No Comment

Cinema Romantico continues to have no comment regarding “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The blog can confirm it has yet to see “Joker: Folie à Deux” and in all likelihood will not see it until a few months from now, on VOD. At that point, the blog will possibly do as it did for the first “Joker” and write a (probably negative) review to work out our thoughts, leave it in the drafts folder, and never publish it. But that cannot be confirmed at the present time.

In the meanwhile, please enjoy this video of Gaga singing “Orange Colored Sky.”

Instant Reactions to Lady Gaga Starring in Joker: Folie à Deux

A Very Serious Review of Lady Gaga's Top Gun: Maverick Anthem

I couldn’t tell you the first time I dreamed of flying a plane and what prompted it. It might have been touring the SAC Museum in Omaha or the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs as a kid, but more likely it was Luke Skywalker making his target run, or Maverick putting on the brakes so they could fly right by, or perhaps most realistically Snoopy envisioning himself as the WWI Flying Ace. That beagle had an active imagination and so did I. All I know is that any dreams I might have once harbored about flight pretty much died the day during an adolescent game of backyard football when I removed my glasses during a rainstorm and fired a pass to what I thought was my best friend running something approximating a crossing route only to hear the pigskin thwack off a tree. If you’re throwing passes to trees, you probably shouldn’t be strapped into a cockpit. That all came to back me last week as I waited to board my flight at the Duluth International Airport back to Chicago. After all, the Duluth Air National Guard is housed on the airport’s grounds, and as I sat twiddling my thumbs (looking at my phone), a couple F-16s thundered down the runway and into the sky, the takeoff so loud the windows I was watching them through rattled. “What,” I wondered, “would that feel like.” Mentally, I sighed for, surely, I’d never know.



After I settled into my seat aboard the tiny regional airliner and we taxied out to the runway, I suddenly remembered that earlier that morning I had downloaded the just-dropped Lady Gaga track – “Hold My Hand” – off the forthcoming “Top Gun: Maverick” soundtrack. What better way to christen my ears with it than during takeoff? I put on my headphones, taking that moment that I do before listening to any new Gaga track to appreciate the fact that I’m about to listen to a new Gaga track, and cued it up. And as our elbow room-less little aircraft lifted into The Gopher State air and Gaga pulled the throttle forward to that first rendition of the chorus, I could have sworn, for four bars there, our Air Wisconsin Canadair Regional Jet eclipsed the sound barrier. 

All My Favorite Things in the (second) House of Gucci Trailer

This is why I’ll be there opening night (I will not be there opening night): Lady Gaga, as Patrizia Gucci, glowering across extravagantly decorated rooms. 

Well, you have to have at least one shot of Gaga dancing. You don’t include at least one shot of Gaga dancing and the marketing department is going make you recut the whole thing. 

“It’s Gucci,” says Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci, “because I say it is”, in a manner to suggest we will be getting, like, “Devil’s Advocate” Pacino more than, like, “Donnie Brasco” Pacino which is exactly how I would want it. 

Speaking of which...holy crap. Pacino switching on his virtual megaphone while Jared Leto, as Paolo Gucci, is over there looking like he’s auditioning for “Super Mario Bros.” This is like a faux-Renaissance painting you would see in a Wes Anderson movie, or something. 

Unflattering screenshot, I know, apologies, Gaga, I hope you will forgive me. But. When she says the capping line of the trailer - “I don’t consider myself a particularly ethical person” - she does this thing when she says ethical, like she’s biting into it, gleefully laying bare her contempt for the whole concept of ethics. 

It is, as they say, a motion picture and so you really have to see this image in motion. But when Gaga lets her head fall back onto Adam Driver’s shoulder..... [gif of an exploding star] This is the cover of her theoretical future Italo Disco album with Giorgio Moroder that they already should have made. 

Salma Hayek getting a mud bath speaks for itself. 

Life goals

Lady Gaga going all Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill, looking she just got cast on “Real Housewives of New Jersey”, is one of those Stop And Remake The Whole Movie In This Image moments. 

Have I told you? I haven’t told you. My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife and I are going to Rome in a couple weeks. I’m looking forward to many things, obviously, though drinking espresso, just stopping at random bars while we’re out strolling to down an espresso before continuing our leisurely stroll, is high on the list. And every time I sip an espresso in Rome - that’s Rome, Italy - I’m going to imagine I’m sipping it like Lady Gaga in the “House of Gucci” trailer, like in the space of that cup the moment is eternal. 

