A Star Is Born (2018)

[LoveNDino]

First look...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHTEJJPoVo

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

This is a fan made trailer with no real footage.

[LoveNDino]

[Kenny]

Mrs. Norman Maine is a brownette!!!

[+ stevenkesslar]

Mrs. Norman Maine is a brownette!!!

 

Blonde, actually.

 

Call her a fake blonde, if you wish.

 

But really. If we're talking about blondes, who are you to talk?

 

[Kenny]

Blonde, actually.

 

Call her a fake blonde, if you wish.

 

But really. If we're talking about blondes, who are you to talk?

 

Not in the trailer she isn’t. He’s the (dirty) blonde.

 

As for me, I used to be brownette, but I dyed it back to “natural.”

[samhexum]

I'll never forget the headline of a review I read of the Barbra Strident-Kris Kristofferson version when it came out:

 

A BORE IS STARRED.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I'll never forget the headline of a review I read of the Barbra Strident-Kris Kristofferson version when it came out:

 

A BORE IS STARRED.

 

And that's the gospel truth.

 

So far, the Garland version is the masterpiece. I wish it were a complete masterpiece, but what we do have is outstanding. She was robbed of that Oscar.

 

This person describes it better than I can...

 

https://film.avclub.com/judy-garland-and-the-oscar-fuck-up-of-1954-1798269696

[Kenny]

And that's the gospel truth.

 

So far, the Garland version is the masterpiece. I wish it were a complete masterpiece, but what we do have is outstanding. She was robbed of that Oscar.

 

This person describes it better than I can...

 

https://film.avclub.com/judy-garland-and-the-oscar-fuck-up-of-1954-1798269696

I love how she’s lamenting the man who got away while tightly surrounded by a dozen men (the musicians), shown mostly in nighttime shadow, instruments glistening in the dark, and after hours, when the supper club has closed. It’s as if they are circling as her mind is elsewhere, far, far away. The aching, vaguely desperate “last call” quality of the set-up is something Cukor no doubt knew well. The unused outtakes of the scene are quite different, and in them you can see the director working out the right tone. Cukor at his best.

 

Bradley Cooper, who also directed the Gaga version (his directing debut), has a lot to live up to.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Kenny

[LaffingBear]

That makes five.

 

If theyre going to remake a classic depicting modern times, they should show a social media fading-sensation exploit a talentless attention seeker.... call it "What Price, Instagram?"

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I love how she’s lamenting the man who got away while tightly surrounded by a dozen men (the musicians), shown mostly in nighttime shadow, instruments glistening in the dark, and after hours, when the supper club has closed. It’s as if they are circling as her mind is elsewhere, far, far away. The aching, vaguely desperate “last call” quality of the set-up is something Cukor no doubt knew well. The unused outtakes of the scene are quite different, and in them you can see the director working out the right tone. Cukor at his best.

 

Bradley Cooper, who also directed the Gaga version (his directing debut), has a lot to live up to.

 

 

Thought you'd appreciate this:

 

[LoveNDino]

This one’s getting some pretty darn good reviews...Officially going on my must-see list!

[+ Cash4Trash]

It screened at the Venice Film Festival this past week and Variety gives it a rave. https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/a-star-is-born-review-lady-gaga-bradley-cooper-1202922858/

[+ WilliamM]

Off-TOPIC

 

When Judy Garland knew her prime time weekly TV show (1963-1964) would not be picked up by CBS, she performed hour-long concerts.

 

Quite good, and available on DVD.

[YOUNG_LA_DOM]

Great movie got to see it PRE SCREEN

[LoveNDino]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OExu06WhWnQ

[LoveNDino]

Random Thought - I wish that the next version of this movie is a male/male pairing - while reading Beyoncé, Will Smith, Tom Cruise: The Star Is Borns That Almost Were.

[marylander1940]

First look...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxHTEJJPoVo

 

I just wish they had come out with a better and more original name. Sounds like 42nd Street!

[Nvr2Thick]

Someone did a shot-for-shot remake of the trailer using Muppets footage.

 

[LoveNDino]

[+ WilliamM]

Opinion New York Times

‘A Star Is Born’ Is Born Again. Let Us Pray.

Can the latest remake undo my childhood trauma and restore the luster of the Judy Garland version?

 

By David Belcher

 

Mr. Belcher is an editor in the Hong Kong office of the Opinion section.

 

• Oct. 3, 2018
  

Image

The 1954 version of "A Star Is Born" starred James Mason and Judy Garland.CreditCreditUlstein bild/Getty Images

Is it possible to have “A Star Is Born” redemption 42 years later?

 

Four decades after I was forbidden as a young teenager from watching Barbra Streisand reclaim the role that Judy Garland (and Janet Gaynor before her) had so perfectly embodied, I’m again experiencing cautious giddiness as a new version opens worldwide this week.

