Soon It's Gonna Reign

There’s really not much to say about The Tudors except that it doesn’t differ all that much from that other Showtime series, Queer as Folk. Only this time, the queens are real women.

Just like QAF, this new saga is short on intelligence but big on bed-hopping, handsome men, and a numbskull narrative that offers us Merrie Olde England by way of Aaron Spelling. In short, it’s irresistible. All that’s missing is Sharon Gless whipping up some bangers and mash.

Henry, his six wives, and the big break with Rome has inspired so many movies, plays, miniseries and even one big Broadway floperoo that we get a queasy sense of deja-vu just minutes into the first installment. But then Jonathan Rhys Meyers arrives on the scene. He looks about as much like Holbein’s Henry as Charles Laughton favors Elvis, but he immediately gives us what he does best. He smolders. He broods. He pouts. Then he gets naked and the games begin. His isn’t the only flesh that’s flashed, by the way. Lusty lords are leaping and many a maid is mating in nooks and crannies hither and yon.

Which is probably a good thing since the show doesn’t offer anything new in its consideration of history or the Who’s Who of familiar faces. Sam Neill gives us yet another Cheneyish Cardinal Wolsey, while poor Jeremy Northam hasn’t much to do as yet another nobly pious Thomas More (but then again, the man was a saint for all seasons, there’s really not much more you can do with him). Natalie Dormer plays Anne Boleyn as, what else?, a tarty sexpot while Maria Doyle Kennedy gives us one more tragic and put-upon Queen Katherine. Only Steven Waddington, as Buckingham, provides anything close to a performance but history being what it is, don’t get too attached. Remember that several unlucky players lose their heads in this oft-told tale.

The show looks great and exudes self-important pomp. And although it fades quickly when compared to the dearly departed Rome, it at least gives us something to look forward to on Sunday nights. . Not since The Private Life of Henry VIII or Carry On Henry (with its working title Anne of a Thousand Lays) has royal watching been so much fun.

Hail, Caesar! But beware the Ides of March...

So yesterday I was having coffee with my friend Roberto when our conversation turned to Julius Caesar. He’ll be directing a production of the Bard’s classic later this summer, and we were sharing our enthusiasm for the Joseph Mankiewicz movie version from ‘53, in particular Brando and James Mason, as Antony and Brutus, respectively. He also indulged my babbling on about HBO’s Rome and how there were only two episodes left, what I am going to do, etc. Anyway, we failed to realize we were having this chat on the very eve of the Ides of March. Fancy that.

In fact, I didn’t even think about today being that fateful date until I read the latest posting over at The Phantom Professor. This has little to do with Caesar being carved into cutlets, but it’s still one of the funniest things you will read all week. The Phantom Prof is actually a much-beloved college buddy. I was a wide-eyed freshman when, as a world-weary senior, she took me under her wing. She was like Dorothy Parker, Hedda Hopper and Eve Arden all rolled into one. Still is. For a sampling of her quick wit, read the post, "Beware the Hides of Zarch." Like me, you will probably laugh out loud.

Back to Caesar, just for a minute. If you haven’t seen the Mankiewicz film, be sure to do so. I’ve seen it several times and it never gets old. It’s much better than Stuart Burge’s 1970 version which, to be fair, at least offers, among its few pleasures, Gielgud in the title role (he was a great Cassius in ’53) and Diana Rigg, still looking like Mrs. Peel, popping in as Portia.

And as long as we’re thinking about old Julius, let’s offer a tip of the toga to Rex Harrison’s Oscar-nominated Caesar in Cleopatra, Ciaian Hinds in Rome, John Gavin in Spartacus, as well as Warren William and Claude Rains who played opposite the Egyptian queens of Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh.

And finally, this is a stretch, but a closing “Hail!” to the late Richard Kiley who, in one of his least successful Broadway romps, played Caesar to Leslie Uggams’ Cleopatra in that fabulous, fabled flop from 1968, Her First Roman. Kiley had just left his Tony-award winning smasheroo, Man of La Mancha for this misbegotten adaptation of Shaw’s play. You have to love a show that opens with the chorus boys, as Roman soldiers, belting out that memorable ditty, “What Are We Doing in Egypt?” It closed after 17 performances and lost more than half a million dollars.

