New York City Adventures Day Three: From Big Screen to Broadway

On this past Saturday I went with my friend Keith to see the musical version of the film Catch Me if You Can.  The film version was released on Christmas Day in 2002, directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as the precocious Frank Abignale Jr. who stole money, posed as a pilot, posed as a doctor, and posed as a lawyer.  The film also starred Tom Hanks as Carl Hanratty the FBI agent chasing Frank Jr., and Christopher Walken as Frank Abignale Sr., Frank Jr.'s father who just never succeeded at life.  The film score two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score (composed by John Williams), and Christopher Walken in the Best Supporting Actor category.  I personally think DiCaprio was so great in this film and should have been nominated for Best Actor, but DiCaprio still is not taken seriously.  This is a great film, and I went in to the musical with excitement, but also trepidation.

The trend of turning films into musicals started of course with Disney, and the Broadway musical, Beauty and the Beast.  Disney also has done The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Mary Poppins on Broadway as well.  Disney  has had commercial success, with each of these shows (except The Little Mermaid).  Beauty and the Beast was on Broadway for 13 years, Mary Poppins is still a big hit and has been on Broadway for 5 years (a long time these days), and The Lion King is still one of the hardest tickets to get, and does amazing with a show in Vegas.  In these rough economic times Broadway producers have tried to ensure their shows would be a huge commercial success (sometimes instead of a better show).

After Disney's success many other producers started to look to other types of films.  Classic films like Sunset Boulevard (with Glen Close).  The oddball comedies have been some of the greatest success stories and some of the greatest flops.  Mel Brooks created and produced the The Producers (starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) and then tried to capture lighting in a bottle for a second time with Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein like his head fell flat.  John Waters had a huge hit in turning his darker film Hairspray into a musical (with the likes of Harvey Fierstein, and Matthew Morrison), but audiences left the theatre wanting to cry with his adaptation of Cry Baby.  Then came the modern film adaptations like Legally Blonde the musical, which has done well on tour (not my cup of tea) and the ever endearing tony winning musical Billy Elliot.  I saw Legally Blonde on MTV and just did not like the show at all.  I think it loses the heart of the movie and just isn't a great show.  Billy Elliot is a great show, but to me the dancing is the star (my favorite musical that year was the original and off beat Next to Normal.

I have seen two musicals within the past year that were adaptations of films: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Catch Me if You Can.  The first show was adapted from a film with the same title by Pedro Almodovar.  I was so excited to see this musical, despite reviews I was going to see a show that starred Sherie Rennee Scott, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Laura Benanti, and the infamous Patti LuPone (all big talents), and it was the worst show I have ever seen on Broadway.  Individually the acting wasn't bad and the singing was good, but the show was a big mess.

Now, onto the show I saw this past Saturday.  Catch Me is You Can is an uneven show, although entertaining.  Aaron Tveit who starred in Next to Normal plays Frank Jr. and is very charming, but he overshadowed Norbert Leo Butz who plays Carl Hanratty.  Butz's number "Don't break the Rules" is the showstopper and he plays the cranky FBI agent with gusto.  This is a musical so lighthearted and fun it is difficult to walk away hating it.  Sure there are issues with the adaptation and the overuse of Frank's parents, and rushing the ending but overall this is a fun show.


With more shows currently on Broadway right now like Sister Act, and more coming like Bring it On: The Musical, Dirty Dancing, Father of the Bride, and Revenge of the Nerds.  I think with some of these musicals being great fun, and often successful.  My hope is that Broadway sticks to creating original work, and they don't lose their backbone they once had and continue to defy gravity.

Read more »

Michael Fassbender is on the track to becoming a truly magnetic actor

On both this past Friday and Sunday I went to see X-Men: First Class and was drawn to one actor most, Michael Fassbender.  Fassbender plays Erik Lensher aka the mutant Magneto.  Magneto is the most interesting character in the film because the film is about his journey of vengeance; his mother mother was killed in front of him and he wants to avenge her death at the hands of Sebastian Shaw.  Obviously,  in the end of the film Magneto forms his Brotherhood, and he becomes the evil master of magnetism.  Fassbender is terrific in this film, and was perfectly cast as a younger version of Magneto.

