Finding the right role for Beyonce

After seeing the following image of Beyonce Knowles over at Go Fug Yourself I started conjuring up new movieroles for her. Wouldn't she just be perfect for...


(click to enlarge)

Mannequin 2: Cleopatra's Revenge - I can't remember the end of 1987's Mannequin (did Kim Cattrall revert back to a mannequin in the end?), but for a sequel how about this for a plot: A rival mannequin maker named Clive Parker Daley (Hugh Grant) still holds a grudge against Jonathan Switcher for having the best window display of 1987. He then moulds an even more perfect mannequin, yet in a strange only-in-a-sequel parallel, his perfect mannequin becomes inhabited with the spirit of Cleopatra! A sassy cleopatra at that. Shocked to discover that her reputation has been tainted over the years ("Who is this... Elizabeth... Taylor...?") decides she must not only help her master create the Christmas shop window to end all Christmas shop windows, but she must also make the world fall in love with the real Cleopatra. The sassy jive talkin' hip-hop singin' Cleopatra.

A New Mom For Christmas! - A new family, a new mannequin! A lowly down-on-his-luck single father (Enrico Colantoni) just can't handle his daughter (Abigail Breslin) at Christmas time. When she wins a contest for a free wish at the local mall where her father works as a security guard (and who in the opening scenes is seen staring at a mysteriously life-like mannequin in a store window), she wishes for a mother to be with during the holidays. Shockingly the mysteriously life-like mannequin awakes and becomes mother to the sweet orphan Annie (minue the orphan part). But not just any mother, no, she's a sassy jive talkin' hip-hop singin' mother. She can crunk with the best of them!

House of Wax 2: Madame Tussaud's Revenge - One night a group of American teenage tourists stumble around a graveyard in country France only to discover the grave of Mada Tussaud. Being idiot American film characters that they are, they enact a voodoo curse of some kind and suddenly the ground rumbles and Tussaud's hideous zombie body emerges. The kids run away to tell the authorities. Tussaud somehow makes her way to a wax museum and sees what her life long work has ended in, weird figures of celebrities. Due to the weird voodoo curse, Tussaud now discovers she too can possess unliving things and bring them to life. She somehow commands all the wax figures to kill everybody in sight. One of the figures being the sassy jive talkin' and hip-hop singin' Beyonce who goes about with reckless abandon strangling people with her legs and ripping their skulls off to eat the gooey brains inside.

Bicentennial Girl - A robot that wants to be human so badly. Thankfully, instead of getting a dull and dreary personality like Robin Williams did in the original Beyonce's human-version is a sassy jive-talkin' hip-hip singin' robot who sets of sparks between her an a moog synethesiser making her realise she was better off as a robot. She reverts back to her robot self but somehow manages to keep her jive talkin' sassiness. It's an uplifting love story for the ages.

Or, she could star in a real-life remake of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, but I'd be scared no one would notice the difference between (clearly) robot wax mannequin doll Beyonce and the Barbie dolls used in the original.

Scary.

April Fools Links

er, no fooling here actually. Y'all should all follow these links.


I usually skip Movie City News' Digital Nation column, but this weeks is really interesting. It's all about the 3D boom as of late. I'm neither for or against 3D to be honest, but as long as it's done well I don't see why it can't have a place. One of the problems I had with 2006's charming Monster House was that watching it in the confines of my living room the obvious fact that it was meant for 3D viewing was a bit annoying for a while. However, I've mentioned before how much I enjoy when things are waved in front of me like crazy.

Here is the first teaser for one of the many trilogy-enders coming this US Summer, The Bourne Ultimatum. Not much there, but it gets my blood pumping. BRING IT ON! Also, I love Joan Allen.

I've given Beyonce some hard times recently, but now she's gone and make me respect her. It's hard for me to even think of a mainstream artist who would even contemplate doing what Beyonce's done, let alone actually go through with it, but Beyonce has created video clips for every single song off of her B'Day clip. Way to go, Beyonce! Giving your fans a treat. She is rereleasing the album with something like seven extra songs plus videos for every song from the album (yes, including songs not released as singles). Not all the vids are as fun and awesome as "Get Me Bodied" (inspired by Sweet Charity), and not all the songs are as good as "Freakum Dress", but I give her big props for actually planting down the cash and doing this. I'd like to see others try a bit of concept in their marketing.