Tonight We Dine in Hell!!

Why am I not surprised? I mean, it was probably bound to happen: the loincloth worn by Gerard Butler in 300 is now up for grabs on eBay. If you don’t believe me, check it out.

When you stop to think about it, this makes perfectly good sense. Ever since 300 launched its brilliant marketing campaign several months ago, we have been bombarded with a PECtacular promise of man meat. Butler, as King Leonidas, has been featured prominently, perhaps giving new meaning to “coming attraction.” The movie does not disappoint. It celebrates heroism and sacrifice. But no more than that, it also honors beefcake and brawn. For all its well-intentioned prattle about valor and machismo, it is also the gayest movie since Auntie Mame. Pumped up and edging its audience towards an orgiastic bloodbath, 300 pulls on everything from Steve Reeves movies to Tom of Finland cartoons with such confidence and authority that it is impossible not to surrender to this mind-numbing, jaw-dropping extravaganza.

In his very funny review for the New York Times, critic A.O. Scott wrote, “300 is about as violent as Apocalypto and twice as stupid.”

To a certain extent, Scott is right. The movie may very well be a simple-minded sword and sandal saga, gleefully choking on its own guts and gore. But as far as Cro-Magnon entertainments are concerned, this one is hard to beat. Director Zack Snyder, adapting Frank Miller’s graphic novel, has brought forth something very new and rather strange: it’s part amusement park and part video game disguised as a movie. And it works. Brilliantly.

It covers familiar territory, already drawn out on the screen in The 300 Spartans (1962): Sparta’s King Leonidas (Butler) leads his army of a mere 300 soldiers against Persia’s King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro, late of TV’s Lost) and his bazillion troops at the Battle of Thermopylae. But Snyder’s movie is much less a history lesson than a brutal, nihilistic, musclebound glorification of cinema’s future shock, where things like acting and design are replaced by blue screens and the marvels of technology. Sin City (also based on a Miller work) and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow have already hinted at the possibilities of computer-generated movies. 300 claims that movies like these are here to stay. Design-wise, it’s a winner. It’s pretty to look at it, in a blood-drenched kind of fashion, with excellent editing and a lovely score. Be on the lookout for a sequence involving the sinking of Persian ships. Wow.

Much has been written this week about the film's boffo box-office ($70 million in less thn than a week) and how fansites and comic book enthusiasts have assured its popularity. That’s fine. But what may be a tad worrisome is that the things that many of us hold dear, like craft for starters, is replaced here by spellbinding gadgetry. The story doesn’t simply unfold. It is catapulted off the screen right into our laps and, in case we are newcomers to nuance, there’s a narrator on hand to make sure we understand exactly what we are supposed to know. The acting, if you can call it that, is even less subtle. The entire cast preens and struts, flexes and poses. For all his swaggering and breast beating, Butler doesn’t act as much as be barks and bellows. But boy, does he pack that loin cloth. (He also sounds just like Sean Connery every time he brays “Shhhhpartaaaah!”)

The rest of the cast members are about as wooden as the Bill Baird marionettes performing “The Lonely Goatherd.” Those cast as the Persians are especially one-dimensional but it’s hard to poo-poo the brave souls writhing around in Xerxes’ orgy, especially when they are credited with characters such as Transsexual Asian #1, Kissing Concubine #2 and Transsexual Arabian #3. Oh, that Xerxes. He was an equal-opportunity libertine, that’s for sure.

And yes, when it is all over and accounted for, it really comes down to the loincloth. Bidding is currently underway. May the best man win.

Fair Weather Friends

Our friends over at Turner Classic Movies are offering a treasure trove of Gene Kelly classics right now. Kelly is their Star of the Month, which means within the span of thirty days you can catch up on a bundle of his movies, not to mention the American Masters documentary as well as Robert Osborne’s visit with a charming Stanley Donen.

