#Tinseltown Takedown
Text
GREAT MOMENTS IN ACTING
GREAT MOMENTS IN ACTING
MICKEY ROURKE THE PLEDGE
In an alternate universe, MICKEY ROURKE is in every movie and it’s glorious!
Mickey Rourke knows how to make an impression
When he was a struggling nobody in 1970’s New York, Rourke was accepted into the esteemed Actor’s Studio on his first audition. Studio co-founder Elia Kazan called it “the best audition in thirty years.”
In 1981, after bit parts in two movies…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
There’s no question that You Are What You Is is Zappa’s best album of the ‘80s. On the overall list of best Zappa albums it probably doesn’t even crack the top ten, but that’s the ‘80s for you. This is a worthy successor to Sheik Yerbouti, with the same virtues and the same faults.
Musically, it’s pretty dynamite, Frank’s bombastic rock style in its purest form. After his debut on some songs on Tinseltown, Steve Vai is in full effect here. The teenage Vai first contacted Zappa with a transcription of The Black Page, and Zappa was impressed enough to commission him to transcribe a bunch of his guitar solos. Then he invited him to audition for the band—there’s a great Youtube video where Vai talks about his Zappa audition, highly recommended. He’s credited with “impossible guitar parts,” which is true. This begins a double-lead guitar trend in Zappa’s bands—he has a stunt guitarist (another name he later used for Vai) to do tight, musical solos, and does the long, meandering, often dissonant ones himself. (Don’t read that as an insult—I prefer Frank’s style 😂) But though the band is tight and the songs often good, the whole thing is massively overproduced. Zappa is now recording in a home studio instead of paying for studio time, so now there’s nothing stopping him from working his songs to death. To hear what I mean, compare the original I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted single from 1979 to its appearance here two years later as Drafted Again. What was a tight, fun song becomes an unlistenable mess as FZ throws everything including the kitchen sink into the mix.
Side 1 starts with a bunch of 200 Motels references teasing the return of the one and only Jimmy Carl Black. He guest stars to sing Harder Than Your Husband, a mock country song with a punchline that actually hits: “I’m gonna be harder than your husband… to get along with.” Immediately afterward is Doreen, which is a straightforward doo wop song that has been updated to an ‘80s hard rock sound with great results. Sides 2 & 3 are, I think, some of the strongest song cycles of his whole career. I could do without the title track, but all the rest is incredible, especially his first (and far from last) takedown of televangelists—The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing to Dumb All Over to (extending to side 4) Heavenly Bank Account.
But the rest of side 4 is SO bad. Suicide Chump and Jumbo Go Away are “jokes” with no humor to them other than pure mean spiritedness, I cannot stand them, and I’ve already talked about how much I don’t like Drafted Again. I usually take this record off after D1 and pretend the rest doesn’t exist.
I could edit this record to a single disc that would stand toe to toe with the best of Zappa’s discography. But as it is, it’s deeply flawed with long stretches of brilliance… in short, it’s a Frank Zappa album.
0 notes
Text
Chvrches - Screen Violence
Fourth album from the Glasgow synthpop trio includes a contribution from The Cure's Robert Smith
9/13
Lockdown reduced the lives of many people into a series of screens as the world was miniaturised into laptops, televisions, and video calls. The sense of alienation this created became the starting point for Chvrches’ fourth album.
Reviving the Glasgow trio’s original name, Screen Violence explores the consequences of family becoming little more than a reality show and trauma being viewed through the lens of a horror film. The theme is at its most direct on “Final Girl,” on which frontwoman Lauren Mayberry wonders whether, “In the final scene/ There’s a final girl/ Does she look like me?”
The band’s survival instinct strongly implies that she would make the final cut. Having taken their ’80s nostalgia and indie electronica into the mainstream, there’s a danger of them becoming too comfortable in a synth-pop groove. Yet while there are times they repeat themselves across these 10 tracks, there’s also just enough change to keep them sounding exciting.
A key shift is that they’ve resumed full production control, after working with Greg Kurstin for third album Love Is Dead. The move was at least partly dictated by logistics as members found themselves in different continents during the pandemic: Mayberry and Martin Doherty in Los Angeles and Iain Cook in Glasgow. Recorded and mixed via video calls and audio sharing programs, it has a human quality that counters their ruminations on the digital age.
The sound of the album is also far removed from early concepts of a bedroom recording, being monstrously huge and upfront. Its neon brightness is signalled right from the start, with the glitchy synths on opening track “Asking for a Friend” building towards an ecstatic drop. Its strident melody and anthemic quality is elsewhere used as a Trojan horse for Mayberry’s outspoken feminism.
The gothic, twinkly melody on “He Said, She Said” is married to lyrics that highlight gaslighting within an abusive relationship (“He said you need to be fed/ But keep an eye on your waistline/ And look good but don’t be obsessed”) while the fizzy pop of “Good Girls” is a passionate takedown of Mayberry’s critics (“They tell me I’m hellbent on revenge/ I cut my teeth on weaker men/ I won’t apologise again”).
Further highlights include “Final Girl,” which has a jangly guitar line that’s straight out of Johnny’s Marr’s songbook, and “Violent Delights,” which marries a breakbeat to New Order’s bittersweet early sound. If Doherty’s whispery vocal line is drowned out by Mayberry’s powerhouse delivery on the latter then she finds a better match on “How Not to Drown,” which features their musical hero Robert Smith. A dark, piano-driven track, it appropriately enough fades out with the shimmery atmospherics of The Cure.
