Gideon58's Reviews

THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

20th Century Fox struck gold with a 1954 gem called There's No Business Like Show Business, a splashy and colorful big budget musical wrapped around a classic show business story that touches upon what people give up for the business and the iconic concept of "the show must go on."

The film opens on the Five Donahues, a family vaudeville act consisting of father Terry (Dan Dailey), mother Molly (Ethel Merman), elder son Steve (Johnny Ray), daughter Katy (Mitzi Gaynor), and younger brother Tim (Donald O'Connor), who have just completed a successful run at the Hippodrome Theater when fate and circumstances start breaking up the act: Steve decides to quit show business and become a priest; Katy falls for a Broadway composer (Hugh O'Brian), and Tim falls under the spell of Vicky (Marilyn Monroe) a hatcheck girl with big show biz aspirations that turn out to be more important to her than Tim.

As I did after watching 1956's Anything Goes, I had to confirm that this was an indeed a 20th Century Fox film, because this film has the gloss and style that MGM had a patent on in the 40's and 50's, but Monroe's presence confirmed that this was a Fox film. Director Walter Lang, whose next assignment would be The King & I spared no expense in bringing this lavish tale of a show biz era that is a thing of the past beautifully back to life, in the tradition of the Broadway musical Gypsy(even borrowing that show's star). Phoebe and Henry Ephron have provided a screenplay with just enough meat that it doesn't get in the way of what moviegoers were looking for in the 1950's in terms of movie musicals. The story presented here has equal shares of laughter, romance, and genuine warmth and I must confess getting a little misty at the climax.

Irving Berlin has provided some terrific songs for this outing, some but not all especially for this film but if you listen to the background music, just about every song Irving Berlin wrote can be heard at some point here. The score for this film includes "When the Midnight Cho Choo", "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody", "After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It", "If You Believe", "Lazy", "A Man Chases a Girl", "Heat Wave", and, of course, the title tune, which was actually written for Annie Get Your Gun.

The cast is terrific for the most part...Ethel Merman was probably the greatest star Broadway ever created but for some reason her presence never translated properly to the movie screen, creating a limited movie career, but her performance works here. Director Lang has properly reined in the actress so that she is not too big for the movie screen and she works extremely well with Dailey, limber on his feet as ever as Terry. Mitzi Gaynor once again makes the most of a thankless role as Katy and Donald O'Connor is a solid leading man, especially scoring in an impressive production number where he brings an Astaire elegance dancing with statues who magically come to life...only in a musical. And let's not forget the original Divine Ms M...Marilyn absolutely lights up the screen here in one of her best performances, playing a character who actually has a brain and you never doubt that for a second. Only Johnny Ray misses the boat as older brother Steve. Ray was the biggest singing star on the planet at the time and Fox wanted to capitalize on that, but Ray was no actor and, during moments, almost painful to watch.

Elaborate sets, stunning costumes, and flashy choreography by Robert Alton are the finishing touches on this winner that is a must for classic musical fans.

THE JAZZ SINGER (1980)
Neil Diamond was a driving force in the world of pop music during the 1970's and 80's and someone got the bright idea that his popularity could be capitalized upon by making him a movie star. The 1980 film The Jazz Singer is the second remake of the history-making 1927 film that came to be known as the first "talkie", but this film shamelessly rips off a cinematic legacy and makes a singer's attempt to become an actor look pretty lame.

Diamond plays Jess Rabinovitch, a Jewish cantor who attempts to defy family tradition (cantors go back five generations in his family) and become a rock star, changing his last name to Robin. Jess forsakes his wife (Caitlin Adams) and his very strict father (Laurence Olivier) to go to California when he learns that rock star Keith Lennox (Paul Nicholas) wants to record one of his songs. Even though that doesn't work out, Jess decides to stay in California to continue pursuit of his dream with the help of Lennox's former aide (Lucie Arnaz) and his BFF from New York (Franklyn Ajaye).

