The other day, I posted a joyful video from the BBC Proms of the great Simon Russell Beale and Bryn Terfel, and with Daniel Evans and Julian Ovenden -- not a slouch among them -- performing "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid," from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, that had music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, What I didn't mention is that that production in 2010 was an evening of All Sondheim, done in honor of his 80th birthday. So, if you enjoyed that one number, I figured why not pass along the whole freaking thing? It's long -- just over two hours -- though there's a well-placed intermission (sorry, "interval"), so that might be a good play to split things up over a couple of sittings, if you're so inclined In any event such as things, there will of necessity be choices of what to include and leave out that don't please everyone. I do think it odd to have nothing from West Side Story or Gypsy, though I do understand the decision, since they choice to focus solely on pieces that have both music and lyrics by Sondheim, not just lyrics. Still...he did write them, and they are, I'm sure, proud credentials in his portfolio. A three-minute medley of selections might have fit just fine. Still, if that's their decision, the evening went wonderfully regardless. Some of it quite magnificent, in particular the sequence of Sweeney Todd in the second half, with Bryn Terfel re-creating his title role, along with Maria Friedman, some very nice material from Sunday in the Park with George, an excellent "Being Alive" from Company, sung by Julian Ovenden, and also Judi Dench, who only performs one number -- except for returning in the finale -- ah, but what a number. She was the original star of the London production of A Little Night Music, and every performance I've seen her give of "Send in..." oh, you know, has been spectacular. What she does this night is no different. There's a wonderful interval, with behind the scenes footage of the rehearsals, old interviews with Sondheim, and clips of earlier productions and movies. (It's here that there's finally a reference to and clip of West Side Story, though nothing of Gypsy). And it's followed by a pleasant, live interview with Sondheim, who among other things gives (as he always does) full credit to the librettists of the shows he's worked on, saying that all his songs spring from the material and characters they came up with first, "They created something from nothing. I created something from something.") One oddity is that none of the performers are credited, until the intermission (sorry, "interval") and very end. In addition to the aforementioned people, the remaining two are Jenna Russell and Caroline O'Connor (who I saw a few years ago with my dad in a tremendous production of Follies at the Chicago Shakespeare Festival. She's in a purple dress here). Here then is the full, wonderful two-hour BBC Proms tribute. And honestly, even if it wasn't any good, I'd still have posted this, just to be able to use the tile I came up with for this article...
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Tonight, we enter Part 3 of our six-part series of the first-ever Elisberg Industries International Film Series, The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True. This is the segment where things kick into high gear, and the Really Big Stars make their first appearance. That would be Jackson Browne as the Scarecrow, Roger Daltrey as the Tin Woodsman, and Nathan Lane as the Cowardly Lion. One of the fun things about this concert production is that it includes some extra verses of the songs and introductions into the numbers that weren't used in the Wizard of Oz movie. A good bulk of those are used in this segment here. So, join Jewel as she hops and skips her way along the Yellow Brick Road and meets a few of her odd, soon-to-be-friends. (For anyone just joining up midstream, you can read about what this production is by scrolling down to April 22.) On Wednesday night, Jon Stewart had former White House press secretary Dana Perino and current Fox "News" co-host Dana Perrno on as a guest. I thought about watching -- I figured that Stewart would have a could time undercutting her, and Perino was always a reasonably personable press secretary, but I have a hard time watching her these days, so I passed.
I did read of some good exchanges for the appearance, though. My favorite was when Stewart began to take off on one of her co-hosts, Eric Bolling, and Ms. Perino came somewhat to his defense with a "heart-tugging" reply designed to get him to back off. She quickly replied that Bolling had a dog named Freedom "after the Freedom Towers, ok, so watch the jokes." That got an eye roll from Stewart, which immediately answered. “My dog’s named Holocaust. I’m just saying, you want to have a dog tragedy-off, well, I think I’ve got that covered.” Much as I initially had found Dana Perino reasonably benign when it came to those defending the Bush Administration, it was a comment she made when appearing in 2007 as a guest on the wonderful NPR radio game show Wait, Wait..Don't Tell Me that broke the umbilical cord and got me from caring about most anything the then-White House press secretary had to say, no matter how charming she appears to be. Though happily some remember, I think it's tended to be forgotten by far too many, if not most. Attempting to tell a whimsical charming story at her expense, it had people gob-smack shocked at the time. As the Washington Post reported: "I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure." So she consulted her best source. "I came home and I asked my husband," she recalled. "I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, 'Oh, Dana.' " "Oh, Dana" is perhaps the politest thing that could be said about this. And it's not something that I read about long after the fact, or just days after. I was listening to the program as it happened. And my capacity to listen to Dana Perino and take anything she said seriously stopped at that moment. That the Cuban Missile Crisis happened before she was born (just 10 years, though), it's not like it's ancient history. And there had been TWO movies about it -- one, starring Kevin Costner in 2000 (when she was a very much alive 28), called Thirteen Days. And the other made for television in 1974 (though she was only 2. NOTE: this is a correction from the original draft when I was juggling dates incorrectly), The Missiles of October, that starred William Devane and Ralph Bellamy. That's how renowned the event was. Again, it's had two movies made about it -- within the then-45 years of it happening. But more than that, life is full of events that occurred before we were born that we all know about, and not knowing is no excuse. World War II happened before Dana Perino was born, presumably she'd heard about that. But mostly, there is one other thing that was utterly, painfully galling. I don't think everyone has to know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think most people, especially Americans, should know -- it was that important to world history - but they don't have to. But...if you're going into government service in Washington, D.C., I think it's critical that you do know. AND if you're going to be the freaking White House press secretary -- speaking on behalf of the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, the most power man in the world -- I believe that it is essential that you must know what the Cuban Missile Crisis is. Almost Job #1. The Cuban Missile Crisis is one of the most serious, dangerous, important