In the Heights (2008)

This may be a bit backwards, since I talked about Bring It On a while ago, but In the Heightsis simply superb.  The Broadway debut of composer/lyricist and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, this show is in a class of its own:  a Latin hip-hop Broadway musical.  These days, just finding something original on Broadway is no easy task, and this show delivers in spades.  I remember watching the 2008 Tony Awards – at the start of the night, I knew almost nothing about In the Heights, but by the end of the telecast, I was cheering as it took home the award for best musical.

 

The nuts and bolts of the story are fairly simple.  Set in Washington Heights, a Latino neighborhood in northern Manhattan, the show follows its residents over the course of a sweltering 4^thof July.  Everything and everyone is in flux; all along the block, people are considering “packing up and picking up” for different reasons.  For instance, the cheery bodega owner Usnavi longs to find his roots, the Dominican Republic he’s never known.  Daniela and Carla, the insatiable gossips from the salon, struggle to stay afloat as their rent keeps increasing.  Bright, hardworking Nina has just returned from college, and the site of home makes her wonder where she really ought to be.  It’s a story of love, dreams, and family that bursts with life.

 

The characters are at once familiar and specific, weaving vibrant sparks of individuality into archetypes.  They’re all imperfect, entertaining, and utterly rootable, and they make it easy to invest in the fairly thin plot.  You care about them instantly, hope to see them get what they want, and enjoy just watching them spend time together.  Energetic, self-deprecating Usnavi (in the original cast, exuberantly played by Miranda, a fantastic rapper) is of course my favorite – absolutely the heart of the show.  Also noteworthy are Usnavi’s dream girl Vanessa and his best friend Benny, but I love them all.

 

The main attraction, though, is the amazing score.  It’s Broadway’s incredible introduction to Miranda, and I love about how truly multidimensional it is.  It’s so Latin, so hip-hop, and soBroadway, all at the same time.  Some new shows scored with modern music exude an air of “too cool for school,” like their composers have ridden in triumphantly to save Broadway from irrelevance and carry it singlehandedly into the 21^st century.  In the Heights has no such attitude.  Broadway runs through the veins of every song, telling the story and revealing the emotional lives of the characters with great theatrical sensibility.  Oh, and Usnavi name-drops Cole Porter in the opening number.  Yeah – that happens.  All the while, it’s stunningly clear that Miranda really knows his way around hip-hop.  The rhythms are catchy (and accompanied, I might add, by amazing choreography,) and the rapid-fire lyrics sparkle with playful wit and smart rhymes while brimming with heart.  And I’ll admit that I’m no authority on Latin music, but Miranda is more than capable here as well.  In an interview (can't find it now, sorry,) he discusses how he incorporates a wide assortment of Latin music into the score, using styles from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and other countries depending on what character is singing and where they’re from.  It’s put together so wonderfully and lovingly.  When I first got the cast recording, I played it nonstop for months, and it still puts me in a great mood every time I (frequently) listen to it.

 

Warnings

 

Some swearing, drinking, and a few sexual references.

Top Five Retellings: Once Upon a Time

Yep, more Once Upon a Time.  Although it’s far from the greatest show out there, I enjoyed my summer watch, and I’m looking forward to new episodes this fall.  Expect a handful of posts on it in before then.  Today deals with the episodic flashbacks to the characters’ Enchanted Forest lives.  The show plays nicely with the original stories, at times subverting them unexpectedly and at others branching off in original directions.  My favorites – with definite spoilers – are below.

 

Little Red Riding Hood

 

Okay, the awkward parallels with menstruation are, well, awkward, but overall, I love Red being the wolf.  Werewolf stories are so often male-centric, and I like getting Red’s perspective instead.  After her brave and clever mission to find the wolf, it’s gutting to realize it’s her.  The show deals well with Red’s lycanthropy, gradually bringing her to acknowledge and own both sides of herself instead of trying to deny one or the other.

 

Grumpy

 

Just as one of the show’s (many) mantras is that evil is made, not born, Grumpy doesn’t enter the world with his trademark crankiness.  Rather, Snow White’s dwarf buddy starts out as optimistic, wonderstruck Dreamy, and his new name is given him by fateful circumstances and lost love.  However, his old potential remains and can still surface, given the right conditions.

