Yes, I’ve got it. Call it the movie-going malaise. The cinematic blues. The crummy picture collywobbles. Whatever you call it, it ain’t pretty. No, I’m not burned out on the movies. Far from it. In the past few weeks, I’ve watched: Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919) (all nearly three hours of it); Ernst Lubitsch’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938); Victor Saville’s Evergreen (1934); Frank Tuttle’s Waikiki Wedding (1937); F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927); Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932); Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (1991). And these were movies I didn’t have to watch. To this, you can add in the fact that I’ve picked up David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) and Tideland (2005). And there’s a copy of Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) just sitting here waiting for reappraisal.

I’ve seen new movies I’ve liked, including last week’s Iron Man and Flawless. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention The Counterfeiters on any list of recent viewings.

But there’s something missing. That little extra kick isn’t quite there. Discounting the usual run of last year’s releases that just penetrated the hinterlands this year, the only movies from 2008 on that list of titles I fully intend to buy the minute they become available are Be Kind Rewind, The Band’s Visit and In Bruges. Worse, there’s the question of just what there is to look forward to — and this is where it gets really grim.

Most people look at the trailers prior to movies and think, “That looks interesting” or “That might be good” or “That looks awful” or “I’d rather drink my own urine than see that” (usually reserved for the works of Uwe Boll) or “Who’d go see that?” The answer to that last is simple for me — either I will, or Justin Souther will (depending on the level of sadism I can live with). For you, they’re just trailers. For me, they’re more like some often unfortunate crystal ball predicting my future in widescreen color and six channel Dolby sound.

OK, so I hold out some vague hope that this week’s Speed Racer might at least be visually striking, while the very idea of David Mamet making a martial arts picture — Redbelt — starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (perhaps my favorite actor of current film) and Tim Allen (definitely not my favorite actor from any era) intrigues me. The less said about the prospect of What Happens in Vegas... the better, except to note that I won’t be seeing it. (Tee hee hee, he giggled sadistically.) I positively loathed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and am not exactly looking forward to its sequel, Prince Caspian.

I’m probably one of four people living (there were five, I understand, but the fifth passed away suddenly), who has close to zero interest in Indiana Jones and the Impossibly Long Title. And do we really need a big screen version of Sex and the City? Could The Strangers look any less interesting or more derivative if they tried? Oh, but there’s Adam Sandler in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, isn’t there? And Kung-Fu Panda.

More comic book movies are on their way, of course. Next up is yet another version of The Incredible Hulk — this one from Louis Leterrier, who gave us The Transporter and its sequel, and starring Edward Norton. What kind of casting is that? Does it matter? The CGI looks appalling, and anyway, I actually kind of liked Ang Lee’s Hulk (2003). Worse, Norton (who took a hand in “improving” the Frida (2002) screenplay, thereby helping to make that Julie Taymor’s least interesting film) was involved in the writing.

Of course, there’s more enticing comic-bookery afoot with Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II the following month. And while the first film was a big “so what?” for me, the trailer for this looks better, which is to say that it has a similar look to Pan’s Labyrinth. Does it look enough better to get me past the depressing news that del Toro has signed away four years of his creativity to make two Hobbit movies? Not really, no, especially when that presumably moves such tasty looking projects as his film of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness to 2012 or beyond. Or will he simply follow Peter Jackson’s example and remake Son of Kong as a follow-up? Don’t get me wrong, I liked Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, even if the only one I felt truly compelled to see more than twice was the first one. But I’m kind of Tolkiened out, and can’t help but think that del Toro’s unique gifts could be better applied elsewhere.

Yes, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight holds promise, and I have no doubt that it will be good. If nothing else, the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker looks absolutely fantastic. But in all honesty, I’m otherwise having a hard time getting that worked up about another Batman movie. I’ll be delighted if Nolan and company can change my mind — and they just might.

Of course, somewhere along the way, there’s room for a new M. Night Shyamalan picture, The Happening. Yeah, I know I found some merit in Lady in the Water (2006), even while admitting its flaws, but I haven’t forgiven him for The Village (2004) or suckering me into temporary insanity and causing me to give Signs (2002) that inexplicably positive review that haunts me to this day. And can I be the only person who finds the trailer for this latest funny? The business where somebody comes down with the “mysterious disease” and we hear the sound of a body falling after the trailer cuts away to a title card is very droll.

