Revisiting In Bed With Madonna: She Was Born That Way

So, apparently there's a bit of a hubbub happening about the new Lady Gaga song, "Born This Way" resembling Madonna's anthemic "Express Yourself". Far be it from me to defend Gaga - I've been known to diss her mediocre albums - but I don't really see it. Oh sure, there's slight similarity between the two in that they feature the same beat structure, but aren't most pop songs generally working off of the same blueprint? I can hear the similarity, but don't think there's cause to fuss. And, hey, if you're going to borrow a quote or two from another musician, why not Madonna? She's done it herself (Madge's "Hung Up" quotes her own "Love Song" from 1989), why not Lady Gaga?

And, from what I've heard of her Grammy appearance - cone bra extravaganza - she certainly knows what people are saying and is turning it into her own sort of weird performance.

There's more to fuss about once you get to the song's lyrics, but this isn't a Gaga entry; it's a Madonna entry. "Express Yourself", from Madonna's 1989 masterpiece album Like a Prayer, is one of her definitive tunes - it was then and it still is now - so it wasn't surprising that the track got the best production in her 1991 documentary In Bed with Madonna (aka Madonna: Truth or Dare), which followed the on stage and behind the scenes workings of her Blond Ambition Tour.

Everything from the set, lifted from her David Fincher-directed music video that was inspired by Metropolis, to the choreography (note, Madonna has never been much of a dancer) and the camerawork. Love the way the camera zooms out from behind the backup dancers at 0:00 of the below video, or the quite epic pose she pulls at 3:27. I could write an essay on why the moment at 4:00 with the hand flicks is one of my all time favourite movie moments.


I've spoken of my love for In Bed with Madonna before and, watching it again, it never dulls. The performance sequences are expertly exhibited and the rest is sharp as a tack. Madonna may not get much credit as an actress, but the greatest role she ever had was playing herself. If Lady Gaga doesn't have a camera following her around her next tour then she might actually be as crazy as people suspect. Perhaps she can call it In Eggshell with Lady Gaga? I haven't seen that new Justin Bieber documentary, but I have little doubt that it can match the sheer energy and audacity of In Bed with Madonna, which I would rank as the greatest celebrity documentary of all time.

Three more clips, one of the trailer and another of "Holiday" and "Vogue". Watching this movie again and I can't quite comprehend how it missed out on an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and Best Editing. But, they also didn't nominate Paris is Burning in the same year so I think that branch had a collective stroke in 1991. Let's not even get started on 1994, okay?

Style It Up

One of my absolute favourite "'80s movies" - you know the ones, those heavily steeped in the style of the 1980s and representative of the decade from a pop culture standpoint (so, not necessarily the highest of art) - is Stan Lathan's groundbreaking 1984 dance movie Beat Street. It preceded by the much more famous Breakin' by a mere two months, and subsequently grossed half as much at the box office, but it's Beat Street that remains the more satisfying. It's less gimmicky for one, and while it could have easily rested on its laurels of having one of the finest soundtracks ever conceived (two of them actually, the first film to ever have multiple compilation soundtracks released), it actually quite a fine dramatic thrust, some solid performances and Lathan plus his cinematographer Tom Priestley Jr have a vision of New York and the Bronx that is instantly distinctive. It's like comparing Step Up to Save the Last Dance; one is clearly superior to the other (note: it's the latter).

Beat Street, however, wasn't just an east coast hip-hop musical (a musical that featured Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five, The System, Jazzy Jay, The Treacherous 3, Afrika Bambaataa and the Sonic Soul Force, Debbie D, Harry Belafonte and the Rock Steady Crew - amazing!), it was also a fascinating look at the underground graffiti art scene. It was a movement that is a simpler version of those displayed in Exit Through the Gift Shop, but far more complicated and skillful than the straightforward tagging that you might see sprawled across the fences that run along local train lines in this day and age.

The New York graffiti scene was first given high profile exposure in documentaries Style Wars (which aired on American network PBS in 1983) and Stations of the Elevated from 1980, although the former is far better known. As far as I am aware though it was Wild Style from 1983 that gave the scene it's first feature film. While it's not much of a film in the traditional sense - the plot is almost non-existent, the actors are barely up to the task and it was obviously made on such a threadbare budget that "independent cinema" seems like a barely adequate term. What it is, however, is still a thrilling look at such an iconic moment in the histories of art, music, dance, pop culture and life in general. While Beat Street represents a more theatrical version of the era - with subway battles between rival crews, dramatic death sequences and high gloss production values - Wild Style is a rougher, more dangerous and authentic view at this incredibly fascinating moment in time.