 

Rumpelstiltskin

 

While Rumpel’s tragic villain origins are pretty standard practice, I love how this version really make the details of his story resonate.  First, Rumpel’s dark magic comes from an enchanted dagger bearing his name, and since he can be controlled by anyone wielding it, it’s logical that he’d respect the power in names.  Similarly, Rumpel’s penchant for dealing in firstborn children is more significant when you realize he’s spent centuries trying to find the son lost to him.

 

Snow White

 

Snow’s story itself isn’t too noteworthy, but my adoration makes me mention her.  Snow White in the Disney movie does nothing for me, so it’s shocking how great she is here.  Though she begins with hints of her helpless, saccharine predecessor, the queen’s vendetta against Snow forces her to grow and learn quickly.  In most of her flashbacks, she’s a tough, lively heroine who takes care of herself and, despite her struggles, has inner goodness and unquenchable hope.

 

The Mad Hatter

 

This is a great instance of the show really creating its own story.  Here, the Hatter is a man with a magical hat that opens portals between worlds, someone who’s hung up his immense power to raise his young daughter.  When the queen talks him out of retirement for one final trip, he heartbreakingly embodies another of the show’s mantras:  all magic comes with a price.  Not to mention, his debut also has a fantastic Storybrooke plot that digs into the show’s thematic heart.

Favorite Characters: Mickey Maguire (Shameless (U.K.))

 

I’ll admit that I wasn’t a fan of Mickey at first.  When he first appeared in the fourth season of the long-running British dramedy, I thought he was too over-the-top and cartoonish.  He quickly won me over, though, and by the time he parted ways with the series, he was far and away my favorite character.

 

Chatsworth, the rough council estate where the Manchester series makes its home, is populated with colorful characters who come and go over the years.  Mickey is one of many Maguires, the local crime family that lives next door to the protagonist Gallagher clan.  The Maguires have their fingers in a number of illicit pots:  drugs, extortion, money laundering, and so forth.  In short, they make the cheekily law-breaking, benefit-fraud-committing Gallaghers look like model citizens.

 

Like most of the ever-expanding Maguire family, Mickey manifests seemingly out of thin air as soon as the plot requires their family tree to sprout another ne’er-do-well branch.  His earliest ties, however, are to one of the Gallaghers; he’s brought in as a one-off love interest (or rather, one-night-stand) for Ian.  While, at this point in the series, Ian has been gradually becoming more comfortable with his sexuality and is known by many Chatsworth residents to be gay, Mickey is so deep in the closet he smells like mothballs.  He’s a wannabe tough guy riddled with internalized homophobia, but he falls fast and hard for Ian and is hurt when the slighter, less masculine boy breaks it off with him.

 

With Mickey, there’s this fantastic patchwork of at-odds traits that makes for a terrifically entertaining character.  He looks up to his gangster parents and older brothers and desperately wants to make them proud of him, whether that’s through dealing drugs, roughing someone up, or another staple of organized crime.  The problem is that, though he has plenty of enthusiasm for all these activities, he’s almost hopelessly inept and screws up most things he touches.  He’s not clever enough or hard enough to gain any real street cred, and he chafes at being the butt of family jokes.

 

Given his background, he spends a long time trying to deny his sexuality.  The rest of his close-knit family already think he’s a wimp, and he can’t bear the thought of them finding out he’s gay.  Really, it’s hard for him to bear admitting it to himself.  So he walks around with an exaggerated machismo, tosses out homophobic slurs, and makes a show of imaginary female conquests while wholeheartedly pining for Ian (somewhat to Ian’s horror.)  At the same time, he’s a bundle of repressed desires who’s at least beginning to dip his toes into the Manchester gay scene, and as he starts to begrudgingly come to terms with his identity, he explores the many different things that he is.

 

What can I say?  He’s a loose cannon, a hopeless romantic, and a terrible liar who insists on lying.  He’s a bit stupid, kind of a jerk, and 100% gung ho.  He can be extremely sensitive, surprisingly sweet, and shockingly obtuse.  His sole wishes in life are to be an upstanding criminal and to find someone who loves him, and his pursuit of them is both endearing and amusing.  Oh, and he’s hilarious – you wouldn’t believe the crazy stuff he gets up to.  With all these interesting angles, flaws, and qualities, how I could not love having him on my screen?