Get Smart is admittedly well-cast (The Rock to one side), but another TV show going to the big screen? Why? And let’s face it, Adam Sandler’s pet director Peter Segal (The Longest Yard) at the helm is cause for pause — or cause to send you in search of the TV series. Personally, I can’t wait for the new Mike Myers picture, The Love Guru, to come out, but only because that will mean the trailer will go away, and petitions from Hindu organizations asking me to boycott the movie will stop landing in my in-box every two days. (Good Lord, I just got another one — and I’m not kidding.) Except that no one is protesting it, I have similar feelings about the prospect of the Disney-Pixar WALL-E. That trailer, with the world’s longest lead-in to the song “Brazil” (Terry Gilliam envy?), is just too cute for me.

While Timur Bekmambetov has made a cottage industry of the Night Watch series in Russia, the films have failed to make much of a dent (at least theatrically) here, but what are we to make of Wanted? It’s based on a comic book (does no one read, oh, I don’t know, actual books anymore?). It has a not uninteresting cast — James McAvy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terrence Stamp — but the trailer looks like non-stop action of the Matrix rip-off variety.

Peter Berg’s Hancock will be a hit because everything Will Smith attaches himself to is, whether or not it deserves it. But am I enthused? No. Brian Robbins — the man who gave us The Shaggy Dog (2006) and Norbit (2007) back to back — returns with another Eddie Murphy comedy, Meet Dave. This one has Murphy playing a space-ship run by tiny aliens. (That’s what it says.) Obviously, it’s for people who can’t get enough of The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002). What about Space Chimps? Doesn’t the title kind of say it all?

Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard are an imposing collection of talent, but have you seen the trailer for the filmization of Mamma Mia!? Ye gods. In two-and-a-half minutes it answered my question from last week’s Screening Room — why do people hate musicals? Yes, the ABBA songs are catchy (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert proved that 14 years ago), but the musical numbers as depicted in the trailer are almost exactly the sort of thing that could send viewers in search of a torture porn flick as an antidote. I’m hoping the trailer doesn’t do the film justice.

The Will Ferrell machine grinds on with Step Brothers. Didn’t we just get rid of Semi-Pro? And what’s this? The Longshots — another family comedy with Ice Cube. Barbershop (2002) seems like ancient history. It’s the kind of thing that makes The X-Files: I Want to Believe look actually promising, except that nobody really seems to know anything about The X-Files, which may be a good thing. Even after it’s been here and gone, I’m guessing most people still won’t know anything about Henry Poole Is Here — the track record for movies starring Luke Wilson is far from whelming.

August looks a little better, if we charitably overlook the prospect of College (exactly what it sounds like), Babylon A.D. (the return of Vin Diesel!), House Bunny (from the director of Strange Wilderness!), Bangkok Dangerous (Nicolas Cage in a greasy wig as a hitman!), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (this needed a sequel?) and Wild Child (can Emma Roberts become a star?). Griffin Dunne’s The Accidental Husband might be OK, if things like Made of Honor haven’t caused you to lose all faith in romantic comedies. The Apatow crowd will probably take delight in the stoner comedy Pineapple Express directed by David Gordon Green, but I can’t work up enthusiasm for the pairing of Seth Rogen and James Franco. The prospect of a third Brendan Fraser Mummy picture is only ho-hum-worthy in itself, but it becomes an essay in stark terror when you realize the director, Rob Cohen, gave us Stealth (2005) and xXx (2002).

My personal favorite bet for the end of summer is Ryuhei Kitamura’s The Midnight Meat Train from the Clive Barker story of the same name. I really don’t even care if the movie’s any good. The title alone sells me — and the title and trailer were the highlight of sitting through Good Luck Chuck (2007). The trailer is too much a jumble of images, interspersed with some unintentionally campy dialogue, to tell a lot about the picture, but some of those fleeting glimpses are downright freaky looking (in a good way). Regardless, this may just be the greatest title ever.

OK, so maybe it’s not that grim, but the prospects still feel like a mix of “yes, it is that grim” and the “maybe it’ll surprise me” range, meaning there’s a basic lack of real excitement here. And that could be offset if the fall/winter season looked good, but right now I’m not seeing anything other than Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) Blindness that really enthuses me. The problem is that folks like Wes Anderson, David O. Russell, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Neil Jordan, Tim Burton, etc. are all slated for movies in 2009. We’ve had our Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind) for the year. Julie Taymor doesn’t even seem to have anything in the works. It’s dispiriting.

Maybe there are surprises in store, something completely out of nowhere just lurking in the shadows. I certainly hope so. In the meantime, there’s Midnight Meat Train.

Drexel, N.C.-based author Susan Woodring‘s new book, Springtime on Mars: Stories (Press 53, 2008) is at once quirky, charming, confusing and comfortable. It manages to be all over the map, but also intricately rooted in family, dysfunction and place.

