My Spider Links Are Tingling

Playbill Julie Andrews and Dolly Parton are both getting special Grammys this year.
Pixar Blog another FYC ad for Toy Story 3 as Titanic. Hmmm. I gotta say, I am not sure about the taste level on this one. What'cha think?
BBC Anne Hathaway discusses that Judy Garland biopic. There's some hesistancy about the singing. Here's a clue. If you can sing as well as Anne Hathaway (very well) star in a musical, not a biopic with one of the most famous voices of all time that you won't be able to replicate. Argh.
Old Hollywood, my favorite tumblr, gives a rooftop view of the filming of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931).
IndieWire The Year of the Actress. 60 Women FYC.

Off Cinema
THR whoa. Broadway stars are on the attack after injuries on that Spider Man set. But wait there's more...
AV Club heated meetings and cancellations follow latest injury.
Wet Asphalt on "slipstream" and the continuum between genre fiction and mainstream fiction. I'm linking up to this because I read my first China Miéville novel earlier this year and am still... uncertain... about it.
Playbill HBO will film Pee-Wee Herman's current Broadway show for broadcast.
BlogStage actress audition alert: wanna be Kathleen Turner's understudy?

This Link Roundup Will Soon Be Adapted Into a Stage Musical

Towleroad Far From Heaven being adapted into a stage musical. I've been burned on this sort of thing too many times but at least it's by the composer of Grey Gardens and that had a few lovely tunes.

 

And would make a good stage-to-movie candidate actually...

NYT the latest injury from the set of the Spider Man musical on Broadway. Wednesday matinee cancelled. I am 100% certain that someone will one day write a bestseller about the behind-the-scenes of this disaster prone production
Cinema Blend Peter Weir not interested in a sequel to Master & Commander. Awww. Maybe they should just adapt it for a stage musical instead. Kidding.

photo src

Movie|Line has a jolly interview with Mike Leigh on the eve of the release of Another Year. I love this bit on why he'd never make a superhero film (no, really. the question was posed to him in a way that's not as crass as it sounds)

I use film to make a personal kind of film in a very specific, particular way. And there is no more reason for me to do what I think you're suggesting than there would for me to give up being a film director an become the pilot of a jumbo jet flying across the Atlantic. Or a brain surgeon or, indeed, a coal miner.

I love thinking of Mike Leigh as coal miner. Tee hee. Come to think of it. He would make a GREAT director for a coal mining movie or a... wait a minute. I have it. Topsy-Turvy demonstrated that Leigh can sell a musical number. So... Mike Leigh, directing the acclaimed musical Floyd Collins about that explorer trapped in a cave!

Floyd Collins is so pretty. Let's listen to a couple of its songs.

Her Awesomeness Audra McDonald & Hair's Will Swenson doing
"Through the Mountains" from Floyd Collins. 

Matt Doyle (Gossip Girl) doing "How Glory Goes" from Floyd Collins.
This song is perfection but it must be hard to sing because there are a lot
of bad versions on YouTube. This version gets better as it goes.

My brain does like to wander. Obviously needed a break from thinking / writing about Oscar Oscar Oscar Oscar Oscar...

Moving On...
Pop Eater have you heard this crazy story about 80s star Marilu Henner? Seems she has something called "superior autobiographical memory" - fascinating story really and totally unrelated: I've always thought Marilu was a hilarious celebrity.
Go Fug Yourself Fug or Fab Style: Mila Kunis
In Contention Jafar Panahi banned from making films. So terrible. As Guy says, this puts the silly annual Oscar bitching into perspective.
AV Club Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg offered $1 million to box each other for charity cuz they both starred in boxing picture, see? This story cracks me up on so many levels. Like, no movie stars would risk their billion dollar faces for charity. The only risk movie stars take with their moneymakers is plastic surgery.