Many people give the MPAA grief (rightly so, they're idiots sometimes), but (like Beyonce!) I gotta give them the props that they deserve after the official warning and sanctions given to After Dark and Lions Gate over the advertising of the new Roland Joffe (yeah, ROLAND JOFFE) film Captivity. Good on the MPAA for stickin' it to them for blatantly disregarding their disapproval of the offending billboards and bus posters, which showed a woman's capture, captivity, torture and death (image below). The billboard is sort of sick and if these sanctions mean they lose money and have to move the release date then fine by me. It's about time the MPAA went hard on violence again and not just sex like usual.


Who's Who Behind The Do? It's rated PG for, amongst other things, "momentary teen smoking". Let the MPAA-are-idiots argument continue...

She's a bitch. No seriously.

The delightfully enthusiastic Adam from Crumb by Crumb has gone ballistic over Todd Haynes' I'm Not There in relation to Oscar (what else?)? Some would say that Haynes was snubbed for his direction of Far From Heaven (he was nominated for writing), I say it's his 1995 film [safe] that is his masterwork so far. And while I would love for the Academy to go all orgasmic about Haynes I don't think I'm Not There is the film to do it. You know, the Bob Dylan biopic that features the role of Dylan being played by a multitude of actors including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and, ahem, Cate Blanchett (who he predicts for Supporting Actress). I don't see it happening, but all the best to Haynes. I hope he knocks it out of the park! Let's just hope the Weinsteins don't screw it up. They seem to be doing that a lot lately.

The best review of 300 I've read yet.

Oh man... I laughed so hard... honestly, this shit is the funniest stuff i've seen in ages. The dialogue is painfully bad and just as you think it couldn't get any more idiotic David Wenhams narration kicks in. That's when it moves from hilarity to pure pain.

The best possible way I could describe this is like an episode of Rome moved to Sparta and written specifically for spastics, retards, mongoloids and 5-year-olds then dumbed down a little more for our American friends.

The action scenes were okay but nothing to rave about.

3/10

Scott, To Be Certain discusses Natasha Bedingfield and her bonkers new song "I Wanna Have Your Babies". The song is ridiculous and, yes, bonkers, but my god is it catchy or what?! "Button my lips so the truth don't slip." Aagh. I'm glad that, for now at least, she hasn't whored herself out to American hip-hop (and by "hip-hop" I mean the foul rotten shell of a corpse that the genre of hip-hop has become) that could has easily happened when she made it big over there. YAY!

And lastly, because I like it when others talk about me (it gives me a rest from talking about myself so much) I'm gonna give a shout out to J.D. (edited) from Joe's Movie Corner. Hugs and kisses, mate!

(I've found myself saying "mate" way more often than usual lately. I think I should stop.)

Dreamgirls Downloadables

Click here to download (curtose of Kevipod) the audio of that fabulous Oscar performance by Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce Knowles and Anika Noni Rose performing the three original tracks from Dreamgirls. Listen for the power. Listen for the hystrionics. "I'm more than what-AA" lol. Beyonce, you crazy fool.

There's also this hilarious dance remix to Jennifer Hudson's version of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going". It's really really bad. Jennifer actually has the big diva voice to pull of a dance track, but this song does just not mix with tacky generic dance beats. Still, it's good for a laugh.

Not so 'Crazy in Love', or Not really 'Deja Vu', or just plain ol' 'Replacable'

So I was watching Video Hits today (it's a music video program) and because Beyonce has just announced a tour they decided to devote the last 30 minutes to her. I've always liked Beyonce (much less now than I used to), but I got to thinking.

Remember when "Crazy in Love" first came out and everyone knew it was pretty much the most brilliant moment in pop music that year, and the video was crazy super sexy hot (and it still is). But then the first single from her latest CD was "Deja Vu", which was pretty much the exact opposite of "Crazy in Love". Awful song, bad singing, and the video clip was complete and utter shit. I get chills just thinking about it. Since when was scary convulsions considered dancing? And why is she doing so in ridiculous outfits? Although, she did rebound with "Irreplacable". That song was awesome and the video clip was hilarious (what band in general has over 15 members, let alone a girl band? hilarious)

And then I started thinking about her film career. She was fine in Goldmember because nothing was asked of her, but The Pink Panther? Really? And then she didn't really do much (other than sing real good) in Dreamgirls.