Part of the scattershot feel of the book comes from its format: like the title suggests, it’s a collection of short stories. The longest of these is 20 pages and the rest weigh in at about half that length. Among the stories, the point of views range from a young girl to a middle-aged man. This is jarring at times, moving from one story to the next, but Woodring seems to revel in the disparate nature of her prose. She unravels, in each installment, a nugget of a story. A single, awkward moment arrived at through a maze of mundane events and non-events. Nothing is happening but ordinary life, only Woodring gazes deeply into all that’s ordinary to distill the kernel of weirdness, of awkwardness, of dark secrets, old wounds, dreams unrealized, cracks in the foundation. And then, when that moment is finally revealed, Woodring leaves us there on the brink of understanding. We’re given a glimpse, but nothing more.

This is tantalizing, and even for the nudge of frustration at the paltry reveal, I found myself compelled to read on. Just one more story. After all, they’re short! Only 10 pages! Think of the sense of accomplishment!

Which is kind of how I approach short story collections, anyway. I like the near-instant gratification of polishing off an entire narrative in a setting. And, considering all that’s been said and written about the shrinking attentions spans of post-X generations, it’s surprising that short stories haven’t all but replaced novels.

But they haven’t. In fact, short story collections have been the underdogs of the literary business for some time now (to the extent that some MFA in writing programs replaced their short story concentrations for more popular genres such as creative nonfiction). But one thing that Woodring has on her side is a very enthusiastic publisher in Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Press 53.

The other thing working in Woodring’s favor is her way with words. Short those these stories may be, this author can spin a tale. This is evident from the very first chapter, where sixth-grader Lizzie struggles for a sense of normalcy while her mother loses herself in care-taking bees and speculating on UFO sightings.

“It frightened her to see her husband that way,” the author compellingly writes of another character. “And also somewhat annoying — why had Russell done such a thing anyway?”

It’s rare for a writer to move seamlessly between characters and reference points, to switch up genders, generations and voices like flipping through a cache of personalities culled from the psyche of Sybil herself. And though Woodring doesn’t manage a flawless delivery 100-percent of the time, she does an admirably good job — and pulls off a highly entertaining collection of tales.

Susan Woodring offers the workshop Martians on Main Street: How to Bring the Historic, the Scientific, and the Just Plain Weird onto the Pages of Realistic Fiction on Monday, May 12, at Malaprop’s. For info on the 7 p.m. event, call 254-6734.

—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter

Each week Xpress reporter Alli Marshall and WOXL DJ Pat Ryan team up to bring you their entertainment suggestions. Here are Pat & Alli’s Weekly Winners for Thursday, May 8 through Saturday, May 10.
Click here to listen.

Maybe I drank the Kool-Aid, but the more I think about the recent Josh Ritter show at the Orange Peel (Friday, May 2), the more I think it was something really special.

Part of it has to do with this theory I’ve been cultivating, that music both underground and mainstream is moving in a direction of more heart-on-sleeve, un-clichéd sincerity. Artists like the Kimya Dawson, Amos Lee and Melanie Horsnell have been breaking into a formerly cynical, bottom line-obsessed business with quirky, off-kilter songs about real emotion performed with admirably skewed style. Ritter seems to fit into that eccentric singer/songwriter classification, but there’s something more about him. Namely, energy.

I’m not talking woo-woo cosmic energy here. I mean the actual combustible kind that involves singing lots of words really fast while his band holds down a bombastic pace. There’s a sense of barely controlled madness, backed by an undeniable glee. On stage, Ritter grins like his cheeks are about to burst. He acts like a kid at his own birthday party and talks to the audience with an “aw-shucks” affect so hyper-sincere one would think he was just dropped off the turnip wagon.

But Ritter is hardly a hayseed, Idaho upbringing aside. He’s obviously business savvy, playing to a willing audience. He’s disarming, engaging, and holds tight reign on his well-heeled group of musicians. Even more importantly, he knows how to write a song. There are obvious nods to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, especially apparent on jangly, sonic melanges like “To the Dogs or Whomever.” It’s the vastness of organ, the kick peddle thump of bass drum, the talking blues style, the way he hammers home the chorus.

According to Wikipedia, Ritter went to Oberlin College to study neuroscience (in case you didn’t believe me earlier when I said he wasn’t a hayseed) but wound up graduating — no, not as a music major, that would be too easy — with a self-designed major in American History through Narrative Folk Music. My point here is the guy knows a thing or two about music. But what he does on stage — the performance, the goofy-suave banter, the nice-guy songs with their biting underbellies, the wrapping of the audience around his finger ... they don’t teach that at college. Not even Oberlin.

And it’s not just me who think this guy might be exceptional. After headlining with Joan Baez, she recorded a version of his song “Wings.” I mean, it’s not like Joan Baez is out there covering just anyone.

