Year-end Roundup: BLOODY BLODY, TRUE GRIT, Hooked on Netflix; THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON

1onthetown had a theatre companion this month for BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON. We've been talking about seeing this for awhile and when the closing notice was posted she ran out and got us two ducats on the aisle in front of the stage right speakers. The intimate Belasco Theatre Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre houses this rousing Guitar Hero bio of the seventh president. The eponymous lead as played by Benjamin Walker proves he can fill a theatre with his voice even without a mic. The incredibly cluttered stage makes scene changes easy as everything is already up there. I liked a lot of it except for the dotty lady in the wheelchair who narrates the first half of the proceedings.

This show started in L.A. in 2008 and there's a West coast TV sick humor sensibility that may have contributed to this show not catching on, such as jokes stretched paper thin and too long (for example, in the very beginning we suffer through the narrator wordlessly tooling around and around the stage in the electric wheelchair). The other negative is the effeminate depiction of Eastern political figures. Except for the rugged postures of Jackson and Calhoun, figures such as JQ Adams and Martin Van Buren are portrayed as foppish jackasses. I can accept that Andrew Jackson is bringing back sexypants but the other male characters were too Paul Lynde for this context.


TRUE GRIT

What does it take to get me off the couch and into a movie theatre?: a weekday afternoon and the Coen brothers teamed with Jeff Bridges making a movie out of the great Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT. But the real attraction is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as the plucky miss out to avenge her father's murder by an ungrateful coward. I feel like Christopher Plummer giving you "Miss Daisy Clover" but I'm giving a money back guarantee based on her perf. She's real and the true grit of the title, with no phony 21st c. politics informing her acting.

Were the Coen Bros. joking by hiring a lookalike (Barry Pepper) for Robert Duvall to play the same part that Duvall played in the first version of TRUE GRIT? Oh brother!

HOOKED ON NETFLIX

I spent a good deal of week one of vacation watching DARIA on Netflix DVD, streaming Season 2 of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL, and also streaming the cult classic TV show FIREFLY. So sad that we have hundreds of ST: TNG eps and only 14 FIREFLYs but I'm telling myself it's like watching 5 or 6 great movies. I read that 20% of Internet traffic from 8-10 pm is from Netflix streaming and that only 2% of their customers currently stream. When this catches on it may break the Internet. I was running the laptop thru the TV but my new BluRay player makes it a couch potato's dream. How did I miss FIREFLY during its run on FOX in the early 2000s?

THE EMPEROR OF MALADIES by Siddhartha Mukerjee

This book is subtitled "A History of Cancer" and is a good read if you've ever liked a science class or read science for leisure. Stay away if you're looking for humorous anecdotes. The author's vocabulary is excellent and I learned some new words, or at least one of those words that you see but can't ever remember its meaning: febrile.


That's it for 2010. I'm off to the farm, bringing the camera, and will have a full report in the new year.

Merry Christmas from Mel Tormé 3

Cre-a-k-k! The private vault is open again for Mel Tormé. This time it's New Year's Eve, 1987. Like Santa, he comes around every December and leaves all with a great feeling. Enjoy!!

Raw Nerve Touched: The Missed Opportunity of Sweeney Todd

I'm working on a book about Beer and one of the topics is Ale, which elicited a comment from my copy editor, and touched off some deep feelings I have about Sweeney Todd. I wrote about the movie in 2007, and some of those thoughts bubbled to the surface again today.

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From: Jeff 

Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:45 PM
To: Brian
Subject: Ale and Meat Pies

 

You saw the Cariou Sweeney Todd, no?

 

Ever see Cerveris/Lupone or Depp?

****************************************

 From: Brian
To: Jeff
Subject: RE: Ale and Meat Pies

 

Sadly no; no/yes.

 

I saw Dorothy Loudon and George Hearn. I have the Lupone/Hearn/NPH DVD. Hearn filled in for Bryn Terfel, whose chronic bad back made him unavailable. I saw the Lansbury/Hearn on VHS.

 

If you saw the Sondheim birthday tribute on PBS, Hearn has become the Bublé of Sweeneys. I mean that as a compliment. Hearn was/is an amazing artist at any age and killed at the birthday tribute. It was a privilege to see him in his prime.

 

I saw Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury on YouTube sing at a charity event in LA in the 2000s, where Cariou probably gave his last singing performance. Word on the street is that role killed his voice. What a way to go as Dean said.

 

Not crazy about paying four times as much to see ¼ as many performers playing cymbals between their knees while they sing and juggle. It’s the kind of thing that people convince themselves is good.

 

Depp: fantastic actor, craptastic singer. The director’s wife was awful. The gal who played Joanna—awful. Borat as Pirelli—very good. The kid playing the kid—novel idea to have a kid playing a kid. You don’t get a movie made of a musical unless you get Depp/Burton. Then you get a Burton movie, not Sondheim. If I recall the trailer, the music was second to the FX. It’s extortion. I hope to live long enough to see it done right on screen. Dream casting would have been Bryn Terfel and Bette Midler. We can only hope some 10-year-old is doing the grade school version and is vowing to do it right when he or she is all growed up.

 

Dorothy Loudon was one of those very talented people you’d see on TV in the 1960s, when you could turn on a talk/variety show after school and see Count Basie rap with Mike Douglas or Robert Q. Lewis. It was the golden age of free TV.

 

Richard Pryor's Birthday Today

Richard would have been 70 today. I've never laughed as hard at anyone until the meteor that was Chappelle. Thanks again. You were the one-man Beatles of comedy.