#fosse is there. gene. the rest of them.

[agentbluefox]

Kevin Costner (The Untouchables, 1987)

[mostlydaydreaming]

So, under that great French doc about Gene on YouTube (that's now in English-hurray) I commented about Gene being a wonderful man and was immediately contradicted by some moron named MissGelly who wanted me to know that he was a bully, hated by all his co-stars. Well, needless to say, I pinned her ears back and wondered if you wanted to add a few salient points, too. I forgot a few things: I didn't tell her Michael Crawford says he owes his fabulous career to Gene Kelly or mention what Patricia Wilson had to say about working with the Hollywood legend in "Take Me Along." Also forgot about his dance assistants, Coyne and Haney, being totally loyal to GK. Indeed, one of them was head over heels in love with him. I don't know why some people insist on spreading this nonsense; I suspect it's because he's very sexy and his choreography is sensual. Sexy is not in vogue these days and always suspect. Some seem intent on making him the face of Classic Hollywood's Me Too. As you know, nothing could be further from the truth. In a world of Bob Fosses, be a Gene Kelly. Cheers!

Ah, the whole purpose of my Mostlydaydreaming Tumblr & YouTube channel. When I discovered Gene Kelly (thru YouTube videos!) I loved him🥰 When I started trying to learn more, there’s a top layer of nothing but Debbie Reynolds quotes and a Cyd Charisse quote taken out of context.

When I dug deeper I found a wonderfully complex man with a huge heart. Faults and weaknesses? Of course, everyone has them. He had a white hot drive to succeed, to prove himself and leave his mark on the world. But he was also an honorable, loyal and loving family man. Yeah he could be hard to work with, but I knew he was more than that. I wanted to defend him.

That’s why I’ve posted interviews from other people who had a completely different view of him: Leslie Caron, Mitzi Gaynor, Cindy Williams, Michael Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Paula Abdul, Betty Garrett, Vera Ellen, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve tried to deal with haters before.

I remember posting a long answer, with links to interviews, articles, videos, trying to show them a different point of view. But all I got was a short smart ass answer that infuriated me, leading to me block them and take down my GK rant. I’m not getting baited again. You did ok. Offer things for them to check out, like YT interviews, and move on. You can lead a horse to water…🤷🏻‍♀️

All most people do is google him and read the first few pages of the same Debbie Reynolds stories and the same negative (usually incomplete) anecdotes:

Debbie’s horrible “french kiss” from Gene. First, this was likely a misunderstanding. It was on camera, it’s not like he trapped her in a dressing room. No other co-star ever claimed that Gene was sexually inappropriate in any way. This kiss was in the final scene. The rest of the kisses in the movie were chaste and he likely wanted a big kiss for the finale, like he had in a few of his other movies. He knew she had practiced screen kissing with another actor, like Judy Garland had done with him for his first movie. He probably didn’t think she would freak out like she did.

Debbie’s bleeding feet & Fred Astaire teaching her how to dance. First bleeding feet is nothing new to dancers. Ginger Rodgers danced with Fred Astaire with bleeding feet but you didn’t hear her bitch about it. Second, Fred Astaire didn’t teach her how to dance (I see this reported a lot). He let her watch him rehearse, which he normally didn’t do. He did it so she could see how much work dancing was, even for him. She watched him get frustrated and even throw his cane. All so she would know, if this is what she wanted to do, this was how much work it was going to take.

Cyd Charisse’s comment about how her husband knew who she danced with because if she danced with Gene she’d be black & blue. No she wasn’t implying Gene beat her! Gene was more physical than Fred with lifts and such, that’s all. They always forget her other comment when people tried to get her preference between the two: They were like apples & oranges, they were both delicious😘

The competitive dinner parties. I’m sorry, it was Gene’s house and he could put on any kind of party he wanted. He liked informality (He and Betsy knew when strangers came because they were the only ones who knocked) He liked sports and competitions. If you don’t like that stuff, don’t go!!! The people who complained most weren’t even real friends of Gene & Betsy at all, but people who tried to use them and their parties to get close to other influential people.

He only wanted young women. Again, most people only look at the surface on this one. Yes, his 1st wife Betsy was 17 when he married her and even younger than that when they started dating. But his girlfriend before her was in her early 20s. (Per articles I’ve found, they were either engaged or very near).