Ritter’s latest album is last year’s (not-so-unassumingly named) The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. Give it a listen.

—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter

Flocking to Asheville from Maine, New York, Virginia, Tennessee and across the Carolinas, Hanson fans are willing to travel great distances to see their musical idols up-close. More than 400 screaming fans — the majority being young women between the ages of 27 and 18 — gathered in front of the Orange Peel this afternoon for a chance to join the pop band Hanson on a one-mile barefoot walk through downtown Asheville. This is the band’s 66th “Walking Tour” since September of 2007, an event that aims to raise awareness on issues of poverty and AIDS in Africa, while empowering young people to stand up for a cause that they believe in.

But traveling great distances is not the only thing Hanson fans are willing to do to show their support, as Xpress learned when talking to the crowd of Hanson fans. 

Michelle Brochon of Long Island and her best friend Katie Harris of Bowdoin, Maine, traveled 18 hours straight to have a front-row view of Hanson at their sold-out Asheville performance.

“It’s a special show because it’s my birthday,” said Brochon, who had been camping out at the Orange Peel since 3:30 p.m. on Saturday (two days before the concert).  Brochon, despite sleeping on the streets, enthusiastically told Xpress that Hanson’s music means the world to her because, “They’re my age and they’re easy to relate too. They could have stopped making music, they could have sold out, but they didn’t and they keep making music on their own terms.”

Brochon and Harris were two of the five people who camped out for two-nights at the Orange Peel, and were joined by 60 others on Sunday night. 

Along with camping gear, Hanson fans sported hand-made signs, one of which read: “We’re Walking A Mile W/ No Shoes On … What Are You Doing Today?” Other fans proudly displayed their tattoos inspired by the Hanson logo and by lyrics from their songs. One fan had the phrase: “Don’t lose yourself in your fear” tattooed on her forearm.

When the three Hanson brothers emerged from inside the Orange Peel, they were welcomed with ear-shattering screams and a cheer that seemed to ring through the city. They walked from the Orange Peel to Pritchard Park, where Taylor took out his mega-phone and began sharing stories about “The Walk” and the impact it’s made on raising awareness and energy in their generation. “We are the army of hope,” Taylor proclaimed. “We are not an underestimated generation, we have the capacity to make a difference.”

Needless to say, Hanson received a warm welcome from their local fan-base here in Asheville.

Click here to see a photo gallery of the event.

-— Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt

I’m horrified by what’s happening to the children of the religious sect in Texas — and on so many levels.

More than 400 children were removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch during a weeklong raid in early April. The raid was prompted by a call to a domestic-abuse hotline by a teenager reporting that she was beaten and sexually abused by her much-older husband. That call may or may not have been a hoax. So far, the girl hasn’t been located. The children were removed from the ranch, which is owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, because the group supposedly forces girls into marriage and child-bearing.

Let me say that no women of any age should ever be forced into marriage or sexual relations. Period. And I agree with the government that girls under the age of 16 should be protected from these atrocities and removed from the abusive situation promptly.

Yes, state of Texas officials, you’re right to take abused girls away from their abusers.

But why exactly did you take all of the girls, from nursing babies to teenagers, away from their families? And why did you insist on removing all the male children as well? The argument that the boys are being groomed as perpetrators holds a tiny bit of water, but not for the young ones. I can’t even groom my 6-year-old to wipe his mouth with a napkin.

In Texas’ fury to protect the innocent, I think they’ve done the opposite: They’re punishing the innocent—the children.

Despite protests from the parents, most of whom say they are not engaged in polygamous or underage marital practices, every one of their children has been ripped away from home and put into foster care. Supposedly, officials are now letting mothers of babies under 12 months stay with their babies in a group facility. I guess feeding nursing moms is less expensive than formula.

Obviously, this is a complicated situation. But why haven’t the abusers been arrested? If this crime’s so widespread, why haven’t the men who perpetrated it been removed from the ranch instead of the children? Is even the whiff of polygamy so horrendous that it’s worth traumatizing more than 400 children?

The state says that the children who haven’t been abused may be returned to their families, although it could take several more weeks to review each case. These children have already spent weeks in a holding facility, and many are now being bused to foster-care institutions around the state, some more than 500 miles away.

The Texas Legislature reformed the state’s foster-care system after a series of highly publicized abuses in 2004. However, serious problems remain, according to a 2007 report prepared for Texas Appleseed, a group that researches social-services issues. So these children are entering a foster-care system that’s already seriously stressed. These are sheltered kids who’ve for the most part been home-schooled, have rarely seen television, and are used to eating food grown on the ranch. Just imagine the fear and confusion those kids must be feeling, especially if they land in a group home in downtown Houston.