Tired of critics awards yet? You can say so if you are. The London Critics Circle have offered up nominations. Sadly, The King's Speech -- the only British film that doesn't need any Oscar boost -- is the only one they're willing to back for crossover attention; it shows up on both their "Film of the Year and "British Film of the Year" lists and doubles up on Helena Bonham-Carter and Colin Firth in two acting categories, too. (sigh) Whew... I thought Colin Firth was in danger of losing his Oscar momentum there for a second. Thank god, they threw their weight behind him.

Blake Edwards (RIP)

Mrs & Mrs Blake Edwards (1974)

Our heart goes out to the divine Julie Andrews in what is surely a difficult time as her husband the writer/director Blake Edwards passed away a few days ago. We apologize for the delay in honoring him. Edwards was long beloved and praised for his comic sensibilities as a writer and director, most famously within The Pink Panther series starring Peter Sellers.

What was less often noted is that he was often responsible for shining a flattering light on actresses, no matter your feelings about him getting Julie out of her clothing. His late career efforts in this realm (Ellen Barkin in Switch and Kim Basinger in Blind Date) weren't as magical as his earlier work but he had a hand in big moments in the careers of Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn and was absolutely crucial to Julie Andrews career.

Blake and Natalie Wood in 1965

If you haven't seen many of his pictures, program yourself a festival at home with these highlights.

• Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) the most universally beloved Audrey Hepburn movie.
• The Pink Panther (1963) though any in the series will do. My favorite as a wee toddler was the one where Sellers is wearing a facial disguise that melts and his nose starts dripping. Anyone remember which in the series that was?
• The Great Race (1965) Check out how jaw droppingly gorgeous Natalie Wood is in this all-star comedy. Some consider it the peak of her beauty.
• "10" (1979) A massive hit when it appeared making Bo Derek and Dudley Moore incredibly famous. Julie Andrews co-stars.
• Victor/Victoria (1982)-You know this one already. Watch it again. Isn't it one of the most rewatchable films ever?
• And maybe end with one of his other collaborations with wife Julie Andrews. He directed her frequently. I didn't personally like their last film together That's Life (1986) but you could try Darling Lili (1970) a war film where Julie sings and is paired with Rock Hudson or  The Tamarind Seed (1974) where Julie is romanced by Omar Shariff or their infamous showbiz satire S.O.B. (1981). Though moviegoers who liked Julie Andrews abso-squeaky clean sometimes resented her husband for his playful and frisky remolding of his wife's image whether that was striptease musical numbers or gender bending (clips from Darling Lili and Victor/Victoria follow), Julie herself obviously enjoyed it.

Julie Andrews in S.O.B. (1981)

 As is true with most comedically gifted filmmakers, Edwards had to wait for an honorary Oscar late in life rather than win one in competition. He was only nominated once, for the screenplay to the wonderful gender-bending farce Victor/Victoria (1982) which happens to be the last musical hurrah of Julie Andrews. Along with Breakfast at Tiffany's it will undoubtedly live forever.







A dream maker and heart taker, indeed.

Related post: A History of... Julie Andrews
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Here She Comes!

Jose here.

There are few things I enjoy more than "discovering" a new performance by an artist I adore. Such was the case last night when I screened The Harvey Girls for the very first time. I have always known Judy was adorable and could sing like nobody on the planet has since her. What I loved to see this time was her marvelous entrance performing the Oscar winning song "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe".
The whole town seems to know what's coming in the petite package and they all come to greet her in the kind of musical extravaganza only Arthur Freed delivered.

When they sing:

Do yuh hear that whistle down the line?
I figure that it's engine number forty nine,
She's the only one that'll sound that way.

You can't tell whether they're talking about the locomotive or Judy...

Was anyone better at singing on board moving trains (or trolleys)?




Have you recently discovered a wonderful performance from the back catalogue of an artist you love?
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Christian Bale, Honorary Powerpuff Girl

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone fame is being roasted again as the all time champ of shameless Blurb Whores but that's not the point of this post.