For someone like me, a longtime Kelly fan and wide-eyed enthusiast for anything that came out of MGM’s fabled Freed Unit, this retrospective is heavenly.

Last night I settled in for a near six-hour marathon and saw two old favorites and one that I have never seen until now, It’s Always Fair Weather. I know, I know: in some circles this is like saying that I never saw Seven Samurai or The Tree of Wooden Clogs. What can I say? Only that it’s nice to still be discovering a few treats from yesteryear. Lately, I’ll pop in a DVD to watch a favorite scene, listen to new commentary, or watch the extras. Sometimes watching on TV, with Robert Osborne’s dependably masterful and loving introductions, is actually more satisfying.

I don’t know how often I have seen On the Town (which along with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers remains my favorite from the MGM library. That’s right: I even prefer it to Singin’ in the Rain. I prefer An American in Paris, too. Call me crazy. Anyway, as always, On the Town is as brash and buoyant as always. It might just be the happiest movie ever made.

Roaring onto the screen in 1949, and one of the first musicals to actually shoot part of its story on location, the now familiar tale of three sailors (Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin) on 24-hour shore leave in New York City remains thoroughly engaging and even a little poignant. Ann Miller, Betty Garrett, and Vera-Ellen are on hand as the boys’ all-singing, all-dancing love interests. Alice Pearce, the only veteran of the original Broadway cast, is also on hands for additional comic relief. Ann Miller, hot off the set Easter Parade, is my favorite here, especially as she leads the gang through the frenzied “Prehistoric Man” number.

The only disappointment here is the second-rate “second version” of the musical score. The Broadway original (music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green) is brilliant. Rooted in Bernstein’s great work “Fancy Free” for Ballet Theatre, the Broadway version, which opened in 1944, has a modern day urgency that is both jazzy and symphonic. In my mind, it’s an instant classic and one of Broadway’s best mid-century compositions, pointing ahead to Candide and West Side Story. For the movie version, Comden and Green signed on and penned several new lyrics to songs by composer (and associate producer) Roger Edens. The new songs aren’t particularly bad; they just pale in comparison to the originals. Only three of Bernstein’s songs remain, plus some ballet music. (Ironically, Edens and Lennie Hayton won the movie’s only Oscar, for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.)

Cover Girl (1944) finds Kelly freelancing over at Columbia in between Thousands Cheer and Anchors Aweigh at MGM. Directed by Charles Vidor, this was probably Columbia’s most successful musical until Funny Girl and Oliver! came along forty odd years later. The studio was never a real contender when it came to big screen song-and-dance fantasias, but it did have something to offer in the 1940’s that MGM and Paramount could not: Rita Hayworth. All these years later, it is still so easy to see what all the fuss was about. She was the ultimate movie star and, in my book, the most beautiful and enchanting creation of Hollywood’s dream machine.

The story follows Rusty Warren (Hayworth) from her hoofing at a Brooklyn nightclub with boyfriend Kelly and sidekick Phil Silvers to fast fame as a fashion model and, naturally, Broadway star. Romance troubles quickly develop, but with a happy ending guaranteed. Cover Girl, even with its creaky, farfetched plot and a couple of over-the-top musical numbers destined for camp classic status, remains a real pleasure thanks to Hayworth’s performance (and, boy, can she dance). Her Rusty Parker has been one of my favorite screen characters for as long as I can remember.

Kelly, although like everyone else, politely eclipsed by the leading lady, has some sparkling sequences. His most memorable moment is “The Alter Ego Dance” in which he dances with, well, his alter ego (just see it, don’t make me explain); it’s a clever number conceived with his cohort-in-choreography and future co-director Stanley Donen. Eve Arden is also on hand to play, who else?, Eve Arden. She’s marvelous. Phil Silvers, on the other hand, is not. I never cared much for his on-camera mugging. It was as if he never understood he was playing to a camera lens and not standing room only at the Winter Garden. There’s a wonderful Jerome Kern – Ira Gershwin score that includes one of my top-ten desert island standards, “Long Ago and Far Away.” (which was Oscar nom’d for Best Song but lost out to “Swingin’ on a Star” from that year’s Academy champ, Going My Way).

