WEST SIDE STORY REVIEW

The film that no doubt inspired countless of dancers today. West Side Story is the 1961 adaptation of the Broadway musical, which in itself is adapted from Shakesphere’s Romeo and Juliet. Think Romeo and Juliet in the Bronx, but replace complicated English language with fancy, but express dance moves and American 20th Century complications. Basically, a coveted street in Manhattan is fought over by two rival gangs: The Jets, made up of the street's white population, and The Sharks, comprised of Puerto Rican Americans. At a school dance, two opposing members fall in love, but have to deal with their warring crews before they can be happy. 

Watching this in 2009 and knowing it’s from 1961, you can tell the dancing was ahead of its time. The movie, in a way, redefines stereotypes of musical much the same way ONCE did in 2007. Musicals don’t have to be the flashy, glitzy, over-produced attractions like Dreamgirls and Moulin Rouge. Here, West Side Story is very gritty. A mostly masculine musical with dancing incorporated into combat. At the end of the prologue above, you can see them puree into the fight. Unforunately, it has its cheesy parts. The scenes with Tony & Maria (the star-crossed lovers) come off as boring, too-cutesy, and contrived, but does appeal to the romantics who actually believe in love at first sight.



I prefer the Sharks and Jets complicated dance scenes. Just how they show off their moves and can still be men. I’m also amazed on how the songs incorporated real world messages and/or debates. In the clip below, “Cool” they shift from singing about staying calm and cool in front of the cops to not buckling under pressure when going through hard times.



CULTURAL INTROSPECTION:
A question came up in a screenwriting podcast I was listening to. The listener asked if to make a movie timeless, do you have to edit out anything that will date it like things going on in the world at that time. The podcaster said the exact opposite. That what makes a movie timeless is that what was going on at that time is still happening and will most likely always be a problem we’ll have to deal with. Under that definition, West Side Story is timeless. The message of the film is obviously the ignorance of gang violence. The Sharks and Jets have no real differences except races. Both experience hardships, but are so bent on exhibiting superiority over the other they refuse to see it. A lot of gang violence today is the same, even between gangs of the same race. I remember Spike Lee’s School Daze where the Gamma Rays and Gamma Phi Gammas fight over the lightness or darkness of their complexion. In a way, this nation was built from senseless gang violence. The dominance of the Italian Mafia in the late 19th century, or even the English fighting the Native Americans over land instead of trying to co-exist.

THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE:
One of the more famous scenes from the movie deal with The Sharks discussing the pros and cons of abandoning Puerto Rico for America.



Blacks have contemplated the same thing, asking is it better to stay where you’ll always be discriminated against or go back to a homeland that is tarnished. It’s a personal choice, one that complicates many mixed emotions dealing with identity and familiarity. For African-Americans today, it’s a bit more complicated. Things have gotten better in America and some feel to abandoned rights that so many people have fought and died over is disrespectful. Also having been born in this country, one’s identity, whether they see themselves a member of the black community or a citizen of the American people is an issue. Many Africans refute African-Americans claiming the homeland, so whether one would be welcomed is another issue.

EXTRAS:
West Side Story won 10 Academy Awards out of the eleven it was nominated for. This includes Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Geroge Chakiris and Rita Moreno, the two Puetro Ricans arguing in the America song. There are many culrural references from the movie in today’s pop culture. Both Michael Jackson’s Beat It & Bad were inspired from the movie. As is Santana’s Maria Maria, named after the lead female, Maria. In Anchorman, the news teams rumble under an overpass just like in the film. In Adam Sandler’s Anger Management, the song “I Feel Pretty” is used as a repeating gag. The song is also from the film.

RATING:

= 4 Stars

 = 3 Black/Puerto Rican Fists

TARAJI P. HENSON VS. VIOLA DAVIS

  VS.  

In this year's Oscars there are two blacks up for awards. Taraj P. Henson for her role as Queenie in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Viola Davis for her role as Mrs. Miller in Doubt. They're both up for Best Supporting Actress which means at best we can only get one. Taraj P. Henson is a fan favorite, haven starred in black films such as John Singleton's Baby Boy and Kasi Lemmon's Talk to Me. Unfortunately, I have to root for Viola Davis. Not only is she a former Tony winner, but she holds her own against Meryl Streep in a movie full of supreme actor starpower. Basically she's our only hope to take down Penelope Cruz. Check out the clips below and tell me what you think.