Needless to say, this film probably bears little resemblance to the 1927 original, which was actually based on a play by Samson Raphaelson. Herbert Baker's long-winded screenplay attempts to give a contemporary face lift to an outdated story, utilizing every tired show biz movie cliche that we've been subjected to in far superior movies. I guess we weren't supposed to notice because it's Neil Diamond. We have the defying-the-family scene, to the showing-the-vet-how-to-perform-my-music scene to our hero achieving a modicum of success (which occurs in about 20 minutes) and letting it all go to his head to the leaving the pressures of success to go out and "find himself." Richard Fleischer's lackluster and unimaginative direction doesn't help matters either.

Diamond does provide some nice songs for this film, which are probably the best thing about it. Written by Diamond, Alan Lindren, Gilbert Becaud, and Doug Rhone, the songs include "America", "You Baby", "Amazed and Confused", "Summerlove", "Hello Again", and the fabulous "Love on the Rocks."

I remember seeing this film during its original theatrical release and having my high hopes dashed. I've always felt a bit of a kindred spirit to Diamond because we share a birthday, but it doesn't change the fact that this film is a real snooze-fest. The acting ranges from wooden to over the top. Diamond is just out of his element as an actor and even Laurence Olivier is hard to take here...the climactic scene where he tears his clothes and declares he has no son is almost funny, though it really shouldn't be. A lot of money and faith went into this project, but faith sadly turned to dross here.

HOT SHOTS
The creative team who brought us Airplane! reunited 11 years later for 1991's Hot Shots, a near perfect satire of the 1987 film Top Gun that provides major belly laughs throughout.

Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) is a disgraced Navy pilot who is persuaded to return to duty to aid in a very special mission that is being complicated by a pair of greedy weapon manufacturers. Upon his return to the base, Harley immediately becomes involved in a love triangle with the pretty base psychologist Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino) and hot shot pilot Kent Gregory (Cary Elwes, in a perfect send-up of Val Kilmer's Ice).

Director and co-screenwriter Jim Abrahams had a perfect blueprint to work with, since, let's face it, Top Gun is a movie rich for parody, though there are also affectionate winks provided along the way to The Fabulous Baker Boys, Dances with Wolves,9 1/2 Weeks, Apollo 13, and Independence Day. Abrahams screenplay features some impressive attention to detail that has some comic bits moving at razor speed and taking the time to set up others so that when the final predictable punchline lands it's still funny. A standout example of this is the way the fate of "Dead Meat" Thompson (William O'Leary) is set up...it starts unassumingly with a black cat crossing the path of "Dead Meat' and his wife, Mary (Heidi Swedberg). I also loved "At Ease."

Abrahams also has employed a crack technical team to provide intentionally cheesy special effects that work perfectly for this kind of parody. Watch the scene where Topper and Ramada meet for the first time when he is on a motorcycle and she is on a horse...Abrahams makes no bones about the fact that Golino is not doing the stunt work here and for some reason it makes the scene even funnier.

Abrahams assembled a top-notch cast that really understand what he's trying to do here for the most part. Sheen is perfect in the lead and Elwes, one of the most underrated and versatile actors in this business, nails his Val Kilmer impression. Also loved Lloyd Bridges as the bubble-headed commanding officer, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., surprisingly smooth as the villain of the piece, and Sheen's future Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer as "Wash Out", a pilot with serious vision issues. Galino kind of missed the boat for me though...I never really got the feeling that she understood the concept of this kind of movie parody and played her role just a little too straight, but for the most part, this movie is a dead on satire of a very popular movie that surprisingly, hasn't held up over the years and this very funny lampoon documents that. Followed by a sequel.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

A slightly over the top but uncompromising look at the disease of alcoholism, 1962'S Days of Wine and Roses is still appointment movie viewing, thanks primarily to some bold directorial strokes from Blake Edwards and a pair of Oscar-nominated lead performances.

