In continuing with my series, which I'm tentatively calling "Random Pop Culture Crap My Family Loves" I'm going to discuss today one of our most obscure (on this continent at least!) obsessions. The Irish film The Commitments. The Commitments is the story of a bunch of young Dubliners who start a soul band that plays in some bars and changes their lives, but not by making them rock stars, just by giving them something to do, for however long they want it.
Come to think of it, there's a little bit of Jimmy Rabbitte (the band's manager) in myself, seeing as I started my theater group on kind of the same principle.
The music of The Commitments is what got me first, since I'd practically worn out the film's soundtrack years before I was allowed to see the movie. My brother and I clocked it once and the say the "F" word once every minute and a half, which is pretty amazing considering it's only about two hours long and at least forty minutes of that is singing, where there are no "F" words.
The movie is sharp funny, and very Irish. The nation's history is summed up in a quote by Jimmy, when one of the other band members question whether they've any right to sing soul:
"The Irish are the blacks of Europe, and Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northsiders are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once and say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!"
Once, following that same logic my brother and I decided that we had every right to blues, because our family are farmers from Roscommon, so if Dublin is urban black America with soul, Roscommon is the Delta.
Come on, you know you want to see what would happen. Obviously this fight wouldn't be physical until the very end, this would be about conniving and backstabbing and obviously fabulous outfits and hissy fits. Let's look at their strong points.
Blair Waldorf (Gossip Girl):
Signature: Headbands. We all know about Blair's flair for keeping her fantastic raven locks off her face with those wonderful little satin bands. It's gotten to the point that in mid catfight Serena pulled one off. I mean, it's all about the headbands.
Greatest Victory: Her outing of Jenny Humprhey/Erik Vanderwoodsen's boyfriend was unbelievably played. Not only that it showcased her greatest asset as well.
Greatest Asset: Blind Loyalty. Blair will do anything to help her friends. Even if it means breaking her own heart, like when she exposed the secret affair between her boyfriend and his step mother to save Nate from life as said step mother's gigolo. Or when she went all the way to Queens (GASP!) to expose Georgina's manipulation of Dan. Or even how she went to bat for Jenny against her mother, the list goes on and on. If only she and Chuck could get their act together, then she’d have it all!
Greatest Weakness: Overactive imagination and paranoia. Blair always thinks someone, usually Serena, is out to get her, although occasionally it’s Jenny. These paranoias get acted out in dreams of Audrey Hepburn movies. (Blair is always Audrey, until Serena is)
Ally: Chuck Bass. Blair's at her best when she's teamed up with her ex lover, who's at his best when he's wearing a paisley bow tie. And well, he’s Chuck Bass.
Sharpay Evans (High School Musical):
Signature: Bedazzling things. Her microphone, her cell phone, her clothes, her shoes, her brother.
Greatest Victory: Sharpay manipulated the director of the drama club to change the date of callbacks so that Troy and Gabriella would have to miss them. Of course Wildcat hijinks undid her manipulations, but in any universe other than one created by Disney Channel her plan would have been a success.
Greatest Asset: Ambition. Sharpay is a girl who knows what she wants and she goes for it. Whether it's the lead in the school show or Troy Bolton, she goes out full force, not caring who she hurts, even her own twin brother.
Greatest Weakness: The Wildcats. Sharpay just can't seem to get around their whole real friendships and true love and teamwork thing! Try though she might, she just can't do it.
Ally: Ryan Evans. Despite her poor treatment of him, Ryan continues to follow Sharpay's schemes. Oddly, like Chuck, he's at his best in strange outfits. Also, everybody loves a good jazz square.
Kelly Taylor (Beverly Hills 90210):
Signature: Love Triangles. Kelly has been at the center of some of the greatest love triangles in the history of television. The first, Kelly/Dylan/Brenda, the second Brandon/Kelly/Dylan. Both were clearly the best parts of 90210 besides whenever David would rap.
Greatest Victory: Dylan McKay. In the finale, she leaves Beverly Hills to be with him. We find out that later on they had a child together (Thanks to the now wildly popular 90210 spin off.) and upon Kelly’s request Brenda deleted Dylan from her cell phone contacts, but not without tears.
Greatest Asset: The bizarre ability to make every man she’s ever met fall madly in love with her. Whether it was David’s adorable but slightly creepy crush on her in the early years at West Beverly, Dylan’s decision to cheat on Brenda with her, Brandon’s inability to sell the engagement ring he bought for her, Steve’s six season long hang up on their relationship, that coke head guy Collin’s falling for her, that other guy who they bro
ught in to replace Brandon, Ryan Matthews on the new show, well, you get the point.
