Musical Mondays Week 51 The Rose

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

Yea really, coming in I had the same ideas as Grudlian. I only know Bette from Wind Beneath My Wings, Hocus Pocus, and, I guess, twitter.  Because of that, I was not expecting this to be a gritty look at the rock and roll lifestyle, with her singing blues and being all raw.  I knew her mostly as pop ballad mainstream type!  But that said, tt definitely surpassed all my expectations and I liked it a lot.

I really liked how alive the movie felt too... there was always a lot of things going on in the background (scenic views, crowds, waving flags, etc.).  It never felt like a movie to me, which made it all the more harrowing.  

[gigi-tastic 2322]

12 minutes ago, Cinco DeNio said:

@grudlian and @PollyDarton educated me that the opening song at the drag club was from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

 

I'm still trying to figure out who the Blonde drag queen was meant to be. I clocked the Barbara Streisand and Baby Jane. I was surprised there was no Judy Garland 

[PollyDarton 1807]

8 minutes ago, gigitastic said:

I'm still trying to figure out who the Blonde drag queen was meant to be. I clocked the Barbara Streisand and Baby Jane. I was surprised there was no Judy Garland 

My guess is Mae West by the costume. 

[PollyDarton 1807]

So... I knew Bette’s work fairly well and the Rose wasn’t such a departure for me because I know a bit about Bette’s stage show - The Divine Miss M.

Like I mentioned to Grud and Cinco last night... that show is bawdy and just kind of nutty. Bette is a total wildcard. Singer/actress/comedian. She can do it all... it’s unfortunate how she doesn’t get to be very funny in The Rose and it’s why she mostly did comedies after this (with the ENORMOUS exception of the cry-fest Beaches.)

This is her most famous bit Delores Delago... she’s been performing versions of it for years. This is just one of many videos of the mermaid bit. 

 

[PollyDarton 1807]

Speaking of Beaches- very few remember this song, but it’s sooooo typical Bette. 

 

[grudlian. 4725]

40 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

Yea really, coming in I had the same ideas as Grudlian. I only know Bette from Wind Beneath My Wings, Hocus Pocus, and, I guess, twitter.  Because of that, I was not expecting this to be a gritty look at the rock and roll lifestyle, with her singing blues and being all raw.  I knew her mostly as pop ballad mainstream type!  But that said, tt definitely surpassed all my expectations and I liked it a lot.

I really liked how alive the movie felt too... there was always a lot of things going on in the background (scenic views, crowds, waving flags, etc.).  It never felt like a movie to me, which made it all the more harrowing.  

Yeah. The only thing I knew about this movie was the song. I assumed the movie would show her writing it or would be a movie about love since that's what the song is about.

So, I thought her death was just passing out from exhaustion/drugs/stress/whatever. Then there is the guy she just met at a tribute. I'm like "wtf, she died?" Then it cuts to The Rose song and it's a different genre of music, different vocal style, and unrelated to the movie. I don't think love is like Bette Midler in this movie.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

2 hours ago, grudlian. said:

This movie was really interesting to me because my experience with Bette Midler music is The Rose, Wind Beneath My Wings and the like. So, hearing this style of music, it was surprising she doesn't do more of this. I know she had fans before this, but this seems like it really thrust into a larger audience. It seems strange not to do more music like this unless it was just killing her vocal cords.

Or she's doing this music and I'm totally ignorant to it.

 

2 hours ago, Cinco DeNio said:

It seems like every song in the movie was un-Bette-like.

 

2 hours ago, gigitastic said:

I think we talked about it and this feels a LOT like it was her version of Streisand's A Star Is Born. However she somehow is both Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson's characters all at once. She and Bab's definitely have similar afro perms. 

I said this during one of the viewings, but I really only knew of Bette Midler post-success, meaning as Bette Midler the entertainment icon from my parents' generation. I saw her in Hocus Pocus and in that one episode of Seinfeld where she starred in Rochelle Rochelle. Aside from that, she was just a celebrity who just seemed famous because she'd been famous for a while already. 

