Song Sung Blue (Movie Review)

 

Song Sung Blue (Movie Review)

Directed and Written by Craig Brewer

Mike "Lightning" (Hugh Jackman) and Claire "Thunder" (Kate Hudson) are two middle aged over the hill cover song performers ready for a change, sick and tired of playing low dive clubs and fairs. On their own, they would probably live out the rest of their lives doing the same songs over and over again. But once they meet, sparks happen, both romantically and creatively. She suggests that Mike start singing Neil Diamond songs with her singing harmonies. But they want to go further than just singing the notes and wearing the outfits. They want to make it an "Experience" for the audience. What ensues is a roller coaster of events that take them to the pinnacle of success in their field to the lowest lows of failure. And then it begins again. Like life. 

I have to say I was aware of this film coming out but my depth of knowledge about what it was about was just the movie poster. I'm like oh is this some kind of biopic of Johnny Cash and June Carter or a Star is Born type story. There was zero chance of me seeing it but it happened to be the Cinemark Secret Movie screening last Monday. Jackman and Hudson did like a 25 second intro before the movie started so I knew what I was in for. But I went into it with a open mind and ended up enjoying it. 

First of all do not go see this movie if you hate Neil Diamond. Because you are going to hear a lot of his songs. As for me, Diamond was always more of an artist my parents liked. I just basically know the hits and enjoy them if they play on the radio but I never bought one of his albums. So it was cool to hear music of his that I had never heard before in this film. It made me go out and get the Essentials cd of his work. 

Hugh Jackman I like but he's not one of my favorite actors, but he's great in this movie. I assume he did his own singing as well, and it was spot on. Just like the real singers, he was more concentrated on the spirit of Neil Diamond's singing which actually made the songs more authentic than just straight up mimicking.  

Honestly, I did not even know that was Kate Hudson as Thunder until the movie credits rolled at the end. That's how clueless I was about the movie going in. She also did a great job acting and singing. Both actors had to do the full range of human emotions, almost like a mini Hamlet performance. They had to cry in depression and laugh in the highest exuberance and everything in between. 

It was also nice to see Fisher Stevens and Jim Belushi in supporting roles. 

I had never heard of the real Thunder and Lightning documentary that this movie was based on or even the original performers back in the day. The original doc can be viewed for free on Youtube. 

The cool thing about Cinemark Secret Movies is you get to see a movie before its release for like $5 and a lot of times it will be a movie you would have never went to but end up enjoying. The worst I have done was see an "OK" movie. I haven't experienced anything truly awful.  Check your local listings. 

My Grade: B

The Housewife by Frieda McFadden (Book Review)

 

The Housemaid

By Freida McFadden

Published by Bookouture, 2022

Millie has just gotten out of a long prison stint in her late 20s and has gotten fired from her first post penitentiary job. She's living out of her car and if she doesn't find another job, she might violate her parole and end up behind bars again. 

That's when she finds out about a job as a housemaid in a rich gated home in New York that is going to pay well and also be a live in position. If she can get it, it will solve her money and housing problems in one go! So she purposefully pads a fake resume hoping her employer won't make a background check. 

Her interviewer, Nina Winchester, is very professional and a perfectionist. She will be doing cleaning and some cooking for Nina, her husband Andrew, and their young daughter, Cecilia, who seems as creepy as one of the undead twins from The Shining. 

Things start to go south a bit when Millie is shown to where she will be staying, a tiny attic room with a cot, and small porthole window that doesn't open. It is only lit by two loosely hanging light bulbs. Something that begins to ring alarm bells in Millie's head is that the attic room locks from the OUTSIDE and she notices what could be scratch marks on the inside of the door like someone had desperately tried to free themselves.....

Add to that the hot ripped Italian landscaper that works for the Winchesters, who can hardly speak English, warns Millie that she is in danger.....

But Millie doesn't really have a choice in her mind. She can handle anything except going back to prison. All the danger signs probably have some other explanation right? RIGHT?

