You may recall on the the TV broadcast of the 85th Oscars in 2013, the cast of the movie version of Les Miserables performed the medley-song "One Day More" medley live.  This is a behind-the-scenes video of the rehearsal for that number.  Actually, it appears to be a rehearsal for an audio of the song in a recording studio, rather than the staging.  I suspect they did it to either have a backup, in case there was a problem during the live broadcast, or so that they could lip-sync to it.  But I strongly believe it's the former, having tracked down a video of the performance and it looks pretty clearly sung live.

The performers are Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks.  Fittingly, given the roles they played in the film as comedy foil con-men, keep an eye on Cohen and Bonham Carter later in the video, having a fun time among themselves, as he also records the whole thing on his phone, 

Also there are music supervisor Stephen Brooker, composer Claude-Michel Schönberg next to him, director Tom Hooper standing in the back with his arms crossed, producer Cameron Mackintosh (who produced the stage production), and next to him original French lyricist Alain Boublil with a scarf around his neck.

​And here's the end result on the Oscar telecast.  You can check for yourself that it does appear to be sung live.  The sound quality is poor, the user seemingly having recorded it second-hand, probably with their cel phone, not from the direct TV feed. But it comes across well enough.

By the way, as long as I was giving credit above, the English lyrics to the show were written by Herbert Kretzmer.

You may recall about a month ago or so, I wrote about some changes that the Motion Picture Academy had announced for next year.  A few streamlined the broadcast and while the reaction was mixed, I though they were reasonable, if handled well.  The most notable change, though, was wildly abhorred as idiotic and unworkable -- a new category for "Best Popular Film." 

I'm happy to say that last week, the Academy has backtracked and announced that as a result of a vote by the Academy board, they will not be giving that award.  Sanity prevails!
 
The Los Angeles Times had a long article on the decision, which you can read here, full of the background and comments from many Academy members.  It includes a bunch of clueless quotes from Academy president John Bailey, who shoots himself in the foot several times, most notably where he states –
 
“I’m not afraid to say this: If it had been my decision as president, this award would have been in place for the 2019 Oscar telecast.  [On the board] you’ve got 54 alpha-type people that are highly creative, highly motivated — it would be absurd to say it was unanimous. But clearly there was a majority and we honor that. It’s a democratic process.”
 
First of all, the fact that the Academy board is made up of "alpha-types" is not, I am certain, why the decision was made.  It was made because it was a terrible, mind-numbingly bad idea, and the smart people on the board with common sense understood that. In addition, that the vote was not “unanimous” (or as we learned this week Trump would say, “unamanush”) is utterly meaningless, since the vote could have been a nail-bitingly close 28-26…or 51-3, with Mr. Bailey and two pals supporting him the only holdouts.
 
​In the end, something very rare in Hollywood occurred -- good sense won the day.

On this edition of the 3rd & Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is Rawson Marshall Thurber.  He discusses his move from writing and directing comedies like Dodgeball and Central Intelligence (as well as directing We're the Millers) to writing and directing the big-budget action movie, Skyscraper. 

This was unlikely.  I was going to write about something else this morning, but last night was I was browsing through YouTube at various videos when one had an ad pop up first.  Normally, I don't pay attention and just look at the little bot that tells when I can click through after about four seconds.  For whatever reason, this caught my eye -- and I not only watched for those four seconds, but past.  And kept watching.  And am posting it here.

It's a trailer for a movie I'd never heard of, that's opening for Thanksgiving.  I know next to nothing about it, only this trailer.  And it looks absolutely wonderful.  The movie is Green Book, ​starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.  It's written by Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga and Brian Currie -- and directed by Peter Farrelly.  Making that all the more notable is that Peter Farrelly is one of the two Farrelly Brothers, who made such "stupid comedies" as Dumb and Dumber; There's Something About Mary; Me, Myself and Irene, Kingpin, Shallow Hal and more.

It's inspired by a true story, and I'm sure there will be reviews that refer to it as Driving Mr. Daisy, which seems somewhat apt, but the story seems to take its own left turn down a little-used road.  The title comes from the guidebook that would let Black people know where they could eat and sleep, or get gas when traveling through the South in the days before Civil Rights. 