While interviewing Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter, who seem to be in great moods (why wouldn't they be after the Globe & BFCA announcements?) Travers tries to entice Bale to serenade us with a little Newsies number. And why shouldn't he? Is there anything so wonderful as Bale crooning "Santa Fe" on horseback with that little red kerchief round his neck?

Travers doesn't get what he expects.



Unexpected delight: Wahlberg throwin' a little Boogie Nights encore in there.

Okay, I can't resist posting it... the best moment from Newsies bar none.



He has a lovely voice. Sad that he doesn't want to do another musical.

Welcome to "Burlesque"

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Care for some turkey? Cher, XTina and gay filmmaker Steve Antin shall provide a succulent bird. If you’ve been looking forward to the new musical BURLESQUE, relax. I come not to disparage the movie, but to (mostly) praise it. Consider this a corrective protest. It will prove too easy a target for critics and haters, who often seem to despise girlie or flashy movies before they’ve even seen them, but it’s not truly a turkey. It’s more like a (hot) pink flamingo; the plumage is so colorful, you forget that it looks like it should fall over.

The basic plot of Burlesque is so typical as to be personality free: small town dreamer arrives in big city to make it big. Does. The End. But let’s backtrack. Christina Aguilera, referred to as “Ali” since she’s acting or “Iowa” since she’s just off the bus, chances upon the club “Burlesque” run by Cher. For some reason everyone in the movie keeps calling Cher “Tess" but even Cher knows she’s just playing Cher. Tess even gets an 11th hour power ballad "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me Yet" to remind you that she's Cher....

Read the full review @ Towleroad.

TV @ The Movies: "Glee" and "The Walking Dead"

What is the ideal format for talking about tv? I'm beginning to think it's Twitter since even in the days of next day recaps and the 'watch it on your own time' DVR reality, people often watch it in great masses, round about the same time -- only staggered with everyone in their own slightly skewed time zones. I'm on NESST (Nathaniel's Eastern Stop & Start Time). TV has never been the all immersive experience that the movies can be... so it makes sense that people are now tweeting as they're watching. TV is jerry-rigged to withstand distractions: housework, phone calls, commercials. Twitter and Facebook only amplify this and now everyone has become their own tv critic, ringleader, announcer, omniscient narrator, diarist. I always wish that the movies were this accessible to people to enjoy en masse but... sigh.

With deeper immersion comes less accessibility I suppose.

If she's growling and decomposing, shoot her! 

Anyway, Sunday night I opted not to tweet through AMC's much ballyhooed THE WALKING DEAD. I was curious before the series even began how they would work around television restrictions, only to realize that there are no restrictions. You can apparently show anything on non-premium cable during prime-time hours including little girls and grown men getting their brains blown out (in slo-mo!) and men getting their heads smashed to bits with baseball bats as long as nobody says the naughty "F" word or shows the naughty boobies, butts or dangly man-bits.

[Lots on GLEE & more WALKING DEAD after the jump]

Otherwise it's all good!

I had planned to tweet but I didn't get any further than this.

Now that it's had time to settle I don't even know how to review The Walking Dead. It felt like every zombie movie that has ever been made cuisinarted together. Once it had become a fine slush, it was poured into a new TV sized mold slowly, slowly now... you gotta string it out over several episodes. While pouring, Chef Frank Darabont (he's writer, director, producer), described his "new" old concoction with a southern twang.

True to AMC's form, The Walking Dead is a well made show. It was scary, well acted, and intense. I can easily give it that. The only missing AMC ingredient was a unique identity. It even starts its zombie apocalypse just about the same exact way (homage?) as the chief revivalist of today's current zombie craze. In this film / tv show our hero "Jim" (Cillian Murphy, 28 Days Later) /  "Rick" (Andrew Lincoln, The Walking Dead) wakes up in an abandoned hospital, disoriented, sick, thirsty and totally unaware that while he was "sleeping" (coma?), the world basically ended from a zombie plague. The only difference? Rick wakes up buck naked in a stripped hospital bed and Jim wakes up under sheets and under those he's wearing a hospital gown and under that he's got boxer shorts on.

