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March 17, 2003:

THE DAY AFTER

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, here it is, our 501st notes. Yes, Virginia, for those who were errant and truant over the weekend (and there were many) we had quite a celebration here yesterday, especially in our Unseemly Live Chat, which was especially lively and sparkling last evening. In any case, there’s a lot to cover in these here notes, so I may as well just dive in.

I got my first two blurbs for Kritzerland. I thought it would be clever and perhaps even a first for me to go back to the original blurbers and have them blurb this book, too. Unfortunately, that plan has proven difficult, as Ira Levin is in the middle of his own book and won’t read any other fiction until he’s through (I’m the same way). Rupert Holmes has been very busy with a multitude of projects, but I know he’s going to attempt to read it this week (the deadline for me getting the blurbs to them is coming up shortly). So, if we have his, then what I’ll do is use Ira’s from the first book (describing the first book) and then do the new ones (describing Kritzerland). In any case, here’s Dick Lochte’s blurb (he’s written six superb mysteries under his own name, and co-authored several mysteries with the likes of Christopher Darden):

“Readers familiar with Bruce Kimmel’s debut novel, Benjamin Kritzer, will need no prompting from me or anybody else to take a trip inside its sequel, Kritzerland. They’ve already discovered that Kimmel, relying on storytelling skill, wit, and memory, has tapped into something quite wonderful with his continuing portrait of a boy coming of age in late 1950s Los Angeles. What those unfamiliar with the author’s shrewdly observed, wistful tales should know is that the outspoken and idiosyncratic Benjamin, putting the pangs of adolescence on hold by losing himself to the magic of the silver screen, deserves a place on the classics shelf alongside his spiritual older bothers, the protagonists of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer.”

Isn’t that a perfectly lovely blurb? Tomorrow I’ll give you Mr. Gary Owens’ blurb. Over the weekend I watched quite a few DVDs. Here are my thoughts on a few of them.

I got an advance of A Chorus Line. I haven’t seen it since the day it was released. I hated it then and I hate it more now. What a botch from start to finish. Everything that worked about the stage version has been tampered with and changed for the worse. The energy is simply sucked out of the piece by director Richard Attenborough. Why they would hire the director of Gandhi to direct a film of a Broadway musical is an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum. That single decision is deadly for the film, but the work of scripter Arnold Schulman, is dreadful. The film’s biggest downfall is the decision to keep Cassie separate from the other auditioners (until the tap routine). This is an idea that Michael Bennett toyed with and discarded immediately because Cassie, for the emotion of the story, must be with everyone from the beginning. Michael Douglas is a terrible choice for Zach because he’s just surly and mean, and you never ever get the sense that he’s a dancer/choreographer. Some of the kids are good, but it doesn’t matter because they are dancing the hideous choreography of Mr. Jeffrey Hornady, who was, at the time, the flavor of the month because of Flashdance. The movie has been thoroughly eighties-ized, with synth drums and that awful Flashdance/Giorgio Moroder style. Mr. Hornady does occasionally throw in a Bennett step, though, so that’s always nice. And the normally brilliant Ralph Burns does terrible work here – it is the most unexciting orchestration you can imagine, and the mix of the film is shockingly bad. It is fun to imagine what a director today would do with it – simply pander to the MTV crowd with overcutting and jumpy cameras and it would be equally awful. I do hope someone gets another crack at this someday, because it really would make a marvelous film. I did like Miss Nicole Fosse (who looks like her dad) and Pam Klinger (as Maggie). A big haineshisway.com blechhh to this film. There is a little newly-made featurette with Marvin Hamlisch in which the people who made it get one hilarious fact so wrong that one can only sit and shake their head in disbelief that someone got paid to make the featurette. Hamlisch mentions the two new songs he and Kleban wrote for the film, and then they cut to those numbers, which should be Surprise (an awful song) and the new Cassie song, Let Me Dance for You (although it’s so similar to The Music and the Mirror, why did they bother). But instead of Cassie’s song, they cut to Who Am I Anyway as the “new” song. First of all, it’s not even a song, second of all it’s not new. Another blechhhh.

Then I watched the remake of Charade, The Trouble With Charlie. It is becoming increasingly clear that Jonathan Demme lucked out with Silence of the Lambs, which is the exception rather than the rule in his career. This film is so annoying on every single level that one simply can’t believe it. Charade is a light comedy thriller, well thought out, well paced and a star vehicle for Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Who do we get? Thandie Newton (who?) and Mark Wahlberg. I mean, honestly. All I can think of is that every other actor in town turned it down. And with good reason. It’s another botch job from start to finish. Charade remains entertaining and watchable because of its stars, and its devilishly clever plotting by Peter Stone. This has the same plot, but everything is hammered over the head, the soundtrack is non-stop “hip” rock songs, and what little score there is by Rachel Portman is so wrong it’s just scary. The leads are so non-charismatic that one simply doesn’t care whether they perish or succeed. Jonathan Demme, who is older than I, spends the entirety of the film trying to be hipper than hip, with skewed angles, sped-up film, all that crap they do today that’s supposed to be clever. This film, which is already unwatchable, will end up being one where you say, “Look what they were doing back then”, a cultural relic of bad artistic choices – pandering to today’s audience visually, rather than telling a good story. Well, it didn’t work here, and no one went to see this thing. The DVD does include Charade, in a lovely enhanced transfer, so unfortunately it’s a must-have.

What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? I’ll talk about the others that I watched tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s all click on the Unseemly Button below and see what’s happening on the other side of the mountain.

Don’t forget, you still have until midnight tonight to answer the Unseemly Trivia Contest question. And Donald has a brand spanking new radio show up and running to celebrate the wearing o’ the green. And do catch up on the weekend notes if you missed them.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must make phone calls, I must plan, I must write, I must eat various and sundried foodstuffs and I must get organized, oh, yes, I must get organized. Today’s topic of discussion: Back to our film composer top five – today we’ll do my favorite film composer, Bernard Herrmann. So, what are your five (or more) favorite Herrmann scores (I know this will be particularly difficult to pare down). I’ll start – Fahrenheit 451, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho and The Magnificent Ambersons. But I can’t not mention The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Obsession, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Marnie, and his work on both The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Your turn. I’ll check back in shortly, so let’s have lots of posts, shall we?

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