There’s another nod to their musical forebears on closing number “Better if You Don’t,” which opens with Mayberry singing over a simple guitar line before the beats are introduced. Less polished than the other tracks, she pertly observes, “Tinseltown was always in the rain,” in response to fellow Glaswegian’s The Blue Nile and their 1984 hit “Tinseltown in the Rain.”
Their ability to weave such lyrical and musical references into a hook heavy, forward-looking tapestry helps them to appeal across the generations. Mayberry’s attitude and outspokenness also distinguishes them from many anonymous acts working in a similar field. This means that while they may no longer sound as cutting edge as they did on their 2013 debut, they’re certainly not going gently into the dark of their mid-career.
youtube
https://spectrumculture.com/2021/09/02/chvrches-screen-violence-review/
0 notes
Text
Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again
http://fashion-trendin.com/chers-fabulous-journey-from-camp-diva-to-serious-actress-and-back-again/
Cher's Fabulous Journey From Camp Diva To Serious Actress And Back Again
Of all the pop stars who have attempted to act, Cher’s track record is arguably the best. “Silkwood.” “Mask.” “The Witches of Eastwick.” “Moonstruck.” “Mermaids.” “If These Walls Could Talk.”
As her post-Sonny & Cher solo career waxed and waned in the ’80s and early ’90s, Cher’s movie career flourished ― a true achievement, given the ostentatious displays that had made her a walking glitter bomb since the mid-’60s. Shedding her eccentricities in a way that many pop stars cannot, Cher was able to transform onscreen time and again, so much so that she won an Oscar after uttering one of the most quotable lines in cinema history.
But when Cher out-glittered herself in 1998 with her mammoth “Believe” comeback, her acting career atrophied. At 52, her diva status had become mythological, even a bit comical. She was too decadent to disappear into the same down-home movie roles, and Hollywood no longer saw her as a profitable actress. Cher played along with the joke, though, portraying exaggerated versions of herself (see: “The Player,” “Will & Grace,” “Stuck on You”) even when she wasn’t actually playing herself (see: “Burlesque”).
That tradition continues today. Cher is the grande dame of the new “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” making a flamboyant eleventh-hour entrance that only someone of her renown could pull off. (She plays Ruby, a famous singer who has a thorny relationship with her daughter Donna, portrayed by Meryl Streep.)
But as we relish Cher’s septuagenarian divadom, it’s easy to forget how we got here. We got here because Cher commanded maximum respect at a critical time in her career, challenging anyone who assumed her pop panache would prevent her from becoming a great actress capable of playing everyday women experiencing everyday struggles.
So let’s revisit just how Cher became the greatest pop-actor of them all, and why she maintains that superlative even if she’s graduated from Hollywood’s leading-lady graces.
Getty/Alamy
The Beginning
“Chastity” (1969)
To trace Cher’s acting ambitions, we have to go back to 1967, when Sonny & Cher’s musical comedy “Good Times” flopped. Wanting to prove the “I Got You Babe” duo could cut it in the film world, Sonny Bono wrote her first solo lead: the title role in “Chastity,” an 83-minute oddity about a free-spirited drifter who talks to herself in public and manipulates men’s weaknesses to get ahead.
This was Sonny & Cher’s bid to appeal to young counterculture audiences who had deemed the duo square after Bono bemoaned the era’s sex and drugs. “Chastity,” released in June 1969, tried to be a gritty derivative of the French New Wave, packing big ideas ― Bono apparently said it was about society’s sudden “lack of manhood” and “the independence women have acquired but don’t necessarily want” ― into a whiplash-inducing downer involving a lesbian romance and childhood molestation.
It was another flop — an especially embarrassing one for Cher, because she alone was the face of the project. But bad movies can be testaments to good actors’ skills. Cher is at ease in front of the camera, never letting her fame announce itself before she opens her mouth. The same qualities accenting all her best film work — a scrappy confidence that reads as a proverbial middle finger to anyone who crosses her — become the highlight of “Chastity.”
Too bad the experience drew her away from movies for 13 years, during which Cher released 11 solo albums and divorced the controlling Bono, finally escaping the Sonny & Cher brand.
“Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (1982)
In 1981, with her music career sputtering and her split from Bono six years in the rearview mirror, Cher trekked to New York to study acting with renowned teacher Lee Strasberg. Robert Altman, the celebrated director best known for “M*A*S*H” and “Nashville,” was casting the Broadway debut of Ed Graczyk’s play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” Altman gave Cher the part of Sissy, a wisecracking libertine employed at a diner in small-town Texas.
When Altman rehired the Broadway cast for his big-screen adaptation of “Jimmy Dean,” Cher’s movie career was reborn. The scope of the film, released in November 1982, mirrors that of the play, with a single set and overly theatrical dialogue. But Cher has one of the meatier roles, nailing a teary monologue about Sissy’s failed marriage that Altman shoots in revealing close-ups. Sissy is a vixen who uses her sultry appeal to mask self-doubt ― something Cher related to after her split from Bono. She crimps Sissy’s smile, revealing an impressive vulnerability as the character laughs through her pain.
“Jimmy Dean” wasn’t a smash, but it provided a vote of confidence at a murky time for Cher, yielding her first Golden Globe nomination.
