That’s Entertainment: A personal journey through Musical Cinema

They say people don’t change. I think that’s crap. I mean, look at me. When I was a kid, you couldn’t get me to touch a Musical with a ten-foot pole. I thought it was boring, frankly. The plot halting every once in a while because people burst out singing. I was into Spielberg and idiotic 80’s comedies like the Police Academy films (which were the funniest thing in the world as far as I was concerned). Musicals seemed old, slow, and too long. Indeed, the early Eighties didn’t see a lot of musicals, at least not many good ones. There were some movies I did like, though. I think I liked Hair from the get-go (maybe because we had the vinyl at home), and Grease too, Just because they were relatively new and fast paced. But as a genre, Musicals were at the bottom of the hip for me.

But then something happened. When I got older, and got more and more interested in Cinema and especially Genre cinema, I discovered that Musicals, good Musicals, can be splendid visual fists. Gradually, I began watching more and more of them, especially from the Fifties and Sixties. I watched That’s Entertainment and got a new appreciation for the skill and talent involved in these films. It’s very hard to do a good Musical, and a bad Musical is something really horrendous. Interestingly enough, two of the genres I disliked in my youth and came to love later in life – Musicals and Horror films – are the two most visually interesting genres cinema has to offer. Can the dancing of Fred Astaire be transmitted through Radio, or even be described? No, you have to see it. Can the shadows and lighting games and weird angles of many horror movies can be duplicated in any other form? No. Only when you learn to appreciate the visual uniqueness of theses films can you begin to really appreciate them – thematically and artistically.

Many people in the modern age don’t like Musicals. Some think they’re silly, because it’s stupid to just spontaneously sing and dance (As opposed to, let’s say, dress as a giant bat and fight criminals). I can only feel sorry for these poor saps. A good musical is a celebration of life. In a good Musical, when a character starts to sing for no apparent reason, you feel uplifted, like you’re hovering a few inches above the ground. The marriage of sight and sound is powerful. You just need to let yourself open up and be swept by it, and if you’ll do that, you’ll find that Musicals can evoke tremendous feelings of joy, excitement and emotion, like no other genre can.

In the last three decades, the world has become more and more cynical. Our entertainment and culture is dominated by money-hungry corporations. The bottom line is dollars. The materialism and each-to-his-own state of mind has seeped into everyday life. People are afraid to feel , or rather admit that they’re feeling. No, I’m not saying that guys should go and admit to their girlfriends that they cried in Titanic. Some lines should never be crossed. But the reason Musicals have practically faded out of cinemas in the last 30 years is because the genre became too out-there, too loose, to unbelievable for our reality (TV)-grounded world. So many movies today remind us that the world is a crappy place. That people are mean. That everything’s gone to shit. Hell, we know that, but every coin has two sides. I’m a sarcastic bastard myself and I still believe the world has many wonderful things to offer along with the bad ones. I think there’s a place for this kind of escapist cinema to exist next to the more realistic ones (even comic book movies have become depressing). The 30’s and 40’s and 50’s weren’t better than today. There was depression and wars. But people still went to see Musicals (and a lot of other movies), to dream in the dark for two hours. Irt was a period very different than our overly analytical, criticism-filled world.

That’s why I was so glad to see Hairspray, probably the best Musical in years. It reminded me of Grease in many ways – It is set in the 60’s, it concerns teenagers, it has John Travolta in it (who appears next to Michelle Pfeiffer, a Grease 2 alumni) – but it has it’s own spirit. It’s so fun, energetic and cool, it’s almost defies description.

So I present to you, without further ado, my favorite Musicals of all time, in chronological order. In my opinion, these are some of the best Musicals ever made and they are prime examples of what the genre, in it’s peak, can accomplish.

Static

Well, hello.

I don’t really know who visits this blog on a regular basis and who just happens to read these lines because he searched for the words “Blond Ventriloquist” on Google and found himself unexpectedly here (gotcha!), but I just wanted to apologize. Apologize for not writing as much as I’d like to. These days leave me strangely lethargic. I think it’s a combination of the cold dry weather outside which makes one a little sleepy, and the distracting worries which plague me. Worries of the immediate nature, like finding another apartment, finding ways to save money, and worries of Meaning of Life type, which I won’t get into here, with your permission.