Millie gets the job and so the story begins...starting with psychotic behavior exhibited by Nina. 

The writing of this book, at least Part 1, just from a technical aspect, is not very good. Everything in the first part is on the surface. Nobody really has an inner life. The characters are about as shallow as you can get. The cliches fall like daggers from the sky. When Millie uses the word "dreamy" to describe Andrew you know as a male exactly who this book is aimed at. Millie is constantly a horn dog and commenting how ripped and sexy the landscaper, Enzo, and Nina's husband are. 

The whole time you are reading Part 1, you are thinking "Is Millie really this DUMB?". I did not like her. She reminded me of heroines from early 80s slasher movies like Halloween or Friday the 13th. Ok, you put a machete through Jason's shoulder, but you're going to leave him there, not sure if he is dead, WITH the machete??? You shot him five times. Please just go up and shoot him in the head. Don't drop the gun and run away!!! 

It is in Part 2 that the book turns around with a point of view change. Without giving anything away Nina and Millie finally become real living breathing people. And the reader is the richer for it. So if you are reading Part 1 and thinking the writing is bad, the characters are bad, start Part 2 before putting it down. It was like Frieda flipped a switch and what was dim and dark about the characters becomes light and revelatory and you get caught up in the whys and eureka moments of all that has come before. 

I will definitely be reading the next book in the series. I read this one on kindle and most of McFadden's books on Amazon go for about $5 so it doesn't cost that much for a great read!

I read the book a week before going to see this movie on opening day last Thursday so I will also be posting a movie review soon. 

My Grade: A-

Batman (1989) 4K Movie Review

 

Batman (1989) 4k Ultra HD

Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren

Rated PG-13

Do I really need to give you a plot synopsis of a Batman movie at this point after 1000 different versions? Batman (Michael Keaton) fights crime in Gotham City and accidentally causes an up and coming mobster named Jack (Jack Nicholson) to fall into a vat of unknown chemicals that turns him into the Joker. Not only is it a physical transformation, dyeing his skin white and turning his hair green, it causes the already innate psychosis of a cruel criminal to become even worse. He goes mad. He no longer cares for material power. He wants to kill people. LOTS of people. It's up to Batman to stop his plans but his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, might be falling in love with a photographer named Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), who is town to get pics of the Batman! This distraction could spell his doom.

I remember when this came out in the movies back in the day. Trust me, it was an EVENT. Besides the original Christopher Reeve Superman movies, there really weren't any other superhero movies to this point. I also remember there being a lot of WTF? when it was learned that Michael Keaton would be playing Batman. I mean he's basically a shrimpy, average looking dude, and short. How was he going to play the dark brooding toughness of Batman? And Tim Burton, the director of Pee Wee and Beetlejuice, two weird comedies? It just didn't seem like it would work on paper, but the visual product was very successful. 

Let's get something out in the open first. To me, this movie is more about the Joker than Batman, which was repeated almost 19 years later. Jack Nicholson steals the show completely much as Heath Ledger did a generation later. Jack Nicholson is even listed on the marquee first.  I think if you added up the screen time between Batman in costume and the Joker, the Joker would have tipped the scale. Nicholson plays the Joker somewhere between the campy goofiness of Cesar Romero's Batman tv show and outright subdued matter of fact violence of Ledger's portrayal. He is funny but also dangerous and unpredictable. 

Keaton, on the other hand, seems to play it more like Christian Bale. Doing more through action than speaking. There's not really a wide palette of acting on display for his part. His was never my favorite Batman. Mainly because if you're going to act mainly through body language and facial expressions, you have to be a GREAT actor. Also, physically, Keaton just is NOT a good Batman. You're telling me this shrimpy guy is going to lift a full grown man by his jacket 2 feet off the ground? I bet Keaton did like zero body building training or fight choreography for this film. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Michael Keaton. Bird Man is a great movie! But here he was just serviceable. 

