Cabaret-Hot Take

-




 Cabaret (1972 US) Liza Minelli stars as a cabaret performer in 1931 Germany and gets involved in a very interesting love triangle with two guys as Hitler rises. Based on the Broadway musical show and books. Wow! there was so much stuff in this to offend a certain subset of the population, at least in the US. I'm just not sure it would get made today without the outrage machine losing their minds. I would totally go watch it but certainly side eye some dude with a big jacket. Yeah its that nuts here. Anyway, this iconic film was breakout roles for Liza and co star Michael York. This apparently was Liza's first opportunity to sing in a film. She really sounds like her Mama. But what a lot of people don't talk about is her dancing skills. Leslie Caron of An American in Paris got in trouble with the Hays people over a sexy chair dance. She later was aghast and said, "that's ridiculous! What can you do with a chair?" Well Liza showed us what you can do with a chair. Thank god Hays code was toast at the time. It was glorious. Liza can dance too. Liza asked her Dad for advice about the character and he told her to "Study everything you can on famous flapper Louise Brooks". So Sally is based on Brooks. She won Best Actress for that. In total the film won 8 Oscars. It did lose Best Picture to The Godfather that year. However, director Bob Fosse won Best Director over Frances Ford Coppolla. Go watch it and p*** off your intolerant Uncle. Recommend it to your adult niece and watch as your relatives collapse in a puddle of tears. Find it on HBO and Hulu and for rent on most streaming.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bound- Noir Hot Take

-
Image
  Bound (1996 US) Todays second entry for #FemaleFilmmakerFriday is this Wachowski sisters neo-noir masterpiece. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon concoct a scheme to steal money from Tilly's mob boyfriend. Tilly rocks as the femme fatale. It just felt like she was loving this role. Gershon plays the sap and she knocks it out if the park. It’s really hard to shoot noir style in color. The Wachowskis pulled it off with muted color production design and black to get the proper contrast and shadow. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of having bright colors and crushed blacks to get the contrast. Happy colors don't scream noir. It screams Teletubbies. Wikipedia says the budget was 6 million but I heard 3. Why is that important? Lower budgets are really going to cut down on so many things including locations. There was limited locations in this. Either way audiences liked it and it made money at the Box Office. It’s on Tubi and Pluto for free and rentable on other streaming pl
Read more

Shrek-Hot Take

-
Image
 Shrek (2001 US) Its #FemaleFimmakerFriday and today's entry is this now classic animated kids film directed by Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson. An Ogre sets upon rescuing the princess from a tower guarded by a dragon. If you are interested in going to see Dungeons and Dragons you will find there is a similarity to Shrek with D&D being just a bit more mature and live action. Jenson was not the first choice of director in charge of story. Kelly Asbury was first choice but departed to work on another film. Jenson and Adamson had their work cut out for them as a lot was going wrong including their star Chris Farley had passed away. Jenson was in charge of story and she was tasked with finding the right tone and story for the film. She did great and the film won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. You can clearly see her influence on the film: for instance the princess does not really need rescuing. When I first saw that I was like, "wow! I didn't know they could do that?&
Read more

Brick-Noir Hot Take

-
Image
  Brick (2005) This Neo-noir stars Joseph Gordon Levitt and was written and directed by then first time feature filmmaker Rian Johnson (Star Wars, Knives Out) and had a whopping budget of 450k (I have also heard 800k). This film was basically a Chandler story... in high school and Levitt was Marlowe. If you think that sounds weird. Well it is kind of but Johnson and Levitt made it work. Getting traditionally noir shots is hard and audiences and fans know their stuff. What I loved about this gem is that Johnson adds to the vocabulary of noir or neo-noir. How? New ways to get high contrast, deep shadow and the incongruent lines of German Expressionism. Johnson did his absolute best to get those lovely noir shots and he did quite often and with a budget of 450k. That's really hard. Johnson is one of my favorite directors. He just keeps surprising me. Like many low budget films this was all about natural light and locations. worth a watch. Rentable on most streaming.
Read more