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mdshullaw
Reviews
De-Lovely (2004)
Cole Porter would approve of this movie!
I am 50 years old, and have been a professional musician most of my life. Cole porter's heyday was long before I was around, but I was instantly attracted to his music in my youth, and that love for his compositions has never ceased.
I know many here are bad mouthing the movie "De-Lovely", and they shouldn't be. There are so many unwatchable, ridiculously bad movies being released nowadays, that De-lovely looks like Gone with the Wind compared to many of them. We have several generations of young people that do not have the benefit of the diverse media many of us older people had when we were young. Back when radio and television use to thrived on diversity. They are now totally market driven toward youth, and offer little diversity. The re-birth of the musical these past few years, is introducing youth to a quality of art that most were not even aware existed. The influence movies like De-Lovely could have on young artist should not be under-estimated. I remember many musicals in my youth that greatly influenced my future career as a musician.
I found De-Lovely to be a delightful movie. I found both Kline and Judd to be excellent in their roles. While the story has taken some lead way with the facts, they got the majority of important points across, and with a lot of style in my opinion. The makers of this movie had to do a balancing act between biography and entertainment. Between telling the story of Porter's life, and paying tribute to his incredible talent as a song writer. I left the movie theater feeling upbeat and inspired. That told me they balanced the two very well.
While I might of chosen a few different singers to sing Porter's songs in the movie, I realize that using known, modern singers helps get youth into the theater, and that's important. The artist they choose to sing Porter's music in the movie, did a wonderful job. While some renditions are a little too modernized, any influence his music has on today's youth is a good thing. Our young people need to know that real works of art take skill, training, talent, and time. Much of todays music is aimed toward an audience with a very short attention span, wanting instant gratification, and to counter that with the music of Cole Porter is a wonderful gift to an entire generation.
This movie works on so many levels. The music, the period, the love affair, and the pain. The story is about Porter looking back at his life during his last moments on earth, he sees it as a theatrical production. Because of this, the songs are not all in chronological order. A few of the songs were placed out of sequence to fit the story line. This idea works splendidly, and it is beyond me why some reviewers seemed to miss this concept completely, and thought the writers messed up. The truth is we really don't know that much about Cole porter. He was not fond of the press, and the relationship between his wife Linda and him was very private. We do know Cole was gay, but loved Linda deeply his entire life. The movie raises more questions than it answers, as it should. Cole was a complicated person, and lived a complicated life. This is movie making at it's best, folks. I recommend this movie highly. I hope Hollywood keeps the musicals coming. It's about time.
Superstar (1999)
This movie is strictly for fun - and it is!
Thank heavens for films like SUPERSTAR. This movie was not meant to be the comedy of the decade, there are enough movies that are over-hyped, over-budget, and over-done that attempt to claim that title already. This little movie is just silly, and fun. Molly Shannon plays her SNL character Mary Katherine, along with Will Ferrel. The plot is simple enough - Molly and Will are students at a catholic school, and Molly (Mary Katherine) is battling for the attention of Will (Sky Corrigan) who is more interested in the cute Elaine Hendrix (Evian Graham). You might remember Elaine from her role in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.
Glynis Johns, of Mary Poppins fame, plays Mary Katherines Grandma. For you movie buffs out there, you might be interested in knowing that Glynis is the real-life daughter of Mervyn Johns, who played Bob Cratchit in the 1951 version of Scrooge with Alastair Sim. She helps teach Mary Katherine how to dance and sing so she can win the school talent contest, with the main prize being a trip to Hollywood, and a bit part in a major motion picture.
Thats about it for the plot. Kind of like a Three stooges short. Just enough plot for the fun to unfold, and it really does. Nothing serious here folks, just one silly skit after another. You can tell right from the start, this film was just meant to be fun. Ever been flipping through the channels and run into a Three stooges short, so you stop and watch just for a few laughs? That SUPERSTAR in a nutshell!
Undressed (1999)
Chalk up another piece of garbage to MTV
It's a little hard to imagine that anyone would believe that UNDRESSED is a true-to-life representation of todays sexual culture in the USA. In my opinion, it is just a way to grab young peoples attention for MTV's advertising clients. It's about as real as MTV's "The Real World" which is another piece of garbage designed on getting young peoples attention just long enough to throw every youth geared advertisement at them that they can.
The acting in UNDRESSED is hideous at best, the scripts are ridiculous, and the messages they send out will do nothing more than confuse young people who are already confused enough about the topic. MTV needs to go back to playing videos, and get out of the business of teaching their moral (or lack of) ideas to our children, no matter how much money they profit from it.