible from live theatre. The mockery here is the kind that needs a crowd to complete it; ideally you ought to see it with a gang of friends.”

Gordon continued to work in film, but he never found the same mix of over-the-top violence and laughs. Most of his follow-ups to “Re-Animator” have seemed forced.

Rent it now: ‘A Star is Born’

Sunday, June 27, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Warner Home Video released an extras-packed two-disc DVD of the 1954 classic “A Star is Born” on Tuesday.

For once, DVD ”extras” are something special, an incredible four-hour array of deleted scenes, audio of recording sessions and a radio version of “A Star is Born” that Garland did many years before the film was released.

The DVD also contains two TV specials that were broadcast for the movie’s premiere in Hollywood — a fascinating and amusing look at the primitive live TV broadcasting capabilities of the early 1950s.

In the special, one of the supporting players in the movie — Jack Carson — acts as the host and we can see him sweating and squirming as one snafu after another makes his job tough.

It is also lots of fun to watch how quickly celebrities were hustled past Carson so that they could be introduced to the TV audience on their way into the theater — we get quick glimpses and startled smiles from a host of A-list and B-list performers from Elizabeth Taylor to Mamie Van Doren.

The movie itself remains a brilliant but flawed creation capturing Garland in peak vocal form in some of her signature numbers (“The Man That Got Away” among them).

The movie represented a comeback attempt by Garland after her Hollywood career was declared dead and buried when she was fired from the movie version of “Annie Get Your Gun” four years earlier. Garland violated one of the cardinal tenets of Hollywood — leaving a movie after it began production — which made her basically uninsurable and unemployable for film work.

The singer pulled herself together — thanks to the help of her new husband/manager Sid Luft — made a triumphant concert comeback with a legendary engagement at the Palace Theatre in New York, and then mounted a campaign to restore her film career.

“A Star is Born” was a musical remake of a 1930s hit with Janet Gaynor. Sid Luft lined up top talent, including director George Cukor, co-star James Mason, and the great songwriting team of Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin.

Sadly, Garland reverted to her earlier problematic behavior during the shooting — adding millions to the cost of the movie and making her appearance in the movie itself a challenge to the director and editors (the picture took so long to shoot that Garland is in terrific shape in some scenes and not so great looking in others).

When the movie was finally released, critics hailed it, but the three-hour running time made it a distribution challenge. The studio wound up chopping about a half-hour out of the film for second-run release, the expected Oscar for Garland went to upset winner Grace Kelly (for “The Country Girl”), and the movie wound up losing a lot of money.

For the second time, the singer-actress was banished from Hollywood and — with a few supporting role exceptions — she never really returned (and died before she hit 50).

Despite its flaws, “A Star is Born” shows why Garland was one of the great musical stars. Her singing is spectacular and the emotions she could tap into in some dramatic scenes are so powerful as to be slightly frightening.

The new DVD presents the movie in its best video format ever — with the brilliant Technicolor cinematography fully restored and a crisp soundtrack that serves every great song in the movie. And fans will not want to miss that amazing disc of extras.

See you next week!

Monday, June 21, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

Your loyal blogger is taking a week off to recharge and to take in as many cultural events as I can.

When I return on Sunday, I’ll have reports on the new extras-packed DVD of “A Star is Born,” a couple of shows in New York City, novels by James P. Othmer and Michael Cunningham, the terrific new cast album of “Promises, Promises” (above), and maybe a new movie or two.

Have a great week!

P.S. I’ll be microblogging on Twitter while I’m away. You can follow the short feed on this page or on Twitter @joesview.

Rent it now: David Fincher’s ‘Zodiac’

Sunday, June 20, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

David Fincher’s serial killer drama, “Zodiac,” was a financial wipe-out in 2007.

Shockingly, when it debuted, the film did about a third of the business of that weekend’s other major Hollywood release, “Wild Hogs,” which grossed a huge $38 million in its first three days in theaters. (Ugh!)

That’s about what I expected from the director of “Fight Club,” who has a way of using studio money and top stars to make pictures that are a bit too demanding for today’s commercial marketplace.

(Fortunately, Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was a modest financial success in 2008, allowing the director to work on his much-anticipated Facebook movie, set to open by the end of 2010.)

