The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Tonight I thought we'd cover one of the most famous showers in entertainment history. It's not famous for the showering but for the singing. Raise your hands if you've ever sung this song in the shower.
I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair and send him on his way.
Nellie talks herself out of love "before i go any further i better not get started."
It's so catchy it's like a commercial jingle. (Didn't it get coopted for actual commercial jingles at some point?) The strangest thing about the sequence in South Pacific (1958) is that it's not actually sung IN the shower. I had totally forgotten this. Maybe "Billis Bath Club" charged extra for singing? I mean even "use of soap" is an extra there, an extra 5¢.
No, constantly fretful Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) actually waits until AFTER she's out of the shower to shampoo her hair. And to sing.
Isn't that nuts?
Early Don't Ask Don't Tell signage (?) and Mitzi's backwards shower activities after the jump.
Continuing the weekly or twice weekly series of reader spotlights. Today's reader is Chris a Midwestern reader with a great sense of humor who started reading TFE in his senior year of high school back in the mid Aughts and never stopped. That's the way we like it, the never-stopping part.
Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience or first movie obsession? CHRIS: I'm pretty sure it was The Little Mermaid, because I have a distinct memory of Ursula's entrance. I can't remember my first movie obsession, because there have been so many. Probably the biggest was the summer that Moulin Rouge! and Hedwig and the Angry Inch came out. I flipped for both movies individually, but collectively they made me feel like musicals were back for good.
Take one Oscar away and give it to someone else. I have to go with two on this one (and I'd take them away from double winners actually): First, I'd give Sean Penn's Mystic River Oscar to Bill Murray for Lost in Translation, because Murray gave a career-defining performance and, let's be honest, Penn was light years better in Milk anyway. Second, I'd give Hilary Swank's second Oscar to Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine, because it's her best work and Hilary Swank was the weakest performance in the category by a mile!
You're suddenly in charge of world cinema for a year! How do you you wield this awesome power? I'd get rid of the whole "Oscar movie" release pattern! I hate that having to wait all year for the quality movies, and then try to cram in far too many movies into too little time. Plus, living in the crappy midwest means most of the smaller films don't stick around and I have to rush to see them ASAP anyway. Have you ever dressed as a movie character for Halloween? And has a movie character ever dressed as you? I went as Wall•E. Made it myself, too! On the flip side, Joseph Gordon-Levitt totally raided my wardrobe in (500) Days of Summer.
Chris makes his own costumes. JGL steals his look!
Three Favorite Actresses? Only 3 is so not fair! I'd have to go with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Laura Linney.
Name your favorite movie in the following five genres: musical, drama, scifi, horror, woody allen. Go! Aladdin, Boogie Nights, Children of Men, The Shining, Interiors. Most of those are hard to narrow down just to one, but I was half tempted to put The Room as one that fits all these categories. Jokes!
Michael C. from Serious Film here, eager to dive back into a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for ages: Todd Haynes’ whirlwind Dylan collage I’m Not There(2007). All this Mildred Pierce talk has given me Haynes on the brain.
I was the ideal audience member for Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. I am a devoted Bob Dylan lover, a big admirer of Hayne’s work, and am literate in pop culture to the point that when Haynes paid simultaneous homage to Fellini’s 8½ and Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back I had no trouble keeping up. And while I found lots to admire in this hugely ambitious project – and I was grateful Haynes didn’t attempt a traditional linear biopic – the film mostly left me cold. I was too conscious of the intellectual constructs at every turn. Dylan’s music can be pretty cerebral at times too, but I love it because he combines that obliqueness with the ability to absolutely destroy me emotionally on a consistent basis.
And yet –and yet - right at the heart of the Richard Gere section of the film, the section I found most problematic, there is this amazing scene that I haven’t been able to shake since I first viewed it four years ago.
If I’m Not There is a whole movie constructed of tangents then the scenes involving Gere playing a character named Billy the Kid riding a horse around a bizarre Old West town called Riddle may be a tangent too far. I get that it’s supposed to represent Dylan’s self-imposed exile in Woodstock in the late sixties, and that the sequence is wild grab bag of Dylan references, but these scenes still stop the movie cold with their randomness.
Or at least that's the case until all the townsfolk wander to the center of Riddle to hear Jim James of My Morning Jacket sing a hypnotic cover of Dylan’s "Going to Acapulco" backed by the band Calexico.
Covering Dylan is almost a genre of music onto itself and this incredibly soulful take of a relatively obscure track deserves a place along side the all time greats. For a little over three minutes I don’t care about Haynes’s thesis statement. Nor do I care about making sense of the riot of costuming and set decoration I’m witnessing (love the random giraffe). For those three minutes I don’t care about anything but the fact that James, Calexico, and Haynes have managed to tap into that thing I love about Dylan. All those levels of meaning can take a back seat to the visceral experience of the music.
