Singing

Beyond The Lights is Not Your Average Showbiz Movie

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

I walked into “Beyond the Lights” expecting it to be some sort of manipulative soap opera which aimed to be “The Bodyguard” for a new generation. What I got instead was a showbiz story which felt surprisingly genuine in its emotions and intentions. It does have that familiar ring of two people from opposite walks of life coming together, but the way their relationship evolves throughout proves to be very entertaining to watch.

When we first meet Noni Jean, she’s a little girl performing in a talent competition and singing Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” which leaves the audience in a state of awe. However, when the judges award her a runner up prize, her mother Macy (Minnie Driver) angrily takes her out of the auditorium and orders her to “chuck” her trophy in defiance. The way Macy sees it, being second best counts for nothing in a world where you need to be number one.

We then move to years later when Noni, now played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, is on the verge of stardom after having won a Billboard Award even though she hasn’t released an album yet. But after retreating to her hotel room, we come to see how much the pressures of fame are bearing down on Noni as she sits on a balcony ready to jump. Coming to her rescue is police officer Kaz Nicols (Nate Parker) who pulls her back from the edge, literally and figuratively speaking, and two quickly get lost in each other’s eyes. What happens from there is easy to guess.

Initially, Kaz feels somewhat betrayed when Macy pays him off to publicly say Noni did not try to commit suicide, but Noni warms up to him quickly as she can tell he sees something in her others do not.

While they may come from different worlds, Kaz and Noni are going through similar issues. Her mother Macy has been grooming her for stardom ever since she was little, and she has helped turn Noni into the kind of woman every man wants or at least fantasizes about. As for Kaz, his police captain father David (Danny Glover) is grooming him for public office, something he does in fact have ambitions for. However, when you look into Kaz’s eyes, you wonder just how serious he is about politics or if he really wants a different path in life.

Basically, Kaz and Noni are trying to fulfill the desires of their parents, and we have caught up with them as they have long since played a role they feel society wants them to play. In the process, they have lost touch with what they really want out of life, and we follow them as they go through a much-needed period of self-discovery. Watching these two evolve and change from start to finish is deeply involving and, even if the conclusion is never in doubt, we revel in their personal triumphs.

I am not at all familiar with Mbatha-Raw or her work as an actress, and she gives an extraordinary performance here. She is mesmerizing to watch as Noni begins to shed the public persona which has been foisted upon her, and it allows the frightened child inside of her to come out into the open. Also, she has a show stopping moment where she sings “Blackbird” by herself onstage, and you cannot take your eyes off of her for a single second.

Parker also puts in a strong performance as a well-meaning man who respects the law, wants to help people and who has, as his shirtless scenes will attest, spent a lot of time in the gym like any cop should. Looking at the actor’s past which had him involved in political activism, charitable work and working as a wrestling coach, you get the sense he was born to play Kaz. As he wades deeper into Noni’s world of fame, Parker shows Kaz to be someone who keeps his head above water and is not easily seduced by the closed-off world of show business. But there’s also no doubt that the chemistry between him and Mbatha-Raw is very palpable.

Kudos also goes out to Minnie Driver who takes what could have been a one-dimensional stage mother from hell and turns her into a complex character who is far more vulnerable than she lets on. We come to see how Macy has never had it easy, and she is eager for Noni to have everything she never had. But as much as she cares for her daughter, Macy also comes to realize her determination to make Noni a star speaks more about her ambitions than anyone else’s. Driver is a powerhouse as she lets us see how Macy has been wounded by others who had no faith in her when she was young, and it becomes understandable why Macy wants to beat everyone at their own game.

“Beyond the Lights” was written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood whose previous films include “Love & Basketball,” “Disappearing Acts” and “The Secret Life of Bees.” I regret to say I haven’t seen those films, but I am certainly willing to see them now based on the work she has done here. Prince-Bythewood succeeds in giving us a showbiz tale which actually feels grounded in reality. The atmosphere at the award shows and parties Noni attends feel authentic, and they never seem like a spectacle to be easily laughed at. She also gives us a number of complex characters who struggle to survive the high pressure world of fame and fortune where people have everything and nothing at the same time.

I also have to applaud Prince-Bythewood for sticking by Mbatha-Raw when studios were insistent on getting a bigger name cast in the role of Noni. Perhaps a music star would have done a good job here, but they also would have brought an enormous amount of baggage with them which would have had an unintentionally negative effect on this movie. Mbatha-Raw has the advantage right now of not having this baggage, and that makes her performance all the more enthralling as a result.

