Rock of Ages

Converting a performance from stage to screen is not by any means uncommon, but that does not mean it’s easy nor is it always successful.  Such is the case with Rock of Ages. Not having seen the Broadway version I cannot comment on the quality of the show, but there’s no way it could be as bad as the movie translation.  When watching something on Broadway, the viewer allows certain suspensions of disbelief that moviegoers do not.  From the first frames when Sherri Christian (Julianne Hough), our lead protagonist, is sitting on the bus escaping her podunk life in Oklahoma to chase her dreams to Hollywood the needed suspension of disbelief is just too great.

The story is this: a lonely, small town girl  goes on a journey (see what I did there?) to Hollywood to explore her dream of being a singer after her grandmother tells her she has a great voice.  In the first moments of getting off the bus in what was then grungy 1980s LA she both gets mugged of suitcase filled with her most prizes possessions – her records (apparently moving cross country with actual clothing is not what was done back then) and she meets Drew (Diego Boneta), the bartender/rock star wannabe that will become the love of her life.  Drew works at The Bourbon Room, a legendary (code: grungy) bar that hosts rock icons and is preparing for the arrival of legendary (code: grungy) rock icon, Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise).  Jaxx is a whisky-infused, sex crazed and definitely aging rock star who still causes throngs of girls to faint at the mere sight of him.  Bourbon Room owner Dennis (Alec Baldwin) and his partner Lonny (Russell Brand) are relying on this concert to save the bar from bankruptcy and at the same time right wing, anti-fun politicians want to shut it down for being a harbinger of youth corruption. 

Rock of Ages has all the hallmarks of a run of the mill light fare musical romp/romantic comedy show.  It doesn’t offer anything really new or exciting to audiences and the filmmakers, namely director Adam Shankman was so lazy in adapting it from the stage to screen that you don’t need a lot of creativity to imagine how the original stage production was performed.

All that being said, Rock of Ages doesn’t claim to be a piece of cinematic marvel.  It’s campy and silly and it owns it, which almost makes the ridiculousness ok.  You’re immediately thrown into the 80s rock aesthetic from the hair and music to the clothing to the set design.  Honestly, that’s what I was mostly drawn to with this movie.  I wanted to all things 80s and in that regard the movie definitely delivered.  I was very pleasantly surprised by Tom Cruise’s performance – he totally pulls off the aging rock star image.  And (while I’m sure it was enhanced in post-production), he can actually sing.  The music was excellent – but that’s not surprising as they were all 80s-standards and rock classics.  I wanted to sing along and clap at the end of the big numbers, as I’m sure happened in the stage production, but alas, movies goers just don’t do that so I was left mouthing the words and sitting on my hands at the ends of the performances.

What I think was the most interesting thing about Rock of Ages was that it is the latest in a growing list of movies and TV shows which are curating our favorite songs for audiences.  Along with Glee, the upcoming Battlefield America, Pitch Perfect and not to mention musical remakes like Footloose old favorites from the original iterations are revamped in neat, easy to digest packages.  In a sense, television and film are putting together what feels like a modern day mix tape.  In today’s internet age, videos, songs, article, and pictures get shared in an instant across oceans.  However, through this, one of the most sacred sharing devices has been lost: the mix tape.  Mix tapes were given to friends, crushes, and family as a sign of affection and wanting to share something that was important to the person who spent painstaking hours waiting for songs to come on the radio and hitting “record” on their boom boxes.  Sometimes, if you were lucky enough to have the song on a preexisting tape you could record straight from there.  But in any case if someone gave you a mix tape it meant you were special to him or her and they wanted to share something sacred to them.  While the tape itself had meaning, the songs themselves were important as well.  Emotions and feelings of nostalgia are evoked by both the idea of curating songs and the songs themselves - and show runners and filmmakers know this.  By giving us music packaged in this way and as plot devices, audiences are naturally drawn to the vehicle in which they are being presented.  The music is likely the main (if not only) reason for any success of this movie.  The plot is barely existent, the acting is stilted and even the singing is generally weak but the songs are great, fun and familiar and people want fun and familiar.  Without them there’s no way it would have earned a respectable $29 million in under 2 weeks.   