The court-appointed psychologist, Dr. Bruce Perry, claims that the fundamentalist Mormons’ belief system is “abusive. It’s very authoritarian.” Yet he also concedes that the children could suffer in traditional foster care. Again, it makes sense to remove those most likely to have been abused from the situation. But why separate toddlers from their mothers when there is no evidence that they’ve been abused?

My family belongs to a church, and I imagine that there are a few members of our church who have done things that endanger their kids. Maybe they’ve gotten drunk and then driven their kids somewhere. Maybe they’ve smoked pot around their kids. So should the government come in and take all 300-something Unitarian-Universalist kids if a few parents mess up? Is the government telling the FLDSers that, because of their religious beliefs, they aren’t allowed to have kids? That sounds so 19th century.

The state of Texas seems to assume that every member of this church should not be allowed to have children. A divorced father, living in Nebraska (far, far away from the ranch) found out that his kids
had been forced from their home, where they lived with their mother, and into foster care. When he showed up at the holding facility to pick them up, his kids were loaded onto a bus and driven away.

Supposedly, more than 130 women, some of them mothers, voluntarily left the ranch when offered the opportunity. Why can’t these women have their kids back? Why can’t the children stay with relatives outside the ranch? Don’t some of them have grandparents?

I realize it’s been difficult to ascertain parentage with certain kids, and DNA testing has ensued. OK, then. Figure out who belongs to whom. Figure out which girls have been abused. Figure out which men have perpetrated these crimes. Then arrest their asses. Break up the sect if they’re breaking the laws. But don’t take loved children away from their parents until there is no other choice.

Earlier this year, the Lake Eden Arts Festival announced that it would release the entire run of tickets for the fest, which runs from Friday, May 9 to Sunday, May 11, through online sales. The festival has traditionally made tickets available at the gate, allowing less-prepared fest-goers to pop by on the day of their choice and have a fair chance of getting in. This year’s deadline for ticket sales was originally targeted for May 7, but the online option proved to be far more enticing that many had expected, and tickets officially sold out earlier today.

Interestingly, a quick search of ticket reseller outlets revealed no available passes for the fest, implying that the vast majority of people who bought tickets fully intend on using them — hardly a surprise, perhaps, given the devoted nature of many LEAF-goers.

— Steve Shanafelt, A&E editor

Reggae star Luciano is not exactly a stranger to Asheville. Xpress interviewed him in this 2005 story. He’s visited since and is now back for a Tuesday, May 6, show at the Grey Eagle.

So what makes Luciano so special? It’s something about the timbre of his vocals, the unabashed note of hope in his lyrics, the earthy pulse to his songs and his peaceful warrior presence. To listen to a Luciano track is to be transported, at least sonically, to the lush island of Jamaica from where he comes and, by the looks of his tour schedule, spends little time these days. The U.K., France, Ireland, Poland, Italy, sure. The Caribbean? Not so much.

Then again, Luciano (born Jepther Washington McClymont) is also known as the Messenjah, a Rastafied moniker nodding to his commitment to spread the word about spiritual salvation, right living and brotherly love.

The musician’s 2006 release, Child of a King includes covers of Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train” and N.C.-native Nina Simone’s “Young Gifted and Black.”

Mikey General, Jah Creation and Deep Roots Sound open the 8 p.m. show. $18 advance, $23 day of show. Info: 232-5800.

—Alli Marshall, A&E reporter

For a certain kind of person, there are few things in this world more exciting than a stack of comic books waiting to be read. It’s the rush of knowing that the unbelievable is going to happen, and that the stories that lie between the glossy could take the reader almost anywhere. But the one thing that isn’t always as welcoming and inviting as cracking open a brand new comic is the experience of shopping for them.

Comic-book shops have a reputation for being havens for the socially awkward, where any potential newcomer risks a grilling on the minutia of the Green Lantern’s backstory by swarms of geeky fans garbed in the latest in official Ultimates-era Thor T-shirts. And while that can happen, there’s a lot more to your local comic-book shop than superhero snobbery. In an industry-wide move, comic retailers across the U.S. and Canada will be holding an open house of sorts during Free Comic Book Day.

The five-year-old effort to put comic books into the hands of people who are either new to comics, or have lost touch with their four-color process friends over the years. With both major publishers (DC, Marvel and Dark Horse, for instance) and a number of indie publishing houses participating, Free Comic Book Day is a great way to explore the rich and varied world of modern graphic storytelling.

“We want to get everybody into the stores, because it’s not just kids reading comics, everybody is. Our customer base is from ages 8 to 80,” says Chris Atkins, owner of Woodfin-area comic-shop Pastimes (175 Weaverville Rd #Y).