Go West (1925)

 

The latest Buster Keaton movie to be featured on the blog is a rather unusual film for Buster.  Yes, he’s playing his fumbling-but-resourceful little fellow, the film is wildly inventive, and there are some remarkable gags.  So what’s different?  Two words:  Brown Eyes.

 

Brown Eyes is the name of Buster’s costar in this film, one of the first bovine actresses in Hollywood to receive a salary and a screen credit.  That’s right – Brown Eyes is a cow.  Following Horace Greeley’s advice to “go west, young man,” Buster’s character (a hapless chap called Friendless) rides the rails to a ranch where he gets a job as a rather dubious cowboy and makes a fast friend in the form of a certain brown-eyed beauty.  Unfortunately, Brown Eyes’s milk-giving days are behind her, and it’s up to Friendless to save her from the slaughterhouse.

 

For whatever reason, movie-going human beings are inherently more sympathetic to imperiled animals than imperiled people, and so, Go West is infused with a sentimental streak not usually found in Buster’s work.  Some would say that the heartstring-tugging present here feels like Chaplin rather than Buster, but while I agree it’s bit sappier than Buster’s typical fare, it doesn’t feel hugely out of place to me.  His stories aren’t big on sentiment, but some of his characters are, especially when it comes to the girl.  In this case, the girl just happens to be a cow; though the looks he gives Brown Eyes aren’t the lovesick gazes he points at the girls in his movies, they’re every bit as (platonically) affectionate.  On paper, it may actually be funnier to think of Buster running pell-mell and bending over backwards to save the cow he cares for, but in the execution, one can’t help feeling for Brown Eyes.  Watching Friendless’s efforts to rescue her, an “aw” may even escape one’s lips.

 

But enough about that – let’s move on to the comedy.  Buster must’ve had a ball playing around with the Wild West genre, because there are great gags aplenty.  Watching non-country boy Friendless trying to figure out how to milk a cow is hysterical, and everyone should see Buster Keaton struggling with a lasso at least once in their lives.  There’s some nice train humor, a winking reference to Buster’s famous stone face, and of course some clever, fantastically funny problem-solving on display.  I’m especially fond of the way Friendless retrieves his tiny gun from his full-sized holster, as well as his quick fix to spare Brown Eyes from being branded.

 

I mentioned Buster’s stone face, but something that’s really impressed me as I’ve been rewatching these movies is how deceptively expressive he is.  While it’s easy to focus on the deadpan, it’s always clear what his characters are thinking, thanks to subtle shifts in Buster’s facial expression and smart camera work that knows when to highlight it.  With hardly a flicker of movement, he can show surprise, fear, despair, resolve, joy, and a bevy of other emotions.  Just another reason to applaud this terrific filmmaker.

 

Warnings

 

Just lots of slapstick violence.

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 3 – “Robot of Sherwood” (2014)

 

Well, the latest episode is still rather uneven, but things are improving.  This is my favorite so far, a fun historical that plays with ideas of fiction and reality.  At Clara’s desire to meet Robin Hood, the Doctor is insistent that the prince of thieves is only a legend, so he’s naturally perplexed when they’re met by a dashing, arrow-slinging hero upon arrival in Sherwood Forest.

 

This starts the story on an interesting foot.  Clara’s delight and fangirling clashes nicely with the Doctor’s skepticism.  While she squees over meeting Merry Men, the Doctor is swiping hair and blood samples from them, determined to prove they’re not what they seem.  Part of it is his need to be right, a well-established trait of pretty much all Doctors, but there’s a more personal aspect to it as well.  In the Doctor’s eyes, which have seen so much, Robin Hood is too good to be true.  He’s an “impossible hero,” the sort that humans need to believe in but couldn’t really exist.  It ties in well with the Doctor’s current issues of identity.  Now that he’s in a new regeneration cycle, he’s not sure he still recognizes himself.  He’s not convinced he’s a good man, let alone a hero, and this story continues the Doctor’s exploration of who he is now.