Prior to this role Fassbender's name was foreign to me.  I did not remember Fassbender's role  in Inglorious Basterds (2009) as Lt. Archie Hicox, I re-watched the movie the last night and thought he great in this as well.  Fassbender was also in 300 (2007) a Stelios, I am not a huge fan of 300, but I may have to re-watch that as well to look for him in that film.  I love discovering new actors, who I can enjoy and re-watch and plan to watch their films in the future.  I am planning to add Jane Eyre (2011) up on my must watch even more.  Fassbender plays Mr. Rochester, Eyre's boss, and he is just so charismatic so I can see him pulling this roll off well.

Fassbender has a large list of upcoming projects with some major directors including A Dangerous Mind  directed by David Cronenberg.  This film is set to be released this year, and Fassbender plays Carl Jung the  psychoanalyst.  Fassbender also has projects that are supposed to be released this year where he will be working with director Steven Soderbergh (Haywire) and his director from the film Hunger (2007), Steve McQueen in the film Shame.

Michael Fassbender is a star on the rise, and i predict to see him at award shows in the future; he has that aura around him that will make him bankable for a long time.

Read more »

New York City Adventures Day Two: You'll Have a Gay Old Time

Day two of my New York City excursion was another great time.  I got to sleep in and then took the train to meet one of my favorite people, Kyle Palmer for lunch.  The two of us went on a date a couple of years ago and every time we meet up we always go to eat Ruby Tuesday's in Times Square, it is our little tradition.  As we parted I ended up meeting with my friend Keith and we started our night out.  We ate at one of my favorite places in Hell's Kitchen Empenada Mama's, then saw X-Men: First Class.

Going to see a movie in Manhattan is a different experience.  When you go on opening night or even opening weekend of a big blockbuster film you have to get there at least half an hour before.  The theatre was packed it was a sold out crowd, but the real fun began after when we hit the clubs.  We started out at a newer club Industry, then went to Therapy, then finished the night at Posh.  The gay scene in Manhattan is pretty fun because you can go all over the city and find a place or crowd that suits what you want.  Of course this is like a lot of major cities, but the Hell's Kitchen scene is different from Chelsea, and is different in Greenwich Village.  I am excited to finally move to a big city in less than a month, and have the opportunity to be a part of something similar to this.

I want my group of gay friends like in The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000) or The Boys in the Band (1970) but with less melodrama (may be difficult).  The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy is about a group of friends who play on the same softball team and live in West Hollywood.  This film has stellar cast with lots of famous television stars: Timothy Olyphant, Dean Cain, Zach Braff, Nia Long, Mary McCormick, and John Mahoney.  This group of friends in the film is portrayed very accurately.  I love watching these relationships in this film because you see how through adversity gay men form such tight friendships and hold close to the ties that bind.

Then there is that darker side of friendship like the film The Boys in the Band, which shows the close relationships, but also shows the bitterness that can happen with friendship.  The film is based on a play which centers around a friends birthday.  This one present sets things of, and these older gay men help give a great representation of a group of gay friends in the 70s and how things sometimes never change.  I loved finding this film.  I remember being a young closeted gay man and finding this movie and thinking about the wonder that exist and forming great friendships within a community.  This movie helped me to define so many things about who I am as a person.

While I was there it made think about my future in Boston, and finding place with new friends.  I loved being out in the city with my friends and meeting new friends, what a great night it was!

Read more »

X: Men First Class is an eXcellent way to revive this series

X-Men: First Class (3 1/2 out of 5 stars)

Directed by: Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass)

Starring: James McAvoy (Atonement) Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds) Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) Kevin Bacon (Footloose) January Jones (Mad Men) Rose Byrne (Brides Maids)

As a true fan of the X-Men comic book series, I was hesitant about this film.  The characters who were listed were not the original five (except for Beast) and there were characters held no importance in the mutant world like Darwin.  I was excited however that they were using Emma Frost one of my favorite female comic book characters ever, and I was excited to see how they developed the relationship between Professor Xavier and Magneto.  The director Matthew Vaughn also did an amazing job with the comic book adaptation of Kick Ass (2010) so I went in with somewhat reserved expectations (as a comic fan).  This is actually the first X-Men film I have seen twice in the theaters (and would go go see it a third).

