*** Official "CHICAGO" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[PatrickL]

the hip-hop version of "Cell Block Tango" could not appear over the closing credits

I assume there will be a video though, or else, why did they bother?

 

[Phil Florian]

Saw it, loved it. Wish there was a lot more Fosse in it, though. While folks say it lacks the Moulin Rouge "MTV-style" cutting (what does this mean, any more?) it surely cut up "All That Jazz." The remaining numbers were much more sensible, but the whole point of Fosse is the smooth and silky interplay between all the dancers. We never got to see more than a second or two before cutting to a new angle or to Roxie. This was a poor start to me, but it really jumped up a notch with "He Had It Coming." That one really had it.
I am not advocating a static, "audience perspective" camera, but even a wider shot in motion would have caught the dancing a bit better, in my opinion.
Also, it is fun reading HTF and seeing someone complain about live theatre being for the well-to-do! This from the site where people use $500 widescreen tv's for their "spare room or for just video games!" Honestly, it made me giggle. In any decent sized metropolitan area (and even many rural areas) you can find theatre priced pretty fairly, from the low end community theatre (which doesn't always mean low quality) to the high end regional theatre or national tour (which, on the other hand, doesn't always mean the highest quality). Give me a good live theatre production over a good movie release any day. I saw the tour for Chicago in the 90's. The show was in the process of replacing a headliner and the understudy was filling in for Velma...and was amazing! Sure, they wanted a "name" to fill the role, but this lady had it in spades. An extremely fun evening.
Still, the movie was great and hopefully will lead to more shows making it to the screen. Big, that is. ABC seems to be getting into the musical biz pretty heavy over the last couple years. We have a new "Music Man" coming in February with Matthew Broderick, right? Groovy. Hope to see some more newer stock on the big screen, though. "Rent" would make an excellent movie. And how about "Ragtime?" That would be amazing.
Phil

 

[Lew Crippen]

Vickie, Thanks for the heads-up on Roxie Hart, which I did not even know was a film. I’ll definitely take the time to watch this.

 

[PatrickL]

it surely cut up "All That Jazz."

It would be nice to have an alternate edit of the number as a dvd bonus feature, wouldn't it? Like you, I'd like to have an unobstructed look but I can't argue too much with how it was edited for the movie - I was very impressed with how much information was communicated and how many purposes were served by the first five minutes of editing.

 

[Phil Florian]

I think Rent would be great for film. For one, one of the main characters is filming a movie within the show and it is watched, in part, by the audience at the end. Second, Spike in New York? 'Nuff said. What a great pairing.

I agree...an alternate cutting would be cool. Not to compare to Moulin Rouge, but that DVD has a multi-angle extra for one of the songs/dance numbers (Roxanne??). Can watch any one camera or jump around. Beastie Boys Criterion DVD has this for one video, as well. "All That Jazz" needs such a feature. Gotta love the old Fosse.

Phil

 

[Vickie_M]

Also, it is fun reading HTF and seeing someone complain about live theatre being for the well-to-do! This from the site where people use $500 widescreen tv's for their "spare room or for just video games!"

That was me, and I don't spend that money on equipment. I'm here because I'm a movies-in-the-theater buff. I can go to matinees for $5.75, or go to our local theater's $5.00 Tuesdays. The MOST I ever spend on a movie is a $9.00 evening price in a regular theater, or $10.00 for IMAX. I can see a dozen movies for the price of one live theater ticket. Yeah, there are discount times and whatnot, but the cheapest live theater ticket costs more than the highest movie ticket. People who complain about movie ticket prices tick me off too, so I understand the "cheapie" sentiment.

I've been a volunteer usher at live theater, where you can watch the play for free, but you usually miss the beginning, and end, and before and immediately after the intermission. For someone who won't see a movie if I've only missed the first minute, that's very frustrating. Not worth it.

I do understand why people love the theater, and that's great for them (and if I were an actor, I'd much prefer to work in live theater), but I'll take my dozen movies. For me as an audience member, movies are bigger, better, more realistic and far far FAR cheaper.

All that said, there are several plays I'd love to see. I'd think seriously about giving my left arm for a ticket to Julie Taymor's The Lion King, for instance.

 

[Vickie_M]

I found this interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Sympathy on Murderess' Row
December 27, 2002
BY MARY HOULIHAN STAFF REPORTER
The crimes and their female perpetrators would have been just another entry on the police blotter had they not caught the eye of a young Chicago reporter named Maurine Watkins, who immortalized the doers and the deeds in her 1926 comedy "Chicago."
Hired by the Chicago Tribune to give "a feminine touch to the police beat," Watkins gained front-page notoriety in 1924 when her humorous stories made media darlings of two killers--Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan--who were residents of Chicago's "Murderess' Row." Watkins used the women as the inspiration for her play, on which the 1975 Bob Fosse/Kander and Ebb musical, and the movie version that opens today, are based.
Gaertner was accused of killing her lover, who was found dead in her car (she claimed she was too drunk to know what happened). Annan, proclaimed by Watkins to be "the prettiest murderess Cook County has ever known," admitted to shooting her lover in self-defense while drunk, then letting him die as she listened to a fox-trot, "Hula Lou," on a phonograph.
Watkins was fascinated by the two women, says Tom Pauly, a professor at the University of Delaware, whose book Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press) examines the original comedy and the press coverage on which it is based.
"I think Watkins realized that in a city like Chicago, these two stories weren't so unusual unless she made them so," Pauly said. "She used a tongue-in-cheek attitude and a wry sense of humor, which caught the attention of her editors and readers."
Watkins' coverage helped cause a media circus and encouraged the two women to go to sensational extremes to win the pity of their all-male juries. As in the play, their plan worked, both Gaertner and Annan were acquitted.
Watkins' play is about two murderesses, Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, awaiting their trials for identical crimes of passion. Velma, a vaudevillian, is in the media limelight until Roxie usurps her unique form of stardom with her own crime. The two compete for headlines with their flashy lawyer Billy Flynn, known around town for never losing a case.
Watkins borrowed nearly every detail from her real-life encounter with Gaertner (the model for Velma) and Annan (the coquettish Roxie). Even the play's most absurd moments--as when Roxie claims to be pregnant--were based in reality (Annan tried the same ploy but never had a baby).
In the '50s, director Fosse and his wife, Gwen Verdon, approached Watkins, who had become a born-again Christian and was living in Florida, about obtaining the rights to her play. While Watkins was congenial, she never gave permission. It wasn't until her death in 1969 at age 73 that Fosse's team bought the rights to "Chicago."
Speculation has it that Watkins may have felt remorse about her role in the acquittal of the two killers and never wanted the play produced again. (It did, however, inspire both the 1928 silent film "Chicago" and the 1942 film "Roxie Hart," starring Ginger Rogers.)
"I think she had a change of mind and was worried about the reaction if it became known how close she was to the process she was mocking," Pauly said.
Shortly after covering the trials, Watkins left for the Yale School of Drama, where she wrote the play in a class taught by George Pierce Baker, who had also taught Eugene O'Neill. In 1926, "Chicago" was produced on Broadway, where it had a successful run.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Personally, I'm not convinced "Rent" would make a great movie,