Twang, not wang!

I don't mean to be flippant. I don't expect to see nudity on television. But I'm being absolutely 100% serious when I say that I do not understand why the MPAA ratings or television board (I forgot the name) exist. They've always been, well, dumb. But theoretically their 'goddamn raison d'etre' is easy to understand. But if you seek to destroy a whole entertainer's career over a wardrobe malfunction but you can show a zombie movie on TV with all of the R rated violence intact (they pulled approximately zero punches) what the hell are you on about?

Are body parts (non bloody rotting ones I mean) and excessive profanity the only remaining taboos?

I know there's a lot of violence on TV shows (especially procedurals which really seem to get off on it) but it's usually more "described" than shown. I mean, I watch Dexter. I can handle some violence. But that's a pay cable series. I'm not sure I am okay with the idea that any little kid who wants to can watch The Walking Dead and enjoy all the grisly slaughter. It reminded me of something I'd long since forgotten: on the weekend that Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake opened, two teenagers approached me at the movie theater and asked me to buy them tickets. Apparently the theater was policing that R rating. I declined. I wasn't trying to be a jerk but I'd seen way too many parents leading their little kids (not even teenagers) into slasher movies in that same exact theater and so I had become ultra sensitive and judgey about what people were letting the newest generations watch. Just think, all those teens had to do was wait 6 years and they could see the same thing on regular cable for free.

a tough cop and  a hungry mom.

Back on topic. I might give The Walking Dead another episode or two -- again, it was well executed -- but I'm nervous.

I'm especially uncomfortable with what struck me as a pretty obvious (if unintentional?) misogyny: the first female we see is the little girl zombie. She's the first kill. We follow that with a jump backwards in time and we sit with two cops (Rick and his partner Shane, Jon Berthal, pictured above) and we discuss Rick's cruel nagging wife and how she wants him to share his feelings (god forbid!). We don't meet her then so she gets no voice of her own, just the one prescribed to her: cruel, nagging, relentless, one who causes emotional distress to her husband AND child. The next important female "character" we meet is another cruel mother; this one is a zombie who really wants to dine on her son. The boy's good heroic father is protecting him from her, though he still can't bring himself to kill his now-cruel wife. Later, we see a few living female characters (no names) and we discover that Rick's wife (the cruel nag) is alive and she's now sleeping with his former partner (pictured, left). In their defense they both think Rick is dead but basically what we have here is dead women, hungry dead women, and living unfaithful nags!

My rating has to be threefold thus far. Execution: B+ | Morality: D | Originality: F. So, I guess I'll have to go with a C for now.

I'll give it one or two more episodes on account of its fine acting/execution and to see if I'm wrong about the morality and originality problems. Maybe I am. (And, yes, sexism is a moral failing. But I notice on AMC's site that there are a couple of female principals so maybe things will be different soon.)

Meanwhile over on network television...

GLEE was also shoving our hypocrisy in our faces with its strange decision to do a tribute to the very R rated Rocky Horror Picture Show. That one I did tweet through. Glee is generally as horny as your average (gay) teenager -- the show is constantly seeking opportunities to show us the bare abs and chests of the male characters -- but in the same episode, they shamed the teacher (Mr Shue, Matthew Morrison) for his willing exploitation of teen flesh. "Pot." "Kettle." The show just doesn't seem smart enough to be aware of or intentionally presenting its own ironies or hypocrisies. The writing is way too inconsistent to give it that benefit of the doubt. If they can't even remember basic personality traits and motivations from episode to episode, how they gonna build complex story-telling with meta commentary while belting their show stoppers?