events to have happened in the United States, let alone the world in the past 60 years -- when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war (!!) -- and it stood at the center of the White House. And the way the White House and its then-press secretary Pierre Salinger handled it in addressing the concerns of the world is the textbook case for every future White House press secretary. And for any White House Press Secretary to not have a clue what it was -- at any time, but just a mere 45 years after it happened -- isn't just pathetic, shameful and horrific, it's unacceptable in every pure sense of the word. And she told it as a cute, adorable story about herself. I didn't expect her to be fired the next day -- or ever, for that matter. It was the Bush White House, after all. People didn't get fired for transgressions, they were given the Medal of Freedom. But she should have been. The White House is no place for having a spokesperson who doesn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. I don't remotely think Dana Perino is stupid. What I think is that she is far less bright and inquisitive than the position of White House press secretary demands. And from that point on, I've just had a near-impossible time giving a scintilla of credibility to almost anything that has come out of her mouth since that point. And when she has been positioned today as a supposed expert because of her days at the White House, it makes my corpuscles curdle. The Elisberg Industries International Film Festival continues with Part 2 of our six part series, presenting the 1995 TV adaptation, The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Comes True. If you're coming into this a day late, check back to yesterday, April 23, for a full write-up on what this is. Today, the selection is pretty much Big Music Star Free, other than Jewel as Dorothy, though at the time she was an unknown. There's also however a bit of Natalie Cole as Glinda the Good Witch, who's introduced with a nice touch of stagecraft, as well as a brief appearance by Debra Winger as the Wicked Witch. But mainly, in this segment we're introduced to Munchkinland, and the residents there are played by the Boys Choir of Harlem. By the way, there's an interesting and very small moment around the 1:12 mark, which impressed me given how new Jewel was to all this, and wasn't a trained stage actress. But when the little boy playing Toto forgets to move, notice how she has the presence of mind to take his arm and politely direct him along. I also get a kick out of how she gets carried away with the audience clapping along with "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" and joins along with them. (As you can tell, I like "little moments." I find in their attention to detail they reveal a lot.) While it's pretty well-accepted that today's Republican Party has a self-admitted problem with attracting minorities, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) -- who's presumed to be a candidate for the GOP nomination for president (and is actually leading in some opinion polls) -- apparently has decided to throw off all pretense and went all-in the other day.
Talking with Glenn Beck, Gov. Walker spoke out forcefully against immigration. Wait, to be clear, this wasn't "illegal immigration, but immigration, period -- regular, ordinary, legal immigration. And no, this isn't something where a Walker spokesman can come back the next day and say that the governor was misquoted or taken out of context, or explain what he "actually meant," or that he had a brain cloud No, Scott Walker was very clear and specifically said "legal immigration." You know, the whole "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" thing that's on the Statue of Liberty. "In terms of legal immigration," he explained, "how we need to approach that going forward is saying -- the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages.". Give me your tired, your poor, indeed. Just to be clear, when someone is a "legal immigrant," they are here legally. In fact, they are on the legal path to become actual American workers themselves. And to be even more clear, when they are "legal immigrants," the wages they earn are real American wages. It counts. And it's all legal. You can look it up. Also, if this is such a critical problem, why wait until the "next Congress"? The GOP controls both the House and Senate. Why not press them to take it up? Unless, perhaps, it's not really that pressing? Or a problem at all, but just far right pandering to get the conservative base riled up about something that sounds like it's bad, even if it isn't remotely a problem. Or an issue. Like "death panels." Or a Nigerian president. I particularly liked, though, when Mr. Walker continued and said, "Because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to [Sen. Jeff] Sessions and others out there -- but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today -- is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages. And we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward." What I like is that when it comes to sources on immigration -- other than the ubiquitous "folks," whoever they are, whatever their concerns are -- Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is not generally your go-to guy, unless you're looking for an outspoken "NOOOOO!" But mainly I like that Scott Walker refers to this as a "fundamentally lost issue." Gee, so, why in the world do you think that is?? Maybe because most people who aren't small-minded or petty or xenophobic or racist or hate-filed understand that legal immigration isn't an issue worth getting concerned about and addressing. Personally, I think calling this a "losing issue." rather than "lost" might be more accurate, and perhaps someone on the governor's staff might tell him that. ("Er, sir, do we really want to come out against legal immigration? Don't you think it might come back to make us look small and parochially narrow-minded? And sort of silly? And perhaps allow people to recognize that your own Wisconsin is made up of an inordinate amount of legal Swedish immigrants and generations of their families, who themselves might take offense in your backyard?") On the other hand, it's comforting to know that there's at least consistency in the GOP. When Mitt Romney was the party's presidential nominee, he infamously said how he didn't care about getting the votes of 47 percent of the country. But then, given how America is a nation of immigrants -- sorry, legal immigrants -- that number of voters who Scott Walker doesn't care about getting the votes of might be a bit higher. By way of reminder, Scott Walker is the same guy who on his recent trip to England, in an effort to make him seem like he had some foreign policy experience by virtue of vacationing in London, was asked about where he stood on vaccine inoculations, and said he would "punt" on the question. So, his bona fides as a presidential candidate seem a bit more thin than ideal. But then, too, as his vacation in London demonstrated his total lack of international experience, and his thoughts on legal immigrants confirm, Scott Walk might seem to have to have a problem with the world outside U.S. borders -- or even Wisconsin borders. Something that's never a good sign in in someone who wants to be the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. Perhaps the Cheesehead King might be a better title to go for at this year's annual Cheddar Fest in Racine. I think it's probably best to consider this the first Elisberg Industries International Film Festival.