Greatest Weakness: Low Self Esteem. She lost her virginity in a date rape, and lived for years with an alcoholic and drug addicted ex model mother, these things screwed her up a little bit. It doesn’t help that someone graffitied “Kelly is a Slut” on that tile in the hallway (I wonder if it’s still there and the new West Bev kids will find it?) Kelly’s low self esteem leads her to do incredibly stupid things, like develop a cocaine addiction, or not marry Brandon.
Ally: Donna Martin. Donna always has her bffs back. Whether she’s protecting her from Brenda’s vicious bitch barbs or that creepy stalker girl, she’s the one you want or your side.
Clair Standish (The Breakfast Club):
Signature: Whining. Claire whines through the whole movie. To be fair they all do, but her a little more than the others. But we love Molly Ringwald, so we move past this.
Greatest Victory: Defending her virgin status. When Claire explodes and admits to the other Saturday detention kids that she’s a virgin and that’s she’s mostly OK with this, it’s really quite touching.
Greatest Asset: Uncontrollable hostility towards her rich divorced parents. Claire just wants to get back at them the way they use her to get back at each other.
Greatest Weakness: I mentioned the whining already, no?
Ally: John Bender. Claire’s got bad boy Bender on her side by the end of the movie, and we all know he’s not afraid to get a little crazy.
Paige Michelchuck (Degrassi: The Next Generation)
Signature: Backhanded Compliments. Hon, trust me, you do not want to get in the way when Paige lets these babies go. She “Sweetied” and “Hon’ed” her way to captain of the Spirit Squad, cutest couple, and even into the VIP party for Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh?
Greatest Victory: Manny Santos’s public humiliation. At the prom in season 4 or 5, Manny shows up in the same dress as Paige and Paige arranges for her to be elected prom queen, she shows her up by somehow arranging for Manny’s dress to get ripped off in front of everyone. Hey, Manny needed a wake up call, you don’t mess with Paige!
Greatest Asset: Her ability to reinvent herself. Paige has been through a lot of stages. There was Young Paige, Post Rape Paige, Spinner’s Paige, Single Paige, Lesbian Paige, Devil Wears Prada Paige, you get the po
int. We’ve seen a lot of different sides to this girl, and she uses them all to her advantage.
Greatest Weakness: Quick Trigger Finger. Paige acts, thinks, and then regrets. Like when she goes into the bedroom to makeout with Dean and, well, he rapes her. Or when she crashes Spinner’s car into Dean’s, or when she started dating that teacher, or when she slept with Spinner while he was still with Darcy, or kicked Manny off the spirit squad or almost burned down her dorm room. I could keep going, but I think you get the point
Ally: For Paige I had trouble picking so she gets two. Gavin “Spinner” Mason and Alex Nunez. Spinner has always stood by his honey bee, and we all know he can throw and take a punch. And Alex, well, we all know about Alex and Paigey’s little same sex tryst, but they managed to stay besties even after their romance
went south, and Alex became a pothead stripper, and Paige started working in the exciting Toronto fashion scene.
Brooke Davis (One Tree Hill)
(Note: Though not the most Queen Bee-ish picture, its one of my favorites, and from my favorite episode.)
Signature: Fashion. Brooke’s a designer, and like Kelly Taylor and Donna Martin before her she’s wildly successful at it, even at a very young age. In the four years later seasons Brooke is rich, fabulous and ready for anything.
Greatest Victory: Clothes over Bros. In an attempt to take back her life and slutty image Brooke started her wildly successful clothing line and made it into a world wide brand. Of course this still didn’t bring her fulfillment. You get the feeling that if real world events (Chad and Sophia divorce and he marries a seventeen year old extra) hadn’t interfered she would have even had Lucas Scott to share it with.
Greatest Asset: Pigheadedness. Brooke wants what she wants, and she gets it. Lucas Scott, Clothes over Bros, Chase in Season 4, a baby (OK so she ended up with a teenager, but whatever).
Greatest Weakness: Pigheadedness. Brooke wants what she wants, and she doesn’t let go. It can be a problem.
Ally: Peyton Sawyer. True bffs, nothing can break up Peyton and Brooke, not even their mutual true love for a certain blond dreamy eyed, far too sensitive basketball hunk. Alright, they briefly didn’t speak over him, but they got past it, just like besties always should.