The film starts in 1944 with a young Erik Lensher (Magneto) in a concentration camp with his family.  After he moves the metal fence he comes face to face with Sebastian Shaw a mutant so powerful he can harness energy.  Shaw kills Erik's mother in front of him thus creating a tale of vengeance.  Meanwhile in the United States a young Charles Xavier meets a young Raven Darkholme (Mystique) in his kitchen as children. The film then jumps to 1962 and develops into film about the discovery of the existence of mutants, a war between the USA and the USSR, and war between Shaw's people and this new group of mutants that works with CIA agent Moira McTaggert.  There are things that are changed in the film from the comics, and I will not be a real fan boy and point them out, but they do not take away from this great film.

 Vaughn did a great job helping to tell the story (or a re-imagination) of the birth of both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Bryan Singer helped produced this film and did a great job as the director and visionary of the first two films that were made.  The acting was great, Michael Fassbender steals the film as Magneto.   Fassbender is a star on the rise, and this film will help him. McAvoy and Lawrence gave the next best performances.  Each of their stories was the meatiest.   I liked and didn't like the visual effects.  Throughout most of the film, most of visual effects seemed real, but there were things as Magneto was moving that room around as a child and Emma Frost's diamond that just didn't click.  Overall another good comic book movie for the year of 2011!

Read more »

New York City Adventures Day One: A city divided, the Joy of Film Editing

Well I have been away from this sit for a couple of days because I was in New York City visiting friends, and other things.  I took a Mega Bus at 2:30 on Thursday which was supposed to put me in Manhattan at 5:15ish but of course Manhattan traffic did not allow that so I got in at 6:30 in perfect time to meet my friend Keith for dinner in Chelsea.  Then at around I took the M and the L with him to his house in Middle Village Queens.  I have stayed at my friends place before and knew the commute would be a journey, it took us about an hour to get to his house.  Then I thought how far it actually is from where we were and thought to myself about how it can take an hour to go only a small amount of miles (go traffic).

The thing that I thought about a lot this past weekend was the different neighborhoods that exist within each burroughs.  I spent most of my time in Manhattan this past weekend, and every part of Manhattan has a different feel or vibe.  There is Chelsea which a very LGBT vibe, Greenwich Village which not only has an LGBT vibe but an indie vibe because of NYU, there is the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side where those who the most money live then Times Square with all its commercial glory that attracts the most tourists, there is also the financial district which feels like a Men in Black look a like contest because everywhere you look there are men in suits, and I could go on for hours.  Each neighborhood is patched or edited together like a quilt or a great film.  The pieces of the puzzle do not seem to fit together but they do!

Great editing is one of my favorite parts of a film.  It was the editing in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that helped make it such a well told story.  As this film starts we see Joel and Clementine as the interact on the subway and in the diner there, and after seeing this film I recognized the subtle ways the characters memories start to tell them they may have met before.  The film starts with the beginning of the end, and then starts from the beginning and lets us watch as their story unfolds.   Going through Joel's mind as he erases Clementine is so well edited, the way things disappear is just haunting.

500 Days of Summer is another "love story" with great editing.  The film takes on the journey the 500 days of the Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt) dealing with his relationship with Summer (Zooey Deschanel).  This film is also not told in a linear style but with a jump in dates showing the audience the highs and lows of this relationship.

There is obviously great editing that does not use this technique, but this style has helped piece together films in a very unique way.  Manhattan is such a unique place there are so many different cultures, people, places, and things that are on this island, and yes there is a division and certain people usually stay within certain neighborhoods, but at the end of the of the day the people on that island all call themselves New Yorkers.  The patchwork of those neighborhoods creates one of the most vibrant cities in the the world.

Read more »

New York, New York, a helluva town. The Bronx is up but the Battery's down

Well today at 2:30 pm I will  be taking the mega bus to Manhattan, and staying with my friend Keith in Queens, and my friend Lauren in Long Island.  About a year ago this time I worked for the Julliard School, and lived in Manhattan all summer.  I saw ten broadway shows (one per week), hit the club scene, enjoyed some great cupcakes from Magnolia bakery (my favorite), and got to live out my dream.