I have no idea, of course, how the full movie will be, but I can't wait to see it.

In two parts, here is the Kennedy Center Honor tribute to Katharine Hepburn in 1990.  What was rare about this, even at the time, is that Hepburn famously avoided awards ceremonies.  And the Kennedy Center didn't honor anyone if they wouldn't be there to accept.  And she did show up.

The entertainment portion for Kennedy Center tributes to actors are pretty much never as interesting for actors as they are for singers or musicians (at least if there's not way to work music into the festivities, which somethings there is).  So the entertainment here isn't overly special, though fun.  But compared to most, the film clips are enthralling.

I hadn't expected to write another Capsule Review so soon, but I just saw an incredibly clever movie yesterday that deserves attention.  It's somewhat in the high-concept vein of Phone Booth -- (that's the film where a guy answers the pay phone, he's told not to hang up or he'll get shot, and pretty much the entire movie takes place in that phone booth) -- which is a kind of move I love when done well.  And this new film is done very well. 

The movie is called Searching. It concerns a father whose daughter goes missing, and the high-concept twist is that we follow his efforts to find her entirely from the perspective of seeing only his computer screen.  For instance, he uses Facetime to contact people and stay in touch with the police, watches YouTube videos that give us backstory, checks out lots of social media videos as he tries to track down what his daughter could have been doing before she disappeared, there's a lot live-streaming and so on.  It may not have the most detailed layers, but it’s awfully good and is such a tremendously clever idea that they handle wonderfully.  Using the device sometimes keeps you at arm's length and from there from being more close human interaction, though that distance is one of the things that keeps you as "frustrated" as the father is and builds tension.  (Also, to be clear, there is "in-person" interaction between people -- I don't want to say how, since discovering how they pull all this off is some of the fun.) 

What I especially admired is that there’s some great social commentary, handled subtly and effectively.  One of my favorite parts is after the news story of the missing girl goes public, and we see the TV video clips online, we then get the world of social media chiming in with their “theories” and accusations of what happened.  And it’s so wonderfully done because it’s not like we see only two or three reactions of someone talking to a reporter, like in a normal movie, but because this is solely from the perspective of looking at a computer monitor, for each social media service the father goes to, searching, he scrolls down ALL the voluminous comments to check for anything, so we see dozens upon dozens of people’s reactions – heartfelt, snarky, know-it-all, the whole gamut.  And these user comments are SO believably written by the screenwriters.

Huge credit goes to Aneesh Chaganty who directed the film and co-wrote it with Sev Ohanian.  The logistics and meticulous pre-production planning to get this done must have been a hellish Hercluean effort.
 
John Cho plays the father, and he's very good.  I always like his work (particularly in the series Selfie with Karen Gillan), and he's very effective here.  As terrific a job as he does, though, and as respectable a fan base as he has from being in the Star Trek movies, I think a unique film like this needs more of a Big Movie Star presence with starring-role credentials (someone like Colin Farrell, when he starred in the aforementioned Phone Booth) in order to help attract wide-attention an audience. This isn't to say that John Cho wasn't a good choice for the role -- indeed, he was an excellent choice -- just that I suspect the film's box office potential is limited.  But the good thing about Searching is that even if you don't see it in a theater, it’s something that would play perfectly well on DVD – or streamed on one’s computer!

Here's the trailer.  The movie is significantly better, since it takes its time cleverly laying all the pieces out in careful detail, building the story and ratcheting up the level stress, almost like a nightmare unfolding, while the trailer is trying to create a sense of instant, grab the audience, in-your-face, fast-paced tension.  The movie isn't done in this "smash cut" way at all, but at least you get an idea from the trailer of how it all works 
 

Yesterday afternoon, I saw a screening of BLACKkKLANSMAN, directed by Spike Lee, and written by Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott, & Lee.  It's very good -- both tension-filled and often quite funny.  And very well-crafted.  By no means it is a comedy, to be clear.  In fact, at times, it's uncomfortable to watch (as it’s supposed to be, dealing as it does with a close-up look at racial hatred and anti-Semitism), but handled well.

