Burlesque

I wrote this on May 12th but just created the blog now.

After a long week of battling a cough and working overtime, I took last night off and watched Burlesque (2010 Cher and Christina Auguleria) with Motoaki.  His sister had rented it and since his office is next to the rental shop (there is a small rental shop in our town but to get to the good stuff we have to drive 30 minutes to the next town over), she asked him to return it in the morning.  This happens a lot which is great because a) she has decent taste in movies, b) she has an unbiased taste in movies (aka she makes choices I might not make but end up enjoying anyway), and c) she is a working, single girl who doesn't spend much on other things (lives at home like most single women in America) and thus doesn't mind spending money on the "new releases" that Motoaki and I usually will wait to go on sale before renting.  AKA she foots the bill and we enjoy the spoils.  Why don't we watch them with her?  Well, that is another post entirely but the gist of it is that she is a nurse with crazy working hours and so she is most likely watching these movies at like 4 am.

Anyway, to the point... I had heard about this movie and also had read some bad reviews (I read Roger Ebert every Friday at work when I drink my coffee) but was still interested anyway.  I don't think Motoaki had any idea what it would be about but he soon got interested once he saw the club scenes with scantily clad women (he is not an oaf but he is human).  I loved the dancing, enjoyed the music, but overall was disappointed in the lost potential.  I personally thought that a lot of the background stories (the love, alcoholism, etc) were a bit forced and that there wasn't much time spent getting to know the characters so we didn't really care what happened to them.  It made me a bit sad that what could have been amazing, given the talent (Cher, Christina, Alan Cumming who was barely used at all, etc), was so "typical."

Watching of course got me thinking about similar movies like Chicago and Moulin Rouge.  Those movies were both successful and wildly populer despite having less talent (excuse me but Catherine Zeta-Jones/Richard Gere and Nicole Kidman/Ewan Mcgregor are NO Christina Auguleria/Alan Cumming/Cher).  I will say that I was plesantly surprised by Kristen Bell.  I knew she could act but who knew that she could dance like that?  Another completely odd thing was the choice of Dianna Agron (aka Glee's Quinn) to be Natalie, Jack's fiance, a part that didn't involve any singing or dancing.  Or did I miss that???  And I was a little disappointed to see Stanley Tucci and Peter Gallagher typecast (if you have seen The Devil Wears Prada or Center Stage).  Not that they weren't perfect in their roles, I just felt a little bored in watching the same performance (ok, so maybe I am stretching on the the Peter Gallagher connection).

I guess that I was just disappointed to fell that, while I will definitely buy the cd (which I hardly ever do- last time I wanted a soundtrack was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and maybe Juno and anything directed by Sofia Coppola who has a bad habit of having less than great movies but amazing choice in music), I really couldn't see myself buying the movie.  Unlike a b movie such as Coyote Ugly, which had a similar story line, albeit less talent, but which I was absolutely in love with.

In a funny side note Motoaki asked me at one point if I thought the main girl, Ali, was really singing.  I was like, "Of course, that's Christina Augleria."  And he was like, "Oh!"  Although he knows who she is, he had no idea that it was her playing the part.  He has recently become obsessed with American talents for singing after watching Glee and finding out that all of the cast are using their real voices.  This is largely due to the fact that one of the current "it" girl groups in Japan, AKB48 (48 becuase they have 48 members, although they are split into 3 teams so you don't always see them together), aren't very good at singing and SUCK at dancing.

See video below...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNg3mcjhq9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_OC0ebxq2c&feature=related

And they can dance a bit, but nothing that I couldn't do or that any small school Jr. High Drill team couldn't do...

Note: Sorry if you were expecting something else from my blog, but this IS my life!

I will say that watching Burlesque definitely made me regret not having taken dance classes so seriously.