Joe Clay (Jack Lemmon) is a public relations man unhappy with his job, but dealing with his unhappiness through some heavy drinking. Joe meets an attractive secretary named Kirsten (Lee Remick) who doesn't drink, but he does manage to get her to have dinner with him where he uses her passion for chocolate to get her hooked on Brandy Alexanders. Joe and Kirsten marry and have a child, but eventually alcoholism becomes the glue that is holding their marriage together but the real test of Joe and Kirsten's relationship comes when Joe faces the truth about himself and decides to get sober but Kirsten continues to drink.

JP Miller's screenplay, adapted from his 1959 Playhouse 90 production which earned him an Emmy nomination, takes an up close and unattractive look at this deadly disease and the iron grip it has on its victim. The slow burn of this story is alternately fascinating and aggravating. During that fateful first dinner date, it appears that Joe is going to accept the fact that Kirsten doesn't drink and that she is going to be the one dealing with his sickness, but having her be his nursemaid was clearly not going to be enough for Joe...he wanted a playmate and a partner-in-crime and it was slightly squirm-worthy watching this man pretty much "teach" this woman how to drink in order to make her the kind of playmate he wanted and required. Of course, the story does come full circle when Joe faces the truth about himself but is unable to get Kirsten to do the same.

There are some dated elements to this production, but what isn't dated at all is the work of Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in the leads...Lemmon, in particular, is a one man acting class, in a role that allows him to play any kind of emotion you can think of and he nails them all, earning his third Oscar nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor. Remick initially appears to be a little soft to be believable as a woman sinking into full blown alcoholism, but shocks with a performance of such pathos that it earned the late actress the only Oscar nomination of her career for Outstanding Lead Actress.

Lemmon and Remick receive solid support from Charles Bickford as Kirsten's father and a surprisingly sensitive Jack Klugman as Joe's AA sponsor. And any talk about this film has to include a nod to Henry Mancini, whose evocative score, including a gorgeous title song, properly frames this somewhat seedy, but realistic human drama that offers no easy answers to some difficult questions.

HOLLYWOOD OR BUST
Hollywood or Bust is a 1956 comedy with music that has a footnote as the last onscreen teaming of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Martin plays Steve Wiley, a singer and chronic gambler who owes $3000 to a bookie and plans to pay him by making copies of all the tickets to a contest where a new car is being given away so that no matter what ticket is called he will win. Unfortunately, the young man in possession of the real winning ticket, Malcolm Smith (Lewis),a nerdy movie fan obsessed with actress Anita Ekberg, is not going anywhere so Steve convinces Malcolm to take a road trip to Hollywood where they plan to sell the car and Steve can introduce Malcolm to his "neighbor" Anita Akberg. En route, they encounter a would be chorus girl (Pat Crowley) who Steve falls for.

By this time in their careers, Martin and Lewis were a well-oiled machine and it comes through in every frame of this movie. Erna Lazarus' screenplay merely serves as a blueprint for our stars, who clown and play off each other like they've been doing it forever and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of what ended up onscreen here was improvised and not part of the script at all. A script was never an absolute necessity for Jerry Lewis and his gift for improvisation as well as for physical comedy serve him well here. But the real surprise here was Dean Martin, who not only provided his accustomed velvet pipes to the proceeding but a real penchant for physical comedy as well. After working with Lewis for almost a decade, this should have come as much of a surprise, but, unlike their previous film, Living it Up, Martin never fades into the woodwork and provides just as many laughs as his partner.

The film features some terrific songs by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, who wrote the score for Calamity Jane. The highlights include "A Day in the Country", "It Looks Like Love", "The Wild and Wooly West", and the title tune. And just like Dino does more clowning in this film than usual, Lewis decided to do a lot more singing in this film and whether or not that this is a good thing is a matter of personal taste I guess.

Director Frank Tashlin provides breezy supervision for our stars, staying out of their way and letting them do what they did better than anyone. Crowley is a charming leading lady and Ekberg offers a cute cameo as well and mention must be made of a large Great Dane named Mr. Bascomb, Malcolm's best pal, who steals every scene he's in. A worthy swan song for one of Hollywood's greatest screen teams.

Brilliant review, Gid!

Thank you so much.