The film is based on a book about the true experience written by Ron Stallworth, a black rookie police officer who infiltrates the KKK in Colorado.  (Lest the TV ads and film's title give the impression, no, he himself doesn't get personally inside.  That's a joint undercover operation between him on the telephone and a white, Jewish officer.)  John David Washington is excellent as the cop, and Adam Driver does a terrific job as his main partner.  And there's a small, but wonderful performance by Harry Belafonte.

(By the way, some of the film's tension comes from the fact that Stallworth -- new to the job -- screws up and uses his real name when he makes his first call to the local Klan about joining.  And so the undercover team is stuck with his real identity now being out there.  It's a very funny moment, but one with very serious implications.  Later on, Stallworth expands his reach and ends up becoming phone pals, by total chance, with the Klan's Grand Wizard, David Duke.)
 
It's important to note, too, that BLACKkKLANSMAN is not just a movie about what happened in the 1980s.  Spike Lee is blunt here about racial hatred to and its connections to the current administration.  There are clear slams at Trump throughout – a bit heavy-handed with the phrases, but a) in fairness, it’s sort of impossible to work in Trump phrases and not be obvious, and b) Lee doesn't overdo it -- since he doesn't have to.  Say such phrases at only a few points, and you can't miss the point which pretty much of the audience has already figured out long before going to the movie theater.  So, the use is blunt, but low-key.  Until the very end, which was perhaps my favorite part of the movie, letting it all out and being as forthright about Trump as could be.  I shall say no more.  Other than it's all especially timely with it being the one-year anniversary of Charlottesville and the "very fine people."

​Here's the trailer.  It does a solid getting across the film, though the movie is significantly more tense -- and filled with the venal visceral language of the Klan members -- and therefore far-less "breezy" as it may seem here.  P.S.  The film's star John David Washington is the son of Denzel.  You can fill in the last name.

And as a bonus video, here are Spike Lee and the real Ron Stallworth being interviewed on the show, CBS This Morning.

Okay, like so many others with a keyboard at their disposal, I feel it's required that I chime in and comment on the new changes to the Academy Awards.

The most notable by far is the addition of what they're calling Best Popular Film.  And like pretty much everyone else I read, I agree that it's mind-numbingly idiotic.  Not because it's a change and How Dare You Change the Oscars (it's the Oscars, for goodness sake, it's open for change), but because they're panderingly foolish and diminish the whole point of the show.  To be clear, I've written lengthy articles about how the Tony Awards should change their broadcast and why.  (The short, core answer to the latter is that these are TV shows, so they should make them good TV shows.)  So, I'm absolutely fine with changing awards shows.  

My friend Ken Levine, a multiple-Emmy-winner who's also written several features, has a a spot-on rant about what's wrong about this Best Popular Film category, which you can read here.

Part of the challenge with everyone's complaint about this rule (including my own) is that the Motion Picture Academy hasn't actually announced yet how it will work.  But then, that should give you a hint about the problem with it.  I suspect that the Academy hasn't announced how it will work because it doesn't have a clue how it will work.  Most probably because it won't work.  Can a film be eligible for Best Popular Film and Best Picture?  Will this undercut the value of Best Picture by suggesting that if it's not popular, it's just a froo-froo artsy-fartsy film no one should care about except the effete snobs?  Does it demean the Best Popular Film nominees by saying they're perhaps a bit dumb and not good enough to be a Best Picture? And what qualifies for a "Popular Film"?  And will you now get people whining (by the way, the answer to this is "Yes," regardless how the sentence finishes...) that some movie won Best Popular Film when another movie was clearly more popular?  And why only Best "Popular" Film ?  Why not an award for Best Comedy Film?  And Best Action Film?  And, hey, why not Best Un-Popular Film?  (since after all, most movies that don't do well at the box office, no matter how brilliantly made rarely get Oscar nominations -- because people didn't see them, not just the public but Oscar voters,!)  And for that matter, why not Best Popular Actor in a Popular Film?  Because they generally get overlooked, too.  Most especially Best Comic Actor in a Comedy Film?  And...and...and...well, fill in the blank with your own "ands", including at the top, and why have the category at all???!