I feel like I would have had a more glowing vision of her if I had seen some of her performances from this movie, because holy shit does she let loose. There was a whole lot of Janis in her voice and in the sound of the band, which is always a positive, but watching her sweat and move and scream and writhe during her on-stage moments was really the main, possibly the only, true joy in watching this film.

1 hour ago, grudlian. said:

Yeah. The only thing I knew about this movie was the song. I assumed the movie would show her writing it or would be a movie about love since that's what the song is about.

So, I thought her death was just passing out from exhaustion/drugs/stress/whatever. Then there is the guy she just met at a tribute. I'm like "wtf, she died?" Then it cuts to The Rose song and it's a different genre of music, different vocal style, and unrelated to the movie. I don't think love is like Bette Midler in this movie.

In that last moment, when she's just about to plotz, and she starts singing a song that she learned when she was just "so high" (Oscar-worthy wordplay, that), why isn't "The Rose" that song? There is no reason not to include that song in this moment ... it would've been a really sweet tribute to her mother, or whatever, by signing a song from her childhood sung to her, presumably, because of her name. She could have started by singing a few bars, and then the band could've picked up on the melody and the song structure, and could've built and built from there. 

The fact that the song had absolutely fuck-all to do with the movie is kind of infuriating, if for no other reason than how popular that song became, because that means that the most moving part of the movie, and the moment that resonated most with audiences, was the end credits. 

Imagine if MC Hammer's whole career was built around how awesome "The Addams Family Rap" was, or something like that.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

I posit to you that this is less of a musical and more of a snuff film. 

This movie is two and a half hours of watching the world shit directly into the soul of a woman who is very talented and charismatic but who CLEARLY needs an intervention that she never gets because everyone around her is too busy trying to get what they can out of her. The AWOL soldiers lie to her and try to get a wild night from her. Her manager uses her, lies to her, and manipulates her. The world spits on her for wearing glittery scarves in its truckstop diners. She can't get laid. Harry Dean Stanton calls her trash and tells her she isn't good enough to sing his music. Everyone enables her most self-destructive tendencies. The last 45 minutes of the film is just her wandering through the streets of fucking Jacksonville with her tears smearing her make-up. At one point, Houston takes off and leaves her on her knees in a parking lot, and then some rando dude walks up and just shoves a whole bunch of pills into her hand. What the actual fuck, Sam?

Everyone in the movie is like "To hell with the Rose," and as soon as they've sucked her dry and she's lying dead on stage, we get 30 seconds of David Keith, who had no bearing on the film in anyway, kinda nonchalantly leaving a photo on a memorial, lights go out, and roll credits. We don't get a eulogy, or a funeral, or any visible sign of mourning from the people in her life. How hard would it be to even roll credits over a single rose in a vase, its dew-moistened petals letting one single drop fall to the ground in symbolic acknowledgement of the tragic early passing of a lovely soul?

But we don't get that because the movie's whole goal is to kill Bette Midler. Once that's done, roll credits. Job well done.

5 stars.

[grudlian. 4725]

18 minutes ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

 

 

I said this during one of the viewings, but I really only knew of Bette Midler post-success, meaning as Bette Midler the entertainment icon from my parents' generation. I saw her in Hocus Pocus and in that one episode of Seinfeld where she starred in Rochelle Rochelle. Aside from that, she was just a celebrity who just seemed famous because she'd been famous for a while already. 

I feel like I would have had a more glowing vision of her if I had seen some of her performances from this movie, because holy shit does she let loose. There was a whole lot of Janis in her voice and in the sound of the band, which is always a positive, but watching her sweat and move and scream and writhe during her on-stage moments was really the main, possibly the only, true joy in watching this film.

In that last moment, when she's just about to plotz, and she starts singing a song that she learned when she was just "so high" (Oscar-worthy wordplay, that), why isn't "The Rose" that song? There is no reason not to include that song in this moment ... it would've been a really sweet tribute to her mother, or whatever, by signing a song from her childhood sung to her, presumably, because of her name. She could have started by singing a few bars, and then the band could've picked up on the melody and the song structure, and could've built and built from there. 

The fact that the song had absolutely fuck-all to do with the movie is kind of infuriating, if for no other reason than how popular that song became, because that means that the most moving part of the movie, and the moment that resonated most with audiences, was the end credits. 