“Silkwood” (1983)
Cher’s next role was make or break: Can the queen of glamour become the fledgling of frump? For “Silkwood,” she was again working with one of Hollywood’s most gifted directors, Mike Nichols (“The Graduate,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), playing a dowdy lesbian working at a nuclear power plant where employees are exposed to life-threatening levels of radiation.
It remains one of Cher’s best performances, even though she almost didn’t take the job because she was intimidated to act opposite Meryl Streep. (“When we did ‘Silkwood,’ I didn’t even know what a close-up was,” she told The New York Times.) Here, Cher achieved a stripped-down everydayness that defied the anthemic pop-rock for which she was known. Near the movie’s bittersweet end, Cher sits slumped in Streep’s arms, her outstretched legs growing more lax as her tears multiply.
“Silkwood” opened in December 1983, earning Cher’s first Oscar nomination and winning her a Golden Globe. In her acceptance speech at the Globes, she jabbed the “Hollywood moguls” who wouldn’t give her a chance before Altman came calling ― evidence that, no matter the doubts Cher had in accepting “Silkwood,” she knew how to trumpet her own worth.
“Mask” (1985)
If “Silkwood” proved Cher could transcend her “Half Breed” fantasia, “Mask” proved her acting was bankable. Taking a hiatus from music after the 1982 album “I Paralyze” failed to deliver a hit single, she paired up with another great director, Peter Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon”), to portray Rusty Dennis, the real-life mother of a charming teenager (Eric Stoltz) with a cranial deformity.
Her third consecutive film to include a tear-stained breakdown, “Mask” was perfect for Cher. Rusty is a biker groupie with a penchant for drugs but an unwavering dedication to her son, letting Cher convey a contentment that softens the reality of Rusty’s strained life. As she would again in 1990′s “Mermaids,” Cher was playing a single mom who lives by her own rules (e.g., trying to get her son laid by picking up a girl at a bar). The role earned her a third Golden Globe nomination and the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious best-actress prize, but she was snubbed by the Oscars.
No matter: “Mask” stormed the box office, and Cher joined the ranks of Streep and Jane Fonda as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actresses. At the Academy Awards, she donned her infamous midriff-bearing Bob Mackie getup, complete with a cape and a spiky headdress. The look was more punk rock than Tinseltown elegance ― an oversized fuck-you to the fusty Academy and an ebullient reminder that she wouldn’t tidy up her image to appeal to Reagan-era conservatism.
Getty/Alamy
The Gold
“The Witches of Eastwick” (1987)
Coming off of “Mask,” some studio executives were still questioning Cher’s ability to attract audiences who knew her as an outrageous pop doyenne who hadn’t had a hit single in several years. Her credibility was put to the test each time ― and each time, she passed.
In 1987, at the critical age of 41, Cher landed a troika of commercial hits in which she was the centerpiece, starting with the delicious lark “The Witches of Eastwick,” her first comedy since her variety show a decade earlier. Then came the overwrought legal thriller “Suspect,” which required her to pull off boxy suits as a strapped D.C. attorney spouting verbose monologues. And following that was the snappy romance “Moonstruck,” which demanded a thick accent that was Italian by way of Brooklyn. In each, Cher captured a quotidian version of American life ― and what’s more transformative than Cher pretending to be quotidian?
Playing another single mom in “Eastwick” (directed by “Mad Max” maestro George Miller), she held her own against Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson. Cher clearly relished the role. During a tart takedown of Nicholson’s lothario, she trades the maximalist energy that many actresses would bring to the scene for a soft smirk, savoring every word as she calls him “physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish [and] stupid.”
“Suspect” (1987)
For “Suspect” and “Moonstruck,” Cher was the directors’ first choice, netting a salary of more than $1 million apiece ― an impressive figure in the mid-’80s, though notably less than what men like Bruce Willis and Robert Redford commanded.
“Suspect” let Cher check off a requisite movie-star box, as it was all but decreed in the ’80s and ’90s that every serious actor make at least one blandly entertaining legal thriller. Like the best of them, Cher’s was a courtroom drama with an ethically dubious love story nestled into the center. (Young Dennis Quaid was irresistible.) It might be the least Cher-y of any Cher performance ― can you imagine her sporting a no-frills power suit today? ― and yet she is comfortably forceful in the role. Amazingly, the woman whose assless one-piece would soon get her banned by MTV looks cozy amid mounds of paperwork.
“Moonstruck” (1987)
“Suspect” was a modest box-office hit in October, but it was largely forgotten by December, when Cher turned in her career-defining performance in “Moonstruck.” Playing a widowed bookkeeper who falls for her fiancé’s unruly younger brother (Nicolas Cage), Cher cycled through a wider range of emotions than any movie to date had asked of her, lending realism to what is ultimately a Cinderella fairy tale. That she does so with the same physical charisma is a wonder, especially considering she didn’t think Cage was a generous scene partner. (She must have savored that slap.)
“Moonstruck” became the fifth highest-grossing release of 1987 and attracted Cher’s warmest reviews. The following April, she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Wearing another audacious Bob Mackie gown, Cher delivered an earnest speech that was more movie-star sleek than pop-star chic.
“I don’t think this means I am someone, but I guess I’m on my way,” she said in a rare moment of modesty. Every now and then, even Cher plays along.