When Betsy left him, she was in her 30s (he in his 40s) and by all accounts, he didn’t want a divorce. If he wanted a younger one, it was the perfect time. But 2nd wife Jeannie was also in her 30s while he was in his 40s. No robbing the cradle there. After Jeannie died, in the late 70s and early 80s he dated women like older actress Jean Simmons and Tony Bennett’s separated ex, Sandra. Not excessively young. As for his 3rd wife, she did have what all his wives had, intelligence. They both loved words and literature. We may question her motives but Gene didn’t pick dumb bimbos. But to say he only wanted much younger women wasn’t true.

And he didn’t just seek young women to take advantage of them. Betsy loved telling the story of how when they dated and she tried to push for more than hugs and kisses, he reminded her that she was still too young for all that.

My GK rant is done🥵 I admire you’re enthusiasm but I don’t feed trolls anymore.

[youstormedofftoscarthearmada]

La La Land

This is one of the most celebrated movies of the year. La La Land made a clean sweep at both the Golden Globes and the Baftas, so in order not to be considered to cynical or opportunistic or whatever else, I review it before it makes a clean sweep on the Academy Awards too.

I was curious and swear to God, absolutely hopeful. I had loved Damien Chazelle’s previous work Whiplash, which was not a masterpiece but had guts, will, blood, committment and for once, an interesting description of its characters, especially that of an incredible J.K. Simmons. La La Land, in turn, lacks almost all of these aspects.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone play a couple who try making their dreams true in Las Vegas. Will they make it? You know the answer.

The first 40 minutes of the movie are good: the direction and the coreographies are good, and the strict musical part of the movie where people sing and dance is not abused but instead used in appropriate moments and not a means to interrupt the speaking. However, after this part, the movie blocks itself and for the rest we see the least interesting façade of the picture: a lot of rendundancy, clichés (not that there were not in the previous part), and quite frankly, boredom. We arrive at the end which is in two ways an extreme hope to make the movie more original, and an act of irritating arrogance at the same time. The end does not belong in the movie the way it is put. Or maybe it is vice versa.

The movie could hence divided in two parts: a comic and more appropriate one, and a more dramatic and pretentiously serious/realistic one. The first part works better because the characters have something that is interesting: namely a certain aggresiveness which characterizes their first encounters and kinda marks (off-screen mostly) the second part. Emma Stone has an interesting aggressive smile (à la Jack Nicholson) and gestures, whereas Gosling is more enigmatic. Interesting, yes, but I warn you: nothing original, consider the classic Singin’ in the Rain where Gene Kelly mocks Debbie Reynolds before getting engaged to her, while she aggressively rejects him. The movie was shot in 1952. And do not forget Cabaret (1972) by Bob Fosse, where characters are way more modern this and music is blended in a theatrical yet realistic way.

Moreover, Singin’ in the Rain does refer to the past too: it is set in fact in the 30s in Hollywood, in the transition between silent and talked movies. La La Land is set in current times, but artistically and visually refers to the 50/60s, see the dresses, the dancing, the music. Nothing new here.

I have no particular note on the dancing: I understand nothing of it generally speaking, but since it did not annoy me I consider this element positively. I do not care of the dresses at all. I will let you be superficial in my place. The music, instead, is quite important to me. Now, I hate jazz, but I absolutely detest THIS jazz. The original one was invented by poor black people who did not know how to read nor write music but who where still geniouses. You see only a band of black people here, and no more. The only black character here, John Legend, sells himself to the God of profit. And he’s black. There are no other negative characters. Anyway, a central aspect of jazz’s history is improvisation. No trace of it here. Also passion, sweat, guts are central in the genre’s history. For the whole lenght of the movie, Gosling, nor anyone, will not sweat all, not even a little drop. Whiplash is so far, far away. These flaws hurt a movie that is also about music as a concept.

As a way to reiterate the lack of flesh in the movie, the relationship between the two lovers is built in a way I doubt they ever fuck each other. I see no dirt, no complicity, no eros. This is a movie for romantic nuns. They could be described as best friends, and even that would a stretch.

I do not like the way love and music are built in this movie - such a commodity vision of them, as if not to lose the potential support of Mormons. Where is the passion? the dirt? the flesh? the committment to it? Gosling did not play the piano prior to shooting and had to learn it ex novo. They had a decent piano player already available in John Legend, but they could not give the lead to a black man, I am forced - and sorry - to be forced to assume. For leading black men you already have Moonlight - don’t you dare complaining!

The end, finally, is simply arrogant. 

The movie is well-made, Chazelle surely knows how to use the camera, and again the coreographies, the photography, the acting and the editing too (very good especially in the beginning) are good and force me to give a sufficient mark to this movie, even if I do not want to. But the screenplay is effortless and at times plainly irritating.

The fraud of the year is here, and of course almost everybody liked it. Defines you well.

6.5/10.