Coinciding with the release of the Iron Man film, Free Comic Book Day promises a chance for people to not only learn of the adventures of Marvel Comic’s armored super hero, but to pick up a few selected comics starring The Simpsons, Archie and many other ink-bound characters. And with a wealth of new works in genres ranging from Japanese indie comics and kid-friendly stories to dark horror and upbeat romance, odds are that even the most fickle of readers will find something they like.

“It’s not just super heroes, and it never has been,” Atkins says. “I can find something for grandpa, or an 8-year-old kid who’s never read super heroes.”

Free Comic Book Day takes place Saturday, May 3. For more information visit http://www.freecomicbookday.com. To locate the nearest comic shop dial 1-888-COMIC BOOK.

— Jason Bugg

When the library asked me if I wanted to pick three of my favorite musical films for their annual “Spring Musicals” series, my first thought was that it was impossible to choose three favorites — not to mention the fact that a few years back, I’d convinced them to run one of the titles, Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (1932) — that would be on such a list. After some deliberation, I decided that instead, I’d pick three musicals that showcased the work of choreographer-turned-filmmaker Busby Berkeley.

The three I chose — Whoopee! (1930), Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) and The Gang’s All Here (1943) — represented different stages of Berkeley’s career. The first is little more than Berkeley repeating and expanding on the kind of thing he’d done in the 1920s on Broadway with another director, Thornton Freeland, handling the directorial chores. The second shows Berkeley in full-bloom as concerns his musical extravaganzas, but still with another director, Mervyn LeRoy, in charge of the non-musical scenes. The third features Berkeley in charge of the entire film. More than that, the films reflect three distinctly different eras — the simple “innocence” of the pre-Depression stage show, the Depression musical, and the war-time musical.

The process, however, got me thinking about the musical film in general and how a great many people absolutely can’t stand the genre. It’s a stance I’ve never understood, maybe because the first movies I responded to that weren’t horror pictures were the “Road” pictures with Bing and Bob and Dotty mixing comedy and songs in a world of studio-created exotica that stood in for South Sea islands, Africa, Alaska, Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong. None of it seemed strange to me, but you may say that I was young and easily corrupted.

It may also just be that the range of movies offered to us at that time on television included a lot of musicals. Moreover, a lot of movies we encountered from the 1930s that weren’t musicals still thought nothing of suddenly injecting a song. A straightforward romantic comedy like Otto Preminger’s (yes, that Otto Preminger) Danger! Love at Work (1937) would suddenly have a musical number in mid-film and then go back to its original approach. It was this kind of attitude that made the big set piece in Alfred Hitchcock’s Young and Innocent (1937) work. No one went “what the hell?” when a musical number broke out, allowing Hitch to surprise you with the payoff at the end of that still amazing travelling shot.

I’m not, by the bye, putting forth a simple idea that this is necessarilly a generational thing. I know plenty of film fans of my generation who cross themselves and spit at the mere mention of the musical film. The usual excuse for their disdain is that musicals aren’t “realistic.” The irony that more often than not the person putting forth this supposedly damning charge has just finished waxing ecstatic over Lon Chaney, Jr.’s transformation into a werewolf in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) seems to be lost on them. Of course, many of these same folks adore the Marx Brothers, and never consider that all of their films worthy of the term “a Marx Brothers picture” except Monkey Business (1931) are inescapably musicals.

The simple truth is that sound movies and music have always gone together quite nicely. Even before the movies learned to talk, they knew how to sing. The first uses of sound were for synchronized musical scores (the real idea behind sound films originally) and short films featuring popular singers. With the exception of Al Jolson’s A Plantation Act (1926) the efforts of these popular singers are today apt to make you wonder just who they were popular with, but that’s a separate cultural issue.

The movie generally referrred to as the first sound feature, The Jazz Singer (1927), is a mostly silent movie with a synchronized score (featuring large slabs of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture), a few songs and a smattering of dialogue that legend tells us was started when an overenthusiastic Al Jolson adlibbed, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet! Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain’t heard nothin’! You wanna hear ‘Toot Toot Tootsie?’ All right, hold on, hold on.” It’s a great story — promulgated by Jolie himself — but the fact that the movie cuts to him saying it and that he’s overdubbed when he turns to musical director Lou Silver and adding, “Lou, listen, play ‘Toot Toot Tootsie’ — three choruses, you understand? In the third chorus, I whistle. Now, give it to ‘em hard and heavy,” makes its veracity doubtful. But then Jolson was never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, especially if the story made him look good.

In a sense the first talkie, then, was a musical. It was a natural progression, since one of the few things a silent movie couldn’t be was a musical. And so with the advent of sound, the movies quickly found themselves with a new genre — and the mathematically unsound advertising slogan, “100% All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing!”