New York City is home so many amazing films, I can name ten films easily off the top of my head:

Taxi Driver
Annie Hall
King Kong
Manhattan
The Godfather Part I and II
Do the Right Thing
Ghostbusters
Saturday Night Fever
When Harry met Sally
The Devil Wears Prada
West Side Story

These are some of the finest films ever made and highlight just how amazing the city of New York.  From crazy Robert DeNiro asking "You talking to me" to Miranda Priestly telling us "That's All" or Sally faking an orgasm in a diner.  Each of the films (and many more) give us intimate portrait of specific aspects of New York City.  Immigration and dancing gang members (West Side Story), hunting ghosts (Ghostbusters), racial tension (Do the Right Thing), the mob (The Godfather I and II), that search for romance (Annie Hall, When Harry met Sally).  These films have used NYC so well, and you almost feel as thought city is character in the film.

New York is the city where dreams come true and for years filmmakers like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese have used this city as the back drop for some of their greatest works of art.  As I prepare for this trip let me say that I have Frank Sinatra's version of New York on in the background as I start to begin my packing.  I am reminded of that song, and my adventures to the Bronx, and when the Yankees win they play Mr. Sinatra's version of that song.

Read more »

Movie Stars Heading to the Small Screen: The Triumphs

As I was reading some of my favorite television and gossip blogs (tvline.com and perezhilton.com-cehck the out)  I came upon a story that Halle Berry is in talks to star in her own television series.  Halle Berry won an Academy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 2001 for the great performance in Monster's Ball.  Halle Berry was the first black female to win this award (I personally would have picked an actress who was not nominated that year Naomi Watts in Mullholland Dr.).  After her Oscar win, Berry starred in a string of flops: Catwoman, Gothika, Die Another Day, Perfect Stranger, Things We Lost in the Fire, Frankie and Alice.  Berry did of course star as Storm in the X-Men film franchise, but I thought she miscast and I would have much rather seen Angela Basset.  Overall beyond her Oscar win Berry's film career has not been that stellar, so moving to television could be a smart move.

In the last ten years there have been a number of huge movie stars that have shifted their careers focus from film to television.  This has added new life to their acting repertoire.  I have been re-watching the television show 30 Rock starring Alec Baldwin, and he is my favorite movie star who transitioned from primarily film roles to being a huge television star.

Baldwin started his career in television and his first acting credit was the soap opera The Doctors from 1980-1982.  Baldwin scored some major role in the 80s and 90s in films like Beetle Juice (1988), Working Girl (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Prelude to a Kiss (1992).  In the 200s his career started to look different he took a guest starring role on  both Friends and Will & Grace,  and played smaller roles in films with great comedic timing.  This was probably the contributing factor that landed him one of the best roles in television history playing Jack Donaghey.  This role has also helped him to land more movie roles in films like It's Complicated, and I have appreciated his comic timing more than anything.  Baldwin has won several awards for his role, from Emmys to Golden Globes.

One of my favorite moments in 30 Rock was this season where Tom Hanks makes a joke about the official A-list at Baldwins expense.

There have been several other success stories recently.  Sally Field obviously started her career as the flying nun then went on to win two Outstanding Lead Actress Academy Awards; she recently took on the role of the matriarch in the television series Brothers and Sisters (2006-2011) where she played Nora Walker, and won an Emmy for her role.

Kiefer Sutherland started his career playing that bad ass teenage boy in films like Stand by Me (1986) and after that had numerous roles in film.  Then came the television phenomena 24.  Sutherland has done more here creating the role of Jack Bauer than he ever did with any film.  Rumor has Sutherland is also in talks to star in another television series.

Glenn Close is seen as one of the most talented actress in film history, with five Academy Award nominations (0 wins); she has made a great presence in the silver screen.  Then in the 2000s Close took on an Emmy nominated role in the television series The Shield, but got her own series in 2006 entitled Damages where she plays tough as nails lawyer Patty Hewes.  Damages is not one of the most watched shows that was F/X but it helped to create indelible television characters.

As television becomes more and cinematic with shows like Boardwalk Empire. Dexter, Mad Men, Breaking Bad etc more big stars will be drawn to taking on roles in television series.  I wish Halle Berry success and hope her journey to small screen bring her more success.

Read more »