 

The buzz swirling around the third remake of the 1937 movie looks promising, to say the least: Critics and audiences at the Venice and Toronto film festivals have praised Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga as the lovers in this tale of the perils of simultaneously rising and falling careers, along with equal praise for Mr. Cooper’s directorial debut and his songwriting. Early reviews are pretty ecstatic.

 

This is exciting stuff, and potentially a huge relief for the previously disappointed among us who had feared for decades that it would be remade for the wrong star. (Actually it was, in a way, with “Glitter,” the Mariah Carey laugh-out-loud campfest from 2001 that ostensibly tells the same story with a slight twist at the end. But let’s not go there.)

 

For those of us who were too young to see it onscreen the last go-round, it’s not a time of reflection so much as potential redemption. Barely a teenager in 1976, I was well aware of the second remake, which was clearly conceived as a movie-with-music vehicle for Barbra Streisand in the same way the first remake was for Ms. Garland. For all self-respecting gay boys at the time, life had taken on new meaning when it was announced Ms. Streisand would star in a remake of the 1954 remake, which to so many of us is

(She was notoriously robbed of an Oscar, most likely because of her infamous erratic behavior on the set of the film.) It was going to be a gay boy’s doubleheader: Barbra and Judy would inhabit the same role 22 years apart. God was in his heaven.

 

four years earlier. People had drowned and fallen to their deaths in that movie — including children — but I was allowed to see thatmovie, I screamed.

 

My mother tried to appease me with the reminder that we had gone as a family to see “Gone With the Wind” in its last run in movie theaters that summer before its television premiere. To which I pointed out: “All Vivien Leigh did was whine for four solid hours in that movie! I bet Barbra doesn’t whine once in ‘A Star Is Born!’”

 

But I lost the battle. I moved on. Thanks to the miracle that was VHS in the early ’80s, I got my wish nearly 10 years later — and it was a stunning letdown. Unlike the 1937 version, and particularly the 1954 version, which is close to cinematic perfection if only for

Ms. Streisand’s version was mostly panned by critics and borders on ’70s camp at this point, except for the Oscar-winning and timeless “Evergreen.” The vibe between the two leads is more a lump of protoplasm than organic onscreen chemistry. O.K., so it wasn’t as bad as “Funny Lady,” but that’s about all I’ll give it.

 

Fast-forward to 2018 to the

. It’s the kind of excitement I’d almost given up on for what would inevitably be a third remake, assuming it would be strolled out at some point with all the wrong stars or that the studio would insist on an ending untrue to the first three. The ending (no spoiler alerts, for a few out there who don’t know the ending at this point) needs to depict how love and fame are equally fleeting and unfair.

 

. As Vicki Lester’s career spins to the heights of Hollywood, you feel as if there is no room for anyone else, let alone a lover. But it’s also a raw depiction of the desperation of living with alcoholism and denial amid the hypocrisy and hysteria of show business. The 1937 version is delicate and stripped of ’30s Hollywood glamour, and

, and not dolled up like Jean Harlow or Joan Crawford. And does anyone else besides me still have a crush on a young Fredric March? His pain as his fame dissipates is a study in restraint in an era of filmmaking not exactly known for subtlety.

 

Forty-two years after my parents crushed my dream of seeing the ’70s “A Star Is Born” that turned out to be mostly a dud, I’m waiting for Mr. Cooper and Lady Gaga to make it all right again. It won’t be Judy in her finest hour, but I’ll take what I can get.

 

David Belcher is an editor in the Hong Kong office of the Opinion section.

Edited October 4, 2018 by WilliamM

[+ WilliamM]

Janet Gaynor was badly injured in an auto accident in San Francisco (1982). Mary Martin's manager,Been Washer, was killed. Ms. Gaynor never recovered. She passed away in 1983. Martin was injured also, but recovered quickly.

Edited October 4, 2018 by WilliamM

[LaffingBear]

Saw it today. Its good. Not phenomenal, but worth seeing.

 

As I sat in the theater, I wondered how many people had seen the predecessors. The woman next to me wept uncontrollably - I suppose that's an endorsement.

 

It drags a bit. Theres no real incredible performance scenes.. a few that are very good. A more balanced look at the star being born and the fading star. More Cooper than Mason or Kristofferson by comparison; less GaGa-focused than Streisand-, Garland-, or even Gaynor-centric. Maybe thats a function of being producer (or producers' lover)

 

Not fair to draw comparisons to predecessors, and I suppose I credit them with being different. Nonetheless, I'd like a few things in classic remakes to be iconic. Like the closing number to focus on the star who was born - I found the editing of the finale distracting.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Saw this tonight.

 

Wildly uneven in spots, but hey, Cooper is a first time director. It happens.

 

While she had a strong out-of-the-gate performance, the music in the film felt like B-sides to an Adele album. Nothing that even came close to what Harold Arlen wrote for the Garland/Mason version.

[Kenny]

It’s great, in an old-fashioned, big Hollywood movie way.