Wild Style ('83) | Beat Street ('84)
The scant amount of plot that director Charlie Ahearn shoehorns into the proceedings involves a small collection of graffiti artists who reside in the Bronx. A journalist that looks amazingly like Debbie Harry, and who listens to Blondie on her car tape player (not surprising since Chris Stein produced the film's music), enters the community and follows various players throughout their nightly routines of spraying New York City metro subway cars and partying at underground hip-hop clubs where local rappers do battle for money. Mostly following "Zoro", a well-respected graffiti artist who, along with a local club owner, aim to put on a big show in the amphitheater by the harbour. The actors all play variations on their real life personas (Zoro, for instance, is played by Lee Quinones, one of the most famous graffiti artists of all time) and a lot of the film follows a documentary aesthetic as these people merely go about their lives, wishing for someone to take their art seriously and propel them to the big time.

Throughout the film we see many, many spectacular pieces of this street art that, once upon a time, decorated entire length subway trains. Their painters, who would spend all time designing and painting them, watching from the windows of worn down buildings in their neighbourhood as the trains go by on the above-ground train networks through the Bronx. The hip-hop scenes are positively catchy and energetic, a perfect example of the east coast hip-hop style of music that remains to this day one of my personal favourite genres. Amazingly complex musical constructions, breathtaking lyrical flows within the raps and an unabashed desire to push music forward.


From the opening credit sequence that merges graffiti with animation, to the music scenes that bring the house down, the breakdancing that defies gravity and flexibility, and the art of graffiti given centre stage, Wild Style is an important film that captures an iconic moment in time. It's budget/cast's limitations actually give it a rawness that helps to put the focus squarely on the talent. Anyone with even the slightest interest in art and music (and not only from this time period) should check Wild Style (and, for that matter, Beat Street) out. A-

Nicole on Gwyneth

This is Gwyneth Paltrow performing "Country Strong" at the CMAs recently. She's quite obviously very nervous, but she does a fine job.


My favourite bit, however, was this:


You totally know that Nicole Kidman is all "Keep smiling! Bitch better not steal my Oscar nomination!"

You know it!

Glenn with a Double N

♪♫ It's Glenn with a Double N
Not Glen with one N
'Cause Glen with one N goes "n" not "nn"
It's NN instead of N
Gle instead of Gly
Simple as be
See Glenn! ♫♪

One of the original songs from Liza Minnelli's Liza with a Z ("a concert for television" as the opening credits inform us) is "Say Liza (Liza with a Z)" in which the grand Liza sings about how often her name is mispronounced, miss-spelled and generally butchered by the masses. I can relate. I have spent my entire life spelling my name for people, not even taking a second to let the person ask "one n or two?" because I just know that the person will automatically assume it is one. It is not one, it is two. I've had teachers of six years continue to spell it incorrectly. I get emails from film people wanting me to spruik their product, but if they spell my name wrong I tend to send it straight into the trash bin. And I actually have had some think my name was "Glyn", which is odd since that's hardly the more common name.

Liza gets it.

Image Source

I finally got around to watching said 1972 special for which Liza Minnelli won an Emmy and director/choreographer Bob Fosse won two. It came the same year that Minnelli won an Academy Award for Cabaret and a Tony Award for her contribution to Broadway. She and Bob Fosse won the trifecta of awards within the same year, which I don't think had happened before and hasn't happened since.

The show is a delight to watch from start to finish. Minnelli has been in the spotlight a lot these past ten years or so with her marriage and subsequent divorce, her appearance on cult television series Arrested Development as well as mainstream hits such as Idol and her concert series' and album releases. Just this month she appeared on screen in Sex and the City 2 and if that appearance left you wondering just what on Earth the big deal is with this woman then sit down and watch the 50 extraordinary minutes of Liza with a Z and you'll see. Actually, watch Cabaret first and then watch Liza with a Z. The term "a force of nature" gets applied to Liza a lot and with that red hot double shot of 1972 brilliance it's hard to not fall back on cliche and call her that yourself.

The show is astounding, it really is. 50 minutes of Broadway excellence. Amazing renditions of standards like "Son of a Preacher Man", "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "My Mammy" sit alongside a trio of Cabaret classics "Wilkommen", "Money", "Maybe This Time" and "Life is a Cabaret" as well as original tracks such as "Say Liza (Liza with a Z)", "Yes" and the glorious musical comedy of "Ring Them Bells". My favourite number was "I Gotcha" originally sung by Joe Tex. It's a dazzling eye-popping performance with killer choreography and a vocal performance by Minnelli that is a step out of the norm.

Incredible stuff. And I haven't even mentioned Bob Fosse's choreography and direction, the cinematography and editing or the fact many things that have been inspired by this collaboration. This is why Liza is still so renowned. If you're not willing to discover why then that's your own fault.

