I want to take a moment and publicly acknowledge the loss of one of the Entertainment Business greats, Michael Jackson. There is no one in the world that will or has ever come close to reaching every point on the globe, and who doesn’t know his name. I grew up with artists like him and Madonna who essentially altered and revolutionized the Entertainment and music culture in the 80’s, and something like that will never happen again. I remember seeing him as a kid on TV singing “Rock With You”. I remember racing with everyone else to get our hands on the “Thriller” record that had just come out prompting kids on the playground to don a white glove. I remember my Dad lighting his shows and the infamous Pepsi commercial shoot where one of his lights exploded catching Michael’s hair on fire. I remember the sea of people that would gather where ever he was. He is going to go down in history as one of the most incredible genius artists of this century. We haven’t seen anything like it before.
I had broken out of my office in Westwood, California and was in the village yesterday afternoon. Helicopters were swirling above me and sirens were going off from every angle. I was annoyed, thinking, “What the fuck is all this racket?” I’m a Zen cow okay; I like noise if it’s symphonic, not chaotic. It didn’t dawn on me that I was in my usual place across the street from the UCLA Medical Center where they were rushing Michael Jackson in to save him.
The noise was so outlandish that I cut my outing short and hiked up back to the office, as I waited for the light to change I saw my colleague, right hand in business, Daniel across the street, I held my phone up and snapped one of him, as we made our way into the intersection, he stopped and said, “Michael Jackson just died”. I stood there in the middle of the car gridlocked street in the center in public view stalled, as I moved into shock, “What? Are you joking?” He shook his head serious and somber. I couldn’t move for a split second, then continued on, and as I moved into the lobby and took the Elevator to the top floor I was greeted with, “Kevin did you hear? Did you hear?” It was true and had hit the news and internet waves in a matter of seconds! I had never seen something like that, everyone was all over it so fast.
My Grandmother of all people who I rarely hear from called me and said, “Why was he taken?” I was realizing fast that this was moving globally and hitting people of every generation. I just said it had to happen now to wake the world up. We are in crises mode. People everywhere are at the lowest and most distant and lost I’ve ever seen. Something like this has woken everyone up. They’ve been asleep, maybe it’s brief, but this is something positive, very few are dwelling or making comments on his recent legal issues and allegations that have never been proven by the way, but are simply remembering this great artist. The negative is suddenly not important to the mass majority. There is nothing but love. I am in awe with humanities warm reaction towards him right now. They aren’t attacking him, but rather embracing him. It’s unfortunate that his death was needed to wake us all up. He will go down in the History books.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHERI
OPENS TODAY!
Cheri stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a turn-of-the-century French courtesan who starts a scandal-making relationship with a much younger man played by Rupert Friend. Kathy Bates co-stars as a madam and his Mother.
It’s Michelle’s return to the movie theater after headlining in Hairspray, Stardust and I Could Never Be Your Woman back during the Summer of 2007. And while crowds have been flocking in theaters around the world wanting to see if this 1920s period piece might afford Pfeiffer awards-season buzz, the real question on everyone’s minds was whether the 51-year-old actress, who plays a sultry seductress in the film opposite Rupert Friend, looked as stunning in this film as she did during her 80s and 90s sex-symbol heyday. (She does.) Vanity Fair reporters said she is STILL smoking and smoldering hot!
Throughout the last few months Michelle has been on a plane traveling all over the world hitting all the press junkets for this movie. I went to see her about a couple weeks ago when she made it to L.A. for more press, those things can be quite tedious, but it’s all part of the job.
A young, nervous journalist was brought into the room; he was visibly shaken as he approached Michelle quietly sitting there. Although the room was somewhat crowded, it didn’t ease the fear in him any less. I was able to sniff it out, but didn’t want to interrupt to tell him its okay. Michelle is rather oblivious to the intimidation that she radiates. She just thinks they don’t like her. He was allowed in the room to ask a brief question, but then in a sudden fan boy moment, no longer a journalist he says, “You’re my favorite actress. Ever.” Michelle remained gracious and the ice cracked cool in her voice, “Thank you.”
Then he nervously went on with his allowed question, “Now that your children are teenagers you won’t subject those that love your work another five year hiatus, will you?”
She said gently, “Was that hard for you?”