Last year, I wrote about a wonderful TV special I'd seen on TNT back in 1995. It was a benefit concert that adapted The Wizard of Oz movie, which they called, The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True. And it had a seriously-impressive all-star cast, though with a completely unknown young girl in the main role as Dorothy. Bear with me. Though I'm repeating some things here who remember my earlier postings, there's a reason for all of this. Anyway, when I say "seriously impressive all-star cast," I mean it. The cast starred Roger Daltrey as the Tin Man, Jackson Browne as the Scarecrow, and Nathan Lane as theCowardly Lion. And the featured cast included Joel Grey playing the Wizard, Natalie Cole as Glinda the Good Witch, Debra Winger as the Wicked Witch, Lucie Arnaz as Aunt Em, and it had a couple of musical interlude appearances from Phoebe Snow and Ronnie Spector, along with Dr. John. And The Boys Choir of Harlem played the Munchkins. Moreover, the orchestra featured music greats Ry Cooder on guitar and saxophonist David Sanborn, and Dr. John . Like I said, all star. Oh, and that unknown girl who starred as Dorothy, a young singer I'd never heard of -- she hadn't even released her first album yet -- was someone named...Jewel. The whole show was wonderful, but Jewel really stood out. Not so much because she was "the best" (though she was very good), but because she was so utterly unexpected, and held her own against such huge luminaries. She also had a whole lot more to do than the others, and had clearly studied her part more than them, not needing to reference her script nearly as much as the others. And even did some dancing. The reaction of the audience, who was clearly there to see the others, the Stars, who they actually knew - and loved -- was palpable, most notably after her introduction blowing them away with "Over the Rainbow," and with the roars she got at the curtain call. (Unfortunately, for time on television, they cut fairly quickly after "Over the Rainbow," but you can tell by the raucous applause she gets, that it went on a long while.) For some odd reason, the show has never been repeated on TNT. Ever. It's possible maybe once that same week, but I don't recall at this point, though I don't think so. I just happened to luck out and was flipping channels and came upon it a few minutes in -- in time to hear "Over the Rainbow." Maybe there were rights problems, I have no idea. But it's never even been released on DVD. Last year, I came across a bunch of highlights online from the show, that were half a dozen videos with songs, and posted them. It wasn't much, but it beat nothing, and kept this production from remaining lost. Well, not long ago, browsing again, as I am wont to do -- I tracked down the whole show! It's not a single, standalone video, but rather broken into seven parts. They were spread all over the place, not conveniently on a "Wizard of Oz" channel, but I was able to collect them all and put them in proper order. I was thinking of posting the whole group of them at the same time, but I figured that would be sort of messy. And then I realized that these seven segments might work out even better -- it's not likely that most people would want to watch all 90 minutes in one sitting, most particularly since the quality isn't great. But broken up into segments of about 12-minutes each night...now, that might work better. And so, that's what we shall do. Over the next six days (one of the seven segments is only about a minute long, so I'll post two that day), I'll be posting the full version of The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True. Based, of course, on the novel by L. Frank Baum. (Hey, I've got to give credit to the original source!) As I said, the video quality is a little washed out, but it's fully watchable. The script sticks pretty closely to the movie, though it's edited down a bit, and has some narration to bridge the gaps. And there are a couple of musical interludes, as mentioned, though they're a lot of fun. And there's also an added treat that this production has included the famously-cut song and big dance number, "The Jitterbug," that was cut from the film. And the whole thing is made all the more fun, I think, if when you're watching it you try to do so from the perspective of not knowing who in the world this young girl is in the starring role, never having heard of it before rather than imposing an after-the-fact awareness and preconceptions on to it. So, with all that out of the way, here, with its glorious score by Harold Arlen and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, is the Elisberg Industries International Film Festival -- Part One of The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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