By the way, there was only one film in Hayworth’s career separating Cover Girl from her even bigger, some would say iconic, Gilda. That movie was Tonight and Every Night. Dismissed by most critics and fans, it does have songs by Jules Styne and Sammy Cahn, as well as Janet Blair and Marc Platt in supporting roles. Platt was a member of the Ballets Russes (and was one of the Pontipee brothers in Seven Brides...). Anyone who saw terrific documentary on the Ballet Russes last year will remember Platt from that. Tonight and Every Night was his movie debut. And I’ve never seen it. Until now. Happily, TCM has it on the roster for later this week.

Finally, It’s Always Fair Weather is a real treat. Watching it, you know that MGM’s musical heyday is about to come to its crashing demise. This is 1955. Big-budget Brigadoon has opened by this point and was not a hit. Les Girls, Silk Stockings and The Opposite Sex would follow (and stumble) with only Gigi left to make any real money (and gobble up the Oscars for 1958).

There’s a bitterness that hangs over this movie like a shroud.

It was first conceived as a sequel to On the Town, but that was scrapped when Sinatra and Munshin were not available. So the three happy-go-lucky Navy buddies are now three happy-go-lucky Army buddies: Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd. Home from World War II, they toast to a lifelong friendship and vow to reunite ten years later. They do, but they’re not particularly happy and realize they have nothing left in common except a shared disillusionment. Dreams have faded, self-loathing is creeping in to stay, and the man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit cynicism of the Eisenhower years is everywhere. This is one of the darkest screenplays (by Oscar nominated Comden and Green) to ever try and dovetail with an MGM musical. It doesn’t always work but the resulting grumpiness is fascinating. The movie is obsessive in its critique of advertising and television. Given that TV was, at this time, Tinsel Town’s newly feared and hated adversary, the lampoon is pretty timely.
One question you have to ask: for whom was this Best Years of Our Lives Meets On the Town intended? Kelly and Cyd Charisse are reunited again but they never dance together (a duet was filmed, but cut, as was a lengthy solo number for Michael Kidd). There's no romance and no real laugh-out loud moments except for a couple of set pieces with Dolores Gray (see below). Other moves of the era like On the Waterfront and Marty could get away with being gloomy. They didn't have Cyd Charisse.

Among the brighter moments are Kelly’s great “I Like Myself,” in which he roller skates around town on one of the biggest sets since DW Griffith gave us Babylon in Intolerance. It’s a knock-out number and especially refreshing for those of us who have seen the puddle-jumping gaiety of Singin’ in the Rain one too many times. The whole movie looks great and showcases the wonders of wide screen nicely, escpecially in a big number featuring Charisse and a motley group of boxers.

The true highlight of this film for me, however, is a bizarre and vastly entertaining performance by Dolores Gray as Madeline Bradville, a musical Madwoman of Madison Avenue. The star of a TV show that is part variety hour and part “Queen for a Day,” Gray gives us a creation suggesting the lovechild of Audrey Meadows and Charles Nelson Reilly. On her broadcast, when not shilling for the big sponsor, she delivers a showstopper called “Thanks a lot, but no thanks” in which slithers and careens around the stage, knocking off a whole battalion of chorus boys.

Gray had just arrived from Broadway (with a Tony for Carnival in Flanders) and by way of London (where she starred for three years in the West End’s smash hit Annie Get Your Gun). She also had to her credits a less-than-happy outing with Bert Lahr in Two on the Aisle (written by Comden and Green). Maybe singing Annie Oakley to the last row of the balcony for over a thousand performances at London’s Coliseum had made Gray a bit, um, overwhelming for the camera. She’s certainly larger than life here, this close to a drag queen, and very very funny. She would quickly go on to play essentially the same character, just with wardrobe changes, in MGM’s Kismet and The Opposite Sex.