As for the 3rd member of the main cast, Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, she is a beautiful woman, but my god, what was up with her hair in this movie? Most of the time it looks like she has 3 or 4 different hairstyles on her head at any one time. She just looks really bad in this film, and that's hard to do for a such a gorgeous woman. Again, she's ok. 

I have never been a big fan of Tim Burton, but I think he did a really good job with this movie. He was able to meld his weird expressionistic sets with a superhero that matched his aesthetic. He would not have been a good choice for Superman or Wonder Woman. He needed a hero with dark dystopia vision. A hero that was weird and broken.  

It was also cool to see Jack Palance and Billy Dee Williams in small roles. 

Prince did some songs for the movie but to me they were subpar for him. I would say this was his last hurrah as a relevant and powerful pop figure but he was definitely on the way out. Danny Elfman's symphonic score was much more memorable, especially the iconic Batman theme he wrote. 

The main attraction of this movie is the Joker and the action scenes and fun still hold up 36 years later. 

The 4K picture looks amazing! I have the box set of all 4 movies so I plan on watching and reviewing them all. Then on to the Bale trilogy and maybe even the Twilight Batman with Edward in them. 

My Grade: B+

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (Book Review)

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way

By Marcel Proust

Translated by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kimartin

Revised by DJ Enright

Published by The Modern Library, 2003

List Price: $16

The narrator of Swann's Way is fond of beds and sleeping. In fact, laying in bed is what you might say is his hobby. In our day and age he would be someone that likes to "bedrot". Of course, this novel was published in 1913, long before you could lay in bed and watch tv or be on your phone. Instead, for entertainment and/or combat insomnia, the narrator enters into a virtual world of his memories. This is because being in bed is a place where he can remember all the places he has slept through his life, and along with the places he remembers the people and circumstances of his life during those moments in time. He is especially fond of Combray, a small town where him and his parents stayed at his grandparent's house when he was a child. 

Even though his family is quite interesting, being upper bourgeoisie,  they think they are better than the common rabble and always aspiring to be the envy of their neighbors, he is more intrigued by a family friend named Swann. At first, Swann visits a lot, but then the narrator's family begins to shun him because in some way Swann's wife is scandalous. 

The second half of the book, entitled "Swann in Love" flashes back to an earlier time as Swann meets and falls in love with Odette, a charming woman who isn't exactly beautiful, but has some intriguing x factor that Swann finds undeniably attractive. Another problem is she isn't averse to playing the field with other men and even other women. You get the feeling she'd be up for a threesome if Swann introduced the subject. 

In Search of Lost Time, which is comprised of 6 volumes, is a series that is hardly read anymore to completion these days. I know of NOBODY that has even read the first book. I am sure they are out there though. Despite that, it has the reputation of being one of the greatest works of literature produced in the West. I've always had the ambition to read the whole thing but it always felt like a work you would read in retirement so you could focus your entire thought on it without distraction.

It was not an easy read by any means. It took me about 2 and a half months to read this first volume. It has to do with the density of Proust's writing/thought. He can be looking at a lamp on his nightstand or the shape of his pillow and slip into all manner of time and space adventures. He travels back to Combray and is once again anxious and melancholy when his mother does not have the time to kiss him goodnight, which feels like the meaning of his existence. 

That's one of the things that stands out about the book, that every object, every place, is a catalyst for memory or emotion. Even Swann gets affected by this theme, over and over being almost spiritually overpowered by a musical variation he hears. So strong that it might have been what made him fall in love with Odette. 

The narrator is not fond of particular points in time and space, because time does not stop. It keeps barreling forward. He values his memories of the places or things much more than the current reality of them because they are eternal, not subject to decay and death. 

The love affair between Swann and Odette is to me one of the most realistic depictions of unrequited love that I have ever read in literature. I don't know that Odette loves Swann. I got the sense that she was just using him for money. She didn't DISLIKE him, she just wasn't in love with him. He was convenient, and when he becomes inconvenient she begins to disrespect him more and more. Meanwhile Swann just becomes more and more of a simp. 