We all have are our favorites movies, the ones we know scene for scene, line for line. But equally valuable are the individual moments, those stand alone gems from those films that otherwise didn’t reach us. The “Going to Acapulco” scene from I’m Not There is such a moment for me. I doubt I’ll ever unravel the mystery of why it made such an impression on me, not that I have any interest in doing so.
Hey, TFE readers. As you check out this latest reader spolight I'm probably in the friendly skies (heading to Nashville as previously indicated). One day I hope to flap my arms and fly to Australia (despite my fear of kangaroos) where Peter hails from. Peter, who you know as 'par' in the comments, used to run a blog "six things" that I worshipped -- our elongation of every mention of Laura Linney's name to "The Lovely Laura Linney" is his fault -- so this is my selfish excuse to make him list things again. And unlike so many of you he's older than me. Not everyone reading is allowed to claim Beauty & The Beast or The Lion King as their very first movie; People were having babies before 1987! (gasp)
Nathaniel: What were your first six movie obsessions? PETER:
i. anything that played on tv on a weekend as we lived hundreds of miles from the nearest cinema (usually Doris Day musicals) ii. cabaret iii. jesus christ superstar iv. grease v. hair (sensing a theme here?) vi. the invention of the VCR (yes kids i am that old) enabling me to see movies at home on my own schedule
Hey I remember the big-change of the VCR, too. The 1980s were so eventful. What are your six favorite things about The Film Experience (yes, I'm shameless)
a. the film bitch awards b. the endless love for actresses c. so much goodness every single day (seriously, i couldn't keep my blog going at one thing a day) d. narrowing down the oscar contenders throughout the year so i don't have to e. you, nathaniel f. that it's still around (when you spun off to the blog from the original site i feared you were making a huge mistake)
Your 6 favorite actresses. The others only got 3 aren't you proud? PETER:
Six things you would do if you were elected Supreme Overlord of the Movies for a year.
one - no budgets over $10,000,000 (except for pixar) two - no 3d three - no sequels four - ang lee gets to do whatever the hell he wants five - make woody allen watch all the movies he made between 1969 and 1994 in the hope he might make another as good (starring diane keaton) six - i'll be deciding the oscars this year, thank you very much
Six Oscars you would recall. Who would they go to?
1. grace kelly (the country girl) to judy garland (a star is born) 2. helen hunt (as good as it gets) to helena bonham carter (the wings of the dove) 3. julia roberts (erin brockovich) to the lovely laura linney (you can count on me) 4. gloria grahame (the bad and the beautiful) to jean hagen (singin' in the rain) 5. donna reed (from here to eternity) to thelma ritter (pick-up on south street) 6. crash to brokeback mountain
Six favorite things about Australia. As you know I have a never-been-there fetish.
01. olivia newton-john 02. judy davis 03. toni collette 04. guy pearce 05. peter weir 06. kangaroos - big, scary, street roaming, american-blogger-eating kangaroos!
Gotta Sing.... A few days ago I read over at A Socialite's Life that Hugh Jackman is talking to Bollywood producers about work. You know... I like Bollywood just fine, sometimes quite a lot more than that, and I don't mean this as a slight but Hollywood is a crappy crappy please if one of its biggest stars has to actually leave our movie industry for another to show off his skillset. Grrrr. And, also: grrrl. (I'm fuming). I guess Hollywood only wants him to Wolverine but he has so much more in him.
Where is his big screen musical? If ever a modern male star could be a big deal singing and dancing on the screen it's him. He was amazement in The Boy From Oz on Broadway and he was thisbig. I saw him from the last row of the house with my head touching the wall in the far left corner (truth), the worst seat I've ever had for a show, and I was totally mesmerized. I think seeing him blown up on the big screen doing that same thing might kill me. But I'd die happy.
Amy Adams is another huge bankable star whose musical talent is in danger of being wasted. Lois Lane? Really? A role that any feisty actress could do in her sleep and also another "girlfriend" part to the true star. You'd think after hit movies and multiple Oscar nominations, she could get another good leading role.
The only way I want to see Amy Adams, who is so dynamite in comedy (Enchanted) and dramedy (Junebug) and in the right dramatic role (The Fighter), in a superhero movie is if she's the superhero.
The rest of the negativity must be confined to the jump. Click ahead for more on superheroes, Batman's eventual reboot and that weary-limbed Natalie Portman dancing controversy.
Monday, April 25, 2011 at 11:00PM 
Nellie talks herself out of love "before i go any further i better not get started."