Getty/Alamy
The Wobble
“Mermaids” (1990)
As if emboldened by the respect her film career had garnered, Cher signed a new record contract with her friend David Geffen’s label. “Cher,” released in 1987 after five years away from music, produced a couple of mild hits (“I Found Someone,” “We All Sleep Alone”) and paved the way for 1990′s “Heart of Stone,” a rock record with enough big-haired power pop (namely “If I Could Turn Back Time”) to place her in the same league as Madonna, Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston.
She’d set up a production company with Tri-Star Pictures and bagged her next film role, “Mermaids,” a 1960s-set dramedy about an image-conscious firebrand raising two very different daughters (Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci). The role perfectly married Cher’s pop image and film image. Her character was progressive about sex in a way that most mildewy mom roles weren’t, but with enough working-class gumption to make her more than a head-in-the-clouds prima donna. Cher, a child of divorce who grew up without much money, nails that paradox.
But “Mermaids” was also a turning point. Having launched a lengthy world tour in summer 1989, Cher was exhausted to the point of illness, and she found herself sparring with director Lasse Hallström (“My Life as a Dog”). Production shut down so Cher could rest, during which time Frank Oz (“Little Shop of Horrors”) replaced Hallström. Cher didn’t get along with Oz any better ― “she emotionally beat the shit out of him,” a source reportedly told Vanity Fair ― and he left the project. (“Look, I’m only difficult if you’re an idiot,” Cher said.) Richard Benjamin (“The Money Pit”) came aboard and steered the movie to completion.
This backstage drama was splashed across the press, cementing the cantankerous reputation that most divas achieve at some point or another. “Mermaids” made OK money ― far less than it should have, since it’s such a delight ― and Cher mused that her acting days were probably numbered, partly because she was well past the age of 40, at which point Hollywood women become biddies.
“The Player” (1992) and “Ready to Wear” (1994)
After the “Mermaids” theatrics, Cher’s agent tried to push her to take more film roles, namely one of the leads in “Thelma & Louise.” But she needed a break. (Cher had also turned down Danny DeVito’s “The War of the Roses.”) Instead, she released the album “Love Hurts” in 1991 ― but it’s biggest single, “Love and Understanding,” stalled at No. 17. She then embarked on another tour and did hair and skin care infomercials that turned her into something of a punch line.
But instead of fading away, she did the Cher-iest thing of all: She played herself, in ultimate diva form, twice. The first time was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire “The Player.” The second was in old friend Robert Altman’s 1994 fashion satire “Ready to Wear.” Both movies saw her walking red carpets as a VIP at industry events.
Waltzing into “The Player,” Cher glides down a gala red carpet as a TV announcer says, “Well, leave it to Cher to wear fire-engine red when the impossible-to-come-by invitations call for black and white only, please.” In playing along with Altman’s joke, she shattered a wall between person and persona. She’d accrued the sort of diva caliber that can feel mythological, the kind that doesn’t have to abide by the industry’s rules — and she wanted us to know it.
During an interview with a TV journalist in “Ready to Wear” who balks at how good she looks, Cher replies, “Well, yeah.” The cameos were brassy ways of asserting the stature she’s accrued after three decades in the business. Also essential: They let Cher poke fun at her own attention-seeking iconoclasm.
For as much as “The Player” verified Cher’s stardom, it did little to vault her back into Hollywood’s top tier. An Entertainment Weekly article from 1993 — written by a young Ryan Murphy — quoted an anonymous Hollywood producer who said casting Cher was now a “risk.” Her bankability had waned. “I’m not sure if I want to continue to be Cher,” she admitted in 1994.
“Faithful” (1996)
But Cher pressed on, attempting to mount “Tabloid,” about an actress and a tabloid editor, with her “Witches of Eastwick” pal Michelle Pfeiffer. She also wanted to remake the 1945 fantasy “The Enchanted Cottage” as a musical (with the encouragement of Francis Ford Coppola), but she lost the rights and the project never came to fruition. (She would continue to discuss it well into the 2010s.)
1995 and early ’96 were especially rough for Cher commercially. Her Southern rock-inflected album “It’s a Man’s World” flopped, as did her first lead role in six years, “Faithful,” which opened April 19, 1996. Cher is, unsurprisingly, the most compelling thing about “Faithful,” portraying a vulnerable housewife whose philandering husband (Ryan O’Neal) hires a hitman (Chazz Palminteri) to murder her. But the script, written by Palminteri, isn’t funny or tense enough. It was the first time her reputation preceded a character: We never believe Cher’s life is in danger, possibly because she’s too famous to be killed off.
“Faithful” earned a piddly $2.1 million, but Cher shrugged off its reception: “It was no loss. At least the reviews said it was nice to see me acting again.”
Cher’s movie career could have perished altogether, as most established pop stars can’t afford to flounder that hard. A bad single comes and goes, but a bad movie has millions of dollars riding on it.
“If These Walls Could Talk” (1996)
Cher has never been a quitter, though. Toward the close of 1996, she returned with a project so intrepid no Hollywood studio would touch it. Demi Moore had spent five years producing “If These Walls Could Talk,” seeking a home for it on a television network willing to back an unapologetically pro-choice triptych about women ― one in 1952 (Moore), one in 1974 (Sissy Spacek) and one in 1996 (Anne Heche) ― seeking abortions. That home turned out to be HBO.