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD REVIEW

WARNING: Do not see if this film if you follow the naive belief that marriage is bliss. In Revolutionary Road, Titanic stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio re-team to play The Wheelers, an unhappy suburban couple feeling suppressed. They’re solution, move their family to Paris, have Mrs. Wheeler find a job while Mr. Wheeler rediscovers himself. But due to 1950’s gender roles, their idea to escape is scoffed at by everyone, while an unplanned pregnancy and promotion add further complications. American Beauty’s (also Winslet’s husband) Oscar Mendes directs the novel adaptation along with Kathy Bates and Michael Shannon in supporting roles.



Seriously, if you ever want to get married, you may want to avoid this film. I don’t, so I found it all the more reassuring. The Wheelers seriously go after each other, work to rebuild their relationship, and then go after each other again. To anyone who lived with soon-to-be divorced parents, this may seem familiar. At times, especially in the beginning, the film seemed too-smarty and plain. Especially Kathy Bates character who annoyed me with just her dialogue. The characters aren't well defined, and it seemed like DiCarpio and Winslet were doing their best to bring them to life. That is until things start picking up. Both actors, Dicaprio especially, melt into their roles at agitated suburbians. You truly feel sorry for their neurosis. Even though things are not great, they’re not nearly as bad as they’re making it seem. They truly take it too far and you get the impression they wouldn’t be happy anywhere they go. An over dramatized episode of Desperate Housewives if there ever was one, but it does speak to the lengths some go to rid themselves of desperation and discontent. As great as DiCaprio and Winslet are, Michael Shannon is awesome, and even though he only occupies two scenes, he makes his presence known.



CULTURAL INTROSPECTION:
Established gender roles do seem outdated. Just last year Hilary Clinton ran for President and almost shattered the glass ceiling but back in the days the thought of such notions drew gasps. Even though the plan isn’t that far fetched, others in the film looked at them as if they were relenting to a Bohemian lifestyle. Paris? Why? Well, why not? The Wheelers though, were truly out of their time. Society has changed from admiring the ideals of building a family in the suburbs to admiring those who have the balls to do something truly spectacular with their life. There is a bit of a double standard though. Here, audiences are meant to root for the Wheeler’s plan to forgo their wealth to live in Paris. I remember Crooklyn, where the families' father is cast as a villain for pursuing his dream to become a musician. When family is concerned, is there a middle ground between aspirations and responsibility?

BLACK PERSPECTIVE:
While researching, I came along a startling statistic. According to www.bellaonline.com, African-American couples have a higher divorce rate than any other ethnic group in American, currently at 12% per year. This is troubling, since it also reports only 42% of African-Americans are married. A 2007 article in the Midtown Journal states only 52% of black women will be married by the age of 30 and that there are 23 divorces out of 1,000 black marriages per year as opposed to 19 out of every 1,000 white couples. The problems with divorces and unhappy marriages are not solely a black issue, but it hits harder than most due to the black’s communities difficulty with maintaining families. Blacks are more likely to get divorced than any other race, less likely to get married than any other race, and have more single-parented families than any other race. It is possible to grow up successfully from a single parented home but has proven to be more difficult. “Children from single-parent homes suffer a loss of economic, parental, and community resources. These losses limit their abilities to achieve in school, in the workplace, and to avoid early childbearing. Children that grow up with only one biological parent are less likely to learn and do well at school, become economically independent and successful adults.” (www.integer.com)

Resources
Bella Online
Intiger
Middletown Journal

Here is a youtube video dedicated to the celebration of black marriages.



Also Black Marriage Day is March 22nd, 2009. You can visit www.BlackMarraiageDay.com for more information.

EXTRAS:
Revolutionary Road reunited Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio from Titanic, the highest grossing film all-time, which premiered 11 years earlier in 1997. Kate Winslet won Best Actress at the 2009 Golden Globes. The Picture, Dicaprio, and Mendes were also nominated, however all were shut out for their roles in this film at the Oscars. Michiael Shannon (you may remember as Eminem's mother's boyfriend in 8-Mile) received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The film also received nominations for Costume Design and Art Design.

RATING:
= 3 Stars

 = 0 Black Fists

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA REVIEW

When you watch this film, I know what will be on your mind. Can I laugh? The answer is, yes, you can laugh. As dramatic as the turns in this movie are, it’s meant to be comedy. Don’t feel bad. Even the co-star Penelope Cruz wasn’t aware of this until the film’s theatrical premiere.

