Dance crazy!

A couple of years ago, when the first boxed set of Busby Berkeley movies came out from Warner Home Video, I told a 30-something colleague how excited I was about having such classics as 42ND STREET, DAMES, and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 on DVD. Her reaction: "Busy Bee? Who's he?" That has become a running joke between us now, but it does show how much danger Berkeley's reputation may be in.

Though he did direct some movies, mostly rather dismal B-comedies and melodramas, he's a crucial figure in Hollywood history as a choreographer and visual director of musical numbers. Before he came along, most dance numbers in films were simply shot front and center on a stage. Berkeley freed the camera to roam about the stage, zooming in on dancers' faces and between their legs; he expanded the "stage" of a theater or nightclub to be as huge as he needed it to be, though the camera always returned to "realism" at the end of the song. He made the overhead shot of dancers as a human kaleidoscope a movie musical cliche. He retired in the 50's, but lived long enough to see his production numbers rediscovered by a new generation in the 70's as mind-bending, quasi-psychedelic experiences.

Though the best of his movies were in a 2006 boxed set, Warners has just released a second volume featuring four more films in which he was involved. Two of the movies are from the Gold Diggers series, formulaic comedies featuring chorus girls looking for rich sugar daddies while working in shows that are threatened with financial and artistic troubles. Most of the these movies have Dick Powell as a young pup of a songwriter (or actor or singer, or, in the 1937 edition, an insurance salesman) who gets romantically entangled with a leading lady like Ruby Keeler or Joan Blondell.

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 is good fun and ends with a typical Berkeley blockbuster, "All's Fair in Love and War," which features chorus lines of men shooting their guns at chorus lines of women who fight back with perfume atomizers. The look of the number, matching many of his 30's spectacles, is all rich, glossy blacks and glowing whites, and every so often, there is a shot that makes you scratch your head and wonder how the hell he did it in the pre-digital fx age (here, seen at right, it's dancers twirling large flags in full circles, in total disregard for the floor they must certainly be standing on but that seems not to be there). The less said about PARIS (with Rudy Vallee instead of Powell), the better, though parts of it are still fun.

The real gem in this collection is HOLLYWOOD HOTEL, an amusing satire of movie folks and their ways. Powell is a sax player with Benny Goodman (whose band does an amazing, though unfortunately shortened, version of "Sing, Sing, Sing") who wins a talent contest and heads to Hollywood with hopes of being a star. He winds up as a waiter at a drive-in restaurant before he is picked to dub in songs for an non-singing star (Alan Mowbray). There's also an obnoxious actress, very well played by Lola Lane (pictured below; think Ann Sheridan in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER) and her sweet-natured look-alike (real-life sister Rosemary Lane). One lovely scene takes place one evening in an empty Hollywood Bowl, there's a cute communal musical number at the drive-in restaurant, and a couple of fairly elaborate musical numbers, but I have to say that the best song is right at the beginning: "Hooray for Hollywood," led off by novelty jazz singer Johnnie Davis.

The fourth film, VARSITY SHOW, is a cute "let's put on a show" musical, with college students, feeling oppressed by a fuddy-duddy professor, getting some help with their annual talent show from alumnus Dick Powell, now a Broadway producer struggling to get his career back on track. Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians appear along with two Lane sisters (this time, Rosemary and Priscilla). It's quite watchable, even if no one looks college age, and no single production number really stands out. Each disc has the usual generous Warners extras, mostly cartoons and short subjects. The GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 disc has a particularly interesting extra: two scenes from the very first Gold Diggers movie, 1929's GOLD DIGGERS OF BROADWAY, which a considered a lost film (some sound and film elements remain). One of the numbers is "Tip Toe Through the Tulips," which, though not done by Berkeley, has a wild moment when gigantic vases with tulips appear among the dancers. I recommend this set, but be sure to get the first volume as well.

I'm an old school dude with a kick on my shoes...