Nearing 50 and recognizing that meaty roles were growing rare, Cher saw “If These Walls Could Talk” as a chance to advocate for reproductive rights (she’d had two legal abortions, and her mother and grandmother both nearly died from illegal abortions when they were younger). She also seized the opportunity to direct, something she’d talked about doing for years. So she took a small role and helmed the movie’s third segment, playing a self-possessed doctor co-existing with a protest mob outside her Chicago abortion clinic. It was a different role for her — more austere — and Cher pulls off an appropriate blend of fatigue and perseverance.
When “Walls” premiered on Oct. 13, 1996, it became the highest-rated movie in HBO’s 24-year history. Cher earned a supporting-actress nomination at the Golden Globes ― an inadvertent fuck-you pitched at anyone who said her movie pilgrimage had ended.
Getty/Alamy/Universal Pictures
The Redemption
“Tea with Mussolini” (1999)
Cher took a breather in 1997, paving the way for what would become one of the glitziest comebacks in pop history. She was 52 when “Believe” became her first No. 1 single since 1974. Producers had urged her to embrace her gay fanbase via a dance jubilee, and suddenly she was competing with younger artists like Britney Spears, TLC and Mariah Carey. By the end of 1999, it was the year’s most popular song. Her divadom flew off the charts, far more than it had with the caricature of “The Player.”
“Believe” is also the song that made autotune a phenomenon. That someone who wasn’t known as a remarkable singer would distort her voice in such an unconventional way read as an act of rebellion, a boldfaced “look at what I can do.” Cher’s record company insisted the effects be removed, to which she said, “Over my dead body!”
Around that time, Cher co-headlined VH1′s all-star concert “Divas Live ’99” and launched a massive world tour so grandiose it was almost comical. Furthermore, she had divas who were once considered her peers (Cyndi Lauper, Belinda Carlisle) opening for her.
Cher was bigger and bolder than ever when “Tea with Mussolini” opened in theaters on May 14, 1999. On the Italian set the previous summer, she was the only actor to arrive with her own makeup artist, hairdresser and personal secretary ― which didn’t stop her from feeling intimidated by Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Lily Tomlin. Director Franco Zeffirelli (“Romeo and Juliet”) based the World War II-set ensemble dramedy on a chapter of his autobiography, centering the story on a colony of English women living in Florence in the 1930s.
Smith is the movie’s MVP, but Cher saunters in as a rich American widow possessing a caustic but wacky regality. It makes sense that the height of Cher’s bedazzled pop career coincided with a movie in which she flits around in gaudy costumes. Her persona no longer fit the rural threads of “Silkwood” or the juridical garb of “Suspect” ― and it never would again.
“Tea with Mussolini” made a stolid $14.4 million domestically. Moreover, it was tossed aside during Oscar season despite being prototypical awards bait. That’s not necessarily her fault, but it does lead to an interesting takeaway: What people wanted, post-“Believe,” was to see Cher simply be Cher.
In late 2000, she was working to get that “Enchanted Cottage” musical off the ground, imagining the lead character to be a composite of “me and Tina Turner and Madonna.” But nothing ever came of it, and Cher didn’t take another lead role until 2010′s “Burlesque.” She mounted a so-called farewell tour and leaned hard into the Cher Plays Herself trademark. It worked to her benefit.
“Will & Grace” (2000, 2002) and “Stuck on You” (2003)
In 2000 and 2002, she appeared as a sassy Cher on “Will & Grace.” In a beloved 2000 episode titled “Gypsies, Tramps and Weed,” a twist on Cher’s thundering 1971 song “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves,” Jack (Sean Hayes) is obsessed with a Barbie-sized Cher doll. Who else would walk in on his infatuation but Cher herself? Except Jack believes she’s a drag queen ― a tongue-in-cheek crack about Cher’s campy image. They have a sing-off in which Jack, convinced his impression is superior, greatly exaggerates her husky warble and dramatic hair toss in a way that essentially mocks Cher to her face. Amused, she gets the last laugh, slapping him and administering that quotable classic: “Snap out of it.”
There’s no movie-star move more powerful than playing yourself with an ironic wink, and “Will & Grace,” like “The Player” before it, let Cher poke fun at herself in a refreshing way. She is treated as an empire, at once pointedly self-aware and deliciously aloof ― a perfect way to master her own narrative without being beholden to it.
In 2003, she appeared as a sassier Cher in the one-joke farce “Stuck on You,” starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins who move to Hollywood when one decides to launch a movie career. Stomping around in a fitted leather jacket and a spiky thatch of jet-black hair that resembles David Bowie’s in “Labyrinth,” Cher yelled at her agent (Jackie Flynn) about the state of her acting career: “Why am I doing this lame-ass TV show when I should be doing movies?” she says before reminding him that she has an Oscar.
Cher’s “Will & Grace” appearances were hardly lame, yet one can’t help but wonder whether Cher was bitter about her acting career’s ebbs. Further complicating matters, Hollywood was drifting away from idiosyncratic character dramas and toward inflated action spectacles. Between 2004 and 2009, she didn’t appear onscreen at all. And so began the Vegas residency phase, which continues today.
“Burlesque” (2010)
When Cher returned with “Burlesque” in 2010, the punch lines wrote themselves. A hammy musical about an aspiring actress (Christina Aguilera) who coaxes her way into the tutelage of a nightclub matron (Cher), the movie went through major script rewrites (by “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody, “Erin Brockovich” scribe Susannah Grant and “Moonstruck” scribe John Patrick Shanley, no less) but still felt like a collection of rhinestone-studded music videos. Cher seems bored by the whole affair, which makes sense: David Geffen, who once dated “Burlesque” director Steve Antin, had to talk her into doing it. Cher is miscast ― would someone with her magnetism really be running a beggared cabaret? ― but she still manages to bring a sense of pride to the character.
