Check out the names above the title. Christian who?

I feel like the words “cult classic” sometimes get used to defend pretty much any film that was a complete commercial failure. Saying a movie is a cult classic can be the equivalent of saying a girl has a nice personality. But to me, Newsies is a real, actual cult classic. I know this because if you casually name-drop the movie in public, four out of five people will stare at you blankly, and the fifth will jump up and down and say “OH MY GOD I LOVE NEWSIES!!”

For the four out of five of you, the movie is based on the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899. Christian Bale plays Jack “Cowboy” Kelly, a vaguely Dickensian street urchin with an accent as majestic as the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in those days, the newsboys had to buy the papers themselves (and eat the cost for any they couldn’t unload). So when Joseph Pulitzer decides to start charging them an extra 1/10^th cent for each pape (the cool kids call them papes) it’s a big deal. (I believe 1/10^th cent is about $84 in today’s money.)

But before this goes down, Jack gets to sing a song about his fondest dream: leaving New York behind to move out west. It’s called “Santa Fe.” Please take a moment to enjoy Batman singing and dancing.

[This weekend, a guest post from frequent contributor Trevor Seigler.]

Golden lads and girls all must…

From the minute that I first discovered girls, I discovered that they all universally loved Grease and therefore expected me to not only patiently sit through a screening of it but somehow also share in their enthusiasm for it. This is a heavy burden on any male, and I have trooped through multiple viewings so often that sometimes, when it crops up on some late-night VH1 time slot or in the middle of a lazy summer afternoon, I will indulge in some fond fake nostalgia for a version of the Fifties which never happened and catch a few minutes or two, before remembering that this is Grease I’m watching, the Red Sox game is a few channels over, and I might want to turn it there as soon as possible.

My attention has forever been seized, however, by the resolution of the film’s central plot device (that is, the prolonged separation of the star-crossed lovers Sandy and Danny). Over the course of the film, Sandy and Danny hook up, break up, hook up, have a misunderstanding, and break up, only for Sandy to tramp herself up for Danny’s benefit and share a painful-to-watch musical number at the spring carnival.

Why is it painful, you might ask? I’m of the opinion that Sandy (as played by Olivia Newton-John) was hotter as a Sandra Dee clone than in her Joan Jett get-up at the end, if only because you knew that Sandy was nowhere near as squeaky-clean as her appearance suggested. Sure, it represents the liberating sexual power of rock and roll, but it’s a shame that the sexual liberation of Sandy ended up with her as a leather-clad cliché. I get the feeling that she’s said “you’re the one that I want” to a lot more guys than Danny.

Anyway, after the reunion, there is more singing and dancing (it’s a musical, after all; that’s part of the deal). But then Danny and Sandy ride off in a classic car and…fly away. They literally fly off into the sunset, negating the closing number’s promise to “always be together” with the other mooks on the ground whose cars don’t have the capacity for flight. From the first time I saw the movie until the most recent time I caught it on basic cable, the same question has plagued me when the movie is over: “What the hell was that?”

“Thriller a Broadway musical?”

That’s how the Associated Press derisively reported plans to adapt Michael Jackson’s classic song/music video to a Broadway musical. It goes downhill from there; it seems the haters have written this one off about as fast as the Internet’s collective knee can reflexively jerk.

Make a music video a musical? Silly, right? Not really. First, it’s not just based on the music video; there’ll be plenty of other Jacko songs in the show (I know, that makes it a “jukebox musical,” but that’s a rabbit hole that I won’t go down right now). But at its heart, this is just another adaptation of the visual styling and plot from one art form (music video) to another (musical theater).

How is this so different from…say, the upcoming Watchmen movie?

(Image from Rope of Silicon)

There, I did it. I compared the “Thriller” musical to the Watchmen movie. OK, I know, not all adaptations are created equally (No Country for Old Men, novel made into a movie. Wing Commander, video game made into a travesty.), and that the “Thriller” musical is getting bad buzz partly due to Michael Jackson’s tarnished public image. But it’s an adaptation, and that by itself is no reason to condemn a work of popular culture.

So I, for one, welcome the ‘Thriller’ musical, and I do hope that it sets the precedence for a Guns ‘n’ Roses “November Rain” musical:

Hey, you know what else would make a great musical?

Watchmen.

Cyd Charisse died today at Cedars-Sinai in LA. Obviously, I’ve been a fan forever because I love the MGM  musicals that brought her international fame — entertainments to which our current popular culture can’t hold a candle — but I learned someting new from the AP obit:  she was only 5′ 6″. She certainly looks taller in this amazing clip from Singin’ in the Rain, offered here as a tribute:

And for those of you who can’t stand to watch only half, here’s the first part.