Serious movie critics can point to several scholarly reasons why this is a must-see film. And I’m sure they are right. But for me, it’s Gene Kelly on roller skates and the clowning of the daffy, delightful Dolores Gray.

"Attia of the Julii, I call for justice!!"

They’re dropping like flies on Rome right now. The body count is bigger than Hamlet and I, Claudius combined. Like everyone else, I was prepared for one last showdown between Atia (Polly Walker) and Servilia (the divine Lindsay Duncan) before the latter had to join most of the Season One cast out there in the great beyond. However, nothing prepared me for the spectacular theatricality of her leave-taking this week. Wow.

I have complained lately about this sophomore (and final) season. Comparing it to last year, it’s been too hysterical, too lurid (and in last Sunday’s heaving, grunting tryst between Pullo and Gaia, something like a an ancient twist on Russ Meyer). Anyway, throughout the recent travails wherein domestic troubles have exceeded historical truth, I have still enjoyed this spectacular romp which has combined the tastes and expectations of both Alistair Cooke and Bob Guccione. Any sequence involving Duncan has been a stand-out. And her descent into madness (and who can blame her?) singles her out as the only character for whom we really feel any compassion. Obviously Rome’s creative team felt likewise as her send-off was most memorable. She and Suzanne Bertish (as the devoted Eleni) bit the proverbial dust like a sword-and-sandal version of Thelma and Louise.

Antony (James Purefoy) put it best: “Now that is an exit.”

On other fronts, poor Octavia: let’s not forget she and Servilia enjoyed a December-May Sapphic canoodling. So witnessing her former lover’s suicide just before being married off to her mother’s lover, well, she just didn’t have a very good week.

Everything is Connected

For some reason, I never got around to seeing Syriana last year. I finally corrected that oversight last night and am very glad that I did. As political potboilers go, this one is wound pretty tight, and it reminds me of Oliver Stone’s JFK with those mounting feelings of unease and dread that maintain a stranglehold til the final fade-out.

Looking back, I’m surprised it was not in the running for more awards at Oscar time, especially Original Score and Editing; but then again those categories were already crowded with strong contenders. Clooney, although quite good, doesn’t really merit his accolades for this one (I’d give him gold for Out of Sight or Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? before Syriana). If I’m not mistaken, this was Stephen Gaghan’s first time out as director; for a freshman feature it is remarkably assured, well-paced, and balances its large cast and multiple storylines quite masterfully.

Not a great movie. But a very good one (and thank God for closed-captioning which made possible an easy appreciation of the topsy-turvy plot). Matt Damon and Alexander Siddig are stand-outs. Ditto, as always, Chris Cooper. And Captain Von Trapp smacks his chops with villainous glee.

All the other banal bogies

A year or so ago, there was a bit of a hubbub about the long-awaited DVD release of Arthur Hiller’s The Americanization of Emily. Someone, somewhere – and I wish I could remember who – wrote a great piece proclaiming it one of those overlooked great movies deserving of rediscovery. It’s been on my must-see list ever since. I finally caught up with it last night. And I watched it twice.

It’s astonishing. A sinister, darkly hilarious satire, I’m not quite sure how it even got made when it did (1964), nor how Bosley Crowther’s nice review failed to consider the scalding satire sure to offend anyone with patriotic tendencies. Paddy Chayefsky, in his blistering adaptation of William Buie Howard’s novel, delivers a screenplay every bit as audacious –and as entertaining – as his Network.

In his charming commentary to DVD edition, Hill says that the movie is “not anti war, not anti American, but anti the glorification of war.” In these dark days of a new century, the movie packs more of a wallop than ever before.