I have a big thing for singers-turned-actors. While I don't particularly care for Barbra Streisand's music, she is a supurb actress and even a pretty great director. Bette Midler is usually a hoot on screen. If Cher hadn't ruined her face and had continued to act I would probably have no qualms with saying she's a favourite of mine (she had several grade A performances up her sleeve by the end of the '80s). And, well, you know people like Liza Minnelli and so on are legends for a reason. And there are single performances bu the likes of Bjork that blow most "professionals" off the screen. I even sort of like Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. The former has Dick Tracy on her resume, which is one of my all time favourites (that wasn't a joke) so that's enough for me, and even Lopez can be respectable enough (plus, The Cell? YOWZA! what a movie. Note to self: Watch that again soon).

But Beyonce doesn't even seem to have the energy of Lopez. She got given a juicy role on a silver platter in the form of Dreamgirls and didn't do anything with it. She's a glamourous gal, but she got eaten alive by Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy and even Anika Noni Rose (that makes two big screen debutants!). I mean, I know the film doesn't really give her the opportunity (too much snip happy editing), but Beyonce can't do "nice". Instead she comes off as vague and placid. She needs to give up this desire to be perceived as nice (there's that word again) and embrace her divarisity (I just made that word up, okay?) She needs to chomp on some scenery and bite the heads off her co-actors. There was fire during "Listen", but as I mentioned, they ruined the scene by intercutting it with Beyonce looking at stuff (wtf?)

And, really, if Beyonce doesn't start making the gays her BFFs then her career won't last long. That's what divas do.

:P

For no reason

I just really like this still from Dreamgirls. The "Dreamgirls" sequence was one of my favourites and they all looked stunning during it. The thing about this scene that freaked me out though was how identical Beyonce looked to Diana Ross in certain bits. Creepy, even.

Dreamgirls: Pros and Cons

CONS
The silly editing of musical sequences with ordinary scenes. I don't wanna see that.

Unorganised and unstructured. Suddenly people are married and have hit records.

Weird way of doing certain musical sequences. Like, we see about 20 seconds of Jamie Foxx performing "Steppin' to the Bad Side" and then it goes into a montage of him gambling? WTF? Characters randomly deciding to sing songs off stage when there was no previous acknowledgment of this.

Too long. They needed to cut out a couple of songs.

That awful song about being a family, and being a tree that grows or something. That was really bad. And they kept reprising it!

Jamie Foxx.

PROS
Jennifer freakin' Hudson!

A bunch of about 8 musical scenes were really fantastic.

Beyonce was actually quite fine in the final act.

Jennifer Hudson!

The costumes and the glamour and the makeup. Some of those costumes were hilarious.

Jennifer Hudson!

Jesus, Beyonce looked so much like Diana Ross at times it was scary

Energetic and full of sass.

Eddie Murphy.

Jennifer Hudson!

Loretta Devine.

That shot of Beyonce during the photoshoot sequence where she was done up to have darker skin? WTF was that? Unintentional hilarity, I'm sure.

CONCLUSION
It may seem like there are more cons that pros, but the pros are pretty convincing. I think it's a B. I enjoyed it. But, yeah, that song about growing trees and families was terrible.

I love this song

I'm fairly certain it'll win Best Original Song at next year's Academy Awards ceremony.

Some musical goodness for you

Take it how you will, but here is Pink's version of "Tell Me Something Good". If you're wondering why I'm linking this, it's because this is actually on the soundtrack to the upcoming George Miller animated musical Happy Feet, which I am greatly looking forward to. Thanks to Michell's Glamourous World for the link. The one original song in the film is, I believe, written and performed by Prince. Can Prince win a second Academy Award? We'll see soon enough.

Back to Pink though, I think I'm gonna be going to the Pink concert next April! Awesome. Tix go on sale next Friday. For whatever reason, America hasn't picked up on the Pink vibe despite songs like "U + UR Hand" being one of the best of year. Oh well.

Quickly, the one song that I seriously can't stop listening to (as soon as if it stops I start it up again) is the new song from, of all people, Kelly Rowland called "In Love With My Ex". You can d/l it at PopMuse. It's quite more spunk and personality than twenty songs by Ciara put together, and even the ubiquitous rap cameo verse is good. The song sorta shits on everything I've heard from Beyonce's latest record although the B Sides "Lost Your Mind" and "Ring the Alarm [Freemason's Remix]" are great.

Anyway, I don't have a point.

One Night Only

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