MAESTRO

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It's rare for an actor/director/screenwriter to become so enthrall with his or her creation that they get their hand stuck in the cookie jar of their own movie.

Such is the sad case for Bradley Cooper, whose deep impersonation of Leonard Bernstein obliterates everything around it, including Carey Mulligan's exquisite portrayal of Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.

Bradley Cooper's insistence on giving his historic character the stuffed-up voice of man with a constant cold, wears out the viewer early on.

A lack of narrative focus exposes Bernstein's outrageous narcissism. The result leaves the viewer to wonder why we should give two cents about Leonard Bernstein as anything other than an abuser of everyone he came into contact with.

What a monster of a human being.

Perhaps there's room for a gay #MeToo movement.

Here is a film that needed a serious rewrite, much tighter editing, and direction by a filmmaker other than Bradley Cooper.

At least "Maestro" is an easy movie to forget.

Rated R. 129 mins.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FEET STREET — SHOCKTOBER!

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Horror Show
Tim Burton Paints Sondheim Red
By Cole Smithey

Director Tim Burton’s screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Grand Guignol musical is at once mesmerizing and disappointing. Outstanding singing performances from its capable ensemble cast contrast unfavorably with Burton’s trademark affinity for a monochromatic color scheme of white, blue, brown and gray.

Gallons of orange/red blood pour out beneath thankfully abbreviated songs performed in all-too-predictable orchestrations meant to cater to Broadway audiences familiar with the original Sondheim production. For such an idyllic gothic setting, Burton misses his cue to update the songs with orchestration, reharmonization, tempo, and key changes that could have corrected the music’s tendency to slip into a drone of same-sounding pitches.

Even with such musically backward attention paid to staying true to it’s pit orchestra limitations, Broadway traditionalists will likely chafe at screenwriter John Logan’s shortening of Sondheim’s script that cuts an hour from the play. Yet without Logan’s respectable effort, it is difficult to imagine that film audiences could withstand the material’s already redundant plotting.

The film begins aboard a London bound ship where fresh-faced youth Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) sings the praises of the town upon the Thames as the greatest city in the world in "No Place Like London." Next appears Johnny Depp’s pale profile as Sweeney Todd, a renamed escapee from an Australian prison where the corrupt Judge Turpin (brilliantly played by Alan Rickman) erroneously sent him in order to steal away Todd’s lovely former wife and young daughter.

A shock of white hair (ala Dave Vanian of the punk band The Damned circa the "Phantasmagoria" album) cuts across Depp’s black hair and announces Sweeney’s vampire characteristics that blossom when he aligns himself with his former landlady, the widow Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Giant cockroaches scurry around Mrs. Lovett’s filthy and unoccupied pie restaurant where she woos Sweeney with a song about her disgusting sweet meat pies. Lovett returns Sweeney’s box of well-kept razors from happier days and informs him of his late wife’s suicide. However clearly stated Sweeney’s mission is of slitting the throat of Judge Turpin, the crazed barber is prone to distraction and sets about killing untold numbers of men unlucky enough to wonder into his sparsely furnished barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s bistro.

True to form, each member of the cast gets at least one musical set piece built neatly into the plot. Sacha Baron Cohen gives an especially enjoyable scene-stealing turn as a travelling elixir salesman and barber Adolfo Pirelli who takes distinct delight in publicly abusing his wigged child assistant Toby (Edward Saunders). Sweeney publicly challenges Adolfo to an impromptu shaving duel that becomes more of a musical duet. The audacious display stirs Adolfo’s memory of Todd from before he was sent to prison, and dispatches Adolfo to unwittingly become Sweeney’s first victim when he attempts to extort the returning barber on Fleet Street.

Loosely based on a 19^th century stage play, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is a particularly bloody melodrama set to a decisively ‘70s Broadway sound. Tim Burton takes advantage of the gory material to press at the boundaries of its head-cracking, blood-spurting visuals and achieve a sublime brand of gothic horror that owes as much to the Hammer Dracula films of the ‘60s as it does to Stephen Sondheim.

There’s a pitch black humor here about revenge as an excuse for bloodlust. In the context of America’s Iraq/Guantanamo quagmire you could read Sweeney Todd as a merciful and equal opportunity executioner who recycles. Torture is beneath him. Our hero is only interested in passionate murder on a grand scale, and yet he is a lazy serial killer. His victims must come to him, just as audiences must gravitate to a Christmas season of bloodletting to relieve the pressure of blood spilling all around us. In the words of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, "The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the life Mr. Renfield."

Rated R. 117 mins.

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW — SHOCKTOBER!

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LA GRANDE BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST)

London-based actor CHRISTOPHER SHERWOOD brings THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW with TRAILBLAZER IPA for us to imbibe. It doesn't hurt that Christopher was in town to brush up on his Tango technique for his performance in THE PEREGRINE, a play by BIG FEAST regular PHIL HOLT, opening at London's Stockwell Playhouse later this month.

Bon appétit!

Like the hugely successful B-Movie that inspired it — Harry Novak's 1965 sexploitation classic "Kiss Me Quick!" — "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is an exploitation musical that draws on a grab bag of social identifiers to expand on conventional hypocrisies with more than just a nudge and a wink.

For all of its outre sense of sexual liberation, "Rocky Horror" pays sincere homage to sci-fi movies of the '50s.

Writer/composer/actor Richard O'Brien's 1973 British stage play became a hit, and the play's director Jim Sharman wisely insisted on using its original cast — with the exception of American newcomers Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, when time came to direct the film version in 1975.

Famous as more of a social phenomenon than as a great piece of cinema, I would argue that "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is both, thanks to its witty dialogue, inspired musical score, and unforgettable camp performances. The cast is having so much fun that you can’t help but be swept up in the spirit of their joy.

As part of the '70s midnight movie craze that coincided with the advent of punk music, "Rocky Horror" attracted a playful young audience that was more than prepared to interact with the film's innuendo-riddled dialogue. Inventing sarcastic dialogue on the spot proved a fun thing to do for those imaginative audiences willing to play the game.

The film’s giddy narrative is a fetish-based story about an alien transvestite from the galaxy of Transylvania — called Dr. Frank N. Furter (played with Mick Jagger-swagger by Tim Curry) — who seduces two stranded newlywed visitors to his castle where the oversexed doctor is busy creating life in the form of a chiseled male named Rocky Horror.

Tim Curry rocks out the role with so much smirking confidence that his strangely erotic character is transfixing. In Curry's steady persona, Dr. Frank N. Furter becomes an LGBT icon for all time. Who wouldn’t want to party with Tim Curry’s scantily clad Frank N. Furter?

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is a retro movie of crazy excitement that you have to see with an audience skilled in the many retorts to be shouted back at the characters on-screen.

"Smells like fish, tastes like chicken, plug your nose and keep on lickin'."

You’ll be throwing rice at the wedding and spraying water during the rain sequence.

Fun, fun, fun!

Rated R. 100 mins.