I've about given up on mainstream top 40 pop, but I am utterly charmed by the new album from Solange, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. Apparently, Solange is the little sister of singer and actress Beyonce Knowles, and as we still live in the era of Wildly Overblown Lead Vocals (thanks, Whitney; thanks, Mariah; thanks, Michael Bolton; thanks a hell of a lot, American Idol), I haven't been paying much attention to solo pop singers so I can't tell you what Beyonce sounds like--though I think I liked her OK in Dreamgirls. And according to the first song on this album, "God Given Name," Solange is trying like hell to differentiate herself from her more famous sibling ("Get me out of this box/... I'm not her and never will be"). This song is weak and whiny, but happily, things get lots better right away.

Her style (in both vocals and music) is like the last 20 years of pop music never happened; it's an updated Motown sound with lots of crisp, shiny arrangements, and sharp, bop-along rhythms: soul bubblegum, if you will. I'm tempted to say it's a 21st-century update mash-up of the Jackson 5 and Diana Ross (with some self-conscious props paid to Marvin Gaye, especially on the song "Ode to Marvin") ; I know that's not for all tastes, but it's mostly fizzy and catchy and the production has lots of bells and whistles which actually highlight the songs rather than obscuring them. The first single, "I Decided," is good, but "Sandcastle Disco" is better; the production on that song is like Phil Spector meets Motown's Norman Whitfield (R.I.P.) while eating lots of cotton candy and drinking red pop. I *definitely* know that description won't appeal to everyone, and not all the songs are quite that glossy, but most of them have strong melodies, and just to shake things up, there are two long, slow, quasi-psychedelic jams (unfortunately placed together at the end). I might tire of all this effervescence soon, but Solange is making me happy in the car on these sunkissed days of early fall.

Paul and Joanne

My mother and I play a little game called Deathwatch, in which we vie to be the first one to call the other with a celebrity death. This morning, even before I'd had my coffee and donut, she called about Paul Newman. It was expected, as he had more or less withdrawn from public view a few months ago after being treated for lung cancer, but it's still sad news. He seemed like a sensible, likeable fellow who kept the "star" thing in good perspective. He was almost breathtakingly handsome back in his early days in films like The Silver Chalice (a very bad movie), The Long Hot Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Exodus, and he kept up a solid career right up through the last few years. Though he's probably best known for the early 70's one-two punch of Butch Cassidy and The Sting, I admired him more for going out on a limb and working with Robert Altman on two very uncommerical (indie before "indie" was a concept) films, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Quintet. They weren't great films, but I liked them both better than Butch Cassidy.

But whenever I think of Newman, I think of his wife, Joanne Woodward, even though they rarely worked together on screen. By all accounts, they had a wonderful relationship, and though I haven't seen a lot of Woodward movies, I saw her live back in the early 80's when she appeared in a Kenyon College production of Shaw's Candida and it's something I'll never forget. At the time, in my twenties, I knew her name but the only thing I remembered seeing her in was Three Faces of Eve, which I thought was a rather old-fashioned psychological melodrama, so I had few expectations. The production also had Jane Curtin in a supporting role, and, as a Saturday Night Live fan, I was probably more excited about seeing her than Woodward. But as soon as Joanne Woodward came onstage, I was mesmerized. She had the audience in the palm of her hand. I couldn't begin to identify what is was about her talent that made her bring that part to such glowing life that night, but I knew I was in the presence of a great actress.

So I'm sad for the loss of Paul Newman, but I'm even sadder for what that loss must mean for Joanne Woodward, and I'm sad for myself that I never saw her on stage again, though her performance that lovely summer evening will stay in my memory forever.

Dark whimsy, with pie

My favorite TV show last season was Pushing Daisies. The whole thing is driven by a plot device that was re-explained periodically throughout the first season. Ned, the sweet-natured pie maker, discovered in his youth that he had, literally, a supernatural touch; if he touched a living being (person or animal) that had just died, he could bring it back to life for 60 seconds. If he touched it again within that minute, it would die again for good. If he didn't touch it within that minute, it would stay alive, but some other living being in the vicinity would die. Finally, if he let the dead thing live, he could never touch it again or it would die for good. Got it?