With a very emphatic shout he erupted, “YES. IT ACTUALLY WAS!” I think we all jolted, but no more than Michelle who finally let down her cool demeanor and laughed, then the charismatic, sexy Michelle came out. She assured him that she does want to work more now, and that she loves working, but merely waits for projects that interest her in doing.
“Cheri” is based on one of French novelist Colette’s high society page-turners, the film stars Kathy Bates as a madam who commands her spoilt offspring Chéri (Rupert Friend) to end his longstanding affair with her sultry former colleague and courtesan, Lea (Michelle Pfeiffer), so that she might reap the social benefits of his arranged marriage to the dull and virginal Edmée (Felicity Jones).
The film, set in France’s Belle Époque, is gorgeous to look at not just because of the ridiculously attractive cast (relative newcomer Rupert Friend is close competition with Pfeiffer for the beauty prize), but also the sumptuous costumes and production design.
Conjure up the ideal screen role for a famed film beauty, a woman now “of a certain age,” and she would almost certainly be the spitting image of Lea de Lonval, aging courtesan in love with a callow, gorgeous young wastrel. The heroine of Colette’s novel “Cheri” seems tailor-made for Michelle Pfeiffer, one of the screen’s leading sex symbols of the ’80s and ’90s.
Pfeiffer’s Lea de Lonval still wears her beauty well, yet the lines on her washed-out visage are difficult to ignore. There’s no doubt that Pfeiffer is brilliantly cast as this worn-down yet still vital woman, as her face, despite some non-ignorable tightness about the cheekbones, is beginning to show its age; her impeccable, carved beauty remains, yet in a stricter, more severe, perhaps even more divine tone.
In “Cheri”, Pfeiffer as always, makes for a welcome camera subject though in a perhaps unavoidable turn of events the film lavishes most of its attention on rigorous youth, i.e. the face and body of her young lover. As Cheri, the spoiled dandy son of her nasty rival ex-courtesan Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates), Rupert Friend is Pfeiffer’s perfect complement: with his aquiline nose, rosebud lips, and alabaster skin, he also has a harsh beauty, but one tied to the frivolities of youth. At first, Cheri seduces Lea for mere sexual gain, and clearly due to some unspoken one-upmanship with his mother, who watches the come-ons from a nearby window; but six years later, he remains her bedfellow, and, unheralded, their lust has become love.
What follows is a rather lugubrious affair, detailing the sexual and emotional withdrawal the two experience when torn apart by social custom. The increasing darkness of “Cheri” only sheds light on the inappropriateness of its fleet early moments, which include a bouncy montage credit sequence describing “whores of every description,” with faux-didactic voiceover and cartoonish “period” imagery.
Similarly, the emphatic score by Alexandre Desplat throughout has been amped up in order to make dramatic and palatable what might have been overly somber and motivationally subtle.
This film is a slow-burning tale of doomed romance, in which the two lovers, with their pale skin and rigid countenances, look like two hot marble statues mating.
The Director, Stephen Frears creates an atmosphere that is consistent: from camera prowls through Maxim’s to shadowy backroom opium parlors, the film’s sets are dramatic and cluttered, its costumes showy and bold. Gorgeous inside and out, a parade of prettiness, even when Lea finds herself alone, drowned in ornamental solitude.
Pfeiffer and Friend are mostly compelling, Pfeiffer for her sharp, laserlike focus and, as always, her empathy (it’s one of the things that has set the icily beautiful actress apart from impenetrable, self-possessed movie goddesses like Angelina Jolie or Nicole Kidman). Rupert for his rich mix of youthful bravado and withering indecisiveness.
When Cheri is forced by his mother into an arranged marriage, Lea enters a long-suffering stage, and the loss slowly eats away at her. Pfeiffer’s good at quiet implosion (see “The Age of Innocence”), and she’s able to give “Cheri’s final scenes a dignity they may not have had with another actor, imbuing her closing lines with an attractive combination of the sensual and the maternal. If the film had felt like it earned this final outpouring of emotion, and if we felt like we got to know the character’s inner life and how she defines herself other than as just a young man’s lover, then Pfeiffer’s performance would have registered as more than just a poignant outline. Critics are hailing it as her best work yet, wait until award season.
Cheri opens everywhere Friday, June 26, 2009