That movie made my heart ache. As you said it's very mean spirited but so compelling because you cant help but empathise with the characters. I need a rewatch. I;ve seen it 2 or 3 times.

I'm only up to page 4 but ripping good read Gideon. You havt great taste.

GET LOW
Serious students of film writing and film acting would benefit from a watch of 2009's Get Low, an exquisitely detailed and imaginative blend of fact and folklore that provided one of the most surprisingly entertaining times at the movies I've had in quite awhile.

It is 1930's backwoods Tennessee where we meet Felix (Oscar winner Robert Duvall), a hermit who is feeling mortality closing in on him and decides he wants to buy his way into heaven and convinces a slick funeral parlor owner to throw him a funeral while he's still alive, but the man's wide-eyed assistant finds his moral compass going into overdrive, not wanting to take this man's money without making sure he knows exactly what Felix wants.

I love the way every moment where we believe we know exactly what to expect from a movie when it hits a certain emotional point, but this movie with every 30 minutes or so, adds layers to this story that we don't see coming, and it's while watching Felix reconnect with an old friend and an old flame that Felix's true agenda comes into focus...Felix needs to clear his conscious before he dies publicly and is not sure if he can do it or not.

I love Chris Provenzano and C. Gay Mitchell's screenplay because it is another one of those stories where a central character is partially created and manifests backstory through the way other characters in the story react to him. I love the way everything in town stops whenever Felix passes through and everyone just waits to see what he's going to do next...we are even told that the townfolk don't want him anywhere they're women and children,but for me, everything that this guy ever did wrong or whatever he had to get off his chest was forgiven when we learned he built a church with his bare hands. This was also the first movie I've seen about a hermit where the screenplay actually utilized the word "hermit"...I liked that.

Director Aaron Schneider has employed a first rate production team to bring this beautiful story to the screen, taking some surprising detours that never defy realism or entertainment value. And believe, no denying star power is a major selling point here...Duvall was robbed of another nomination for this onscreen graduate acting course of a performance and he gets rock solid support from Bill Murray who redefines "greasy" with this funeral parlor owner. This performance is so slick that there a couple of scenes in this movie where I have absolutely have no idea whether Murray's character is being sincere and if that was Murray's intention, he nailed it. Lucas Black was warm and sincere as the assistant. Every moment Sissy Spacek spends onscreen with Duvall was golden...God, all the cinematic memories conjured watching those two together again. Bill Cobbs made every moment he had onscreen count as well as the only person who seemed to know the real Felix.

Mention should also be made of extraordinary attention to period detail, not to mention David Boyd's cinematography, solid editing by the director, and absolutely lovely musical score by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek that frames this lovely story that provided rich entertainment and yes, ignited a tear duct or two.

ZIEGFELD GIRL
During its golden years, MGM mounted some of the most lavish musicals ever produced and bragged about having "more stars than the heavens" and confirmed this with a lavish 1941 spectacle called Ziegfeld Girl, which actually turned out to be nothing like what I was expecting, but still provided first rate entertainment.

From the turn of the century until the 1930's, Florenz Ziegfeld was an enigmatic Broadway producer who reinvented the New York theater scene with his lavish musical revues that were all based on one primary theme: the glorification of woman as a creature to be worshiped and adored. And because of this, it was the dream of every female show business hopeful to become a Ziegfeld girl, some of whom would actually establish careers after the Ziegfeld Follies, most notably Fanny Brice. This film is a musical melodrama about three young women who become Ziegfeld girls and how this once-in-a-life time show business break altered their lives permanently.

Sheila (Lana Turner) is an ambitious elevator operator from Brooklyn whose head is turned by show business success and finds herself addicted to money, baubles, and booze, which finds her leaving her truck driver boyfriend (James Stewart) in the dust and having her head turned by a slick and wealthy attorney (Ian Hunter); Susan (Judy Garland) is a talented singer who does a vaudeville act with her father (Charles Winninger) but is wracked with guilt when the follies comes calling but doesn't want her father; Sandra (Hedy Lamarr) is the exotic beauty married to a classical violinist (Phillip Dorn) who is having trouble supporting his wife, who is immediately scooped up by the follies, even though Sandra thinks being a Ziegfeld girl is silly nonsense but cannot say no to the money and though still in love with her husband, finds herself attracted to the show's handsome tenor (Tony Martin).