Sure, there are some soap opera dramatics here and there and certain moments do not ring true, but “Beyond the Lights” really did prove to be one of the big cinematic surprises of 2014. It is also another film to add to the list of worthwhile romantic movies. Just as this particular genre looked to be burning out, the movies coming from it are getting so much better. I’m starting to like these kinds of movies again. What’s wrong with me anyway?

* * * ½ out of * * * *

Click here to check out the video interviews I did with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker which I did for the website We Got This Covered.

Anna Kendrick on Playing Beca in ‘Pitch Perfect’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written back in 2012.

She has been a fixture of the “Twilight” movies and got an Oscar nomination for her role in “Up in the Air,” but now Anna Kendrick gets one of her biggest roles to date in the musical comedy film “Pitch Perfect.” In it she plays Beca who aspires to be a famous Los Angeles DJ but is instead made to attend the college her dad teaches at as he does not approve of her career choices. While there, she comes in contact with the school’s all-girl singing group known as The Bellas and in the process becomes its newest member. Kendrick talks about how she went about preparing to play Beca and of what the singing rehearsals were like.

The screenplay for “Pitch Perfect” was written by Kay Cannon, and Kendrick said she found it to be “so unbelievably surprising and subversive.” Just when Kendrick thought she knew where the script was going, Cannon ended up doing something which completely surprised her. When talking about Beca, Kendrick described her as a loner who is the audience surrogate for the craziness which ensues in this movie.

“You get to be kind of repulsed by this aggressively geeky world at the beginning of the movie and then fall in love with it while Beca does,” said Kendrick. “The interesting thing to me about the idea of a character that on paper is supposed to be what really ‘cool’ is, when you bring it to life, breaking her down and making her seem less cool, because that’s when I think the audience really connects with her. I don’t think you can just say, ‘Hey audience, this is a cool character so you’re supposed to like her.’ For me, I fall in love with characters when they’re out of their element or are uncomfortable and you really feel for them in a knee-jerk sympathetic way. So, I had a lot of fun trying to make Beca less cool. It’s fun to take a girl who fancies herself a little bad-ass and kind of embarrass her.”

For Kendrick, the role of Beca also allowed her to revisit her musical theatre days where she started out as an actress. She sang onscreen before in the movie “Camp,” but being the lead in “Pitch Perfect” made her understandably nervous as this was something new for her. Still, her love of singing and dancing made the experience of making this film all the more fun.

“One of the things I was really insistent on was that whenever I’m singing alone in the movie, I’m singing live on set,” Kendrick said. “Because I think something is a little bit lost in the recording studio, and frankly I’m just not good in the recording studio, like I don’t know how to do that. I think I’m just… I’m used to singing in front of people and singing in a recording booth was a little isolating and sterile. So, I was looking forward to the days when I got to sing live. Somebody would just blow a pitch pipe and then I would do the thing.”

Kendrick also confirmed she and the other actresses in “Pitch Perfect” did go through sort of an acapella boot camp, but it wasn’t as bad as it may sound. It consisted of singing rehearsals, and the only real problem after a while was the shoes everyone wears for the performances proved to be very uncomfortable. They were told by the production team how their shoes were “like sneakers,” but Kendrick made it clear “they’re like heels is what they’re like” and everyone ended up getting some serious blisters.

Of course, “Pitch Perfect” did have its drawbacks for Kendrick especially when it came to singing pop songs like “The Sign” by Ace of Base over and over again. After having sung this song so much, she hopes to never hear it again as it now haunts her dreams. She did, however, look at singing Miley Cyrus’ song “Party in the USA” as being important to Beca’s evolution in the film.

“I think that scene was brilliant because it’s such a painfully corny song that Beca should hate, but it’s a telling moment,” Kendrick said. “Is she going to pretend to be too cool for school, or is she going to go along with it and bond with these girls? I love that she’s willing to embarrass herself out of love for these new friends that she has.”

On the surface, “Pitch Perfect” looks to be a sort of “Glee” wannabe and cheesy beyond repair, but so far audiences have fully embraced it as a very entertaining movie. Kendrick has already left us with a number of terrific performances, and her role as Beca is yet another noteworthy addition to a resume which will continue to grow.

SOURCES:

Jen Yamato, “Anna Kendrick On ‘Pitch Perfect,’ Singing Onscreen, And How Being ‘Aggressively Dorky’ Paid Off,” Movieline.com, September 26, 2012.

Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub, “Anna Kendrick Talks PITCH PERFECT, Singing Live on Set, Interacting More on Twitter, Her Love of Reddit, and More,” Collider.com, October 5, 2012.

Sharon Knolle, “Anna Kendrick, ‘Pitch Perfect’ Star, On ‘No Diggity,’ ‘Fraggle Rock’ And Ace Of Base,” Moviefone.com, October 4, 2012.

