Archive for the 'bill condon' Category

Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Paramount, DVD Reviews

I haven’t seen Dreamgirls since its release last Christmas, but after sitting down to watch the DVD, which is arriving in stores tomorrow, I pretty much stand by my original opinion — that the film is a solid B+ as a musical, but didn’t exactly have the dramatic heft or originality to be in consideration for the Oscar. Looks like the Academy agreed with me. For those who still haven’t seen it, Dreamgirls follows a trio of 60s singers, modeled on The Supremes, as they climb to the top, then fracture over love, money and fame, and then attempt to find success on their own. There are memorable songs, including Jennifer Hudson’s signature “I Am Telling You I Am Not Going,” and Beyonce Knowles’ “Listen” towards the end of the film, and the film finds an interesting way to blend musical numbers together with the traditional style of movie musicals. If you are swept up in the story, you might not even notice the moment when that wall is broken and the actors start communicating to each other through songs instead of words.

Fans will be happy to know that the DVD is no slouch — it’s two discs, packed with a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, a whole slate of extended and alternate scenes and some more interesting things that you rarely see. My favorite one a series of ‘pre-visualization sequences’ which means enhanced storyboards that are played in a slide-show sequence along with what I think is an early reading of the script pages. It serves as sort of an animated forerunner to the eventual scene that will be shot, and was probably extremely helpful to the director in setting up some of the musical sequences. In addition to the storyboard-style presentations — and htere are several of them — there are also dress rehearsals included, with stand-ins doing the singing and dancing. Some of these sequences even combine the rehearsal with the storyboard sequence, like the one for the “Cadillac Car” number. After watching that one, it seems like most of the hard work of this film was done before the actors even stepped on stage.

Continue reading DVD Review: Dreamgirls

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Independent, Music & Musicals, Awards, Mystery & Suspense, Oscar Watch

The DGA announced its noms a few moments ago, and I, tragically, had only one right: Martin Scorsese for The Departed. The five official nominees (drum roll, please):

Martin Scorsese (The Departed)
Bill Condon (Dreamgirls)
Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine)
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu (Babel) and
Stephen Frears (The Queen)

Well, well, well. I suppose it’s not shocking that the DGA nommed Condon for Dreamgirls — they did, after all, shell their award out to Rob Marshall in 2002 for Chicago — but I’m disappointed that they’d nom Condon over Cuaron. Oscar tends to march to the DGA’s beat on Best Director (they’ve been a matched set for five years running), so it’s a pretty safe bet that whoever ends up with the DGA’s big gold plate will be counting their chickens in the days leading up to Oscar night.

This was largely a crap shoot, but I am rather shocked not to see Eastwood’s name up there. Scorsese wasn’t a shocker — every last film journo whose predicitions were listed on Oscar watch had him on their lists.

My other predictions were Clint Eastwood (for Letters, not Flags), Paul Greengrass (United 93) and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men), and Guillermo del Toro for Pan’s Labyrinth — I was really hoping the recent critical surge for both those films might give them a leg-up, but alas, it was not to be. The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson came the closest to nailing all five — she’s just that good, folks. She was the only hold out who didn’t have Eastwood on her list — the rest of us had him as a shoo-in, but clearly she pegged that one.

The only thing Thompson missed was the Dayton-Faris nod — to give cred where its due, only Jeff Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere pegged that one (and no doubt he’ll be crowing over it, but we’ll grant that he has the right to do so). I’m surprised by that nom (especially in light of Cuaron and del Toro, the other two of the Three Amigos) getting the cold shoulder, but nonetheless delighted for the Little Miss Sunshine gang — that film is just the little movie that could.

So, now that the noms are announced, who do you think will win? And will the winner take the Oscar, to boot?

**UPDATE: I should have looked closer at the predictions grid (that’s what I get for writing before I’ve had my coffee). A second glance showed me that Thompson wasn’t the only one whose crystal ball was in top form. Five other pundits scored 4/5, all of them missing only Little Miss Sunshine. The other top predictors were:

Scott Bowles (USA Today)
Pete Hammond (Hollywiretap)
Kris Tapley (InContention)
Sasha Stone (OscarWatch)
Susan Wloszczyna (USA Today)

Permalink | Email this | Comments