Regina George (Mean Girls)
Signature: Burn Book. Regina and her “army of skanks” keep clipping of pictures from the yearbook and write their bitchy little barbs. Poor Cady Heron didn’t even know what hit her. Regina ate her soul before she even knew what was happening.
Greatest Victory: Unlike many of the others listed here, Regina doesn’t actually win anything. She doesn’t die, so I guess there’s that. The closest thing to a victory I would say when she gets Aaron Samuels back just because Cady wanted him.
Greatest Asset: No scruples and a sadistic personality. Regina does things just to hurt people and doesn’t care how far she has to go to stay on top. She showed up at the Spring Fling in an effing spinal halo for craps sake. She made photo copies of the burn book and threw them around the school to throw her “friends” under the bus.
Greatest Weakness: Anger management issues. See her freak out when Cady doesn’t invite her to her party. This leads to the burn book reveal.
Ally: Again, I have to give her two, Gretchen Weiners and Karen Smith. The plastics are at their best when united. Because divided its just the end of Mean Girls. Where there's no drama. Where's the fun in that?
Bree Vandekanmp Hodge (Desperate Housewives):
Signature:Just to preface this, I thought long and hard as too which housewife would get the queen bee title. I went with Bree, I'll explain why later, but her signature is her home maker skills, which she has now made a career out of.
Greatest Victory: Her cookbook, which is a best seller. Bree has made her life something truly remarkable and totally taken back her ice queen perfection obsessed image. Good for her!
Greatest Asset: Lack of emotional attachment to anything. Bree can distance herself emotionally from most situations, which absolutely plays to her advantage.
Greatest Weakness: Alcoholism. Bree is a full blown alcoholic, and she trusts very few people with this secret. Especially her relapse which we learned about in the beginning of season 4.
Ally: Katherine Mayfair. Katherine is Bree's best friend and business partner and the pair make a great team. They butt heads quite a bit, but they almost always work it out. And Katherine was the only person who knew about her relapse, until she confessed it to her husband Orson.
Galinda Upland (Wicked):
Signature: Galinda lingo. We all wishafy that we could talkerate like a Galindafied drone without sounding like an ass. Or an Ass? We do have to make the distinction, since we're in Wicked land!
Greatest Victory: (Spoiler Alert!) Expelling the Wizard from Oz and sending Madame Morrible to prison taking revenge and control after Elphaba's death. Also Elphaba's makeover. But only because "Popular" is still my favorite song to perform at random caberet nights.
Greatest Weakness: Uh, none. Cause she's awesome! No, actually, she's a bit full of herself and just a smidge weak willed, oh right and shallow. But she's genuinely self absorbed and deeply shallow (Yes, I know its Fiyero's line about himself but it fits her.)
Ally: Elphie of course! Galinda and Elphaba are the best example of girl best friends in recent memory. You know, how they love each other, but still fight like crazy, but when it comes down to it, they have each other's backs. And plus she's got magic on her side! Magic!
So, those are the contenders, I’d love comments, and votes (I have open commenting, so if you’re on the site, you can comment, you don't need to be a blogspot member!) and I’ll declare a winner in a later post!
So yesterday I trekked down to the mall and shelled out 21 bucks for the frills free (No special features) HSM 3 DVD. Let me tell you something: I don't think I've ever been more disappointed in a movie. That's not to say I haven't seen worse...there's definitely worse out there, I mean I've never been so disappointed...and for those of you that were with me that night, that includes Spider Man 3.
I love the concepts behind the High School Musical series, and actually the entire tween entertainment industry that has boomed in the past 5 years. I think clean wholesome, but still quality entertainment is really hard to do and I really believe that with maybe not its current but at least its recent lineup Disney Channel has captured it, the way Nickelodeon did when I was a kid. That being said, the HSM actual movies have just gotten progressively worse.
Now, HSM 3 technically is flawless...really, the choreography and direction are great, the performances are about what you expect, I'll get to that later. But there is no heart. The first HSM had heart by crap load. Heart was really the only thing to recomend it as something special. The second one had less heart but it was still something small, something beautiful. This movie is bigger than itself, bigger than its cast, and definitely bigger than its heart.