Imagine if MC Hammer's whole career was built around how awesome "The Addams Family Rap" was, or something like that.

Exactly. Give the song some emotional resonance. As is, it's just a sappy love song made all the sappier because it's irrelevant. I'd argue a more powerful move would have been absolute silence because now the music is over.

As gigitastic said, it's trying to be both roles of A Star Is Born. If the had been literally anyone in ther movie who loved her to write this song, cool. But Bette is eulogizing herself with this song I guess? Either have it be her final song or someone who cared about her sing it. We instead get David Keith at a tribute and he met her yesterday. I don't know if that's because she truly had no one in her life at the end or if the filmmakers thought "well, he's the only character who hasn't been unlikable the audience will recognize." At least show a bunch of fans at the memorial singing The Rose instead of one guy.

It's just disappointing because it's a really solid movie that completely bones the ending. 

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

57 minutes ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

But we don't get that because the movie's whole goal is to kill Bette Midler.

ROCK AND ROLL MUTHAFKKAS

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

Well-wriiten @grudlian. What’s even worse is the movie would have us believe the whole garage part was simply to get a picture of a picture and to leave another. Taken together all that might have taken, what, five minutes?

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

1 hour ago, grudlian. said:

If the had been literally anyone in ther movie who loved her to write this song, cool. But Bette is eulogizing herself with this song I guess?

I'd argue it's more like Bette Milder eulogizing Rose ... the actor eulogizing her own character.

[Cameron H. 23786]

2 hours ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

I'd argue it's more like Bette Milder eulogizing Rose ... the actor eulogizing her own character.

I think this is more likely. If you listen to the lyrics, it’s not really a love song. It’s a song *about* love (not necessarily romantic love) - and how much love sucks. Or, perhaps more accurately, how our definitions of love are wrong and how, because of this, we cause ourselves pain. It’s about dreaming so hard about what you think love should be, that you either don’t actually pursue it or it passes you by.

The songwriter suggests that love is actually a a flower and you are "its only seed." So in a kind of weird, love-ouroboros way, love requires itself in order to blossom.

In a movie about a person desperate for love and acceptance, I’d say the song is thematically appropriate even if it isn’t period appropriate.

 

[SlidePocket 707]

 I want to give AlmostAGhost a shoutout because next week is their first pick for this forum!

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

2 minutes ago, SlidePocket said:

 I want to give AlmostAGhost a shoutout because next week is their first pick for this forum!

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

(that's not literally true; the movie I want to do isn't streaming on the sites i use, I have it on my computer, and I have to figure out Rabbiting or even if it's available to you guys to rent or pay to stream or whatever. how do you all like to find these movies?  what methods do you all use?)

[grudlian. 4725]

1 hour ago, Cameron H. said:

I think this is more likely. If you listen to the lyrics, it’s not really a love song. It’s a song *about* love (not necessarily romantic love) - and how much love sucks. Or, perhaps more accurately, how our definitions of love are wrong and how, because of this, we cause ourselves pain. It’s about dreaming so hard about what you think love should be, that you either don’t actually pursue it or it passes you by.

The songwriter suggests that love is actually a a flower and you are "its only seed." So in a kind of weird, love-ouroboros way, love requires itself in order to blossom.

In which case, in a movie about a person desperate for love and acceptance, I’d say the song is thematically appropriate even if it isn’t period appropriate.

 

That's a fair interpretation but it's a really weird thing to throw into the final 30 seconds that the actress playing the protagonist is eulogizing her in a movie that otherwise has no post modern narrative playfulness.

[Cameron H. 23786]

13 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

That's a fair interpretation but it's a really weird thing to throw into the final 30 seconds that the actress playing the protagonist is eulogizing her in a movie that otherwise has no post modern narrative playfulness.

I wouldn’t say it’s a eulogy in that sense.    More like a song inspired by the movie’s themes. It’s more in the vein of Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West.” It isn’t so much that Jim West is rapping, as Will Smith is rapping about Jim West’s wacky adventures. 