Opa! Eurovision etc

Did you all watch Eurovision over the weekend? I know, I know... silly question, because the answer is obviously "YES!" It's only one of the three greatest days of year and I had the pleasure this year to be surrounded by equally jubilant Eurovision loving people. Cheering and booing with each performance (or, in the case of Portugal, nobody even cared enough to shout abuse!) and gnashing our teeth as the results poured in. If you follow me on Twitter then you would have gotten my entire stream-of-conscious thoughts about the show ranging from the prevalence of wind machines, costume reveals, money notes, key changes AND pyrotechnics (occasionally all in the span of a few seconds) to my disappointment that Ruslana's "Wild Dances" can't represent Ukraine each and ever year.

I can't say I was a big fan of the winning entry from Germany, Lena's "Satellite", due to her propensity for weird vocal inflections (say hello to Paloma Faith and Gabriella Cilmi then), but she was miles better than second placing Turkey ("We Could be the Same" by maNga") or Belgium's John Mayer-lite (which says a lot) singer Tom Dice and his stupid "Me and My Guitar", which was getting so many big scores until they they, thankfully, only managed a sixth placing.


Watching these hosts was like watching an oddball combination of Juliette Binoche, Doogie Houser and Fuzzy Agolley that had somehow staggered their way to Oslo, Norway!
My absolute favourite of the evening was Romania's entrant, "Playing with Fire" by Paula Seling & Ovi, which managed to rally late in the game and place third. I was really hoping this track that was performed by some random dude and a Shania Twain lookalike in a catsuit on a duel perspex piano could win (there's even some popera in there for good measure), but Germany just stormed away with it. I even gave Romania a standing ovation after their performance, it was that incredible. You don't see adjoined perspex pianos very often and this one had magical qualities, too!

The other three that I was really cheering for were "Opa!" by Greece's entrant Giorgos Alkaios and Friends, "Je Ne Sais Quoi" from Iceland's resident dancefloor diva Hera Björk and The SunStroke Project's "Run Away" from Moldova. Greece did quite well early in the evening, but their support collapsed at the end they only managed eighth, meanwhile Iceland and Moldova had middling results polling 19th and 22nd respectively, which was sad. Even sadder when you consider countries like Belgium, Denmark and Armenia with their ode to apricots (no joke) all polled really well in contrast to their awfulness.


I liked her much more than her song. She was hilarious!
As always there were pleasant disasters and, as always, one was the UK. Their entry with "That Sounds Good to Me" by Josh Dubovie was spectacularly, hilariously dreadful and came an equally hilarious last place. It was a race to last place between the UK and Belarus (and their amazing butterfly costume reveal) with the latter pulling off 24th place to the former's 25th. The UK barely scraped through to double points, which in itself was surprising because several of us were thinking they were going to get nil pois for their "effort".

Watch the entries from Romania, Greece, Iceland and Moldova below. Moldova is particularly fun to watch since they have a fiddle taken directly out of Tron and thrusting saxophones! If you are American and don't get a chance to see Eurovision then I implore you to visit Eurovision's official YouTube page right now and watch them all. You won't regret it (well, maybe some of it).


And, yes, just because... Ruslana's "Wild Dances". It is still one of the most incredible things I have ever bared witness too.


Until next year from, er, sunny Germany...

Don't Be Daft

My mind can, at times, act like a jukebox. Random songs randomly popping up in quick succession with no rhyme or reason. Daft Punk has, for some reason on the inner-workings of my brain synapses could explain, have been on a repetitive loop for several days now. They're very good, aren't they? Blood excellent would be a more apt descriptor.

While I've hammered out Homework, Discovery and even the underrated Human After All quite a bit these past few days, it is Alive 2007 that has gotten the most repeat action on the speakers. The only thing better than "Superheroes" (my favourite Daft Punk track) is the Alive 2007 mashup between "Superheroes" and "Human After All" in a near six-minute bass-thumping extravaganza of ever-mounting beats. Below is a poorly-filmed video of the concert sequence - Alive 2007 is a live concert album, but better than most others since they actually rework all the tracks and give them new life - that makes me wish the concert had been filmed and released theatrically in 3D. I can imagine that light show flying at me at 180bpm like the "I Love New York" sequence in Madonna's equally-addictive Confessions Tour.

I've also included the Alive 2007 single release of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" which single handedly returned Daft Punk to the charts and clubs. It's anthemic, isn't it?


Speaking of Daft Punk, I cannot wait to hear the material they have written for TRON Legacy. The movie is out in December, but hopefully we will get to hear the soundtrack earlier than that. I am hoping it is incredible and that they get nominated for Oscars and get to perform on stage in their giant rave pyramid. That'd certainly shake things up, wouldn't it? I didn't like the original Tron from 1982, but I hold out hope for this sequel. It looks a lot like Speed Racer, which I enjoyed greatly because of how deranged it was and because I felt like my eyes were being stood on by leprechauns.