My overriding question is this: Why did they choose to do Rocky Horror in the first place when they couldn't even bring themselves to sing the words "transsexual" or "heavy petting" let alone commit to drag or same sex hedonism (Mercedes plays Frankenfurther, negating all of this. Happy to see her get a plum role, but...this one?)?

But, most importantly, I 'm not sure I can live in a world where everyone starts misquoting Rocky Horror's hilarious lyrics because Glee did them wrong; show tunes are sacred!

But for all of my frustrations with Glee, I dig it on some deep level and want it to be a million times better than it is. It's sometimes so embarrassing but every once in a while it transcends. At the very least there's usually a good quotable or three buried somewhere in each messy episode. Becky's "give me some chocolate or I will cut you" has already become a favorite.  And there's a certain amount of joy in the mass-sharing of a public phenomenon. #glee always sparks fun tweet conversations.

WonderRobbie always delights me and Glee's weird double standards on sexuality have escaped virtually no one -- though I hadn't noted, like Joseph wisely did, that the GQ photoshoot that everyone got their panties in a twist about, made an interesting duet with all of the punches they were pulling when doing Rocky Horror.

In the end, I realize I had a similar reaction to The Rocky Horror Glee Show that I had to The Walking Dead. I thought I was enjoying it while it was going on only to realize afterwards that I was totally disappointed. The little missteps and underlying weak foundation just piled up. So I have to hand it to the often brilliant critic Matt Zoller Seitz. We got into it on Twitter -- here's a little of our public back-n-forth...

I share this because, after his brilliant full length write-up of the show, I'm totally coming 'round to his point of view. Except, that is, when it concerns that Britney Spears episode which he liked and which to me was such a creative nadir that I am stunned that the show ever crawled back up again, let alone started doing high kicks and pirouettes like it had never fallen in the first place.

Sweet Transvestite
The Brilliant Tim Curry

I was never an obsessive fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). I brought toast and rice to throw and what not but I never dressed up in costume or made it a weekly midnight habit. But I did buy the soundtrack and went to 4 or 5 midnight shows over a 2 year period. And I got really fascinated by the overriding theme "Don't dream it. Be it." which scared the hell out of me at the time (late 80s in my case) as it would anyone who is repressed on any level.

So, I was happy to see it revived again in this major reaching-millions way. But since Glee doesn't really have the strength of its convictions, they should probably steer clear of randier material. Please, people, no more Sweet Transvestites from Transsexual, Transylvania. I mean, clutch your pearls, children could be watching! Why couldn't Glee just have gone with something wholesome like Sweeney Todd's throat slitting and cannibalism; you can't can do that on television!
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A History of... Julie Andrews

To celebrate the 75th birthday of the great Julie Andrews, our favorite singing governness, our favorite magical nanny, our favorite gender bending toast of Paris. Something big was in order. Why, she's practically perfect in every way... so in her honor, a resurrection of a long dormant exhaustively researched 100% true* series that was once the Film Experience's most popular feature.

1935 Julia Wells is born to Mrs. Barbara Wells in Surrey, England. Mr. Wells is not the father. Scandal! This bastard child will one day become the icon of squeaky clean family entertainment. She won't always enjoy it. At her christening the good fairy Fauna grants her the gift of song

One gift, the gift of song,
Melody your whole life long!
The nightingale her troubadour,
Bringing his sweet serenade to her door.

(We figure that's the only way you get a voice that lovely.)

1940 Having already recognized the fairy's generous gift, non biological daddy Ted Wells sends Julia to live with mom's new man Ted Andrews (also not her biological father --- so confusing!) who is better equipped to give her the musical education she needs.

1947 Julia -- now "Julie Andrews" -- makes her professional debut at the London Hippodrome singing the aria "Je Suis Titania" (i.e. 'I am Titania' -referencing the Queen of the Fairies in A Midsummer Nights Dream, no doubt an homage to generous Fauna) from the opera Mignon. She blows the roof off the place.

