A musical a western and a city slicker
If you’re reading this the Mayans were wrong and the world didn’t end after all — meaning of course that you can head to the theatre and treat yourself to a Christmas movie. There are only two flicks vying for your holiday dollars. In one corner we have Les Miserables (roughly translated from the French as “the miserables”) the big-screen adaptation of the long-running famously popular musical based on the very long and once-popular novel by Victor Hugo. And man is that fucker long — I bought a nice looking hardcover a few years ago and it has sat on the bookshelf ever since staring at me with its cold judgmental eyes every time I walk past.
The book has been adapted umpteen times with the last big budget attempt being the dour non-musical Liam Neeson version that nobody saw in 1998. This latest is a more faithful version of the proletariat musical (clocking in at two-and-a-half hours) starring Hugh Jackman Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. Sacha Baron Cohen is in there too and if the utterly delightful Hugo proved one thing it’s that Cohen can both sing and play a Frenchman.
So if you’ve seen the musical the movie should be the same thing — only with Wolverine as condemned prisoner Jean Valjean. Judging by Jackman’s musical performance on Saturday Night Live I’m confident he can carry a tune. Crowe like a lot of celebrity musicians has been embarrassing himself for years with his half-assed attempts at being a rock star — first with the hilariously nonsensically named band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and his latest project The Ordinary Fear of God. (Whatever that means). I’m looking forward to finally breaking my Les Mis cherry — the perfect bowl of sweet uplifting holiday gruel. Vive la France!
In the other corner is Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited western Django Unchained . I’m an iconoclast when it comes to his flicks preferring the little liked to the mostly agreed upon classics. Reservoir Dogs is okay — the language pops but the film’s pace and look still feels clunky; Pulp Fiction is in the canon and by this point basically unreviewable; Jackie Brown is still my favorite — his most emotionally real and enjoyable (the closest to the perfect “hangout” flick like Rio Bravo that he reveres so much); Kill Bill hasn’t aged that well its spectacular set pieces punctuated by wilfully self-absorbed dialogue; Death Proof is badass the B-movie distilled to its essence; and Inglourious Basterds ’ parts are greater than the sum of the whole — it’s better than I remember but the middle still sags.
My feeling is that Django will be top-tier Tarantino: using the famed antihero (who’s appeared in a score of spaghetti western flicks) firmly plants his movie in grindhouse territory giving him an excuse to overindulge in the sleaze. The red-band trailer consciously fills the screen with blood guts and bullets; and Jamie Foxx Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio all look perfectly cast.
And for those of you (like myself) who say fuck it and prefer to take the road less travelled there’s Parental Guidance starring Billy Crystal and Bette Midler. The unholy duo play grandparents to three rotten kids they’re babysitting for the weekend. Lame unearned laughter ensues. It’s the first film Crystal has made since Ang Lee’s stone cold classic City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold where he makes sweet sweet cowboy love to a rugged cowpoke played with mumble-y brilliance by Jack Palance. Save me a seat.