Anna Kendrick on Singing Take After Take in ‘The Last Five Years’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

the-last-five-years-movie-poster

It should be no secret by now that Anna Kendrick has quite the singing voice. Whether it’s the independent musical film “Camp,” “Pitch Perfect,” “Pitch Perfect 2” or “Into the Woods,” she consistently dazzles us with her singing whether she’s appearing on the silver screen or on Broadway. In “The Last Five Years,” Richard LaGravenese’s adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s Off-Broadway show, she plays Cathy Hiatt, an aspiring actress who falls madly in love with the very talented writer Jamie Wellerstein (played by Jeremy Jordan). But as Jamie’s star quickly rises, Cathy finds herself struggling in her acting career to where she begins to feel invisible around Jamie. Essentially, “The Last Five Years” looks at a relationship’s exhilarating highs and its emotionally draining lows, and it proves to be a musical which is far more character driven than one which thrives on spectacle.

I was lucky enough to attend the press conference for “The Last Five Years” held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and Kendrick was in attendance along with Jordan and LaGravenese. I was particularly interested in how Kendrick was able to keep the songs she sang fresh for her in each take. By this, I mean how she kept the songs alive for her to where she wasn’t just giving us something which felt emotionally dead or sounded over-rehearsed. You can perform a song or a monologue so many times before it becomes stale and uninteresting, and you have to keep shaking things up so you don’t end up looking like a robot.

According to “The Last Five Years’” IMDB page, Kendrick had to sing “Still Hurting” 17 times straight through. I brought this up during the press conference and LaGravenese quickly said it was because of all the different camera setups which had to be done for the scene, and this led Kendrick to joke about how much easier it would be to make movies without the camera. When it came to keeping “Still Hurting” fresh from take to take, her answer was complex to where it sounded like she is still trying to figure out how to do that.

Anna Kendrick: You know, if I trained at RADA I might actually be able to verbalize that kind of thing and the fact is I didn’t and I have only learned by working, and I’ve been working since I was a kid,” Kendrick said. “I don’t know and to try to put it into the words would be to destroy the thing. I guess you try to find a balance between going into the material and going to a personal place because you never want to tip it too much in one direction. I feel like I drew a lot of energy from the support of the crew who were unbelievably compassionate and understanding, and nothing gave me greater inspiration than seeing the 40-year old dolly operator in his classic Hawaiian t-shirt listening in. He had the same earpiece in his ear that I had, and watching his face as he counted and I could feel his body counting, all these people are honoring a thing that you’re trying to do and that gives you an unbelievable reserve of energy.

So, after all these years as an actress, it still sounds like this is something she is still working on, and that’s okay. An actor’s, or actress,’ work is never done as the best ones continue to work at their craft year after year to improve upon it dramatically (no pun intended), and it was refreshing to hear Kendrick admit she doesn’t have all the answers because most actors do not. If you think you’re the only one who is struggling with trying to keep a piece you have performed several times fresh and meaningful for yourself, you’re not. Every actor does whether it’s a movie, a play or a TV show they’re working on, but they keep going because they’re passionate about their work. Kendrick may have accomplished a lot as an actress so far, but her work as an actor is never done. Once it is, she may have to retire.

“The Last Five Years” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.

Tom Hiddleston Discusses ‘I Saw The Light’ and Singing Like Hank Williams

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

I Saw the Light movie poster

We all know him as the villainous Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but now British actor Tom Hiddleston takes on his most challenging role yet as iconic country singer Hank Williams in “I Saw the Light.” Written and directed by Marc Abraham, the movie starts with Hank getting married to the lovely and business savvy Audrey Williams (Elizabeth Olsen), and it follows him from there as he works his way from singing on the radio to becoming a big time star at the Grand Ole Opry. The movie also shows the pain, challenges and addictions he suffered through which led to him creating some of the most memorable country music and his premature death at age 29.

In preparing to play Hank Williams, Hiddleston had to learn his songs and sing them himself. Working extensively with musical coach and veteran country singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell, Hiddleston immersed himself in Hank’s music and worked tirelessly to match his vocals to Hank’s as much as he could. There’s no doubt it was a difficult process for the actor, but watching him in “I Saw the Light” makes you see the tremendous effort he put into his performance.

I attended the movie’s press conference at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, California where Hiddleston was joined by Abraham and Olsen. I was very interested in how Hiddleston managed to get past all the technical aspects of the singing to where he could put all the rehearsal behind him and just sing his heart out. Izumi Hasegawa, a reporter for What’s Up Hollywood and Hollywood News Wire asked him which of Hank’s songs was the hardest to sing, and this would later lead in to my question for him.