It does seem a little more complicated than it should, but it's easy to follow, and it gives the show two good narrative touchstones: 1) Ned works with Emerson, a private eye who knows Ned's secret, and whenever a murder case comes their way, they visit the morgue so Ned can bring the victim back to life to answer a couple of quick questions that will help them solve the case; 2) in the show's pilot episode, one of the murder victims Ned brings back to life is his childhood crush Charlotte (nicknamed Chuck); he doesn't touch her within the first 60 seconds, so she remains alive (and a nasty funeral home director dies in her place, an event that becomes central to a later episode). This plot wrinkle allows indefinite, unconsummatable sexual tension; past shows like Moonlighting and Cheers used such tension to good advantage, but always wound up letting the central romantic pair go all the way, which then inevitably caused some damage to the characters' chemistry. These two can't even touch without a sheet of Saran Wrap between them, yet they manage to some off as sexy and romantic as any TV couple.

The show was chugging along nicely finding a smallish but loyal audience last fall until the writer's strike stopped it cold at its ninth episode. Luckily it was renewed by ABC and will start its second season in a couple of weeks. Happily, the entire first season was just released on DVD so I was able to refresh myself on all the show's whys and wherefores. This series benefits from a second viewing; with the plots and characters still familiar to me, I was able to concentrate on the two things that make the show unique: its whimsically dark tone and its wild color palate.

The show is set in its own baroque version of the real world, sort of Technicolor neo-Gothic; its look and its full-blown orchestral score make it feel a bit like a Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket movie. Ned's restaurant, the Pie Hole, is in a old but ornate urban building, the roof of which overlooks a clean mid-sized modern city; the morgue is painted bright white with thick red stripes; Chuck's aunts live in a cluttered crazy house, dark but still colorful enough--they used to have an aquashow routine as The Darling Mermaid Darlings but retired after Chuck's death. The one plot point I get a little tired of is keeping the aunts in the dark about Chuck's return to the living; with the wonderful Swoozie Kurtz and Ellen Greene (below) as the sisters, I'd like to see them have more to do than mope (Kurtz) and be ditzy (Greene), though I have to say that Greene's rendition of "Morning Has Broken" in one episode was beautiful and left me a bit teary.

Speaking of actors, everyone here is well-cast, from the sweetly handsome Lee Pace (above) as Ned, to Anna Friel as Chuck, to Chi McBride as the detective (also a knitter). Best of all is Kristin Chenoweth as Olive, a Pie Hole waitress who is in love with Ned and, at least for a chunk of the first season, resents Chuck. The more she figures out about what's going on with the two of them, the more rounded her character has become (also what I like about the character of square Janet on Swingtown). There's a fairly heavy stage-actor presence: in addition to Chenoweth, Kurtz, and Greene, Raul Esparza has a recurring role, and Jim Dale narrates each show.

The dialogue is smart, full of wordplay, and fast paced, a bit like the writing of Aaron Sorkin (Studio 60, Sports Night), so both the eye and ear are delighted. This is one of the few hour-long network series that can stand up to repeated watching for me, and the DVD is a must have--the colors positively glow on an HD set, though I must complain about the skimpy extras: no commentaries, no real featurettes, just some very short interviews keyed to specific episodes, and unfortunately all stuck together on the last disc, so they're not even easily accessible after an episode has been viewed. But still, it's a delight to be able to have this season to keep, considering that other hour-long shows I've enjoyed recently (Swingtown, The Middleman, Three Moons Over Milford) have never come out on disc and don't seem like strong candidates to do so soon. It's nice that a show so different and interesting can still be found on network TV, and while I'm waiting for the second season, starting in a week or so, I'm giving the old shows another spin.

Lunatic fringe

There is very little of interest for me among the new fall shows; as a die-hard sitcom fan, I'll probably give a couple of those a shot (Worst Week has a leading man who seems sorta doofus-cute, and Gary Unmarried has Jay Mohr who was good a few years ago in Action). We decided to give the new JJ Abrams show Fringe a shot. It was pushed as a kind of cross between X-Files and Lost, but it's really X-Files all the way. I liked X-Files well enough, and watched it for a good 5 or 6 years, a long time by my standards since I rarely follow hour-long dramas that long (CSI only got about 4 years out of me). But Fringe feels like X-Files reheated (in the microwave) and there are too many things wrong with it to fix in a short time--and don't ask me what that halved-apple image they're using as a logo is all about.