There’s also something to be said about the draw that the 1980s has for people of a certain generation.  People like me, for instance, who were really children of the 1990s and only caught the end of the 1980s can still appreciate and nostalgize that era and for people who were actually teenagers in the 1980s and long for the time of their youth.  Nostalgia and a longing for the past when one can say “the good old days” is a powerful force and helps drive revenue, even if they weren’t really such good old days.  It is also for that reason that Rock of Ages, no matter how “bad” of a movie it is, had a built in audience base of people who will go see anything that can make them feel like they’re either reliving or reconnecting to their pasts.

Nora Ephron, Remembered

Had you asked me last week if I was a Nora Ephron fan I likely wouldn’t have been overly enthusiastic about it but I would have said something like, “Sure why not? I liked her movies and her characters.  She’s pretty funny.  So yeah, I’m a fan.” 

In less than 24 hours since her passing as the internet has become a frenzy of clips from her movies, quotes from her books and general laments over her passing it’s become clear just the extent of her impact on both cinema and women in cinema.  Her female characters were at the same time feminine and strong.  Self-assured yet vulnerable.  In a word: relatable.   Additionally, Ephron was a lover of “the movies” and her characters conveyed that to us, the audience.  From the way Rita Wilson in Sleepless in Seattle sobs over the love story in An Affair to Remember to her creative reimagining of Shop Around the Corner in You’ve Got Mail she brings the movies to life in a new and invigorated way.  When Harry Met Sally, while now almost 25 years old, remains a touchstone for examining the dynamics in male/female relationships.  

Her films are inexorably linked to modern pop culture:  When Harry Met Sally is ranked #6 as the all-time best Romantic Comedy by AFI's 10 Top 10.  In fact it’s ranked in almost all of their top 100 lists:  2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs - #23, 2002: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions - #25,     2004: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs - #60, "It Had to Be You,"    2005: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes - #33, "I'll have what she's having.”   In Sleepless in Seattle she connected with a generation of children that so desperately wanted to be back in a stable family, with men and women seeking love despite logistical barriers.  You’ve got Mail told the love story of two people who were and should be at odds with one another while also taking the internet, while still in its fledgling state and predicted just how integral it would become in both building and destroying relationships.  She bridged generations of women with Julie and Julia by placing significance on their passions.  Another important hallmark of her work is that she never demonized men.  So many romantic comedies want their male leads to be bumbling idiots that women are drawn to because of their charm or good looks.  Her men are smart, encouraging and positive forces in the lives of the women at the center of the narrative.  Modern day writers should take a cue from her and understand it’s not a mutually exclusive relationship. 

Now that she’s gone and the information superhighway has been bubbling over with her work I’ve had a chance to reflect not only on her films but her legacy as well and her impact on the depiction of women in film.  She wrote women the more like women actually are than almost any other writer is offering.  She writes relationships as complex and multidimensional.  She understand that men and women are different, but can still be equal and neither has to be demonizing to the other.   So would I say I’m a Nora Ephron fan?  Now I’d offer an emphatic “Yes.”

Here are some of her great scenes:

This one from When Harry Met Sally is probably her most famous:

This one from Sleepless in Seattle gets me every time: 

  

Here's the one from Sleepless in Seattle that I mentioned with an homage to An Affair to Remember:  

 

This had to get posted because eating is one of my favorite pastimes too :) 

 

This one from You've Got Mail here, is one of the sweetest scenes in a movie: 

 

History Repeats

I'm happy, even proud, to admit the only Fox News I watch is when Jon Stewart shows clips from the shows. I don't have a Nielsen box so even if I did watch they wouldn't get the rating points, but even still I can't bring myself to ever opt to watch it.  I also admit, although not for reasons of disdain but for reasons of boredom I don't watch C-Span or any other programs which cover congressional or senatorial sessions.  Recently The Daily Show did a couple of segments that featured Fox News and a senate session quite prominently that got me thinking about something that I thought was important to discuss.

