Haylie Duff, Not Hilary Duff

Yes, that’s right. Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle is not hosted by Hilary Duff, as I wrote, but by Haylie Duff, her sister and co-star for the movie Material Girls. Haylie has also appeared on Broadway in Hairspray, but her longest and most recognized role was on the long-running TV series 7th Heaven.

For Search she is more than just the front of the show; she also serves as executive producer. Her attitude about the show seems very straightforward: “I don’t do any of the eliminating or judging. I’m always auditioning for things so I see them as my peers. They’re wonderful, talented girls and they’re already professionals.”

“…one of the most realistic reality shows…”

Says Cari Kroop, of CommonSenseMedia.org, mentions that the show is better than most reality-based theatre shows because it “doesn’t waste any time airing footage of the untalented hopefuls who didn’t make the cut during open auditions…it’s a process that’s as ruthless and unemotional as a real-life Broadway casting…” And watching people’s hopes and dreams get crushed on the air is what reality TV is all about, right?

Longtime-absent and perennial-favorite TV blogger Beckylooo also commented on this particular phenomenon of the shows, but with the opposite point of view. “There’s an argument to be made,” she writes, “that offering a cross section of the folks who showed up is in fact more real that pretending the sh***y dancers never existed.”

While I would agree that showing the whole spectrum of hopeful dancers is perhaps realistic, that only really applies if they show them in the first round of auditions. My problem is with the policy of allowing the really awful people to get through the first round – something that is not realistic – and then parading them in front of the home viewers accompanied by the outrage of the judges who complain of wasted time when they invited the dancers back in the first place.

Then again, that’s holding the reality shows to a standard of reality that is…unrealistic. So I just sigh and say that’s entertainment, I guess.

Warning: Here Be Monsters

Under the category of “some things are just better off not existing,” apparently Warner Brother’s theme parks are coming up with their own answer to Disney’s long string of successful musicals with Creature from the Black Lagoon – the Musical! No, I’m not making this up, and neither is the L.A. Times

Why should we be scared? Well, the opening in 2009 promises, among other things, that audiences will be ““enveloped by the exotic sounds and scents of the jungle.”  (emphasis added).

Smell-o-vision comes back to the floorboards…

Post from: Fame or Famine

photo used with permission: FinalPixxx/Newscom

There’s a lot of buzz out there about a recent photo shoot that Julianne Moore did with Annie Liebovitz. The subject was Disney’s The Little Mermaid, and the copper-haired beauty was perched on a rock complete with a large rubber tail. Ms. Liebovitz has been doing a series of portraits like this, with people like Jessica Biels as Pocahontas. “It is about bringing great stories to life,” Leibovitz has been quoted as saying. “Working with great actors – these are stories that they know. It’s embedded in them. And when they start to have their own children it means even more to them.” Emphasis added by me.

See, that’s the thing. There’s been articles about Annie Liebovitz, interviews with Julianne Moore, and profiles of the Swimmer of the Year Michael Phelps who played one of the mermen in the same shoot. It was a new experience for him to be part of a “fantasy” shoot, and I agree, it’s a pretty neat thing. I remember when Madonna’s “Cherish” video came out, how much I was entranced by the actual flippers on the actors.

But that added emphasis is what the real story is, to me. Leibovitz accounts: “There’s a moment in the shoot where Julianne is sitting on a rock in her mermaid tail and her young daughter comes in, and there is not a dry eye in the house. She sat in her mother’s lap. Her jaw just dropped. She could not believe her mother was Ariel.”

That’s the story here. That thousands of dollars were spent to make art, that it was an unusual confluence of stage, screen, athletics, and fine art, that Julianne Moore and Michael Phelps are breathtaking (no pun intended) in the underwater scene, that’s all just fine. But the fact that a little girl had an unforgettable moment, that she got to see her Mom become her favorite character – that’s where the real magic is, in my opinion. With all the talk these days about people needing therapy to get over their parents – it’s nice to see someone, for a change, doing something that will have a lasting positive effect on the child.

Post from: Fame or Famine

Last night’s presentation on Great Performances was as good as promised. Anyone who has ever liked Seinfeld or Sex and the City will appreciate it – in fact, you might think the play was a rip-off of those ouvres until you realized that Sondheim wrote it in the 70’s. The music is also melodic enough that I was able to appreciate it more than the wandering tunes of Sweeney Todd, and included one of my favorites: “Not Getting Married“, a hilarious patter song sung by a nervous bride on her wedding day.

Raul Azara had an understated elegance to being the lead, content to be the lens through which the ensemble could explore their talents of acting, singing, and playing instruments (there’s something quite hilarious about a wide-eyed flight attendant with perfectly-coiffed blonde hair puffing away on a baritone in the middle of a large number). He really let his talent shine in the final number, though, “Being Alive“, and “Marry Me…a Little“.

One of the more difficult challenges in any production like this is the translation of the play from the intimacy of a theatre – an immersive experience – to a tiny screen in a living room. The directors met this challenge beautifully – the lighting, focusing our attention, giving dimly- seen presence to the ensemble at times, as well as the choreography of the camera served to augment the script and acting rather than simply documenting it.  And you were able to see Stephen Sondheim interviewed at the end and it really brought home the ground-breaking nature of this musical.

So I’m relieved to see the DVD is available through PBS.ORG, and I plan on purchasing it soon. It’s something I can see coming back to and enjoying again and again.

Blue Man Group: How To Be A Megastar LIVE! 

Not much to say about this, except that the bridge between the fine arts and the young new kid on the block, Performance Art, is Blue Man Group. Not just the music, but the entire commitment of their performances to this identity of alien-yet-familiar forms. So the idea of a DVD-CD-Book set coming out on March 25th, 2008 is pretty damn cool. The fact that this avant-garde group was performing in Dallas, TX, in front of over 40,000 Blue Man fans is even more astonishing – a great example of how cutting-edge art can support himself.

Post from: Fame or Famine