Even as a fan of the genre, I’ll admit this wasn’t inevitably a good thing. The start was clunky and often didn’t make good sense. Why, for example, did Universal make a straight part-talkie version of Show Boat in 1929, but base the film on the novel, not the stage musical, incorporate none of the songs, but present some of them (and not the more famous ones!) in a stagebound prologue? That’s just odd. And there were more than a few questionable artistic choice, few of which survive in the repertory today. (If you ever see Noah Beery, Sr. in blackface singing about his little whip in 1930’s Golden Dawn, you’ll know why.)

One that does survive is The Cocoanuts (1929), which is still shown because it stars the Marx Brothers. As a film, it’s pretty dismal. As a musical, it’s ... quaint. “The Monkey Doodle-Do” is a catchy song and the number isn’t badly done, and boy, did somebody (the cameraman or the director) really like looking at the dancing girls’ backsides. But otherwise, it not only suffers from a largely immobile camera, but by following the concept put forth at the time by composer Irving Berlin. Berlin got it into his head that the future of the musical lay in movies with a very few songs — and those few would be repeated. As a result, Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton perform “When My Dreams Come True” early in the film. Then Harpo plays it on a clarinet and later as a harp solo. The final scene opens with Eaton singing it again, and then the film can’t end without her having another outburst of it. By then, you’re ready to strangle her and slap Berlin.

The interesting thing is that it didn’t take all that long for audiences to have had enough. By 1931 theaters would proudly advertise “This is not a musical” whenever possible. Warner Bros. had bought Cole Porter’s stage show 50 Million Frenchmen, but by the time they filmed it in 1931 — complete with stage star William Gaxton — they made it as a comedy only with Porter’s songs used as background score.

The musical situation and early sound film was soundly satirized in the Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman play Once in a Lifetime, which interestingly (in that it directly satirizes studio head Carl Laemmle) Universal Picures made into a film 1932. (Unfortunately, the film, which is the movie 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain only thinks it is, is almost unknown today.) The whole “backstage musical” genre comes in for abuse. Late in the proceedings playwright Lawrence Vail (Onslow Stevens) refers to a film as “all talking, all singing,” and is interrupted by elocution teacher May Daniels (the divine Aline MacMahon) with, “all rotten,” prompting Vail to remark, “Guess that must be what they mean by a hundred percent.” Try slogging your way through 1929’s Best Picture winning The Broadway Melody sometime and you’ll know of what they speak.

Not all musicals were anathema, of course. The Maurice Chevalier pictures carried on unscathed, for example. On the other hand, Warner Bros., who’d “created talking pictures” (their claim) with Jolson parted company with Jolie after Big Boy (a bizarre recreation of his stage show that found the performer in blackface for the entire film) in 1930. Jolson wouldn’t work in movies again till 1933. But his closest rival, Eddie Cantor, kept right on knocking out a popular picture each year. There’s no denying that the Cantor films were just better, but Ol’ Banjo Eyes had a secret weapon — large production numbers created by Busby Berkeley. It was no surprise then that Berkeley would turn out to be the saviour of the musical film.

Busby Berkeley — and the Warner Bros. — made musicals cool again with 42nd Street in late 1933. The non-musical scenes moved like lightning and the comedy was rude (Ginger Rogers’ character, Anytime Annie, is described as only having said “no” once, “and then she didn’t hear the question"), while the drama was amusingly over-the-top. But the real selling point were Berkeley’s spectacular musical extravaganzas.

Berkeley had done some elaborate stagings before, but 42nd Street outdid them all. Though what he was creating invariably started and ended with a proscenium arch and a curtain, there was never any attempt at creating the illusion that what came in between was actually taking place on a stage, which was probably just as well, because not even the most credulous viewer would buy it. It didn’t matter, because he swept the audience up into the spectacle at hand. He wasn’t so much making musical numbers as he was making short films that fitted into the narrative of the film’s backstage story (though I defy anyone to make sense out of the shows being put on). In one regard, his numbers were the most outrageous fantasies and were totally unrealistic. In another sense, however, the films themselves were realistic — and for those bothered by such things, they rarely had people bursting into song and dance except on the supposed confines of a stage.

42nd Street is shrewdly structured not to give the game away as to what’s in store. We see rehearsals (which — and this remains a constant in the films to follow — have no relation to the show we finally see) and Bebe Daniels gets to sing a straightforward version of “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me,” but that’s it until the film hits the 70 minute mark. Here Berkeley gives us “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” which is done in a fashion where the spectacle not only could be done on a stage, but retains that illusion, while being shot cinematically. With “Young and Healthy,” this shifts with Berkeley’s camera becoming the real star of the proceedings as it glides between the spread legs of the chorus girls onto a close-up of Dick Powell and Toby Wing.

