While the big excitement in Hollywood is the movie La La Land picking up 14 Oscar nominations, tying the record long held by Titanic and All About Eve, is it a musical to remember, asks Grumpy Editor.
Starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling --- chronicling the love story of an aspiring actress and a jazz musician --- the film was directed by Damien Chazelle who also wrote the script. The movie is described by Associate Press film writer Jake Coyle as “the candy-colored love letter to musicals.”
Or is it?
Emily Yahr, writing in the Washington Post last week, notes a backlash has begun against the praised musical as more reactions are aired.
Grumpy Editor maintains that with the usual memorable Hollywood song and dance musical, the moviegoer departs the theater humming the sound track score. With La La Land, however, there is no such remembrance.
Compare La La Land with some of yesteryear’s top musicals that featured songs that are still remembered today. Among them:
Singin’ in the Rain
The Wizard of Oz
Guys and Dolls
Meet Me in St. Louis
The Sound of Music
West Side Story
My Fair Lady
With nearly 6,000 people voting for the Oscars --- awarded since 1929 for excellence in films --- apparently many of them have not viewed or recalled past great musicals.
Who are these folks? A Los Angeles Times survey finds Academy Awards voters are overwhelmingly white, mostly male with a majority over 60 years old.
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Four-legged newspaper carrier.
In Boulder, Colo., Quincy, a golden retriever, finds bagged newspapers in front of homes on his street, picks them up and drops them at the doorstep of subscribers.
That’s something he has done for 11 years, reports the Daily Camera.
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