1951 Does not prick her finger and fall into an unnatural slumber but is, by now at 16, a British star of stage and radio. Waits impatiently, but sweetly, for love's first kiss total world domination.

1954 Start at the top: Debuts on the American stage on Broadway in the lead role of The Boyfriend.

1956 Wouldn't it be loverly if she originated the plum role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and concurrently became a superstar with the live television airing of the musical Cinderella? Statistics vary but her numbers are basically up their with the explosion of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show and the final episode of M*A*S*H. We're talking everyone... or roughly 10 times the numbers that even the biggest "event" nowadays.

1959 Love's first kiss: Marries set designer Tony Walton who she met on the stage in London many years prior whilst playing the Egg in Humpty-Dumpty.

1960 Her eggs produce first child, Emma. Also creates the original Guinevere in the smash hit Broadway musical Camelot.

1962/1963 Julie, already a household name in America, is passed over for the movie version of the role she created in My Fair Lady because Jack Warner, in a typically lazy movie industry move (that we still see every day in 2010) only wants someone "bankable." Never mind that her first two movies become enormous "all time" blockbusters, each outgrossing My Fair Lady (which was also a hit with "bankable" Audrey Hepburn). Nobody can see into the future and most people aren't willing to risk casting based on rightness for a role... even though anyone in the right role at the time can become bankable as Mary Poppins will soon prove.

1964 Kill Audrey, Vol 1: Julie's movie debut Mary Poppins outgrosses My Fair Lady. So much for not bankable. She also stars in the acclaimed adult-oriented drama The Americanization of Emily, a film which she reportedly loves, though few notice in the enormous wake of that flying nanny.


1965 Kill Audrey Vol. 2: Julie wins the Oscar, besting Audrey Hepburn (who actually wasn't nominated but this isn't the way history remembers it. Shut up!).

As follow up, Julie spins around on a mountain top; billions of people all over the world get dizzy, and thousands of fairies are born. The Sound of Music outgrosses every movie that's ever existed including Gone With the Wind (if you don't adjust for inflation).

After defeating Audrey Hepburn, Julie targets Vivien Leigh. 'You can make one dress out of curtains? Amateur!'

Von Trapp play-clothes

1966 Hitchcock, having worn on Tippi Hedren's last nerve, has to find a replacement blonde. He tries Julie out for Torn Curtain. Outcome: Not icy and anonymous enough for Hitch. They never work together again. The film is a big hit. So is Hawaii that same year. Even outside of musicals Julie is beyond bankable.

1967 Julie stars as wannabe flapper Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. People remember it today as a misfire or flop but sorry: another huge hit, the biggest in Universal's history up till then. Julie + musicals = box office gold.

1968 Except when it don't. Oops. Star, a bloated biopic of Gertrude Lawrence becomes her first failure. Julie divorces Tony Walton and...

1969 ...marries Blake Edwards after filming Darling Lili (1970) for the director with Rock Hudson.

1970s After five years on the mountain top of global stardom, Julie bows out of the movies, making only two more films over the decade. She has two more children and then adopts two more still. She makes multiple television appearances.

1981 Blake convinces his wife to bare her breasts, which he had undoubtedly seen thousands of times already but he's a sharer. Her boob flash in S.O.B totally scandalizes Mary Poppins fans and my parents (also Mary Poppins fans). I remember the fallout vividly from my youth. They were furious.

1982 Despite her "betrayal" of squeaky clean loving fans, Hollywood and pop culture reembrace the icon when Victor/Victoria hits. Her multi-octave slide in "Le Jazz Hot" shatters glass and thousands more fairies are born. Julie is nominated for another Oscar for her woman-pretending-to- be-a-man-pretending- to-be-a-woman nightclub act wherein she falls in love with gangster King Marchand (James Garner again) or "Fairy Marchand" as his arm-candy girlfriend rechristens him in a jealous rage.



