Top 5: Five disco divas ...

Another Top 5: Disco divas .... not the Disco superstars, but those divas whose club classics and huge tunes (or choons) kept us bopping through the '90s and into the new millennium - literally, in the case of Adeva,who was in de club that Millennium night back at Crash in 2000, or that night at Heaven when she appeared with Rosie Gaines and Ultra Nate ...

We loved Soul II Soul and "Back to Life" with Caron Wheeler ..

Shara Nelson and that marvellous video for Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy".

Donna Allen's versions of Maze & Frankie Beverly's "Joy and Pain" ...

German uber-diva Billie Ray Martin and those mixes for her "Running Around Town" and her first album "Deadline For My Memories" ...

sweet Joyce Sims with her "Come Into My Life" album, with "All and All", "Lifetime Love" etc

Regina Belle's "You Got The Love" album ...

Jennifer Holliday's "Hard Time For Lovers" - and Alison Limerick's "Where Love Lives" ...

Angela Bofill's "Too Tough" ....   
Jody Watley's mixes on "When A Man Loves A Woman"....
Eve Gallagher's "Love Come Down"
and CeCe Peniston's "Finally" (below) ... then there is Paris Gray from Inner City, 

There must be lots more, must check my iPod playlists ... 


and Sade's live version of "Paradise" from her Live concert tour. 

Top 5: Five Essential Joni Mitchell Songs

One of our weekend papers here, "The Sunday Telegraph" has a nice new feature tucked away in their magazine - various people choosing a Top 5 list. Recently it was Top 5 Joni Mitchell Songs, and James Lachno (?) chose:  

1 - Carey / 2 - Help Me / 3 - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter / 4 - Chinese Cafe / 5 - Both Sides Now, the original 1969 version.

Naturally, as a Joni fanatic, I had my own Joni favourites, but a top 5 is impossible out of over 200 songs of hers, (allowing 10 each on over 20 albums).

I began with: 
Be Cool / Man to Man / Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (the live version on "Shadows and Light"), The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Car On A Hill, and Let The Wind Carry Me - which has been in my system for over 40 years since the 1972 "For The Roses" album (that year I met her in Chelsea - as per previous posts here,, Joni label).

But then theres: Chinese Cafe / Chelsea Morning / Night In The City / Marcie / Tin Angel.   or:

A Strange Boy / Court and Spark / Down To You / My Secret Place / Off Night Back Street / Talk To Me / Cotton Avenue /  Songs to Ageing Children Come / Urge For Going / All I Want / A Case Of You / The Last Time I Saw Richard / Night Ride Home - or those delightful numbers like: You Turn Me On I'm A Radio, or Barangrill, or the different versions of Woodstock. 

Sometimes one is in the mood for jazzy Joni, or that early folkie of the first three albums, I love her piano too on tracks like For Free. There is "Ladies of the Canyon" Joni, or "Hejira" or "Don Juan" Joni ... and sometimes one wants to play all of "Blue'" or "Court and Spark" or the happy "Wild Things Run Fast", so its an impossible task just to select 5 ! Then, there's her 2000 "Both Sides Now" set ...

Next list: Five Beautiful Screen Actors ! 

Showpeople: more candids of stars at work and play ...

A Monroe and Brando shot I had not seen before, from 1954: he is in his Napeoleon outfit for DESIREE and she is wearing one of her THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW-BUSINESS dresses, and smoking!; those LES GIRLS relax between takes in 1957: divine Kay Kendall, Taina Elg and Mitzi Gaynor in those Orry-Kelly costumes; Faye Dunaway in her goddess period with Kazan on THE ARRANGEMENT, 1969; James Dean holding court with his EAST OF EDEN co-stars: Julie Harris, Richard Davalos, Lois Smith and Harold Gordon; Marilyn again with Robert Mitchum, Rock Hudson and Terry Moore at a party at Jean Negulesco's house in 1953 - her breakout year, this is the Marilyn I first got to know from those '50s magazine covers. That could be Negulesco in the background. Mitchum had been in the marines with MM's first husband, and they went on to star in RIVER OF NO RETURN in '54. Bette Davis visits Audrey Hepburn on THE NUN'S STORY in 1959, left, and right: Rock and Marilyn again, in 1962 when he presented her with an Italian award. And again: that fascinating shot of Montgomery Clift visiting Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon on SOME LIKE IT HOT!