First is Fox News' insistence on creating a so-called war on Christmas by individuals or companies who offer wishes of "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" or "tree lighting" and not "Christmas tree lighting". Puh-lease!  As though this country would ever neglect Christmas. Aside from our innate Christianity, our capitalist nature would never allow for it lest profit margins decline. Fox News, you're just being narrow minded and evangelical just inciting conflict.  It it has to stop.

The second segment he did, and this is more significant, was on the senates recent proposal to pass a bill which would essentially disregard the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.  This bill would allow the courts to jail anyone who could be considered a terrorist or associated with a terrorist. The qualifications for "terrorist" include things from people who are missing fingers to anyone who has more that 7 days worth of food in their pantries. These are arbitrary and dangerous qualifications to base terrorist activities on and since its in the name of "keeping America safe" there has been little outrage over the fact that aside from the disregard of civil liberties, we are turning our backs on our Constitution, a document whose main objective was to protect the rights of our citizens, not to vilify them. 

I, however, am outraged and cannot believe we as Americans are refusing to learn from our past to recognize this dangerous path down which we are headed. A little over a half century ago senator Joseph McCarthy allowed the same fear mongering to go on in the name of catching communists. He accused anyone of anti-American activities and of being a communist, no matter how peripheral their connection was.  Ultimately, he was proven to have caused more harm than good for this country and history has not been kind to him. 

However, it's important to note that during his time, the time the country was in a large part behind him because they feared their freedoms to be at risk, despite the lives that would be ruined forever.  This was a dark spot on our modern history and one which should never be repeated.  The movie Good Night and Good Luck forewarned us of the potential of such unfortunate events repeating themselves and yet no one seems to have heeded the warning.

With all that is being said and done in the name of "protecting religion and our freedom" basic rights are being violated with little to no outcry over the utter irresponsibility of these actions.  The ideal of separation between church and state seems to be evolving more and more into "state dependent on church."  Enough trouble has been caused in this world based on religious extremism and the last thing we should be doing is following that model, albeit in a different manifestation.  We should be aware enough to learn from our national mistakes lest we fall prey to them again and allow history to unabashedly repeat itself.

Dark Shadows Insight

With the upcoming Dark Shadows movie now in production I thought I'd post this video clip of my grandfather, JJ Lupatkin, talking about his experiences working on the show.  He was the technical director of the original Dark Shadows TV show which ran on ABC from 1966-1971.  In addition to DS, over the course of his career he worked for at NBC in Studio 8H for the famed Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra, ABC's Wild World of Sports, All My Children and Live! With Regis and Kathy Lee.  My grandfather is the most modest person I know, and has never thought his contribution to television was important or significant to evolution of the medium.  As an engineer by trade, he mostly enjoyed his work as it was an opportunity to be challenged technically, never once caring for celebritydom or fame.  As a student of television and film I've tried to impress upon him just the impact he helped make, but he always rolls his eyes and just tells me that it's more important to be a good person.  In this clip you'll see how he approached his career, as he does everything in life, with passion, attention to detail, and pride.  Hopefully this will give you some insight into the roots of what will possibly be one of the blockbusters of 2012.

J. Edgar

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I had high expectations going in to see Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar.  Firstly because in my eyes Leo DiCaprio can do no wrong.  Sorry, I just have to admit to that bias up front.  And while Leo did come through, as this is probably one of his best performances to date, the rest of the film didn’t quite hold up to the expectations I’d set forth for it.  Secondly, given that it's an Eastwood vehicle and has gotten all the awards buzz that accompany movies, especially biopics with big names attached to them, I assumed it would be a masterpiece.