I'm not so sure either. When it played in my area, it got a mixed reaction from the audience. What makes Chicago a hit is that its appeal is across the board. With a good director though, some of the barriers on the stage show can be more ironed out on the film version.
~Edwin

 

[Scott Weinberg]

You can always rely on Vickie to dig up the coolest dirt.
Good stuff in that article, Vick.

 

[Phil Florian]

"Rent" is no more controversial than "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." The latter, while not appealing to all audiences, to be sure, was an excellent adaptation of a stage musical and won many critical kudos and fans. Sure, it won't get the same folks who want to see Lilith as Velma in the stage play, but still, it would be a nice fit for the big screen.


Phil

 

[Craig S]

I'd think seriously about giving my left arm for a ticket to Julie Taymor's The Lion King, for instance.

Vickie, please keep your left arm , but go ahead and pay the big bucks to see "The Lion King" on stage. It's a pretty amazing evening of entertainment.

 

[CraigL]

just fyi...the soundtrack was released today.
it's been on repeat here at work since 9am this morning when i picked it up

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Got my copy for the wife (and me) after consistent nagging. Cell Block Tango (the real version) has been played a few times
Snazzy soundtrack, 12 bucks at BB!
Take care,
Chuck

 

[DeeF]

I posted this to the "review" thread, but maybe it belongs here.

Chicago -- I couldn't imagine it any other way; in fact, this is exactly the way I imagined it before I saw it, and perhaps the only way to make a musical movie today (that audiences will buy). The tone is perfect, and each of the numbers seems staged with skill and aplomb. While I enjoyed the movie, it wasn't really very much fun (except the fun in rediscovering previously-known pleasures) but perhaps I know the material too well to "believe" it properly. It does seem overly edited, but that is the current style; perhaps the pendulum will swing back at some point to showing talented people do what they do without camera manipulation. It's the Chaplin vs. Keaton syndrome: Chaplin almost always showed his full body, because as a performer he was enormously expressive, a theatrical mime caught on film. Keaton used his body as a prop for cinematic jokes and tricks. Most people would say Keaton was the better filmmaker, but Chaplin the greater artist (and funnier).

For me, John C. Reilly and Queen Latifah came off best, because you got to see their numbers fairly straightforwardly, and the pleasure came in seeing these actors (particularly Reilly) perform as well as anybody. Richard Gere was OK, but admittedly, that tap dance was perfectly atrocious, shot mostly from the back, and cut to smithereens: perhaps because he really couldn't do it? Cathryn Z.Jones and Renee Zellweger were completely bested by everyone I've seen in the show before, including Verdon and Rivera.

 

[Vickie_M]

Found in another forum:
This what Hunyak ("uh huh") says in the play Chicago during the "Cell Block Tango." I don't know if all of it is kept in the movie, the Hungarian spoken by Ekaterina Schelkanova.
===
Mit keresek, én itt? Azt mondják, hogy a híres lakom lefogta a férjemét én meg lecsaptam a fejét. De nem igaz én ártatlan vagyok. Nem tudom mert mondja Uncle Sam hogy én tettem. Probaltam a rendörségem megmagyarazni de nem ertettek meg...
What do I seek here? It is said that the news where I live is I grabbed my husband and I smashed his head. But it is not true I am innocent. I don't know because Uncle Sam says how I did. I tried to explain to the police but they did not understand and...

 

[RafaelB]

Thanks for the translation Vicki!
I've wondered for years what Hunyak was saying and now I can sleep nights...
Rafael

 

[Greg_M]

Those with sharp eyes will notice that the Hunyak is the lady of justice hanging over the judge in the "Razzle Dazzle" number.

 

[Craig S]

I was just looking through the user ratings of Chicago on the Houston Citysearch site, and among all the 9s & 10s, I found the following. Thought you all would find it humorous:

this movie had a good plot, but there was too much singing, and it was just, overdone. in one word, it was blah.

"too much singing"?? Talk about unclear on the concept...

 

[BarryR]

There will ALWAYS be one person in the audience decidedly disgruntled when a musical has just too much darn singing getting in the way of the movie. :b

 

[Chris Farmer]

Thanks a lot Vickie, I was just about to post asking just what the hell she was saying, only to have you step in and answer my question first.