“Look, I have a very narrow range,” she said in 2010. “I’ve never tried anything more than playing who I am. If you look at my characters, they’re all me.”
The thing is, she’s wrong. Cher is no Cate Blanchett, but she’s far more transformative ― or at least more instinctive ― than she gives herself credit for. Regardless, her big statement in “Burlesque” reverberated loud and clear during a ballad written specifically for her: “I’ll be back / Back on my feet / This is far from over / You haven’t seen the last of me.”
It also makes sense that Cher ended up viewing the movie as a reflection of her legacy: “I’m in a strange place right now,” she said in 2013. “I’m too old to be young and I’m too young to be old, so I have to be used creatively. In ‘Burlesque,’ which was horrible, I had no love interest, I was running this [troupe], that’s who I was. It could have been a much better film. […] Terrible director! Really terrible director. And really terrible script. I remember him saying to me, I don’t care about what you say, I just want to shoot the dance numbers. Had it been shorter, it would have squeaked by and been a really good popcorn movie.”
“Zookeeper” (2011) “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh” (2017) and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” (2018)
In the same breath, Cher vowed to keep acting. But other than voicing a lion in the Kevin James comedy “Zookeeper” and voicing a self-referential alien who “knows how to make an entrance” in Netflix’s “Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh,” no other projects had materialized until now.
“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” like “Burlesque” before it, finds Cher playing Cher, insofar as her snazzy attire and snappy dialogue herald her diva bona fides. Oh, and because she is the sequel’s show-stopping main event, of course.
She shows up in the final 15 minutes, helicoptering into the Greek hotel now run by Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). You know it’s Cher the second the chopper appears. In dramatic fashion, we see Cher’s pant leg touch down before we ever glimpse her wrinkle-free face. It’s a moment that practically begs audiences to cheer.
“Mes enfants, je suis arrivé; let the party commence,” she announces after emerging from the plane. When she sings ABBA’s “Fernando” with Andy Garcia, fireworks explode across the sky.
In almost no time, Cher steals the movie, snapping and shimmying as if onstage at one of her concerts ― the ultimate marriage of her 55-year-old career’s many tentacles. If it’s possible for Cher to outdo Cher, “Mamma Mia!” is it. But “Mamma Mia!” also crystallizes what we’ve long assumed about Cher: Even at 72, she is still in on the joke that was christened in “The Player” and confirmed on “Will & Grace.”
She’ll probably never spawn another Top 40 hit ― see: her 2013 album “Closer to the Truth” and her recently announced collection of ABBA covers ― but she can still capitalize on the Cher brand to electrify audiences familiar with her diva cachet. Today, her biggest transformation is wearing a bleach-blond wig. Maybe that’s all the transformation we really want from Cher anyway, even though “Mamma Mia!” doesn’t quite know what to do with her, plot-wise.
If pop stars are meant to be mythological and actors are meant to be aspirational, Cher has mastered both domains. She did so by never shying away from how the world metabolized her iconography, and by forever laughing at the absurdity of fame. That sense of humor is now her lifeblood. No matter what happens in the years to come, we haven’t seen the last of her.
0 notes
Text
Tinseltown Rebellion, Zappa’s first album of the ‘80s after a year spent on the road in 1980, is alright but ultimately forgettable. It’s a largely live album—the line between live albums and studio albums has been blurry in Zappa’s world for a long while, and this does have overdubs and some studio material, but it’s presented as a concert album with applause and between-song banter prominent.
Lyrically, this album has little to recommend it—it continues the downward spiral. Side 1 is misogyny top to bottom, The Blue Light is just irritating, the title track is a takedown of punk/new wave that lacks the punch and insight of his hippie takedown of the ‘60s. The album is encumbered by long spoken bits encouraging women in the audience to throw their underwear on the stage to make a quilt (eyeroll inducing) and running a dance contest (why does he put so many of these on his albums? He knows we can’t see it right? They’re always so boring). But musically, it’s damn good. The band (amorphous because the songs were recorded over the course of a couple tours) sometimes includes FOUR guitarists (Ike Willis and Ray White on rhythm, Zappa himself and baby shredder Steve Vai on lead) and almost everyone sings—Zappa, Willis, and White all do lead vocals. It’s a band specially designed for bombast. The sound is massive and intensely arranged. It’s also something of a final form… Zappa’s previous bands were heavily influenced by the other personalities in them, but from this album on his rock bands all sound basically identical even as he constantly swaps out members. In live album fashion, the best cuts on this album are the old material. This is technically the debut of For the Young Sophisticate—an earlier version appeared on Läther, which was unreleased until after his death, and this version is better. There’s great renditions of much earlier material, from first Mothers to Flo & Eddie. The album ends with a good rendition of Brown Shoes Don’t Make It and Peaches III, a blistering rearrangement of Peaches en Regalia from Hot Rats that rivals the original.
This is a minor Zappa album, the little brother of You Are What You Is. A rewarding album for diehard fans, but quite nonessential. It’s also the first on his new Barking Pumpkin label—Phonogram, who distributed Zappa Records, refused to release the I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted single (damn, shoulda photographed that one), so Zappa started a new label about it. Modern vinyl reissues feature the Zappa label on the A side and Barking Pumpkin on the B.
