Hark! The Christmas Gabbers Sing

Werth: Merry Christmas, Wise!

Wise: Merry Christmas, Werth! What cinematic goodies do you hope to find underneath your tree?

Werth: This year the cinematic goodies will actually be in the movie theater because for the first time since 2009, they are releasing a big-budget movie musical on Christmas Day!

Wise: I assume you are referring to Les Miserables.

Werth: Oui! Tom Hooper's take on the trés populaire musical is sure to be on the wishlist of many a Holiday Musical fan.

Wise: But even if you can't make it to your local mega-plex this Christmas, Santa's little gabbers are here to suggest some other musicals for you to enjoy all snug in your bed.

Werth: If you like a little trannie glam-rock in your holidays, there is no better musical than the 2001 indie darling, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Based on the successful off-Broadway play of the same name, Hedwig tells the life story of transgender rock goddess Hedwig (John Cameron Mitchell) whose national tour of the Bilgewater's restaurant chain smells like the end of the line. 

If performing on a small stage next to the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet wasn't bad enough, Hedwig's tour just happens to coincide with the sell-out stadium tour of her ex-lover, Tommy Gnosis (the eternally sketchy Michael Pitt).

Wise: I thought something smelled like fish.

Werth: Hedwig looks back over her life from her start as a young boy in Soviet East Germany to discovering Tommy in a trailer park in Junction City, Kansas with a mix of loving reverie and cocked eyebrow. 

Mitchell not only stars as Hedwig, but he also wrote and directed—which makes perfect sense when you realize that Mitchell has spent a lot of time in Hedwig's boots. He created the character in performances at gay rock club night "Squeezebox" at Don Hill's in Tribeca before expanding the character and creating the hit play. And Mitchell's mastery of this fascinating creature is evident as we watch Hedwig go through heartbreak, rock n' roll success, and the tragedy of a sex-change operation that got "botched." 

Mitchell plays for drag camp, but at the same time gives a depth and a sad irony to this character that makes this concoction of wild wigs, Eastern European lilt, and filthy excess feel real. 

Wise: At least more real than the Soviet gymnastics team in the early 80's.  

Werth: Visually Mitchell has fun transforming reality into a stage by blowing the walls off a trailer in "Wig in a Box" and turning a laundromat into an intimate cabaret in "Wicked Little Town," 

but the ending of the film is not as strong thematically as what was produced for the stage. Whether you're left with the urge to "pull a wig down from the shelf" or just confusedly scratch your head—Hedwig is a rock musical worth shoving in your holiday stocking.

Wise: In Cabaret (1972), Michael York plays Brian Roberts, a shy Englishman fleeing his stultifying homeland for the more decadent pleasures of Berlin in the final days of the Weimar Republic before Germany was overrun by the Nazis.  Once there, he takes a room in a boarding house where he meets Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a singer at the tawdry Kit Kat Klub who has dreams of becoming a big star.  

The two become fast friends, occasional lovers, and eventually rivals for the affection of the same man, married playboy baron Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem).  

Werth: Tomorrow Belongs to Max.

Wise: The film is based on a stage musical of the same name which, in turn, was based on a play called I am a Camera adapted from the 1945 book The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood.  Longtime choreographer Bob Fosse was determined to direct the film, but after his previous effort Sweet Charity (1969) disappointed at the box office, he was not exactly at the top of the producers' wish list.  

Still, he persisted, and through luck and hard work, he got the job and won an Oscar for bringing his peculiar and kinetic style to the project.  Most of the dramatic scenes employ the largely invisible camera work of classic Hollywood, 

but during the musical numbers the camera drops its disinterest and becomes a participant, nosing up to the dancers, zooming close to catch each jiggle and turn, then dashing around to capture the abstract shapes of the dancers' legs in strange poses that was part of Fosse' signature style.  

It's a far cry from the wall flower camera during Fred and Ginger's numbers. 

Werth: Art nerd alert—He also had some fun posing and dressing the Kit Kat Klub's audience to create living tableaux of works of German Expressionism from the era.

Wise: The film earned Liza Minelli an Oscar for Best Actress and catapulted her to stardom.  Her performance is exuberant and giddy, but with a core of tenderness that reveals an emotional frailty beneath Sally's high hopes.  Joel Grey is also excellent (and Oscar-winning) as the gender bending Emcee whose capers are both hilarious and unsettling.  

Michael York was not rewarded by the Academy, although his work as what amounts to a male ingenue, though muted, exhibits enough gravity to anchor the flamboyance of his co-stars.  Plus, his bee-stung lips and elegant neck are super dreamy. 

Werth: While we're left with visions of Michael Yorks dancing in our heads, we wish all of our faithful Film Gab readers a Merry Christmas—

Wise: —And come back next week for our New Year's edition of  Film Gab! 