The kicker, however, is the title number where Berkeley transitions from Ruby Keeler tap dancing in front of a backdrop to her being atop a taxi and the stage has suddenly become a huge city street set on a soundstage — with cars and cops on horses and a large cross-section of the habitues of 42nd Street. Berkeley stages mini-dramas as his camera glides up and peers into the windows of apartment houses and speakeasies. And it all climaxes with the camera tracking “up” the side of a skyscraper to an apparently gigantic Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler pulling down a fire curtain. There’d never been anything like it and it’s still astonishing today.

The formula was more or less repeated with Golddiggers of 1933, except that the film opened with a Berkeley number — “We’re in the Money” with, among other things, a disconcertingly gigantic close-up of Ginger Rogers singing the song in pig-Latin. The song is used ironically, because the thrust of this film is the Depression. In fact, the performance is interrupted when the costumes and scenery are repossessed. The Depression hangs over the whole film, despite the musical numbers and the upscale surroundings which come to dominate things in typical escapist fashion.

Since expectations were high and there was no surprise attached to the level of spectacle to be expected, Golddiggers delivered one of the set-piece numbers, “Pettin’ in the Park,” early on, before holding out for the plot to hold the film up to the last big numbers, “The Shadow Waltz” and “Remember My Forgotten Man.” Once the curtain goes up on these, there’s zero pretence of reality in terms of what happens, but the second has a different kind of reality. The escapist quality vanishes and Berkeley hits the audience with the reality of the Depression without comedy and without flinching. He may never have done anything finer. Her certainly never did anything as profoundly moving or important.

From there the formula stayed in place through Footlight Parade (1933), Dames (1934) and Wonder Bar (1934), altering slightly when Berkeley became a full-fledged director with Golddiggers of 1935. It was not the best of ideas. The musical numbers were still great. In fact, “Lullaby of Broadway” vies with “Remember My Forgotten Man” as Berkeley’s best. However, Berkeley just wasn’t much of a director when the music stopped. Some of the downturn can be attributed to the increased censorship of the Production Code. The dialogue and situations had to be toned down to conform. References to promiscuity (like Anytime Annie) and drugs ("Say what does he smoke? I’ll use it, too,” says Aline MacMahon at one point in Golddiggers of 1933) were gone. The plot got less grubby and a good deal sillier. But really, a lot of it rests on Berkeley being out of his depth away from the numbers.

It would never be the same and Berkeley worked out his contract making ever less spectacular programmers, finally ending up at MGM, where the studio’s established white-bread approach had no relation to his strengths. The numbers were sometimes big, but they were flat. And when he landed in the realm of Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals, the stars were the stars, not Berkeley’s numbers.

There would be one final outburst of the Berkeley genius, though, in 1943 when he went to 20th Century Fox to make The Gang’s All Here and met up with Technicolor and Carmen Miranda and her fruit-festooned hats. Again, the film suffered from Berkeley handing the straight portions as well as the musical numbers, but those numbers were something else again, especially “The Lady in the Tutti Fruiti Hat,” which was surprisingly sexual and a showcase for pop art before anyone knew what pop art was, and the kaleidoscopic finale, which was psychedelic before anyone knew what that was.

It’s hardly to be wondered that these films became iconic in the 1960s and 1970s when kids were discovering old movies. Yes, there was a built in camp value, but the films themselves were fast and funny, racy and rude, and felt very much counterculture — and the numbers were unlike anything then going.

The only time anything like Berkeley hit the screen again was when Ken Russell made The Boy Friend with Twiggy for MGM in 1971. Russell deliberately emulated Berkeley’s work and expanded on it. Where Berkeley had one elaborate turntable of dancers, Russell would have two — side-by-side. He even evoked the camp value, duplicating situations and dialogue from 42nd Street. The results were both respectful and slyly humorous. Unfortunately — and unlike the Berkeley films — The Boy Friend has never been released on DVD. There was a properly letterboxed laserdisc, which won’t do most folks any good. The VHS release at least letterboxes the musical numbers, but unfortunately not the rest of the film. (Complain to MGM today!)

Those of you who “don’t like musicals,” ought to give Berkeley a try. You might just be surprised. I’ve used Golddiggers of 1933 — usually successfully — as an icebreaker for people who don’t like “old movies,” nevermind musicals. And if you still don’t like musicals, there’s probably just no hope for you. But I would be curious to know why — just don’t tell me it’s because they’re not realistic while you’re on your way out the door to see Iron Man.