On the eve of D-Day in a dreary, rain-sopped London, American Navy officer Charlie Madison (James Garner, never better) meets up with war widow and motor pool driver Emily Barham (Julie Andrews, also in her best performance). Having lost a brother in the war and experience firsthand the horrors of battle, Charlie is now an unrepentant coward, enjoying the relative safety of his work as personal assistant to Navy Admiral Jessup (the great Melvyn Douglas fresh off the set from HUD). He’s a “dog robber,” or procurement officer who keeps the brass happy with good booze and easy broads, and a warehouse supply of rationed and contraband steaks, fruit, and other delicacies.

Emily doesn’t approve. He calls her a prig. She seduces him. They fall in love. And both being strong-willed, their bumpy road to romance is punctuated with the kind of gleefully delivered dialogue and debate rarely heard in movies anymore.

Emily:
I despise cowardice, I detest selfish people and I loathe ruthlessness. Since you are cowardly, selfish and ruthless, I cannot help but despise, detest and loathe you. And that is not the way a woman should feel about the man she’s going to marry.

There is great chemistry here and I would wager that one of the reasons the film was never a huge success has nothing to do with its themes but rather with Andrews’ marvelous performance as a smart and sensuous woman who contradicted everything that Mary Poppins (and soon Maria and Millie) stood for. Fans must have stayed away in droves.

Soon, Charlie pays a visit to Emily’s house, to meet her mother, and he arrives bearing gifts (Hershey bars, of course)

Emily:

Well, that’s very American of you, Charlie. You just had to bring along some small token of opulence. Well, I don’t want them. You Yanks can’t even show affection without buying something.
Charlie:

Well don’t get into a state over it. I thought you liked chocolates.
Emily:

I do, but my country’s at war and we’re doing without chocolates for a while. And I don’t want oranges or eggs or soap flakes, either. Don’t show me how profitable it will be to fall in love with you, Charlie. Don’t Americanize me.

Charlie then meets mum (a brilliant turn by Joyce Grenfell), who has lost a husband, son, and son-in-law to the war. She’s charming and a bit loony, still in denial over whom and what she has lost. As she pours tea, they share a polite and utterly ruthless exchange that cuts to the chase of what Emily is all about.

Charlie:
We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Mrs. Barham:
You’re very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

Charlie:
No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

Soon, of course, Charlie finds himself in harm’s way. Big time. And I’m not going to offer a spoiler here. You’ll just have to see it for yourself. Let’s just say the final act provides James Coburn, as Charlie’s gung-ho playboy buddy Lt Commander Bus Cummings, some dastardly funny scenery chewing. He and Garner have an easy rapport here (they had just done The Great Escape the year before). There’s also pitch-perfect cameo by Keenan Wynn as a drunken sailor. Look briefly, too, for that soon-to-be Sock It To Me gal, Judy Carne, as one of Bus’s bedmates.

Like Network, the characters here know what they want and how they want to say it; people never talk like this in real life but Chayefsky’s script makes you wish that we did.
Hiller, coming on after original director William Wyler (and original leading man William Holden) exited the project, makes a confident leap to the big screen following several years in television. This was an early feature, following the sex romp The Wheeler Dealers the year before (also with Garner). It’s a shame that, with the exception of Chayefsky’s The Hospital ten years later, he never really had another great movie to his credit. Some good stuff (like the original Out of Towners but nothing on the level of Emily. And, no, I don’t consider Love Story (his only Oscar nomination, and his only Golden Globe win) worth celebrating.

Shot in crisp, beautiful black-and-white by Philip Lathrop (who balanced crap like Don’t Make Waves and Girl Happy with his grand, gritty Point Blank and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?), there’s not a moment of waste here. Every scene is worth savoring.

There is, alas, one sticky wicket that cannot be dismissed, and that’s the fact that Emily vigorously asserts its thesis upon a war that was, to a large extent, necessary. However, even World War II had its share of fools, exploitation and crackpot schemers (as Flags of Our Fathers recently reminded us). Whether you agree with its politics or not, there is plenty to admire about this movie, beginning and ending with one of the best screenplays not nominated for an Oscar. Go to Netflix and put it in your queue. Now.