Everbody Cut Gab-loose!

Werth: Hi, Wise!

Wise: Hi, Werth. Nice parachute pants and jelly bracelets.

Werth: This week they're releasing the re-make of Footloose so I can't decide which decade I should be dressing for.

Wise: My guess is the new Footloose will update its fashions, but maintain the theme of self-expression and freedom through dance.

Werth: With Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell in the cast, I'll bet we see some feathered hair or, at the very least, a scrunchy.

Wise: I'll definitely be peg-rolling my pants this weekend as I succumb to the the subtle charms of Step Up (2006).  

Werth: Step Up?  Um, isn't there a Judy movie you'd rather talk about?  

Wise: Judy was a great dancer, but I don't know that any of her movies could really be called dance movies.  Besides, Step Up is clearly the offspring of both the great MGM musicals of the 1940's and Footloose.  

Werth: I'm willing to entertain that possibility.  

Wise: Channing Tatum plays Tyler Gage, a Baltimore street tough with a heart of gold and quicksilver feet.  After a party one night, he and his pals break into the Maryland School of Arts to commit some good, old-fashioned vandalism.  Unfortunately, the cops show up and Tyler is sentenced to 200 hours of community service at the school.  

Once there, he meets cute with snobby rich girl Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan), and after her even snobbier dance partner/boyfriend Brett (Josh Henderson) sprains his ankle in a freak plié accident, Nora is forced to take Tyler on as her dance partner.  Of course she's horrified by his urban inflected moves, and he finds her classical training preposterous, but eventually, they grow to respect each other's talents and fall in love.  

Werth: The plot is equal parts The Band Wagon and Breakin'. 

Wise: Exactly.  Plus, both Tyler and Nora have quirky best friends who also fall in love, so Step Up basically shares the same structure—  

Werth: As just about every musical made before 1950.  

Wise: But there's no singing in Step Up, just a lot of dancing.  And a lot of that fancy footwork focuses on the contrast between Tyler's street rhythms and Nora's ballet school formalism.  Director/choreographer Anne Fletcher has a lot of fun blending their disparate styles, as well as using the tension between the two to build toward the climactic final number: a kinetic routine filled with hip hop flash modulated by traditional forms.  


Werth: So, you really like Step Up?  

Wise: I wouldn't go that far.  It's not a particularly good movie, but it is a rousing one that makes you want to throw aside your cares and hoof it like there's no tomorrow.  

Werth: One of my favorite dance movies is less hoof and more hankie. Dancer in the Dark (2000) on paper doesn't have the pedigree that you would associate with a musical. Director Lars von Trier is known for his heavy, oppressive dramas with realistic filming techniques like handheld cameras and naturalistic dialogue and acting. With Dancer, von Trier decided to bring some Dogme 95 "realism" to the Hollywood musical.

Wise: Which sounds a bit like bringing a dead fish to a candy shop. 

Werth: Dancer tells the story of Selma (the semi-intelligible Icelandic chanteuse Bjork), an immigrant worker in the Pacific Northwest in the 1960's who toils at a metal fabricating plant and in odd jobs to save up enough money to pay for an eye operation for her young son. She knows how critical this operation is because the eye disease is genetic and she herself is going blind.

Wise: Wow. No "raindrops on roses" or "whiskers on kittens" in this one.

Werth: Selma's one escape from her punishing life is her love of Hollywood musicals, so she is thrilled to be cast as Maria in a chintzy community theater production of The Sound of Music.

Wise: Being blind is going to make climbing every mountain a bit more difficult. 

Werth: As usual, von Trier turns the world against his fragile, reality-challenged heroine and without uttering any spoilers, let's just say Selma does not make it to "Edelweiss." But through his over-heated sense of tragedy, von Trier creates a character who is both healed and destroyed by song and dance—questioning how much fantasy is good for us. 

Bjork is the perfect muse for von Trier (even if they wound up hating each other on set) with her naturally childlike personality infusing the role with an ethereal quality. She seamlessly transports us from her job on the factory floor to a musical daydream where she is whirled around by stomping and clapping co-workers. 

Her final scene is horribly tragic—perhaps because, suddenly, this elf-like creature is made human by her un-Hollywood musical ending. Bjork's Oscar-nominated score is lyrical and percussive and the final song, "New World," is so beautiful it's worth sitting through the final credits for. 

Fine supporting work from Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare and irrepressible musical icon Joel Grey make Dancer in the Dark a must-see... no matter what you thought of Bjork's avian-inspired Oscar dress.  

Wise: I'm feeling pretty inspired to go cut a rug.  

Werth: Just as long as you roll up next week for more Film Gab.