If you're looking for a rehash of Singin in the Rain or The Band Wagon here, you've come to the wrong movie. MGM was a studio that had always displayed a penchant for melodrama as well as musicals and they combined both genres pretty smoothly here, thanks to a solid screenplay by Marguerite Roberts and Sonya Levien that provides some surprisingly well-rounded characters in a well-balanced story that has just the right melodramatic touches and every time the story starts to get a little soapy, we are thrown an elaborate musical number accentuated by stunning costumes and classic Busby Berkeley staging, all under the skillfull directorial hand of Robert Z. Leonard, who respects this melding of separate genres and makes it work.

The cast from MGM's stable of stars totally works...Garland's role is slightly thankless, but her interest in being part of this project should have been of no surprise to anyone who really knew her because one of Garland's biggest issues in her life was to be considered to be pretty and no one was considered more pretty than a Ziegfeld girl. Garland often spoke of wanting to look like Lana Turner and now she was doing scenes with her.
Stewart, fresh off his Oscar win for The Philadelphia Story, brings a lot more to his role than the script provides and few actresses were adored by the camera the way Lamarr was, but the real surprise for me here was Lana Turner, yes, Lana Turner, an actress who usually puts me to sleep. really lights up the screen here in the flashiest role in the film and I have to say that I have never enjoyed Turner onscreen more, and that includes Imitation of Life and Peyton Place.

Musical highlights include Garland's "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", Martin's dreamy rendition of "You Stepped out of a Dream" "Carribean Love Song", "Minnie from Trinidad", and "Mr. Gallagher". The film loses half a bag of popcorn for being in black and white (this lavish production just screamed for color), but lovers of classic cinema will be in heaven here.

I'm not sure if I've seen Ziegfeld Girl or not, nice review. I'll have to watch it for the upcoming 1940's Countdown. Have you seen:
Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

Never seen The Great Ziegfeld. but I have seen Ziegfeld Follies, that's the only movie where Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire danced together, "The Babbit and the Bromide".

The Great Ziegfeld...tells the life of Florence Ziegfeld as he looks back on his life and the show that he did, from heaven. William Powell as the great Ziegfeld, makes the movie memorable and it has a top notch cast including one of my favorite actresses Luise Rainer, who won a Best Actress Oscar...and the move won a Best Picture Oscar. Definitely worth watching!

The Great Ziegfeld is the one with Luise Rainer and in B&W, while The Ziegfeld Follies has Flo in Heaven, Astaire & Kelly and is in color.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Thanks Mark... I swear every time I try to do a movie only from memory I get them confused

COVER GIRL
Columbia Pictures went the MGM route in 1944 with Cover Girl, a splashy and colorful musical confection that even featured an MGM icon as its leading man and provided the same kind of entertainment that Louis B. Mayer and company were believed to have a patent on.

The film stars Rita Hayworth, at the height of her beauty and onscreen allure as Rusty Parker, a dancer who dreams of being a Broadway star but is currently working as a chorus girl in a nightclub in Brooklyn owned by one Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly), who loves Rusty but takes her for granted. Rusty learns that Vanity Fair is looking for an unknown girl for their new cover girl and when Rusty gets the job, it brings a lot of business to Danny's club, but it also threatens Rusty's job at the club as well as her romance with Danny. Further complications ensue when John Coudair (Otto Kruger), the editor of Vanity Fair, brings a Broadway producer named Noel Wheaton (Lee Bowman) to Brooklyn and he falls for Rusty instantly and wants to make her a Broadway star.

There is an interesting secondary story here as well as it is revealed that Coudair had a romance some 40 years ago with a glamorous showgirl named Maribelle Hicks (also Hayworth), who we learn was Rusty's grandmother, who left Coudair at the altar because she was in love with the piano player at Tony Pastor's. The film cleverly brings together the parallels in these two stories, rife with the classic musical comedy complications that we expect from such a story.