In the fall of 1999, “Fight Club” divided critics and only did so-so business despite the star presence of Brad Pitt.

Over the subsequent 11 years, the movie has been recognized as one of the smartest and most prescient dramas of the late 1990s and has earned a sizeable cult following on video.

Audiences who expected “Fight Club” to be nothing more than a brutal action film were surprised — and in many cases, turned-off — by Fincher’s visionary study of evolving masculinity and anti-capitalist terrorism.

“Zodiac” has the appearance of another serial killer movie, in the tradition of “The Silence of the Lambs” and Fincher’s own “Seven,” but it is instead a very demanding examination of crime, obsession and journalism.

Clocking in at just 20 minutes short of three hours, the movie is an epic about a wave of unsolved murders that galvanized San Francisco in the 1970s.

The serial killer known as “Zodiac” inspired countless movies — including the 1971 Clint Eastwood hit “Dirty Harry” — but most of the dramatizations came up with tidy solutions.

Fincher’s movie is about a crime wave that may never have a solution and what that fact does to the police and journalists drawn into the killer’s web. Just like his characters, Fincher sucks us into the mania of 1970s Northern California but then leaves us wondering who really did it and how one comes to terms with a murder mystery that might never be solved.

“Zodiac” feels like an artifact from 1970s Hollywood when directors like Francis Coppola, Robert Altman and Brian DePalma had the power and the talent to present enigmatic mainstream movies. Fincher explicitly echoes that period of film history by using Coppola’s composer from “The Conversation,” David Shire, who delivers a spare piano-only score similar to the one from Coppola’s 1974 classic (which was set in San Francisco during the Zodiac crime wave era).

The director’s highly detailed focus on journalistic process is, of course, reminiscent of Alan Pakula’s 1976 picture “All the President’s Men” (for which Shire did the scoring as well).

Fincher clearly spent a fortune recreating 1970s San Francisco — one of the most detailed period pieces in modern movie history — but most of that work was, no doubt, lost on the core 25-and-under demographic that now rules the multiplexes. For them, all of those tiny (and often not very attractive) costume and hairstyle and set details were a wasted effort.

“Zodiac” lost millions, but this is one of the most honorable movie “failures” of the past ten years.

Broadway celebrates the art of burlesque in ‘Strip-opoly’

Saturday, June 19, 2010 by:Joe Meyers

20 years of stylish stripping for one of the best charities in New York City — Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS — will be celebrated Sunday night at Roseland with “Broadway Bares XX: Strip-opoly.”

It was my pleasure last week to speak with the director of the extravaganza — Josh Rhodes — for a “Go” feature story you can find elsewhere on this website.

I’ve been going to the show for the past decade and have found it to be one of those great only-in-Manhattan nights — a terrific piece of entertainment that gets a huge adrenaline boost from a crowd made up of several thousand theater fans and performers.

Rhodes and his predecessors push the envelope in terms of nudity and other naughtiness but the show never goes over the edge. One of the funniest parts of the event in past years has been in the “tease” portion of striptease — the choreographers and the dancers make the crowd think they are seeing more flesh than is actually on display.

It’s good clean dirty fun, given tremendous energy and style by the fact that the performers are the same folks who are working eight shows a week in Broadway hits like “Mamma Mia!,” “Chicago” and the other dance-driven musicals.

Josh Rhodes and his choreographers and dancers started working several weeks ago on the 11 numbers that will introduce audiences to an erotic/comic version of Monopoly.

Filling in the gaps between the high class strips will be some of the biggest stars on Broadway, whose comedy routines also push the envelope in terms of sexual suggestion, but never to the point of producing career-damaging YouTube clips.

“Broadway Bares” is constructed so that the non-dancing major stars can join the cast just a few days before showtime, depending on their busy schedules — last year, special guests Sutton Foster and Allison Janney brought the house down. And in 2008, “Glee” star Matthew Morrison (above) stopped the show when he took part in one of the most elaborate numbers.

BC/EFA announced last week that Sunday night’s show will include cameos by Kristen Chenoweth, Vanessa Williams and Katie Finneran, fresh from her Tony win for “Promises, Promises.”

Believe me, you will never have a better time helping a good cause than at “Broadway Bares.” The shows are at 9:30 p.m. and midnight and tickets are still available at www.broadwaycares.org.

See you there!

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