Tom Hiddleston: The most challenging song was probably “Lovesick Blues.” “Lovesick Blues” is, I think, of all the songs Hank sang, the hardest, and he probably sang that the most. It was a huge hit for him. He once went up on stage somewhere, it’s on an album called “The Lost Concerts,” and he’s about to introduce it. He says, “I’m going to play a little song for you. I sang this 13,000,001 and a half times and it’s earned us quite a few beans and biscuits.” It was obviously this real hit maker for him and he sang with such control and such authority that he must have done it in his sleep, and I had to accelerate that process because it’s a very technically difficult song. You are yodeling and you are jumping octaves, and so to be on pitch in every note of that song was really challenging. I had days where I felt like I was bashing my head against a brick wall because Rodney Crowell and I would do take after take after take because if I was rhythmically precise the pitch was off, but if the pitch and the rhythm were right Rodney would say, “Well, you weren’t really feeling it. I kind of lost your sincerity, I lost the twinkle, so could you put that back?” And then I’d have the twinkle and I’d go off rhythm again. So yeah, that was probably the most challenging.

Ben Kenber: Clearly you did a lot of vocal work in preparing to sing like Hank Williams. When do you think you got to the point where you stopped worrying about the singing technicality and started to feel the songs instinctually?

TH: It goes back to what I was saying about “Lovesick Blues.” We had to pre-record certain tracks because of the way we were going to shoot them. If Marc was covering a concert performance, it meant he was going to be cutting from wide shots to close-ups to handheld which meant that we had to be very technically precise about the musical track and therefore couldn’t play it live in order for it to cut in. So we had to pre-record the tracks which I would then play and sing along to myself. They each had to have different atmosphere because some of them are radio station tracks, some of them are studio tracks, some of them are live concert performances, and there were some that came very quickly and very easily to me and some that didn’t. I had recorded “Why Don’t You Love Me” in about an hour. It took me about 10 days to record “Lovesick Blues” and I can’t explain why (laughs). Rodney and I used to say that it was like swimming through the ocean, and that I would have to swim for miles and miles through seaweed in order to get to clear water. And that’s how it felt vocally; there would be cracks and strains in my voice. Singing is a physical thing, and once your body and your resonance and your lungs are sufficiently warm, you can actually get to a place where it feels like you’re up at altitude where you are finally in control of the airplane if that makes sense. It’s a fascinating experience for me because I still believe singing is the most naked form of emotional expression. Actors can hide behind characters, writers can hide behind their writing, painters can hide behind paintings, but singers are purely open. The reason we revere the greatest singers is because we feel a raw power to the transmission of their emotions whether it’s Johnny Cash or Amy Winehouse or Nina Simone or Hank Williams or whoever it may be for you. That was challenging because even though there was a technical discipline to it in manipulating my baritone voice to sound like Hank’s tenor, there was still a commitment to emotional sincerity which was really new for me.

Following Hiddleston’s response, Abraham spoke up about what he specifically wanted for this movie.

Marc Abraham: I just want to add something to that because it was a big deal when we decided how we were going to do the music. From the very moment I wrote the script and decided to make the movie, I was intent that we would not have any lip-synching and that whoever played the part was going to have to sing it. I didn’t know they would be able to do it as well as Tom did. I was hoping that would happen, but what’s important to understand and that Tom understood and Elizabeth to some extent when she was even pretending to sing badly even though she gets mad at me for saying she can sing well (she can). Tom and I both knew from the very beginning that he would never sound exactly like Hank Williams. I know Hank Williams like my mother knows her kitchen. There are people who can imitate Hank Williams better than Tom Hiddleston can imitate Hank Williams because he is a natural baritone and Hank’s a tenor, and that’s just reality. What Tom was able to do was to create the feeling not just in his voice and replicate the sounds and the modulations and to get close enough for us, but to inhabit the character. So in the end it didn’t matter that he didn’t sound exactly like Hank Williams. What we wanted was for you to feel that he was Hank Williams, and that was magic. The magic was that he got so close to the music and put so much energy and time and devoted himself so deeply to becoming that character and bring his vocal representation that close, knowing from the very beginning he couldn’t be exactly like Hank. It’s not possible. That was what was really important, and that’s why we didn’t lip-synch it because then you are watching it and you may think you know what it sounds like, but in the end you feel it and you see that character at play and you see Hank singing “Your Cheating Heart” which is done live. That’s Hank Williams.

I want to thank Tom Hiddleston and Marc Abrahams for sharing their thoughts on the making of “I Saw the Light.” The movie is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital.

Copyright Ben Kenber 2016.