Virginia Van Upp's screenplay is overly padded, taking a little too long to get to an obvious conclusion, but director Charles Vidor spares no expense in bringing this elaborate story to the screen, in the tradition of some of MGM's best work, providing sparkling entertainment that never allows the viewer to become too impatient with this slightly overlong musical journey.

The tuneful score by Ira Geshwin and Jerome Kern incudes "The Show Must Go On", "Who's Complaining", "Sure Thing", "Make Way for Tomorrow", "Put Me to the Test", and the lilting "Long Ago and Far Away." Stanley Donen, who would later collaborate with Kelly on On the Town and Singin in the Rain, provided most of the energetic choreography, though I suspect Kelly's alter-ego dance was his own creation.

Kelly offers one of his best performances here and that's saying a lot considering his long and distinguished career. His dancing is first rate, as always, and he and Hayworth work wonderfully together, but the non-musical portions of his performance are among his strongest work...he creates a complex yet likable character in Danny McGuire and I'm convinced that the process of technicolor was invented for Rita Hayworth...not since Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire have I been so mesmerized by an actress' onscreen beauty. I literally could not take my eyes off the woman, even when dancing with Kelly. She makes the most of her musical moments too (though her singing is dubbed by Martha Mears). Phil Silvers has some fun moments as Danny's best pal Genius and there is a fabulous scene-stealing turn from Eve Arden as Courdair's assistant, Cornelia "Stonewall" Jackson. The film features elaborate sets and gorgeous costumes and though it could have been wrapped up a little more economically, it was still an enchanting musical journey. Trivia: When Gene Kelly appeared in the 1980 musical Xanadu, the name of his character was Danny McGuire.

Re: Xanadu - Olivia Newton-John's character Kira is actually the Muse Terpsichore who Rita Hayworth played in Down to Earth.

Feud- Season 1
The FX Network and mad genius Ryan Murphy had a major triumph and an award season darling last year with The People V. OJ Simpson and have once again scored a major triumph with a dazzling fact-based melodrama called Feud an eight-part mini-series that is an up close and personal look at what was arguably, Hollywood's greatest feud: the war between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, which found its genesis on the set of their only onscreen collaboration, the 1962 classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

The mini-series recounts in elaborate detail a look at two stars whose careers were both on the decline, looking for a way to revitalize their careers, the battle to find a studio interested in backing a horror movie starring two show business "has-beens", the effects that the film had not only on the careers of Davis and Crawford, but on their careers and the lasting effects that the whole Baby Jane experience had on everyone personally involved, including director Robert Aldrich and innocent bystanders in a Hollywood battle that was, in reality, fueled by outside influences and never really should have reached the level of venom it did, because one thing this film projects and I believe this to be true, is the enormous respect these two actresses had for each other, but were in complete denial about.

Needless to say Ryan Murphy and his creative team have found a story that is rich for the kind of undeniably bitchy entertainment that would be expected from this story. Obviously, recreating Hollywood history onscreen is a tricky thing and it's hard to know how factual everything presented here actually is, but if you're just looking for facts, I'd go to the internet or read the biographies of the people involved, but if you're looking for an entertaining recreation of a classic time in Hollywood that puts some human faces on some Hollywood icons, you need look no further than here.

The story is a spot on look at the movers and shakers of Hollywood in the 60's and more, importantly, the extremely delicate egos of those involved. There's a lot of discussion on this site regarding the worthlessness of the Academy Awards, but this mini-series nails how the Academy Awards are the life blood of everyone who is serious about a career in Hollywood and how they love to pretend how the award mean nothing when they really mean everything. One of the most entertaining aspects of this story is what happens at the 1963 Oscars, where Davis was nominated but Crawford was snubbed and how Crawford still managed to make the evening all about her.

I will say that the story spends a little too much time utilizing other stars of the period as narrators and/or alleged "insiders" on the feud and most of this screentime is a waste, but when the story focuses on Davis and Crawford, it works.