1983 Julie Andrews loses the Oscar to Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice as would anyone from any year in any film under any circumstance.

rest of the 1980s makes a few more movies with Blake Edwards but nothing ascends. Bares her breasts again opposite Rupert Everett in Duet For One (1986) but few notice. You only get a shock from that once.

1990s-1999 returns to Broadway, eventually revives Victor/Victoria in new form, refuses a Tony nomination for their "egregious" snubbing of her fellow cast members. Vocal problems begin. Undergoes surgery for throat nodules and something goes wrong and she is unable to sing again. A special new circle of hell is created for whomever is to blame though...

2000 ...here on earth the matter is settled in a malpractice lawsuit. Julie's Just Rewards: She becomes "Dame" Julie Andrews by order of the Queen.

2001 Speaking of Queens...  The Princess Diaries opens, surprising virtually everyone by becoming a smash with non-bankable Anne Hathaway in the leading role of the Princess and non-singing no-longer bankable Julie as the Queen of Genovia. The hit film will win her a new generation of young fans and set in motion a new career in children's films, albeit usually just as voice work. As in...

2010 Despicable Me wherein Julie Andrews plays the disapproving mother of super villain Gru. On October 1st, Julie Andrews celebrates her 75th birthday.

Here's to her next quarter century as one of the great entertainers of all time!

*or truthy, same diff.

Dame Judi is Rich

I've heard Dame Judi Dench perform this classic before but I somehow missed this particular performance from a Sondheim 80th birthday celebration this summer.



Isn't she rich?
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Judy Garland's Clark Gable Fixation

Actors on Actors



You know what's odd? Though Judy Garland excels at dreamy sadness, I always end up smiling when I listen to her sing. As soon as she tears up onscreen I feel way better; she alchemizes sadness and turns it towards the bittersweet at the very least. I love her two movie shout-outs here in Love Finds Andy Hardy: one is to Greta Garbo but she also has to reference her main man.

I'm allowed to go to picture shows. That is if Nurse is feeling able. But we only go to Mickey Mouse, I'm not allowed Clark Gable!

Oh Judy. They'd let you go to Clark Gable pictures if you hadn't already gotten so stalkerish just one summer earlier in The Broadway Melody of 1938.



All of this begs the following question:
Who made you love them when you were only 15?
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Streep at 60: A Prairie Home Companion

The following article was originally published in January 2007. It's slightly revised below.

It didn't take Meryl Streep long. By 1987 at the very latest, just ten years into her career, we knew that she could do everything. We'd already heard the accents, seen the funny, witnessed the sexy, fallen in love, had our hearts broken and heard the magnificent singing voice. If she were less endearing and emotionally attentive as a performer her technical range would be just hateful, a thing to curse as she popped up again and again in films. But this woman has it all. She is, put simply, the most consistent versatile actor in the movies.

So what is there left for Meryl Streep to do? It turns out quite a lot.

The joy of watching her now, thirty plus years into a great filmography, is seeing which actors' muscles get flexed for each new project and seeing which past performances are its predecessors. There's also a communal thrill in watching her surprise both herself and us in each performance since there's nothing left to prove. Can you name another movie star who so regularly seems to be having a grand ole time while they're acting? Can you name another actor who is so technically accomplished but still regularly manages moments that feel spontaneous onscreen? I can't.

I've seen nearly all of her filmography which could explain why I prefer her comedic work. There's less of it so you have to hold it closer. Plus the thing I love most dearly about Meryl Streep (her joy in acting) bubbles right to the surface when she's asked to joke about. The Streep performance I cherish most on a personal level is her work in 1990's Postcards From The Edge wherein she also joked, sang, and played an entertainer. And all of this, if you'll excuse the breathless intro, is a very long way of saying that I was thrilled to see her comedic and musical chops get a work out again as "Yolanda Johnson" in A Prairie Home Companion .