Sophia and Ingrid in 1958 on set of INDISCREET. See Showpeople label for more candids,including Marilyn with Marlene, and with Gina Lollobrigida, and Marlene meeting Elizabeth Taylor, or Sophia meeting Audrey, Dirk meeting Rock, or ....

The Normal Heart

It starts as we join the ferry from New York to Fire Island that summer weekend in 1981, as we see the gays and the party people enjoying themselves, as Roxy Music's "Angel Eyes" blares out - on the beach, in the pines, all those houseparties, soon they are all dancing to Sylvester at that disco on the beach (that fantasy gay lifestyle that we aspired to here in the UK). Our focus is on Ned Weeks, who observes but does not seem part of it all. Suddenly, a friend (Jonathan Groff) collapses on the beach, and is ill again later .... soon he is dead.

THE NORMAL HEART is Larry Kramer's fascinating, contentious Tony-award winning play, first staged in 1985, about the early days of the AIDS pandemic decimating the New York gay community and the rage and bewilderment of those trying to cope with it and find a solution, as the government does not want to know .... Kramer wrote that very funny and outrageous novel "Faggots" in the late 70s, detailing the hedonism of gay life then - people loved or hated it in equal measure, and he also scripted Ken Russell's film WOMEN IN LOVE. Its taken 30 years for THE NORMAL HEART to reach the screen, is it too late? Today's gays see themselves as the post-Aids generation, having achieved equality. Its  a paean then to that lost generation and that lost time. The hedonism of the gay lifestyle then - endless disco, worship of the body beautiful - was for a lot of people what it meant to be gay then (before equality, civil partnerships, marriage and kids) and then it all came crashing down ...

Mark Ruffalo as Ned is the Kramer figure here, a writer who combats the silence about this new disease with his own brand of fighting back, as he becomes an AIDS activist accusing the Mayor of New York and Reagan's presidency of neglecting the health crisis, and antagonising the very group he helped to set up - The Gay Mens Health Crisis, who feel they have to force him out. Ned sees the pain and toll the disease is taking in those early years, as more and more fall victim to those lesions and start to waste away. It was that frightening time when people were afraid, not only to have sex, but to touch or assist those afflicted. One horrifying sequence shows a friend taking his dying boyfriend home on a plane, he dies en route and is left out with the garbage, wrapped in bin-liners as hospital workers refuse to touch the body, so the family have to collect the body themselves. 

Julia Roberts is Dr Emma Brooker, at first the only doctor treating these patients, from her wheelchair. Matt Bomer shines as Felix, Ned's partner, who starts off healthy but he too gets the lesions all over his body and wastes away before our eyes - Bomer lost 40 lb. to play the role, and deserves an Emmy at least, for his terrific portrayal (seeing as actors who lose or gain weight now automatically get awards for their dedication) - he and Ruffalo have some great scenes together as their relationship deepens. Alfred Molina shines as ever, as Ned's estranged brother. It takes the dying Felix to bring the brothers back together as they continue the fight against ignorance. There is no denying this is a devastatingly sad film, particularly for those of us who lived through that era. (It was the mid-'80s here in London when this was happening over here - I remember a particular Sunday morning in 1985 in Brighton by the sea,  when we gathered with the papers after a good night out, and began reading about these lesions ..... some of the gang vowed to stop having sex with Americans and to stop using amyl nitrate which it was thought caused these skin lesions; I also remember an afternoon with the gang sunbathing on Hampstead Heath near the men's pond, and a passer by yelling out  to the serried ranks of sunbathers "You are all going to die"... By the early '90s the death toll was rising as most of the gang died, with the then treatments (like AZT) being as toxic as the disease, as one witnessed friends and then one's best friend, and then one's partner all succumb ....).