The whole point of the Oscars is excellence.  After all, it's given by the Industry itself, by the people who actually make the movies.  There are plenty other awards shows that honor popularity.  And there's the box-office, too.  We can see pretty easily which movies made the most money and therefore was the most popular.  (That doesn't inherently mean such films will be The Best, but it certainly focuses the list.)  The Oscars are about craft.  That might bother some people -- or perhaps many people -- who think the concept of quality is too high-brow and elitist.  But it's not, of course, the concept of quality is based on doing your best.  We don't demean an Olympic Gold Medal-winner because he or she was a better runner than all others.  No, the two concepts are not the same, but the foundation is. You don't get a bonus Gold Medal for finishing seventh but you have the most TV commercial endorsements.  There are no participation trophies when you get past the third grade.  If the U.S. Movie Award-a-ganza show wants to honor The Most Popular, swell.  But these are the Oscars.  Yes, it's just about honoring movies, not medical breakthroughs, but it's what separates them from the other shows, there's a point to them, some heft,)

And to be clear, this change has nothing to do with excellence or craft.  It's to draw a larger TV audience and perhaps even assuage egos.  And it's idiotic.

Which leads us to the other changes, designed to streamline the TV broadcast.  (Here, I only partly agree with what Ken Levine wrote in his aforementioned article.  He makes some good points, though overall I don't have an issue with trying to make a TV show a better TV show.) I'm actually okay with the Oscars -- or any awards show) -- doing little sketches and montages.  It's a TV show, after all.  The problem is when you do silly, pointless, interminable "bits" that might at best be after-thoughts on a late-night TV talk show ("Hey, let's get volunteers and go down the block to surprise tourists with candy!!") and not something organic to the broadcast.  When you do the former, they're a waste of space.  When you do the latter, they enhance the show.  

The streamlining changes are being made to keep the show at three hours and not spill over interminably.  In doing so, they will now present some of the awards during commercial breaks, and then edit them to show the winner's speech later in the broadcast.  (Which awards that will be should be a fun debate in the Academy.)

I understand why some are bothered by this.  Hey, if I was nominated, and my category was one of those, I'd be bothered. But this isn't about five people being bothered.  It's about hundreds of millions of people watching on TV being bored.  They're no eliminating the award, after all.  If you get an Oscar nomination -- let alone win -- you have the nomination, and have it for all time.  It forever will be the first line in your biography whenever anyone writes about you, whether it was on TV or not.  When you're up for your next job, the people hiring will know you were nominated for an Oscar -- and maybe even won.  Moreover, they already give a lot of Oscars that aren't shown on TV -- in fact, they're given on a complete separate night, the Technical Achievement Awards, which get very short shrift on the Oscar broadcast.  But they still count as Oscars.  And Oscar nominations.  So, there's LONG precedence with this, and even more drastically, it's not a Huge Deal.  Though it is a deal.  The thing is, it all depends on how it's handled.  (In the new, edited version, for instance, they could show and identify all the nominees on-screen in boxes while the winner is being announced, and then quick-cut to the winner on stage, and give 30 seconds of the person's speech.)  It certainly can absolutely be handled poorly...but it doesn't have to be.  

The Tony Awards, after all, do something sort of like this already for several awards (though given at an earlier ceremony), and sometimes some of the awards are significant ones.  They've worked on getting it right over the past few years.  The first year they didn't do a great job with it, but with some trial-and-error, it worked fairly nicely this past season.  It still has a ways to go, but it can be done well.  And the Oscars can do it well, too.  If they don't -- that's the problem.  Not that they're trimming the full live-presentation of a few awards that the viewing audience doesn't care about.

And in the end, again, it's a TV show.  The point of the Oscar telecast is to make a good TV show.  If you want to present all the awards and in full -- great!  Just don't accept the millions of dollars for rights fee and put a TV camera in the room.