0 notes
Text
BEST BAD GUY IN MOVIE HISTORY
BEST BAD GUY IN MOVIE HISTORY
BEST BAD GUY IN MOVIE HISTORY
If someone were to ask a bunch of movie critics to name the best bad guy in the movies, chances are they’re going to name vile villains such as Anton Chigurh, the “unstoppable evil” with the bad bowl cut from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Or some might say the milk shake coveting Daniel Plainview from THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Still others may insist it’s the STAR WARS baddie…
View On WordPress
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
VILLAINOUS WOMEN #5
DEMI MOORE
CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE
.
She was the highest paid actress in Hollywood history
This was the mid 90’s. The check cashed was a cool $!2.5 million for STRIPTEASE, making it the most expensive lao dance in stripper history. Demi Moore was the female actress at this point thanks to the dawn of the decade box office hat trick she scored. Starting with GHOST, the highest grossing…
View On WordPress
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Supporting Character Spinoff: BONUS CROSSOVER EDITION
Supporting Character Spinoff: BONUS CROSSOVER EDITION
SORRY, BONG NUMBER: Lance & Floyd. Worst. Prank. Call. Ev… wait, uhh…dude, what?
FLOYD And LANCE in A TRUE FICTION PULP ROMANCE
Two Tarantino characters cut from the same hemp cloth. A dealer and a sloth. The hippy pair with the same goatee and Prince Valiant hair. Groovy dudes who know people on ‘ludes should not drive.
Pardon my paraphrasing the Bongfather of the big screen. It seems apropos…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
BEST CINEMATIC PISSING MATCH #7
BEST CINEMATIC PISSING MATCH #7
BEST CINEMATIC PISSING MATCH #7: DJANGO UNCHAINED
GET YOUR BEARD ON: Calvin Candie tries smoke in Django’s eyes with an against-the-rules move.
Two key components to any male posturing performed before a metaphorical pissing match commences is the Square Off leading to the Stare Down.
One modern filmmaker who can be counted on for delivering a good old fashion pissing match its Quentin…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
REVEALED: WAS BURT THE FIRST JOKER BEFORE JACK?
REVEALED: WAS BURT THE FIRST JOKER BEFORE JACK?
JOKEY & THE BANDIT: Some say Joker’s hat and orange shirt are Nicholson’s nod to Burt
BURT WOULD’VE MADE OUT LIKE A BANDIT
Unless you were at least in your preteen double digits and living in America circa 1977, it’s probably going to be difficult to wrap your mind around just how big of a movie star Burt Reynolds was at the time.
When SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT hit theaters that year, Burt’s…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
CINEMA'S CREEPIEST COUPLE
CINEMA’S CREEPIEST COUPLE
SAY HI TO BERT AND DARYL THEY’RE DYING TO MEET YOU
GET YOUR CREEP ON: Bert (Kay Tornborg) and Daryl (Ben Frank) seem really nice…and crazy
Swinging Pair Are A Hitchhiker’s Nightmare
Long before auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was giving audiences a peek past the peckers and poonani of the flourishing porn business to show the dark quicksand within the landscape of the sunny San Fernando Valley…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
UNSUNG ONSCREEN DEATHS #4
UNSUNG ONSCREEN DEATHS #4
Randy Quaid: THE LONG RIDERS
RANDY QUAID as outlaw Clell Miller (Likes: robbing banks & killing Yanks; Dislikes: squareheads.)
It’s a Western often left out when people palaver about their favorite movies from the genre. Maybe it has something to do with how there’s no deep dives delving into the minds of the Riders to provide a tidy “Why?” to their predilection for crime. Truth was the outlaws…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN AND IAN ZEIRNG IN DOMINO
BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN AND IAN ZEIRNG IN DOMINO
BEST MOVIE CAMEO #3
9O21-UH OH: Brian Austin Green & Ian Ziering with Mickey Rourke & Keira Knightley
One of the bravest roles an actor can choose to do is to play a skewed & heightened version of him or herself.
Usually it’s a small, one scene cameo like Keanu Reeves portraying himself as a pretentious, self satisfied actor in ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE or Anna Farris playing a coked up wackadoo…
View On WordPress
1 note
·
View note
Text
The 80’s teen comedy. Take the R-rated ones off the table. Then ask anyone who did time in junior high and high school during the decade to name their Top Three favorites from the era. The odds are very high two out of three will be a movie John Hughes either wrote and directed, wrote and produced, or just wrote.
His smart and funny scripts didn’t stick with one clique. A John Hughes movie was a party everyone was invited to. All the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, dorks, bloods, wastoids, and dickheads saw their lives reflecting back at them in scenes of hilarious highs and heart breaking lows. Having Hughes at the helm brought the teen comedy some respect.
Turns out, Hughes wanted more than to just entertain. He hoped to educate his audience on issues of strife and inequality. He was no fool, of course. Hughes knew if not done just right, educational scenes in a teen comedy can come across preachy or too teachy. Either are capable of delivering doses of lethal-level boredom no amount of gratuitous boob shots can bring an audience back from. Putting preachy and teachy together in a teen comedy is guaranteed movie suicide.
Otherwise called “Pulling A Porky’s 2.”