There is no happy ending here, as we leave Ned, alone again, crying and watching the dancers .... as Paul Simon's "The Only Living Boy In New York" plays - part of the terrific soundtrack. Its a very affecting moment (and is so me, circa 1996-2003).
THE NORMAL HEART is directed by Ryan Murphy of GLEE fame, and thankfully has not been Glee-ified (well maybe apart from that "The Man I Love" rendition). 
The script is by Larry Kramer from his play. Barbra Streisand held the rights for 10 years, and had a public falling out with Kramer over the proposed film. One could imagine if she had played the doctor, it would have been all about her, helping the Aids victims. Roberts downplays nicely. The film shows how prejudice thrived and yet love survived, as the Gay Mens Health Crisis tackled government indifference. Like PHILADELPHIA this is accessible to everyone who wants to know what it was like back then, and is even more essential now as gay rights and equality are still not available to all in some parts of our world. THE NORMAL HEART (which I did not see on the stage) is a key work on the AIDS crisis, along with LONGTIME COMPANION, PARTING GLANCES, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, ANGELS IN AMERICA, AN EARLY FROST, OUR SONS, MY NIGHT WITH REG, THE LINE OF BEAUTY, etc. More on those later ...

Comedy 3: They all laughed ...

THEY ALL LAUGHED, 1981. A New York Detective Agency is hired by two different clients to follow two women suspected of infidelity. John Russo trails Angela Niotes, the elegant wife of a wealthy Italian industrialist, while Charles Rutledge and Arthur Brodsky follow Dolores Martin, the beautiful young wife of a jealous husband. Their respective cases are complicated when John falls for Angela, and Charles falls for Dolores.

Peter Bogdanovich's 1981 romantic comedy re-defines screwball. I like it a lot, its not as instantly funny as WHAT'S UP DOC? or PAPER MOON, but its slow burn gets one. Its a great New York movie too taking in myriad locations, from the Algonquin Hotel to The Plaza, theres a blissful roller-skating sequence that goes on and on, the characters all grow on one, and there's nothing violent or ugly (on screen at any rate). Bogdanovich has such affection for all his characters that we feel it too, even though it takes ages to understand what is going on. Audrey Hepburn may be the star but she is off-screen for most of the first hour as we focus on Sam (Patti Hansen) who drives a big yellow taxi and takes a client to the heliport, where he greets a businessman, his wife (Audrey Hepburn) and son, who arrive in a helicopter. Sam also notices Ben Gazzara, also there keeping tabs on the arrivals. They all drive back to the city but their paths will criss-cross many times. 

John Ritter is adorable here as Charles, the clunky other detective (Bogdanovich says in the 25th Anniversary edition, that Ritter plays a younger version of himself, and one can see that, left). Colleen Camp grates initially as the annoying country singer, but we get to like her too, and her endless referring to Charles's name. Dorothy Stratten is certainly attractive as the object of Charles's desire. Then Audrey comes back into the picture, as the industrialist's wife, who gets close with Gazzara. (She and Gazzara had an affair when they made BLOODLINE in '78). It is wonderful seeing Audrey again here, and the other women are fascinating too. I just read that Hansen (the taxi driver) is married to Keith Richards! It is a shame that Ritter (the son of legendary singer Tex Ritter) died so young at 54 in 2003. Stratten of course was killed by her jealous ex-husband. Bogdanovich covers all that in the dvd interview with fellow director Wes Anderson. She of course was the subject of Fosse's STAR 80 which I have not seen. (Audrey died in 1993, Gazzara in 2012, RIP label).  