The story also works because of some really on-target casting, manifesting some brilliant performances. Though she initially appears to almost be phoning it in, Susan Sarandon does grow into the role of Bette Davis, bringing the screen legend effectively to life, especially in the final three episodes and during certain shots, with certain posing and lighting and wardrobe/hair choices, the resemblance between Sarandon and Davis is just startling. Judy Davis is just dazzling as Hedda Hopper, the legendary actress turned gossip columnist who apparently was team Crawford according to this story. Alfred Molina does a richly complex turn as Robert Aldrich, the director of Baby Jane, who often had to do a very delicate balancing act to keep these two ladies from killing each other and wasn't always successful and Stanley Tucci made every moment he had onscreen as Jack Warner count. But the thing that you will go away from this mini-series remembering is the absolutely mesmerizing performance by two time Oscar winner Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford...Lange is heartbreaking, terrifying, funny, and bone-chilling in a performance that should make her the darling of the next award season. Jessica, we're not worthy. For fans of classic Hollywood and movie buffs looking for a sparkling blend of fact and dazzling entertainment, have your fill here.

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS
Despite some cliched plotting and fuzzy characterizations, the 1989 melodrama with music called The Fabulous Baker Boys is worth a look due to a dazzling performance from the leading lady and a pair of acting brothers, teamed onscreen for the first and only time.

Jeff and Beau Bridges star as Jack and Frank Baker, respectively, brothers who have a second rate piano playing lounge act whose work is beginning to dry up. Frank decides they need to breathe new life into the act by a hiring a singer and after auditioning 37 girls, they hire the 38th...an ex-prostitute named Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) who does bring a freshness to the act but complicates the relationship between the brothers as well.

Director-writer Steve Kloves has the germ of a really wonderful movie here and there is a spark of originality in what is presented, as we didn't get the expected romantic triangle that the premise implies. Frank and Jack are very different guys...Frank lives in the suburbs and has a wife and kids and, therefore, has no real interest in Susie other than business. Jack is an alcoholic loner whose best friends are a black lab named Eddie and a 12 year old latch key kid who lives upstairs and the slow burn between Jack and Susie becomes the central story here, but there are unexplained complications that keep this slow burn positively deadening. It's clear from jump that Jack is a classic movie angry young man with issues that go far beyond sibling rivalry and alcoholism, but these issues remain an issue for the entire running time, making it hard to sympathize with the character at times, but the fact that he is being played by Jeff Bridges definitely helps.

The whole introduction of Susie into the lives of the Baker Boys smacks of cliche as well...it was just so predictable that we watch the guys listen to 37 girls sing and are about to walk out the door when Susie stumbles through the door, an hour and a half late, looking like she just rolled out of bed, and almost unintelligible because of her inability to stop chewing gum for more than 30 seconds. She takes the gum out of her mouth long enough to belt out "More than you Know" and a star is born. Not really sure what the point was of making the character a former prostitute either...why was a woman with pipes like this earning a living on her back? I also had a hard time buying that this ex-prostie, 20 minutes after joining the act, was all of a sudden an expert on nightclubs and show business.

All that aside, the novelty of watching Jeff and Beau Bridges work together onscreen for the first and only time was a gimmick that completely worked and every moment they shared onscreen was completely believable and their chemistry sometimes overshadowed some really cliched writing and Pfeiffer was a revelation here, in a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Pfeiffer was even more effective than the brothers in overcoming the cliched elements of her character and delivered a true movie star performance that also showcased her severely underrated and sometimes forgotten vocal talent...her renditions of "The Look of Love", and "Can't Take My Eyes off of You" were stylishly original and her steamy rendition of "Makin Whoopee" atop Jack's piano is worth the price of admission alone.

The film is beautiful to look at, featuring Oscar-nominated cinematography and film editing, as well as Dave Grusin's jazzy score, not to mention some very effective ivory tinkling from the brothers Bridges, who spent six months taking piano lessons in preparation for this film and their homework really paid off. This film is not as good as it should have been, but it's still worth a look.