I'm off to a slow start this morning. Sometimes it can't be helped. Enjoy this first photo of Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern while I hook up my coffee IV, finish Oscar page revisions, and write about Inception... all while humming Sondheim's brilliant A Little Night Music score. What a mashup that will be.
BTW, loved the Broadway show last night. Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch are theater legends for a reason. Peters was exceptionally moving during "Send in the Clowns" -- I've never heard a Broadway audience go that quiet, basking in every nuance of that spectacular inimitable voice of hers -- and very funny hamming up the comedic portions of the show. There's this line in the second act about watching the summer sky smile, where Elaine Stritch says "That smile was particularly broad tonight." That line reading just killed. It felt like an affectionate elbow to the cast surrounding her that evening. Stritch was so funny that the young actress playing her granddaughter regularly had to wait a few extra beats to be heard above the laughter. Since this 1973 Stephen Sondheim musical is based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and the film version of the musical in 1977 starring Elizabeth Taylor isn't definitive by any measure, I wonder why it doesn't get a second cinematic go? It couldn't be that expensive to mount since it basically only involves a few locations: mostly people's bedrooms and the grounds of a country estate.
"Desiree" via Eva Dahlbeck (55), La Liz (77), CZJ (09) and Bernadette (10)All you need is a great actress of a certain age with a killer voice and a good comedic supporting cast. Plus beautiful costumes and careful outdoor cinematography. You're good to go. Do justice to the show's humor and the actress-playing-an-actress theatrical pathos and you've got Oscar nominations for Actress, Supporting Actress and a few tech categories at least.
[Trivia Tangent: Because we've been talking about the EGOT and the triple crown lately due to the upcoming Emmy awards, here's how that shakes out. As you know Catherine Zeta-Jones just won the Tony for this role so she only has to win an Emmy to get a triple crown. Bernadette, replacing her, has multiple Grammys -- or does she? -- and Tonys. She's been nominated for Emmys but hasn't won and the Oscar (let alone a nomination) eluded her even at the heighth of her fame in the late 70s / early 80s when she was in the mix at the Golden Globes winning for Pennies From Heaven and nominated for Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. Elaine has a Tony and multiple Emmys. No Grammy or Oscar.] Switching gears*, to say the least...
I'm still sad there's going to be a Green Lantern movie instead of a Green Lantern Corps cable series. That could have been the next great complex and fascinating sci-fi television series to follow Battlestar Galactica with the right team. Instead I fear it will be a generic superhero movie franchise. It certainly looks generic. We need another great sci-fi series on television way more than we need another superhero movie.
If you had a power ring, what kind of things would you make it do? I mean, besides conjuring up free Broadway tickets.*I apologize for the schizophrenia of this post. Everyone knows that superheroes and musicals don't go together.
*
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22 comments:
loved this post, i'm excited to see this production again in august. one minor correction though: bernadette isn't a grammy winner. she's been nominated for her solo albums and several cast albums she's appeared in have won, however, performers are not given grammys for cast albums. it seems her publicists are fudging that fact and calling her a grammy winner in press releases. not that she wouldn't be in an ideal world.
Also in regards to the EGOT, Lansbury shockingly only has the Tony Award, despite 3 Oscar nods and umpteen Emmy nominations and being on so many Broadway show soundtracks.
anna -- interesting. Her bio lists her as a two time Grammy winner.
i know, which is why it's strange. it's disseminated a bit more here on broadwayworld: http://tinyurl.com/33uvw7o
I hope the script for Green Lantern is good, it certainly is going to be AWESOME visually. Tons of Greens and Yellows :-) and that's not counting the visual thrill my lady will get from Mr. Reynolds.
Yeah. Your "lady"...
I bet the Bernadette Peters thing is similar to how Al Gore is often called an Oscar winner for "An Inconvenient Truth," even though the actual winner was Davis Guggenheim.
People figure that the most famous person must be the winner, and the famous person's publicist just doesn't bother to correct it ;-)
I remember thinking it was SO weird that Bernadette was replacing Catherine Zeta-Jones, but then I remembered that CZJ was a completely bizarre pick and Bernadette was actually perfect for it.
Superheroes and musicals COULD go together. (Stop laughing at me.)
I can't wait to see Peters in this; Catherine Zeta-Jones was miscast in the role and overplayed everything. I saw a production in Paris in February, when Kristin Scott Thomas was replaced by Greta Scacchi. It was a marvelous production and Scacchi was great, but I'll always wonder what might have been -- so I'll put KST up for your remake of the film.
I cannot wait to see this... Do They imagine when one could download? Huyyy ... moviescapital will grow
I remember when Brooke Shields went into GREASE to replace Rosie, they put out a new cast album with Rosie's tracks replaced with Brooke. Do we think there's ANY chance they could do the same for Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch, considering it's so high profile for a replacement?
Hey!!! Sorry, is this
Now that we're on the topic of versions of Smiles of a summer night (what an enjoyable comedy that is), I have to say that it reminded me of one Woody Allen's underrated films A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) which like A Little Night Music is based on the Bergman classic.
I would love to see a[nother] movie version of "A Little Night Music," and especially one with the new cast. I'd even be happy with a PBS broadcast, like they did with "Sunday in the Park with George" or "Into the Woods." It's been too long.
Following on Erin's post, why are there so few PBS broadcasts like that? The two she mentions were sensational records of excellents shows, and of course the 1990 Little Night Music was a grand sight too. Why aren't more of the great shows filmed that way?
scott and erin -- i have no idea. but i am surprised that a show this funny and adorable has not been done more often.
... but can they beat Eva Dahlbeck in Smiles of a Summer Night?
So dish on who was better -- Bernadette or Zeta?! Did you see both performances to compare them? And Angela Lansbury or Elaine Stritch? Who would have been more deserving of the Tony wins?
Ty -- i didn't see Zeta-Jones's performance. :( but Bernadette's Send in the Clown is roughly 1000 > than CZJ's... at elast from the Tony broadcast.
Nathaniel- CZJ was much better on stage during the show's run than she was at the Tony's. Apparently she had been sick which caused that horrible performance.
As for ALNM, what about a Joe Wright production of it? Whoever was in charge of his cinematography in Atonement and Pride and Prejudice could do wonders for ALNM.
Clowning is a very physical performance that takes a lot of work. It can be tricky to walk that fine line between hysterical and scary, and it all relies on the skill level of the performer inside of the costume.
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