Yolanda (Streep) is part of a singing group "The Johnson Girls" that once had more members but now includes just herself and her sister Rhonda (Lily Tomlin). For the first half hour of the film we get to know Yolanda in a series of brief sequences backstage. In the first she enters the theater where A Prairie Home Companion will hold its last broadcast (please note: this is a fictional film about the still running radio program) with her sister and daughter (Lindsay Lohan). She is holding too many things and nattering incessantly mostly to herself but ocassionally to others. Streep gives her character a quick easy laugh and a fluid temperament. As this sister act prepares for the show, Streep fills you in on the rest of Yolanda.

Yolanda's body language is a little fussy but also slow and open. She's often got her arms outstretched. She has a welcoming folksy presence but you get the immediate sense of fatigue from both age and a life on the road. There's also a weird dichotomous specificity of feeling that Yolanda is both a nervous girl and an old woman entirely at ease with her lot in life. Regarding the latter: several verbal remarks indicate otherwise but Streep plays them more like canned instinctual responses; They come from the character's simple humor and are uttered primarily for her sister Rhonda's benefit.

It's Rhonda who harbors more illwill toward their showbiz history. The famous Altman overlapping dialogue aids Lily and Meryl in detailing this sister act. Yolanda and Rhonda have spent their entire lives together and the actresses ably sell this. They're constantly talking to each other, but it's a well rehearsed decades-long togetherness: their minds are free to float elsewhere knowing that they'll always return to one another.

Yolanda's primary concerns are her death-obsessed daughter (whom she clearly worries about but takes joy in) and Garrison Keillor, the host of the show. You realize through her shift in demeanor with the host that she has either loved or romanced him before the events of the film takes place --Streep shows you this with simple glances even before the dialogue confirms your suspicions. She makes this dead romance her best running gag in the film, mining it for abundant laughs that a lesser actor wouldn't even know where to find let alone amplify.

By the time Streep hits the stage you're already completely aware of this woman's personality and her circumstantial simplicity (this life as a midlevel sister act is the only life she's ever known.) And, then in her vocal performances onstage she just keeps on deepening those initial impressions while giving a musical performance, full of idiosyncratic feeling and beauty.



As in all the best ensemble pictures, the performances of other actors inform each individual turn as well. In a great moment backstage Yolanda, realizing Rhonda is upset about a story they've been retelling, sings an old familiar tune and embraces her sister. When the tune ends, Rhonda tearfully says "singing is the only thing that ever puts me right". She's talking about herself but in Meryl's exuberant, silly, and vocally powerful stage performance that follows, you realize the same is true for her. They're peas in this showbiz pond. Singing also puts Yolanda right.

In so many melancholy and bittersweet ways Robert Altman's last film was a farewell. Casting America's most enduring Great Actress in this role made it sweeter. In the film's last scene the sisters and friends gab around a table about the departed radio show. Yolanda, giggling and reminiscing, is determined to jumpstart a farewell tour...

I love doing that last show. I just wanna do one last show and then another until I'm in a wheelchair. I just wanna keep doing 'em.

The Angel of Death (Virginia Madsen) enters this final sequence and smiles benevolently at these principal players corking Yolanda's infectiously loud joy. You realize immediately that one day all of us will give our last performance. One day all of these actors will be gone, even this beloved goddess of the cinema. Feel free to tear up. It's a testament to the film that the feeling is still somehow a good one.

Meryl Streep is now in her early sixties. She's been knocking her performances out of the park for thirty plus years and there's no reason not to hope for thirty more. She'll keep giving one last great performance until they put her in a wheelchair. She's gonna keep giving 'em.



'Streep at 60' Performance Write-Ups:
Julia, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Plenty, Death Becomes Her, The River Wild, Music of the Heart and The Devil Wears Prada.

Oscar Nominations Discussed:
78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 95, 98, 99, 02 and 06