The film revolves around two American tourists, Vicky and Cristina played by Rebecca Hall and the sexy Scarlet Johansson, whom spend the summer in Barcelona. Vicky is a goal-oriented, Type A personality who’s engaged to a well connected but impassionate man back home. Cristina on the other hand is spontaneous, artistic, and seeking passion in her life. While in Barcelona, they get a proposal from a Juan Antonio, a smoldering painter played by Javier Bardem, to spend the weekend touring the quaint city of Oveido. Completely frank with his intentions, he’s pursuing a three-way. Vicky, who’s against the trip, is talked into it by Cristina, who’s enamored by Juan. But when Cristina gets sick, Vicky and Juan spend some quality time together and end up making love. Unaware of this, Cristina pursues a relationship with him, and then Juan’s homicidal ex-fiance Maria Elena is thrown into the mix after a suicide attempt. Things start to get sticky, but not in the way you expect.



Woody Allen’s style shines in this picture. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle praised the film as “the work of a confident and mature artist,” and I couldn’t agree more. Many ABC’s of filmmaking, like don’t let narration tell your story and build set pieces, are thrown out the window, yet Allen still completely grabs your focus from the start of the movie. Twenty minutes in, I’m hooked, having to know what happens to these characters, and even though the end makes the film seem pointless, the journey turns out to be well worth the ride.

The Highpoints for me –
1) The scenic Barcelona views
2) The infectious theme song – Barcelona Giulia & Los Tellarini 
3) Watching Johansen and Cruz make-out
4) The thrill of watching characters struggle with figuring out what they want and still not have any clue by the end.




CULTURAL INTROSPECTION:
SPOILER ALERT- not really, you can see it in the previews but after Maria Ellena gets over her intentions to kill Cristina, they grow VERY close. Does Juan get jealous? Hell no, he tags right along for the ride creating a polyamorous relationship. Juan and Maria’s marriage dissolved because they were missing a small but crucial piece. Johansen turns out to be that missing piece and the three of them are able to function cohesively. Today’s society is adamantly against such non-traditional unions marked with Bohemian ideals, but even Type A Vicky, when asked if she could ever do it, says no, not because she thinks it’s immoral, but because she doesn’t have the courage. Juan’s father is a poet, but punishes the world by not publicizing his work, justifying this because he thinks the people of the world forgot how to love. Now I’m not pro-polygamy or anything, but with so much ugly in the world, if three people can get along harmoniously and love each other, whose it anyone’s business to stop them.



THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE:
Again, a movie with no black people. I can ignore this since it was shot in Barcelona and directed by Woody Allen, yet I can still give my two cents on how the film relates to black or even black filmmaking in general.

I watched two black films a couple weeks ago. First Sunday and This Christmas. Since my blog is seriously lacking black film reivews, I really wanted to do reviews for them, but couldn’t bring myself to it. It wasn’t that they were bad, because they weren’t. They weren’t good either. They were so-so, just lacking really, nothing special to talk about or get excited about in either direction.

Both these two movies and Vicky Cristina Barcelona have average storylines, but I asked myself what makes them so different. The answer – style. Woody Allen has it for days. The music, the narration, the language, all are quirky in their own right but mesh well for a unique enjoyable experience. Meanwhile First Sunday and This Christmas seem to be clones from so many other black films, it’s disappointing. Yes, Allen is a film veteran and has the luxury to do his thing his way, while David Talbert and Preston A. Whitmore have the handicap of having Hollywood studio execs breathing down their backs, but still, how do they ever expect to break away from the pack if they can’t deliver something new. It’s not enough just to be a black film. If black films every want to increase their status, someone is going to have to reinvent the genre, and not in a Tyler Perry formulaic way.

With that said, I would like to note, not all black filmmakers lack style. Last year, indie filmmaker Barry Jenkins came out with Medicine for Melancholy, the tale of two African-American twenty-year old somethings roaming the city of San Francisco after a one-night stand. Check out the style in the trailer below and then try and tell me of a black filmmaker who can match it.



EXTRAS:
Penelope Cruz is nominated for an Academy-Award for her role as Maria Ellena. This is her second nomination. Also Barcelona partially funded the film, wanting Woody Allen to do a movie showcasing their city.

RATING:

= 4 Stars

 = 0 Fists

OSCAR MARATHON

The Oscars are right around the corner, on February 22nd, and I feel it is my duty as a blogger to review the films up for contention. While there is no way I can get to all of them, I am making my declaration to get to as many as I can. Here's a list of the films I think I'll be able to get to, but no promises. 

Review List:

Tropic Thunder

WALL-E

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The Dark Knight

Slumdog Millionaire

Frost/Nixon

The Reader

Milk

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Visitor

Doubt

Frozen River

Revolutionary Road