The double-layer premise, with 1) an overarching background "mythology" story, and 2) individual episode stories, is right out of X-Files, although the stated plan here is to make the background story less intimidating or complex so viewers can feel free to drop in and out to enjoy freestanding tales of weird science. The set-up: there have been numerous strange, almost paranormal things happening around the world and our three main characters have been drafted by Homeland Security to investigate these matters, the totality of which has been dubbed The Pattern, because, um, they think there's a pattern to the events. But we know from the beginning that the government knows more than it's letting on, and so do the folks at Massive Dynamics, a huge worldwide corporation with their fingers in all kinds of pies.

So all the bits of the formula are here: spooky doings, paranoia, lots of dark and dank interiors, and superiors who are not quite what they seem. Anna Torv is an FBI agent assigned to this fringe unit, John Noble is a "mad scientist" who is plucked out of an asylum to help out with the science, and Joshua Jackson is his skeptical son who's along for the ride because he's his father's legal guardian. The problem so far is the amateurish writing and weak acting. The dialogue is terrible and the "science" is ridiculously fantastic--in the second episode, they've already hit the bottom of the barrel by giving scientific credence to the theory that the last thing a person sees before he or she dies is somehow imprinted on the eyes and is recoverable.

Torv is OK, though because she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm having a hard time warming up to her. I don't like Noble at all: he's too predictably (and artificially) sad and goofy and funny by turns. Jackson (above) is a cutie-pie but the tossed-off, sarcastic humor his character uses does not come easily to him. It's nice that Blair Brown is back on network TV, but she's had a thankless role so far as a spokesperson for Massive Dynamics, and Lance Reddick, as Torv's boss, is so skeletal looking, he's the creepiest thing on the show. I think we'll give it one more shot, but I don't foresee keeping up with this one.

These magic moments, part 2

Heck, that was fun and easy, and I can do it on my lunch hour, so I think I'll do some more:

To steal one from "covetednoprizewinner" over at PowerPop, the surprising f-bomb in SteelyDan's "Show Biz Kids"--it still gets me every time

That carousel opening on Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown"

That horn blast opening on Blood Sweat & Tears' "Spinning Wheel"

Joan Baez doing Bob Dylan's voice on her version of "Simple Twist of Fate"

The ridiculous but sublime drum solo in the long version of Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire"

Phil Spector's last great production work on Sonny Charles' "Black Pearl"

The way all five Temptations voices separate and combine in "I Can't Get Next to You"

The swirling chorus (with that sudden stop-start beat in the middle) and the tricky wordiness of the 5th Dimension's "Love's Lines, Angles, and Rhymes"

Mark Knopfler's almost snotty vocal on "And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene / He's got a daytime job, he's doin' all right" in "Sultans of Swing" (thanx, Tom, for jogging my memory)

A few more soon...

These magic moments, part 1

On a movie e-mail group I belong to, we were recently discussing "magic moments" in movies, short bits we love. On PowerPop this weekend, a similar thing was going on with music. So I think I'll do the same thing here over the next few days.

In music:
Marvin Gaye's soulful howl of despair near the end of "Inner City Blues"

The opening chord of "A Hard Day's Night"

Ella Fitzgerald disappearing at the end of "Angel Eyes"

The cacophonous middle section of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" (and Robert Plant's climax at the end)

The galloping string section and Elton John's pounding piano in the middle and end of "Burn Down the Mission"

The dramatic "real death waltz" verse of Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland"

Joni Mitchell doing a comical waitress voice ("Drink up now, it's gettin' on time to close") in the live version of "The Last Time I Saw Richard" on Shadows and Light

Michelle and Cass's soaring backing vocals on the chorus to the Mamas and Papas' "Twelve Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)"

The jazzy instrumental sections of Steely Dan's "Aja"

Van Morrison's utter joy in performing near the end of "Caravan" in the Band's concert film The Last Waltz

What I hear in my head as a jumble of voices at the beginning of the Hollies' "Carrie Anne"

The way that "We Can Be Together" and "Volunteers" segue together on The Worst of Jefferson Airplane collection (and they don't on the original Volunteers album)

The angelic but spooky ending of Simon & Garfunkel's "Save the Life of My Child"

More to come...