Its a shame THEY ALL LAUGHED did not do better at the box-office, Stratten's death may have cast a pall over it (as Francoise Dorleac's death in a car accident after shooting finished in 1967 on Demy's LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT casts a pall over that otherwise blissfully sunny movie). THEY ALL LAUGHED reminded me a lot of Woody Allen too and has great location photography making New York (including those twin towers) look great, as lensed by Robby Muller (who did Wenders' THE AMERICAN FRIEND among others). Bogdanovich's two daughters and Hepburn's son are also playing parts here, adding to the family ambience.

Bogdanovich may have peaked as a director, but his books on Hollywood folk - PIECES OF TIME, and WHO THE HELL IS IN IT? are fascinating reads on classic hollywood, as he knew them all. 

Comedy 2: California dreaming ...

Going back to CALIFORNIA SUITE is like meeting an old friend, this 1976 Neil Simon comedy still delivers. Gosh,this was from before we even had video, so one had to go the cinema a few times to see it. 

Herbert Ross directs, and the credits have some David Hockney artwork, which creates the mood for California here, as our four lots of guests arrive at the hotel. English actress Maggie Smith is in town for the Academy Awards - after all her high profile theatre work she is nominated for a silly little comedy - and the husband (Michael Caine) relishes the high life as a change from his antiques business, and maybe he is a closet gay ..... Maggie has her suspicions, will they be confirmed? 

Jane Fonda scores as the acerbic journalist from New York meeting up with her ex-husband to discuss their daughter - he is now a laid-back Californian, with his "little boy" look and pastel colours. The other two sketches are played for broad comedy - two dentists who cannot stop competing with each other - Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby - plus their wives (who don't have much to do and are not named on the poster with the other stars), who get into all kinds of arguments and scrapes, eventually one gets weary of their slapstick; and then the Jewish episode: Walter Matthau attending his nephew's bar mizvah wakes up to find a hooker sent by his brother still asleep and he cannot wake her, just as his wife, the great Elaine May, is about to arrive.

So, four sketches of varying amusement, but the Smith and Fonda ones take precedence. Whether Maggie is worrying about her hump, her dress, her hair or if her husband is gay, or flapping those wrists she is endlessly entertaining. Fonda smokes, goes for a swim, shows her toned body and sarcastically banters with her ex-husband - Alan Alda, perfect here.  

Maggie has some great lines: She never knows how to dress for America - in Engand "you just put on warm clothing".  She does not win the Oscar here, but did for her role in the film. In all, as amusing as Simon's PLAZA SUITE.

Comedy 1: A New Kind Of Love, an old kind of movie

We have been looking at some '60s romantic comedies recently - see reviews of SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, PRUDENCE AND THE PILL, GOODBYE CHARLIE etc- 60s/comedy labels. Now for one I dimly remember seeing the trailer for, but not seen until now .... A NEW KIND OF LOVE from 1963, which had the bright idea of sending Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward to Paris, and glam frumpy Joanne up, throw in Thelma Ritter to wisecrack a bit, and - the masterstroke - add in Maurice Chevalier "as himself" to sing some of his hits like "Mimi". So far, so excruciating ..... then there are all the hideous fashions - Joanne couldn't wear more hideous outfts or wigs. So, what went wrong?

The fashion industry and Paris provide the setting for a comedy surrounding the mistaken impression that Joanne Woodward is a high-priced call girl. Paul Newman is the journalist interviewing her for insights on her profession.

This after all is written and directed by Melville Shavelson, who did some delightful '50s comedies that still work now, like HOUSEBOAT and IT STARTED IN NAPLES, both showcasing Sophia Loren perfectly. But it seems that, like Billy Wilder, he too was stranded as the '60s took off and he suddenly appeared dated. The Newmans were probably looking for a change of pace - they had already done Paris seriously in PARIS BLUES for Martin Ritt in 1961, and comedy in RALLY ROUND THE FLAG BOYS in 1958 (review at Newman label). But this romantic comedy set in Paris falls very flat like champagne that has lost its zing. 