Now, I did write a new post the other day, but decided not to publish it. It happens sometimes, although rarely. I see this blog as my venting place, my thought pad, but I also want it to be enjoyable and worthwhile to read. When I deem a post unenjoyable or not thought provoking or illuminating enough, I decide not to publish it. So yes, the draft section of ABAIG has a few unpublished posts in it. Maybe I’ll publish them at a later date. in the meantime, they are kept there. Some of them are too personal for my taste, and some of them are just pointless rants.

So even when I don’t post anything, it doesn’t mean I haven’t written anything. That is the nature of my writing. I am myself most harsh critic.

For the past few days I’ve been riding a lot on the New York subway, an extremely efficient piece of transportation with endless opportunities for people watching. The subway is like the United Nations on wheels. (And those MTA employees inside their glass booths. Boy, are they short tempered! I guess they’ve seen and heard it all).

And in New York it’s still quite cool and very dry. My body’s oozing static electricity. I get zapped from objects like my computer, the tap in the kitchen, the chair I’m sitting on. Static is also a great way to describe my feelings in the last few days. Trying to find a cheaper, or less expensive apartment in greater New York, but not really getting anywhere. As usual for me, I play the waiting game. The big question is how long to stay in New York. That is unknown at this point, since (again) I’m waiting for things to happen on other fronts, things that I have no control or influence on.

So I’m waiting.

And in the meantime, I realized that the relative lack of music and movies is depressing me. I don’t have with me my CD’s and especially my 150 mp3′. I bought Frou Frou’s CD, but it’s just one CD. I’ve seen two whole movies since I left Israel: The Fountain (extremely boring and pretentious) and 300 (Cool visuals. Enjoyable, stylish gorefest). I toyed with the idea of renting movies through Netflix, but since I’m in a very temporary residence, it seemed a bit silly. I thought of buying some DVD’s but didn’t find any I really wanted, and besides, I think it’s stupid to buy a movie just because I want to see one. There are movies on TV (I saw 3/4 of A Time To Kill), but they are botched by endless commercial breaks, which makes the whole thing much more annoying than enjoyable.

I’ve been to a short stroll in Central Park, which looks suspiciously like Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv. Saw a lot of dogs and kids playing baseball, and found out I could cross it surprisingly fast from the east side to the west side of upper Manhattan. I really thought it would be much bigger. But then, I’ve only been to a small portion of it.

I wanted to end this post with some music, so here’s the beginning sequence of Hair, one of my favourite film musicals and a very New Yorkish film. It takes place at Central Park, and it’s featuring that infectious, great song… Well, you know which song I’m talking about.

The one about the opposite of static.

Inventory

When I go through the final preparations before travelling to the U.S of A (on my Tourist Visa, mind you, after all that work-related fuss), I find it a bit overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff to do, but sometimes I find myself sitting on the couch and staring at the TV, unable, or unwilling, to do anything. When I think about it, I realize that there really aren’t that many things to do. A few phone calls here, some buying to do there, but not that much.

It’s just that I’ve lived so long inside a cocoon, that the change of pace wears me down.

For the past several years, it was mostly work, home, work, home. I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t even take a fucking vacation, so this is certainly exciting and scary at the same time. Travelling to other places, plaves where you don’t necessarily know “the rules”, and be an outsider, and all that.

Well, fuck it. I’ve always been an outsider. Maybe it would’ve been even harder if I had dozens of friends, childhood friends, or if I lived in the same town all my life, but that’s not the case. I don’t like being the new kid on the block, but sometimes you don’t have much choice.

I’ve got so accustomed to my little world: My apartment, my TV, my bed, my daily routine, that it seems unthinkable to disturb them like that, make them vanish. I’ve even got accustomed to the cat. It will be very hard to leave her behind. It kind of breaks my heart a little.

I’m a man of habits, whether I like it or not, and habits don’t go hand in hand with big changes. And that’s another thing: I don’t like changes. They make me uncomfortable. I have this constant battle inside me: There’s the guy that wants everything to stay the same because it’s oh-so-comfy and nice and sweet, versus the guy that demands that I get off my ass and stop bitching that I’m miserable and stuck in a rut and try and do something about it. Because bitching is so easy and addictive, while getting up and actually, actively do something about it is so hard.