In Contention

Tag: Cher

  • James Franco takes on Cher

    If you’re still sore about Cher and Diane Warren being denied a place on Oscar night for their Golden Globe-winning effort “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” — hey, is there any rule to prevent them busking on the red carpet? — at least take comfort in the knowledge that James Franco feels your pain.

    Franco’s own tuneful rendition of the power ballad appeared on his site yesterday, with the explanatory caption: “They pulled this from the Oscar show. Damn it.” Seem’s whoever’s singing it, the song just can’t catch a break.

  • Razzies aim typically low

    The Golden Raspberry (aka Razzie) Awards irritate me on an annual basis, largely because they’re such a joyless, unimaginative and, worst of all, cowardly execution of a neat idea: singling out the worst cinematic achievements of the year for a bit of a ribbing.

    Except they aren’t about genuinely failed artistry nearly as much as they are about piling on whichever easy celebrity targets happened to have a film out in the past 12 months. They’re intended as a bit of fun, obviously, but how fun is it really to beat up on tween idols like Miley Cyrus and the “Twilight” team? “The Expendables” isn’t that ineptly directed — but hey, it’s Sly, so it must be bad!

    Wouldn’t it be more subversive to aim at some higher targets who flubbed in 2010? (You’d think a “Worst Use of 3D” award would have been invented for “Alice in Wonderland,” but no — works from prestige directors are above the law here, apparently.)

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Song

    I guess I’ve been pretty hard on the Best Original Song category this year. It’s not like any given year tends to have a deluge of impressive fodder up for consideration or anything, but on the whole, outside of a concentration of contenders that have a fighting chance at recognition, it just seems to be an uninspired lot of tracks in the mix for 2010.

    Before diving into the fray, some quick reminding. The music branch’s rules are always in flux and over the last couple of years they have shifted, perhaps rightly, into a frame of assessing songs as they are used within the context of a given film. Let’s look at the official language from the Academy’s rules and eligibility literature:

    An original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture. There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyric and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits.

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  • Listen to Christina Aguilera’s ‘Bound to You’ from ‘Burlesque’

    I’ve already stated my qualified admiration for Steven Antin’s “Burlesque,” likely the only live-action musical angling for a spot in this year’s Best Original Song race. Or two spots, given that we already featured Cher’s deliriously kitsch Diane Warren power ballad “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” a couple of weeks ago.

    Today, it’s Christina Aguilera’s turn to bust her lungs with a nine-octave belter from the film that she herself co-wrote — so while we’re unlikely to be mentioning her name much in the Best Actress race, Xtina could yet add “Academy Award nominee” to her résumé.

    The song is something of an anomaly in the gaudy, thrust-heavy production: a stately, classically arranged torch ballad that sounds rather like an offcut from Aguilera’s retro-styled 2006 album “Back to Basics.” (It’s more likely, however, to be an offshoot of her 2010 release “Bionic,” in which the song’s co-writers Sia Furler and Samuel Dixon had a heavy hand.)

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  • REVIEW: “Burlesque” (***)

    (We don’t usually post reviews after the US release, but this one got snarled up in my hard drive earlier this week and I didn’t want to waste it. I’ve noticed a number of readers posting thoughts on the film in yesterday’s Cinejabber post, so look on this as your “Tell us what you thought of Burlesque’” post into the bargain.)

    “There’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure,” a music-critic friend once told me. “Just songs that work and songs that don’t. And any song that works is a pleasure.” He may have been talking about pop music (and justifying the expense spent on some rather dubious concert tickets), but the sentiment is just as true of cinema: there are enough wholly joyless bad films out there that one needn’t feel remorse for liking those that sparkle a little.

    Or a lot, as in the case of Steven Antin’s sweetly stupid and gleefully tatty backstage musical “Burlesque,” a kind of cinematic party horn that unfurls for nearly two full hours, pausing only occasionally for wheezily abridged plot extension. Heroically spry performances adjoin rancidly inept ones, peppery one-liners encircle bat-brained narrative turns, even the music veers from choice cabaret to hoary album offcuts – and this gurning, flailing whole is held together with the irrepressibly sincere let’s-put-on-a-show enthusiasm of a high-school drama teacher given a dream budget. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that Antin is just out of shot throughout, wielding a glue gun and a spare bag of sequins.

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  • Listen to Cher’s ‘You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me’ from ‘Burlesque’

    Cher and the Academy Awards made for an interesting mix over 20 years ago when she took home a Best Actress Oscar for “Moonstruck.” Though it was probably her threads that grabbed more headlines the next day.

    This year, the singer is back in the awards mix, though for her vocal talents (which have never been recognized by the Academy, interestingly enough — though I’m not sure there have been many opportunities).  Cher is part of the ensemble of Steven Antin’s musical “Burlesque” and belts out the power ballad “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” at a key moment in the context of the film.  Cha-ching.

    Not only that, the song was also written by Dianne Warren, who has been nominated for six Academy Awards (going all the way back to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from “Mannequin”).  And she has yet to win.

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  • Do you believe?

    God only knows where the Telegraph managed to dig up this rumour – if it was in The Sun, I’d assume some intern made it up during a particularly slow bank-holiday interlude.

    But just for fun, let’s humour them and enter their world of make-believe for a moment. Okay? By that token, I’m excited to inform you that, in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman installment, the role of Catwoman will be played by…

    Cher.

    Riiiiiight. Even with my full guard of irony intact, that’s still hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, I like Cher’s acting work back in the day – when her face could still move and Ronald Reagan was still president. She’s great in “Moonstruck,” better in “Mask,” better still in “Silkwood.” But the thought of the 62 year-old strapping herself into the leather suit and getting frisky with Christian Bale … well, “beggars belief” is putting it lightly. According to them:

    A studio executive said: “Cher is Nolan’s first choice to play Catwoman. He wants to her to portray her like a vamp in her twilight years.

    “The new Catwoman will be the absolute opposite of Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry’s purring creations.”

    Well, I must say I like the idea of a revisionist take on the character, particularly after Berry pretty much shredded the credibility of Catwoman’s conventional incarnation. They’d need to do something radical with her along the lines of Nolan’s reconceptualisation of the Joker, and the prospect of Catwoman as a surgery-paralysed Norma Desmond type sure fits with Nolan’s bleaker approach. It’s arguably insane enough to work … but I still don’t believe a word of it. (Not least because the story takes as a given the casting of Johnny Depp as the Riddler.)

    Kris’ own Batman casting call a while back generated numerous suggestions for Catwoman, ranging from Milla Jovovich (Kris’ choice) to Angelina Jolie (seemingly the default selection) to Christina Hendricks (my own left-field pick). All that, and not one of us picked Cher. Shame on us. I’m switching.