They seem to be aiming for the light Rock and Doris touch - but Newman (unlike Rock or Tony Curtis) seems very charmless in these kind of roles (but then I never found him that particularly interesting) while Joanne - who was it who coined her "the duchess of dowbeat"? - starts off as the 25-year-old old maid in fashion publishing with pencils in her spikey hair and always in dark glasses. She has devoted herself to her career instead of bagging a husband - he is the wolf journalist sent to cover their Paris show.   

Later she has a transformation as he thinks she is a high-class call girl - then the Rock and Doris confrontation with the roles switched - he knows she isn't as she gets ready to go through with their seduction scene, but even that is muffled here. Its all gratingly old-fashioned, even for 1963, as the swinging decade was about to take off. With Eva Gabor, and Sinatra sings the title song. Woodward seems much more at home with material like THE STRIPPER (Woodward label) or THE LONG HOT SUMMER or even those Fox films like THE SOUND AND THE FURY or NO DOWN PAYMENT. She just seems simply at sea here. 

RIP, continued ...

England's "Daily Telegraph" has an obituary on Austrian actor Carl Boehm (or as they spell it, Karlheinz Bohm), who has died at age 86. Boehm (born in 1928, the son of conductor Karl Boehm) died on 28 May. He is of course best known as the PEEPING TOM of Michael Powell's notorious 1960 shocker.
 
Boehm was also very popular in the 1950s in the German SISSI films, as Emperor Franz Joseph opposite teenage Romy Schneider as the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. They made 3 SISSI films (there is a compilation film FOREVER MY LOVE). He also played Beethoven for Walt Disney (which I remember seeing as a kid), and co-starred with Dolores Hart in the 1963 comedy COME FLY WITH ME, as well as playing one of the Grimm Brothers in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, and in Minnelli's FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, both 1962. His career revived in the 1970s with 4 films for Rainer Fassbinder, the best of which was FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (see German label). He later become involved in charity work in Ethiopia - leaving his 4th wife, an Ethiopian, to survive him.
PEEPING TOM will endure as long as PSYCHO in cinema annals as among the key films of 1960, not least for Boehm's interpretation of the killer cameraman. 

Gordon Willis (1931-2014), aged 82, defined the look of Seventies thriller cinema - think KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, THE GODFATHER films, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, several Woody Allen films including ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, STARDUST MEMORIES. I have just got Hal Ashby's 1970 THE LANDLORD (review soon) which he also lensed.  He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and his later films looked so individual and unsettling due to his lighting technique of using shadows - "shadows and light".

War weekend 3: Rex and the Crusaders .....

KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS. Ah, 1954 that era of westerns and costumers, ideal for an 8 year old’s (as I was then) first forays to the cinema. Those cardboard castles – Prince Valiant, Black Shield of Falworth, and this Crusaders saga, plus The Silver Chalice, The Egptian, Sign of The Pagan, Attila etc. 
David Butler also directed that early Cinemascope western THE COMMAND that year, and KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS is more of the same, maybe shot around the same locations, with the Crusaders clanking around in their chain-mail as the cavalry, and those hordes of infidels the redskins. 
In fact I think this crusaders epic is generally considered one of the 50 Worst Films Of All Time. 

We follow King Richard (grumpy George Sanders) and his cousin Lady Edith (Virginia Mayo – and yes, she really does say “War, War, is all you think about, Dick Plantagenet”!). Sir Kenneth (Laurence Harvey) loves the lady, but cannot marry her. So far, so turgid, as various knights plot to kill the king. 