Borrowing plot elements from One Tree Hill, Troy agonizes over whether to take a basketball scholarship to please his father and the expectations of those around him, while Gabriela prepares to go off to Stanford...I'm serious, I think that some of the lines the pair speak when discussing their future were actually spoken first by Nathan and Haley. The Zefron is very cute, and I think he's more talented than he gets credit for (Hairspray people, watch it, love it, embrace it, the kid is good.) but agnst does not wear well on that face. Vanessa Hudgens is really nothing special. She was cute in the first one, bordering on good in the second and in the third she practically speaking disappears. I honestly have no memory of her performance, good or bad, she left no impression.
Lucas Grabeel was once again neglected and I still think he's the most talented of the HSM bunch, my God, the boy can dance. His fosse tribute in "I want it all" is pretty unreal. They also disrupted the artistic integrity of Ryan's character by throwing in a crush on Kelsi the piano player. One of my favorite elements of the series was that the reason Ryan didn't end up with a girl was because he was gay but because it was DCOM they couldn't say that. It kind of bums me out that that's gone.
Ashley Tisdale and her new nose are fine. Sharpay has become a characature of herself though. There was something very real about that character in the first movie. Well, I know what it was, she was the musical theater divas that I had spent so much of my time with in high school. By 3 she's become more of a joke than anything else. Although the Sharpay/Ryan number "I want it all" is one of the highlights of the whole thing.
But the real statue for rising above the little they've been given goes to Corbin Bleu. Like Grabeel, he was pretty overlooked in the first movie, given his chance to shine in the second and steals the show here in the third. The number "The Boys are Back" with him and Efron is the absolute best in the whole movie. And he actually manages to like act or something. The scene where Troy reveals that he and Chad will not in fact be playing college basketball together, its in Bleu's eyes how hurt he is at his bff's abandonement.
The smaller characters are great. Zeke, Martha, Kelsi, Taylor, Jason, they're all there and fabulous as they've been throughout, and we wouldn't mind seeing more of them. The seeds planted for a possible HSM 4 are very there...three freshmen, a british bitch who worships Sharpay a la the Blair Waldorf drones, and two basketball kids who want to be Troy and Chad show up and release a new energy into the movie.
The grownups are also good. Ms. Darbus becomes an actual human as she reminds Troy that he is talented and looks at home on a stage. Coach Bolton dispenses his good dad but misguided advice well, and Mrs. Montez smiles and says "Gabby" just perfectly. Oh and the random Asian principal is back.
All in all, its not horrible by any means, I just think that HSM belongs on the small screen (I didn't see it in theaters) But I suppose the time has come for me to set aside childish things...then again maybe it just wasn't very good. Either way, Troy's graduation speech, (Here's a question, why does the captain of the basketball team get to make a speech at graduation? Not like, the valedictorian, aka probably Taylor or Gabriela? I mean, no school is that obsessed with sports!) Anyway, it was a nice little goodbye to East High, but my HSM fever cooled a couple years ago.
I'm debating walking down the hill to the shitty near campus movie theater to see it on Saturday afternoon, the problem being I have no HSM fan friends out here. Another part of me wants to wait on it, wait to see it with the friends who I curled up on a couch three years ago with and watched the first one. Of course if I do that I probably won't get to it at all, since one of said friends is in England at the moment.
There's something magical about High School Musical, or there was. It was something simple and basic and special. It was a throwback, like some kind of half baked churned out musical from the 1940s, the kind that Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly passed on. Then it exploded and the magic was sort of gone. It killed the scene, that's for sure. There was a pocket of us, The Theatre Geeks, we don't exist anymore, that group of kids who used to stop all action in the room at the sound of Idina Menzel's voice. Anyway, The HSM phenomenon was the death knell of that.
Then came HSM 2. Which in my opinion is the superior film but the worse movie, if that makes any sense. In theory, it's better, the choreography is more complex, the songs more intricate, the vocals more professional even the cinematography cleaner, but there wasn't as much magic. Sure there was more Lucas Grabeel and Corbin Bleu (By far the two biggest talents to emerge from the series) and Zac Efron had gotten sexy, but it just wasn't enough.
Now 3 comes, a full length feature film in the theaters release. HSM has probably gotten too big for it's britches and I don't like it. I haven't heard any of the songs yet, and I've only watched the basic trailer. Although Lucas in white tails and a matching top hat does excite me. And there seems to be lots of shirtless wet Zefron happening. But I refuse to get my hopes up or to become emotionally invested.
Saying that you know I'm going to cry like a baby at the graduation scene.