 

Unfortunately, the episode loses sight of that theme for too long of a stretch, instead putting the Doctor in a pissing contest with Robin Hood.  I love watching the Doctor doubt Robin and try to cut him down to size, but I lose interest when it devolves into juvenile bickering just short of actual dick-measuring.  It feels beneath the Doctor, seems wildly immature for Twelve in particular, and makes the Doctor look foolish compared to Robin and Clara.  These scenes still have some individual funny bits – I rather like the Doctor’s acting when he and Robin try the old “sick prisoner” routine – but not enough to make up for the annoyance of it all.

 

Generally, though, I continue to like the new Doctor.  Jealous one-upmanship aside, he’s a lot of fun in this episode.  He’s cantankerous in an amusing way, almost One-ish at times, but he can still enjoy himself, and the heart is definitely still there.  I especially like his irritation at Robin’s permanently-jovial demeanor, his glee when things inevitably go all sci-fi and insane, and a quiet moment he takes after helping a group of peasants.  I know I keep extending Twelve’s grace period, but assuming future episodes lay off of the stupid posturing, I think he can be great.

 

Clara is a mixed bag in this one for me.  I love her joy at seeing Robin Hood – it’s so nerdy-bookworm of her – and she again makes valuable contributions to the plot that feel within her wheelhouse to the extent that we’ve seen her have one.  However, last night seemed to veer into uncomfortable territory from a “Moffat’s gender politics” perspective, whereby Clara “wears the pants” in the relationship and leads the utterly cowed Doctor by the nose.  The past three episodes have been playing with this idea more and more, that Clara has to keep the Doctor in line and he’s more than a little intimidated by her.  It’s the same sort of strong-arming we see in Moffat’s Coupling, as well as with Amy and River.  I dislike it because it’s so simplistic in general and especially because it shouldn’t have a place in modern-day Who.  The Doctor doesn’t have to be lesser, ineffectual, or dense, for the companion to be strong.  They should both be strong.  They should be a team in which both get chances to shine – to be brave, to figure out the solution, to save the other.  At the same time, they shouldn’t always agree, and they should both make mistakes; it shouldn’t be a case where one is always right and the other is always wrong.  The show hasn’t gone overboard with it yet, but I’m wary.

Relationship Spotlight: Sierra & Victor (Dollhouse)

 

Even though it has a rocky start and a rushed, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency ending, I love Dollhouse.  With terrific Whedon characters, intriguing mythos, adventurous storytelling, and thoughtful thematic work, it’s an ambitious series with a lot to like.  Since this is my first Dollhouse-related post, though, I have to go straight to my favorite aspect of the show:  the relationship between Victor and Sierra.

 

Honestly, it’s pairings like this that remind me what a sap I can be.  At first glance, you wouldn’t think much of them – they’re both brain-wiped victims, mindless blank slates to be imprinted with personalities at the behest of the rich and powerful.  They’re farmed out regularly, equipped with whatever skillful, quirks, or kinks needed for their engagement, and then re-wiped before being dropped back into the Dollhouse.  Their own identities are in storage, and their non-engaged everyday personalities are vacant, childlike, and mutedly content.

 

So why Sierra and Victor?  Because their love cuts through all of that.  Even they’re only vaguely aware of it themselves and entirely unable to articulate it (when asked to describe how Sierra makes him feel, all Victor can say is, “Better,) a quiet, innocent romance begins to grow between them.  Those who run the Dollhouse don’t get it.  They call it “grouping,” think it’s a problematic malfunction.  They try to fix it – the dolls are scrubbed (wiped more deeply to stamp out any ghosts in the cerebral machine,) and staff are instructed to monitor their behavior, but it doesn’t do any good.

 

Adele considers these hints of independent thought and feelings to be dangerous, an incursion that could spread to other dolls and pollute the livestock.  She’s right to be concerned; as Victor and Sierra grow closer, their feelings for each other (especially Victor’s for Sierra) continue to come through even when they’re imprinted.  When they’re both imprinted, their new personalities fall for each other all over again, but they don’t even need to see one another for the imprinted personalities to know they’re in love.  Since the Dollhouse is made to cater to its clients’ deepest desires and needs, it’s not exactly ideal to send a doll on a romantic engagement when they love someone else.

