Word: singin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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JANIS JOPLIN would have detested The Rose. Starring Bette Midler, this thinly-disguised biography chronicles the epic self-destruction of Rose, a white woman from the south, singin' the blues. Director Mark Rydell clearly knows how to hack at the heartstrings; the very first shot of the film identifies Rose, i.e. Janis "pearl" Joplin, with the other self-destructive heroes of our culture, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. As the biography of a real woman, The Rose reveals nothing. It takes a marvelously idiosyncratic human being and reduces her to a cliche...
...billed as a celebration of country music: two hours of pickin' and singin' to benefit Washington's Ford's Theater. Just about all of country's constellations were there to shine: Cash, Clark, Fender, Gatlin, Hall, Mandrell, Milsap, Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, the Oak Ridge Boys, Rabbitt, Rich, the Statler Brothers, Stevens, Tillis and West. Presiding over the show was country's foremost devotee. Jimmy Carter embraced Singer Dolly Parton, with First Lady Rosalynn Carter's approval. They were, after all, huggin' cousins. Parton's home town of Sevierville...
...obeying the rules of classic American musical comedy: dialogue, plot, song and dance blend seamlessly to create a juggernaut of excitement. Though every cut and camera angle in Hair appears to have been carefully conceived, the total effect is spontaneous. Like the best movie musicals of the '50s (Singin' in the Rain) and the '60s (A Hard Day's Night), Hair leaps from one number to the next. Soon the audience is leaping...
...only question raised by Movie Movie is one of timing. Not that there is anything wrong with the way gags are paced within the film. Stylish Stanley Donen, who co-directed Singin' in the Rain and later did Charade and Two for the Road, has seen to that with his usual elan. No, what one wonders is whether after living off its own history for so long, satirizing and parodying the beloved forms of the movies' far-receded golden age, Hollywood can persuade audiences to come out again to share a laugh at lost innocence...
...wind up singin' the blues...