[grudlian. 4725]

30 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

I wouldn’t say it’s a eulogy in that sense.    More like a song inspired by the movie’s themes. It’s more in the vein of Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West.” It isn’t so much that Jim West is rapping, as Will Smith is rapping about Jim West’s wacky adventures. 

You're giving me a great idea for a remake of The Rose starring Will Smith.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

3 hours ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

I posit to you that this is less of a musical and more of a snuff film. 

Well, now you have my attention.

If you guys need an emotional palate cleanser, and haven't seen it yet, you lot could always try Dancer in the Dark. It should go down smoothly like a shot of Clorox.

 

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

But seriously, I'm not much a musical person (though this one was probably more up my alley), hence why I'm not trying to join in, but I'm curious about the rabb.it part.  I still haven't signed up or used rabb.it, but are you guys using it primarily so you can all start talking about the movie at roughly the same time, cut down on rental costs (so everyone doesn't have to find the movie), or are you guys using it heavily for the group chat feature?

Asking partially in case another movie comes up I'd be mildly curious about. I might watch a movie on my htpc, I wouldn't be watching it on my laptop (I also echo AaG's question about how does rabb.it work for files you have on disk, since looking online, it doesn't really sound like it's suited for that), so I wouldn't be really typing. So, that would kind of nullify the group experience.

[Cameron H. 23786]

4 minutes ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

But seriously, I'm not much a musical person (though this one was probably more up my alley), hence why I'm not trying to join in, but I'm curious about the rabb.it part.  I still haven't signed up or used rabb.it, but are you guys using it primarily so you can all start talking about the movie at roughly the same time, cut down on rental costs (so everyone doesn't have to find the movie), or are you guys using it heavily for the group chat feature?

Asking partially in case another movie comes up I'd be mildly curious about. I might watch a movie on my htpc, I wouldn't be watching it on my laptop (I also echo AaG's question about how does rabb.it work for files you have on disk, since looking online, it doesn't really sound like it's suited for that), so I wouldn't be really typing. So, that would kind of nullify the group experience.

We've only done it for two of the Musical Mondays movies so far, but I'd say it's a bit of everything you've listed. When we do it for HDTGM Classics, though, it's really to watch the back catalog HDTGM movies together. It's a way to have a fun movie night with friends who live all over the world  

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

Just now, Cameron H. said:

We've only done it for two of the Musical Mondays movies so far, I'd say it's a bit of everything you've listed. When we do it for HDTGM Classics, though, it's really to watch back catalog HDTGM movies together. It's a way to have a fun movie night with friends who live all over the world  

I am curious then, since I do have a couple of long distance friends, is the group watching experience kind of dependent upon being on something like a laptop, more-so than say an htpc, for actually interacting?

Back catalog HDTGM movies seems like the typing/commentary wouldn't be a big deal like, but having group chat off to the side for watching something more serious would be distracting, I'd imagine, right? Or, even a comedy where you do want to be engaging with the movie itself to a reasonable degree. 

Or do people leverage a voice chat while watching?

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

2 minutes ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

I am curious then, since I do have a couple of long distance friends, is the group watching experience kind of dependent upon being on something like a laptop, more-so than say an htpc, for actually interacting?

Back catalog HDTGM movies seems like the typing/commentary wouldn't be a big deal like, but having group chat off to the side for watching something more serious would be distracting, I'd imagine, right? Or, even a comedy where you do want to be engaging with the movie itself to a reasonable degree. 

Or do people leverage a voice chat while watching?

 

Probably. I watch it from my laptop. I'm not sure how everyone else rolls. And, yeah, it's probably ideal for HDTGM movies since you can usually drift in and out of them. We're usually cracking jokes and whatever. 

I'm not sure about voice chat, but I'm sure that's something that you could arrange. 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

1 hour ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

I am curious then, since I do have a couple of long distance friends, is the group watching experience kind of dependent upon being on something like a laptop, more-so than say an htpc, for actually interacting?

Back catalog HDTGM movies seems like the typing/commentary wouldn't be a big deal like, but having group chat off to the side for watching something more serious would be distracting, I'd imagine, right? Or, even a comedy where you do want to be engaging with the movie itself to a reasonable degree. 

Or do people leverage a voice chat while watching?

 

I did Rabbit this time because misery loves company.