Then, just as we are getting bored, things liven up with the arrival of Rex Harrison in blackface as Saladin. (This was a lean time for Harrison, after the Landis scandal of the late 40s, before MY FAIR LADY came his way). Here is an actor enjoying himself and relishing the absurdity of it all, as his Saracen leader runs rings around the crusaders and falls for the white Christian woman. The climax of course is pure cardboard castle time, how well I remembered that fight on the drawbridge … The Holy Land looks just like California and the whole Crusaders thing and why they are there remains a mystery. After the success of IVANHOE perhaps Warners thought another romp with knights and armour, and also from Scott – “The Talisman” – would be a success. KING RICHARD though remains a costumer to laugh at and enjoy its terrible absurdity.

War weekend 2: In Which We Serve

IN WHICH WE SERVE. The old warhorse from 1942 remains one of the great war films and is still affecting and emotional now, it is simply one of the great British films of the 1940s (along with THE WAY TO THE STARS, THIS HAPPY BREED, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, and of course Lean's later BRIEF ENCOUNTER). (See my comments on those at 1940s/War/British labels).

We follow the men of the “Torrin” which has been torpedoed and is sinking, as they cling to a life raft and see the ship and their lives in the various flashbacks, covering all of society from the high command to the regular sailors and their families. David Lean and Noel Coward directed, from Coward’s script and Noel also played Captain Kinross. His clipped manner is perfect here as is his rapport with his men. All those war clichés were new here – the captain scribbing down dying sailors’ last words for families back home, the coward who redeems himself etc. We have young Richard Attenborough, and John Mills, with Michael Wilding, while Celia Johnson is the perfect navy wife toasting her rival, the ship, 

while Kathleen Harrison is Bernard Miles’ wife, and Mills marries Freda played by Kay Walsh. That scene with the bombs falling on the women still delivers a punch. Young Daniel Massey is Coward’s son (he went on to play Coward in STAR!) while Juliet Mills is the baby. IN WHICH WE SERVE will remain an English classic, a film which can be enjoyed on many levels and repays repeat viewings, the stiff upper lip manner may have been parodied since, but its really affecting here. That scene of Kinross and family on the downs watching the planes above is so perfectly 40s.

War weekend 1: From Here To Eternity

A recent weekend had a spate of war movies on tv, some of which I had not seen in decades, and proved fascinating again now.

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, 1953 – I had not seen this in years, it had almost become a cliché of the Hollywood war movie. Sitting down and watching it from the start, particularly after seeing PEARL HARBOUR again a few days earlier, proved to be totally enthralling, as Zinnemann aided by Daniel Taradash’s screenplay from James Jones’ vast novel, fashions a complex movie with a tight-script aided by that tremendous cast. 

There was a recent short-lived new musical based on the book in London recently which even put back some of the gay material they could not use in 1953, but that could not save it, even with Sir Tim Rice's score.

Little moments here fascinate – those first looks between Monty Clift and Donna Reed, that entertainer at the Congress Club, or those smouldering intense scenes between Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. The brutality of the army is shown as Prewitt (Clift - heart-stoppingly beautiful here in his prime) refuses to box and Maggio (Sinatra) falls foul of brutal Fatso Judson (Borgnine). Those girls toiling at the Congress Club include weary Joan Shawlee and Jean Willes. Mickey Shaughnessy and William Ober also excel. Pearl Harbour when it comes is quick and gripping and its soon that last scene on the ship as Kerr and Reed leave Hawaii. 

Donna Reed’s classy Lorene isn’t as brassy as Jane Russell in THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (also covering prostitution in those Hawaii years, Jane Russell label) while Kerr is simply a revelation here. 

Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOUR from 2001 is so inferior in every way to Zinnemann’s classic that one need barely mention it. I just watched again for the main sequence, where the special effects come into their own, while the 3 pretty people grapple with some puerile romantic triangle and then get their revenge on Japan !   
Carl Foreman's all-star 1963 THE VICTORS (a riposte to THE GREAT ESCAPE or THE LONGEST DAY?) was meant to be shown this afternoon, but for some reason was pulled from the tv schedules. At least we have seen it several times and commented on it here - War label.