I said it was a somewhat hard read. Sometimes you just want to say "Ok, Marcel, we GET it! Next scene!" but Proust just sinks deeper and deeper in his thought and language. It's almost like a musical invention where he weaves a theme or a thought into different contortions or variations in an effort to write a perfect statement. Don't get me wrong. This is not purple flowery prose. Just very creative and very exact when dealing with very abstract ideas.

To me, this is definitely not a series you can read back to back. I need a break from Proust's world. But I will definitely be returning for Volume 2: Within a Budding Grove after a brief siesta of a month or two....or three. 

My Grade: B+

A Complete Unknown (Movie Review)

 

A Complete Unknown

Directed By: James Mangold

Written By: James Mangold, Jay Cocks, and Elijah Wald

A very young Bob Dylan arrives in New York City with hardly any money and no place to stay. He hasn't thought ahead very well. His main goal involves meeting his idol Woody Guthrie who is in a hospital suffering from some sort of disease that doesn't allow him to speak. When he visits him, one of Woody's friends, fellow folk legend Pete Seeger is visiting as well. The two musicians ask him to play them a song. Bob obliges and promptly impresses both men. Pete allows him to live at his house and once Bob gets his toe into the music world of New York City, there is no looking back.

I have to say, I am a big fan of Timothee Chalamet from the Dune movies so I always look forward to his work. He does a great job playing Dylan and especially his singing which at times is hard to delineate from the real McKoy. It's kinda funny, but I think ANYBODY with even a modicum of singing ability could do a good job imitating Dylan because, let's be frank, he is and was NOT a good singer. Chalamet conveys Dylan's understated personality well, maybe TOO well. This was the second time this week, the other being Nosferatu, that I sometimes had to struggle to understand what an actor was saying. 

Edward Norton comes off as a bit smarmy playing the goody two shoes Pete Seeger whose music landscape you almost want to see destroyed by Dylan. Seeger seems like a Mr. Rogers type who is too nice for his own good. 

I was really intrigued by the beauty and talent of Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. I guess she was in Top Gun: Maverick but I had no memory of her. I look forward to seeing more of her. I also loved Boyd Holbrook's portrayal of Johnny Cash in a small but pivotal role. 

While I enjoyed the actors in the movie I would say the weakness of the film was in its direction and writing. I felt that even after the end of the movie, Bob Dylan was STILL a complete unknown. He's like the Joker. We never learn the truth about his life, whether outer or inner. No real origin story. He comes on the scene with his talent and songs already fully formed, waiting to be discovered. I don't know where he was born, what his childhood was like, how he got into music and how he learned to play guitar. I do not know when he started writing songs, and what kind of literature he read. I don't really know if he ever really loved anyone or what he truly thought about anything. It's almost like the only inferences you can make about him is through his actions, not his words. His whole life is encrypted, and this movie is definitely not a cipher for it. 

I felt the script had way too many scenes of him playing a song for people and then close up of their face going "whoa, that song is amazing". Dylan just scrounges from place to place to write songs in people's houses or apartments and he has no human connection to the people in his life. They are just a convenient roof to write his songs under. His emotional connection to the people that love him is tenuous at best. He doesn't seem like a normal human being, more like a demi god who people are in awe of and fall in love with him but there is nothing given back. Similar to Val Kilmer's Jim Morrison in the Doors. Eccentric is saying it mildly. 

It was rated R I guess for a few F bombs. No nudity, no sex scenes etc. except for Monica in a t-shirt and panties (I give that scene an A+!) lol 

I would recommend seeing the movie for the performances, acting wise and music wise, but just know that if you want to learn anything about Bob Dylan, read a biography. 

My Grade: B-

Podcast Episode 286: Dan Da Dan First Encounter

 

Podcast Review: Insomniacs After School Volume 1