Told as a back and forth between flashbacks as an aging J. Edgar Hoover (DiCaprio) dictates his life story to a revolving door of clerks and agents who have been charged with the task of typing up his tale.  We learn about his early life as a new agent to the department of justice and how he rose in the ranks of the department from young paranoid, arrogant clerk to old, paranoid, arrogant bureau chief.  The audience is supposed to be able to keep track of different timelines, mostly, by relying on the makeup used to age the characters.  This is pretty unfortunate because the makeup was horrific, resulting in most of the characters looking like burn victims rather than old people.  The story ends up being rather convoluted and the narrative structure is more complex that it really needs to be, which is unfortunate because had it been a little more delicately handled it probably could have worked.

The movie goes on a little longer than it probably needed to, but does tell the story of a man central to shaping the America we know today, so it is an important tale to tell.  What was troubling, as is often the case with biopics, is that the lines are blurred between fact and speculation.  It has been largely assumed that Hoover was a homosexual and was in a relationship with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), his right hand man and close confident for decades.  I found it somewhat troubling that for something that's speculative at best, the film does its best to make you believe it was fact. While I recognize that this is commonplace with films that take on historical figures, it seemed overdone in this one.

One overarching theme that struck me as the most significant in this film is the focus it puts on Hoover’s insistence on keeping information.  To him, as he says outright, information is power.  Hoover was famous for his information collection and he would, as the movie makes clear, threaten anyone who he considered to not to be loyal or anti-American with the dissemination of the information.  In this film, and maybe he was, he comes across rather paranoid and over the top.  He even threatens Tolson, the man who has stayed by his side for years, when he accuses him of being less than honest.  Hoover's insistence on both national and personal loyalty was paramount and would not tolerate anything less.

This control of information, and the constant references to it in the film, seem to be a direct commentary on the state of our relationship with personal information in 2011.  Take the subject of another recent biopic, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network.  He too is depicted as a paranoid and arrogant guy who prides himself on the control of information and will take anyone down should they prove to be anything less than up to his standards of loyalty.  However, the main difference with this character is that his goal is to share information.  Speaking on behalf of Facebook recently, his sister announced that anonymity on the internet is no longer available.  Your information and anything you post will be subject to public viewing. They positioned it not as something which should make you upset, but just the next phase in our social evolution; it's our new reality.  Initially people might have been shocked or horrified at this notion, but it hasn't kept people from posting minute detail of their lives online.  Oversharing and publicly putting any thought, picture, or comment on display for anyone with an internet connection.  So then, is Zuckerberg the anti-Hoover as he disseminates information to the masses?  Or is the next generation of Hoover as he too controls information but is simply moderating the sharing of information in this different world?

Additionally, another relationship with modern society seems to have been made clear through the Hoover’s commentary on those who are considered to be anti-American.  In those days the threat was communism, from both abroad and domestic.  From the film, it seems as though Hoover spent his entire career keeping the communist forces at bay to keep America safe.  The idea of protecting America is once again an important social issue nearly a century after Hoover began his work.  These days we have a different enemy, but similarly the threat comes from both from outside our borders and within as well.  Now, however, those doing the accusing seems to be any news outlet who wants to boost its ratings, not a genuine interest in protecting the country.  The important lesson we must learn from this historical repetition is to not be like an opportunist as was Senator Joseph McCarthy (so stated Hoover), but to protect the country in a meaningful way.  What is not helpful is the fever pitch that has become Fox News accusing anyone who doesn’t think like them of being anti-American.

Ultimately this film set out to tell an in depth story of a man who kept secrets.  Not only the secrets of countless Americans, but secrets of his own, and secrets he never wanted coming out.  Even some of the people closest to him, and there were not that many, didn't know the true J. Edgar Hoover.  It seems as though, despite Eastwood's best intentions, while we might get a glimpse into some of his dealings, neither will we.