 

Not to mention, I just love how they are with each other.  It’s so gentle and sweet, the way they look at one another, the way they hold hands like they invented it.  I kind of like that, given the blank-slate nature of their doll personalities, the show can’t simply resort to make-out sessions or smoldering tension.  It doesn’t ignore the physical side (the situation first comes to Topher’s attention when he notices Victor in the shower with an erection, a development that surprises Victor at least as much as everyone else,) but it needs to get creative and find other ways to show their affections and burgeoning relationship.  I appreciate that.  Although Victor in his doll state is utterly powerless, he tries to protect Sierra any way he can by his limited means.  Sierra is slower to be very demonstrative with her feelings, but when she does, she starts to look out for him as well.  A heart would have to be a great deal colder and harder than mine not to be entirely won over by these two.

See You in Another Life: Similarities Between Once Upon a Time and Lost

I recently got into fairy tale drama Once Upon a Time (came for the Sebastian Stan, stayed for the Snow White – who knew?)  I’d known going in that several actors from Lostappear on the show, but I was deep into season 1 before I saw it’s run by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, two Lost writers.  I was hardly surprised, though; even aside from the “supernatural-real world hybrid with huge international ensemble” structure, many Lost-ian touches and motifs litter the show.  Here are some good and not-so-good bits that feel eerily familiar (some spoilers.)

 

I’ve Seen That Face Before – Cast first.  Once Upon a Time’s ensemble includes Lana Parrilla (who briefly appeared on Lost as an Other) as Snow White’s evil queen and Emilie de Ravin (Claire) as Belle.  Jorge Garcia (Hurley) and Alan Dale (Widmore) respectively recur as a giant and a king, and Rebecca Mader (Charlotte) has a guest arc as the Wicked Witch of the West.

 

Have You Met My Troubled Past? – Well, what do you know – seasons-long arcs divided into character-centric episodes that weave present-day storylines with flashbacks, or “fairybacks” here.  (Most of the characters on Once Upon a Time are fairy tale characters living in the real world without their memories, thanks to a curse, and the flashbacks tell of their true lives back in their world.)  Like Lost, the flashbacks are doled out unequally, with a few characters getting far more episodes than others.  It’s a bit different, though, since these people lived in the same kingdom and their stories often intersect, so they frequently pop up in each other’s flashbacks.

 

Even the Best Sorceresses Have Mommy Issues – Seriously, you can’t go two feet without tripping over someone’s mommy or daddy issues (or step-mommy issues in Snow’s case.)  Throw in some convoluted family trees, and you get a whole lot of parental-trauma drama.

 

Out of the Closet and Out the Door – Both, maddeningly, reveal a single character to be queer and then have the character disappear from the show.  At least there’s hope Mulan could come back and get her happy ending, whereas Tom’s last appearance is a posthumous flashback.

 

Let’s Go on a Trek – Here, we find the same annoying tendency to spend whole episodes, not moving the plot forward, but having the character journey to a place where they’ll be able to move it forward.  It’s a stalling technique that fans have gotten wise to.  To be fair, though, Once Upon a Time is less likely to negate the reason for going by the time the characters arrive.

 

I Don’t Even Care That This Makes No Sense – Both shows can be hit-or-miss with their plot logic (I can’t tell if Once Upon a Time is better than Loston this score, or if I don’t notice it as much because I haven’t spent six years on it,) but what they lack in sense, they make up in emotional resonance.  The connections between the characters are ridiculously compelling, when the writing is on it’s really on, and the acting sells the emotional moments in tremendous ways.

 

Rumpelstiltskin = Desmond? – Okay, this last one’s just for fun.  On the surface, a dark sorcerer imp who’s fond of making deals is nothing like an Everyman who spent three years living down a hatch on an island of mystery.  But just look at the evidence.  Shaggy-haired brunette Scotsman.  Can see the future.  Achilles heel is being called a coward.  Desperately trying to reunite with a loved one lost through his mistakes.  Rumpelstiltskin is totallyDesmond!