Now for how that phrase became shorthand in the land of Hollywood, we’d need to take a tangent starting at PORKY’S – the first teen comedy featuring a scene involving a character putting his junk someplace funky, simultaneously opening the door and raising the bar on raunchy for every flick in the genre since. It’s not even a debate as to how much a certain pastry based franchise owes its box-office life to PORKY’S.
Naturally, the movie was a huge hit. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even John Holmes for that matter, to deduce producers wanted a sequel. And so two years later writer-director Bob Clark brought back the gang from fictional Angel Beach High School for a follow up. Thus, considering its ‘Next Day‘ concept, the returning cast of PORKY’S 2 holds the dubious distinction as The Oldest Looking Teen Movie High School Seniors this side of the BEACH BLANKET BINGO fluff from the 1960’s.
You’d think Clark would stick to the original’s winning formula and up the ante on the raunchy antics audiences would be back for. Instead, he went in the opposite direction. So far so, he didn’t even bother bringing back Porky, despite the character’s name remaining in the title. Clark wrote a script about the gang defending the school play they’re rehearsing – Shakespeare’s Mid Summer Night’s Dream – against a new villain – the cartoonish Reverend Flavel and his flock.
Replacing the type of “sexy hijinks” scenes that made the first movie a hit, we get the gang rooting for their principal as he goes head to head with Reverend Flavel (Bill Wiley, clearly relishing the role) as the two men – prepare yourself, now – read the salacious parts of plays by Shakespeare agains quotes from the Bible as our high school heroes cheer as if at a football game. No, it’s true. See the scene itself – given a much needed tweak or two by our resident movie manipulator, Olivus Stoney.
Porkys grossed north of $112,000,000 against a budget of just 4 to 5 million.
Porky’s 2: The Next Day, tag priced at 7 million, struggled to scrape up $33,000,000. The sequel proved to be such a damaging burn to the audience, when producers poured practically double the original’s budget into a third movie bringing back bad guy Porky in PORKY’S REVENGE, their attempt at celluloid reconciliation barely brought home the box office bacon of $20,000,000.
That’s how Porky’s 2 – trying to preach and teach in a teen comedy – killed the original’s bright future as a successful franchise. The cautionary tale of Hollywood cautionary tales.
And so…
John Hughes was quite aware of the perils of pulling a Porky’s 2 could have on his impending writing and directing debut, SIXTEEN CANDLES. If he intended to include scenes of educational awareness in his teen comedies, Hughes knew infusing such moments would require something akin to being on an almost subliminal level. So, that’s what he set out to do.
One of the best examples is in WEIRD SCIENCE.
Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science. So many missed opportunities. Damn you, PG-13
An ode to teen-age male wish fulfillment fantasy, Weird Science is John Hughes doing raunchy. Unfortunately it’s PG-13 raunch. Its far-out plot involves two losers – stars Anthony Michael Hall at his geek peak… and the other guy. They build a beautiful woman using cutting edge floppy disk technology, porn magazines, and toy doll. Don’t ask how it works. Besides, when their creation comes to life in the form of smoldering, sexy Kelly LeBrock, things like plot logic tend to take a back seat.
The message put in Weird Science proved Hughes way ahead of his time at identifying a certain form of racial entitlement continuing to permeate society today. Casting Kelly LeBrock, unfortunately for Hughes, meant the message was missed due to the scene stealing sex appeal the actress generated in just her second movie role. It would remain unseen by the viewing public.
Until now.
Thanks to a new breakthrough in technology here at Tinseltown Takedown, we’re able to bring the subtextual message to the forefront. For the first time, audiences of yesterday & today, can see the message as John Hughes meant for it to be seen.
I know.
As always, you’re welcome.
REVEALED: Hidden Messages Nestled Gently Yet Firmly Between The T&A Of WEIRD SCIENCE The 80's teen comedy. Take the R-rated ones off the table. Then ask anyone who did time in junior high and high school during the decade to name their Top Three favorites from the era.
#Anthony Michael Hall#John Hughes#Kelly LeBrock#Olivus Stoney#Porkys 2:The Next Day#Robert Downey Jr#Robert Rusler#Weird Science
1 note
·
View note
Text
I'M NOT BUYING IT: RESERVOIR DOGS
I’M NOT BUYING IT: RESERVOIR DOGS
Let’s get something straight right out of the gate.
RESERVOIR DOGS is a great movie. Fact is, I still think it’s the man’s best so far*.
There now. That should get any wonder out of the way whether this was some idiotic hatchet job for the sake of clickbait. No way in this lifetime or the next will you see Tinseltown Takedown peddling hack crap like that. Using clickbait is like admitting the…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
CINEMATIC A-HOLES #3: Roger Simmons
CINEMATIC A-HOLES #3: Roger Simmons
Movie Muckafergusons Who Look Out For #1 While Treating Others Like #2 Richard Chamberlain as Roger Simmons
The moment we meet Roger Simmons in THE TOWERING INFERNO – crown jewel of producer Irwin Allen’s disaster flick hat trick – he doesn’t waste time exhibiting smug arrogance. Actor Richard Chamberlain infuses the character with self-aggrandizing, smarmy charm. Roger Simmons oozes true…
View On WordPress
#70&039;s Movies#Cinematic A-holes#Irwin Allen#Richard Chamberlain#The Towering Inferno#Tinseltown Takedown
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
podsolnuhovo
Podsolnuhovo
karenenjoysthesethings
You Know, Why Not?
snakepitgunner
Guns N' Roses Fan Talk
kouginoa
ERI