By the way, that said, I also don't have any qualms with an Oscar broadcast going long.  Such length can be boring -- or add heft and substance.  Gandhi was long -- it also won Best Picture.  (And was pretty popular, too!)  One From the Heart wasn't all very long at all -- and it was mind-numbing.  In the end, everything should be done to make the Oscars a sharp, fluid, thoughtful, entertaining TV broadcast...that honors excellence and craft. 

That's a tall order and a tough challenge.  But you only have to do it once a year.  And, c'mon, you're starting from a foundation of honoring movies.  So, you've got a big leg up on broadcasting the gala for Insurance Salesmen of the Year.

What with Steven Seagal bizarrely in the news as Putin's Special Representative on "humanitarian" issues -- because when you think "Steven Seagal" you generally think, "humanitarian" -- it made me think of my very tangential connection with him.  And no, we never met.

But consider this my tribute to Humanitarian Steven Seagal, no matter how tangential.

As I mentioned a while back, I wrote songs for a brief while with a fellow named Andy Marx -- one of them actually even got used in a Showtime movie called The Wharf Rat, with Lou Diamond Philips.  (I wrote about it here and embedded the song.)

During some of this time, Andy was also working on movies as a unit publicist, and at one point he had been hired for the 1990 movie, Hard to Kill -- which starred Steven Seagal.  Andy had the idea that we should write an end-title song for the movie.  Since he of course knew the producer, he could submit it to him.  

Mind you, not having read the script, I had little idea what the story was about, though Andy gave me the general plot.  It was about how Seagal's character is left for dead after an attack kills his wife.  In a coma for seven years, he finally recovers, and after all that lost time he sets out to avenge the memory of his wife and track down those who killed her.

We also had no clue what they were looking for, of course, so we tried two versions -- a ballad, and one that was up-tempo and more "driven."  The best I could figure was that "lost time" and memories of a loved one seemed important.

Alas, it was not to be.  The producers didn't want either.  But the good news is that I went on to write articles on my own website!

Anyway, I figured with the Seagal guy back in the news, I'd embed both versions of what we came up with.  And I think they stand on their own as songs, not inherently tied to the movie.  Though of course that's what they they were for.  That's Andy singing and playing, and I'll include the lyrics so you can sing along.  Sorry that I don't have a bouncing ball...

​All of my days
Are like a circle without end.
Never knowing what to trust
Or who's a friend.
Everything's changing in the world I thought I knew.
But something happens whenever I'm with you.
                      
Time stands still
When I see you in the light.
And when you're lying next to me
Through every night.
Time stands still         
Everytime I hear your name.
It will always be the same.
Time stands still.
 
You are a memory
That always will be near.
Yours are the promises
That never disappear.
Rivers flow on and on forever to the sea.
And forever's just a moment whenever you're with me.
 
Time stands still
When I see you in the light.
And when you're lying next to me
Through every night.
Time stands still
Everytime I hear your name.
It will always be the same.
Time stands still.

 
I'm in a world
Where I've never been before.
Every moment we're together
Makes me want you even more.

 
Time stands still
When I see you in the light.
And when you're lying next to me
Through every night.
Time stands still
Everytime I hear your name.
It will always be the same.
Time stands still.
 
Time stands still.

​In the eye of a hurricane,
The world seems safe and warm.
But it's a false sense of security.
The calm before the storm.
Now, it's been said that all will come
To those who stand and wait.
But the wind will soon begin to blow.
And then, it's far too late.
 
     Time waits for no one.
     Years go by too fast.
     The glory of the moment
     Is past.
    
     No one can wait around for
 
     Time waits for no one.
     Midnight closes in.
     A chance that's missed will never
     come again.
          
 No one can wait around for Time.
 
On the edge in the city,
Alone, nowhere to turn,
Every face is a stranger.
The soul begins to burn.
The darkness hides the answers,
And the truth can be unkind.
And when the wind begins to blow,
It leaves the lost behind.
 
     Time waits for no one.
     Years go by too fast.
     The glory of the moment
     Is past.
    
     No one can wait around for
 
     Time waits for no one.
     Midnight closes in.
     A chance that's missed will never
      come again.
 
     No one can wait around for Time.
 
     (Repeat chorus)