Ray of Light

This is old news by now, I know, in the context of Internet Time. But this blog is on Internet-Aleutian Time, so here we are. Last week Lady Gaga, Her Gaganess, posted a photo to Instagram of her and Adam Driver on the Italian Alps set of Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film “House of Gucci.”  And though Gaga plays Patrizia Reggiani, who was sentenced to 29 years in prison for plotting the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci (Driver), the Internet swooned over the innate allure of what Variety’s Rebecca Rubin deemed their “après-ski chic” and the memes predictably went wild. Many compared Driver’s cable knit sweater to the one Chris Evans sported in “Knives Out”, some superimposed the image over the background of the planet Hoth, Daniel Nolen saw similarities to Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford in “The Way We Were” while another pleaded for an 80s heist movie in which our pictorial subjects pilfered an alpine resort. The latter two felt more right to me even if I was thinking of a different era. 

Early in the Pandemic My Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife and I re-watched the original “Pink Panther” (1963). It’s a strange movie, in its way, famously conceived as a vehicle for David Niven playing a jewel thief known as the Phantom until director Blake Edwards that a supporting Peter Sellers was essentially stealing the film in his role as bumbling Inspector Jacques Closeau and transformed that part into something like a co-lead. That means half the movie is slapstick comedy, half the movie is relaxed caper comedy. If it doesn’t quite work, it also sort of does, as Closeau’s comical sincerity suggests someone trying to maintain order even as he fails to realize the gentry surrounding him are really running the show. And though we turned to “The Pink Panther” specifically for Sellers, I found myself more drawn to the other storyline, the love triangle with Niven and Robert Wagner and Capucine. In fact, Capucine briefly sports a cossack hat, as does Cardinale, not unlike Gaga’s and that’s what I thought of when I saw that photo.

Vogue’s Lilah Ramzi saw this back in January without even knowing she saw it, literally deeming “The Pink Panther” the “Ultimate in Après Ski Style.” Belated air high five, Lilah. She cites a song and dance sequence featuring Fran Jeffries who sings for the camera while the actors in the movie watch, breaking the fourth wall to underline the movie for the sheer entertainment it is and transforming the background into a virtual fashion show. Of course, if you have Gaga in the lead role then you don’t have to hire a singer too; Gaga is Jeffries and Capucine and Cardinale. And she will be Audrey Hepburn, too, from the beginning of “Charade.” She will be all of them mixed in a crystal spritz glass. It will not be “The Way We Were” and it will not be an 80s heist movie. No, no, no, no, no. It will not be a heist movie at all. We do not want a heist even if something is being stolen; we want a caper. It will be a caper film set on and around the slopes of Cortina d’Ampezzo. We’ll keep Driver, of course, but we will add Monica Bellucci too, duh, and set it against the backdrop of the 1956 Winter Olympics, obviously, and figure out the rest later.

Ray of Light

The legendary Sports Illustrated scribe Dr. Z, née Paul Zimmerman, who died in 2018 at the age of 86, timed every rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner he heard. He wrote about this unique predilection in a piece, near as I can tell, since scrubbed from the Internet, though I remember the gist of it quite well, how the song, ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’, on which Francis Scott Key based his future National Anthem was a British pub tune in waltz time, a little ditty intended to be belted out quickly over a few drinks, not a marching band power ballad meant to herald flyovers. If the pre-game singing of a Star-Spangled Banner stretched longer than a minute, Z’s thinking went, you might be honoring America, albeit in over-inflated fashion, but not the song. So he clocked them all, searching for the 60-second versions, which were not entirely elusive but hard to come by nonetheless, too many destined to die on what he deemed Heartbreak Hill, the last two lines, when people threaten to extend that O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave into forever. If to some Whitney Houston’s Star-Spangled Banner before the 1991 Super Bowl was the greatest, to Dr. Z it was two-minutes plus. Nein. 

I have always sided with Z’s interpretation. I have a written a variation of this before but the stiff pageantry, not to the mention the patriotically correct add-ons (put your hand over your heart or else), frequently leave me feeling more distant from America than close to it. I do not mean to begrudge anyone for whom the Anthem culls genuine emotion. I feel it sometimes too, though generally from the circumstances, like an Olympian on the podium, rather than the song itself or the performance of it. The Star-Spangled Banner, as many more qualified to know than me have explained, is not inherently much of a song (Z noted The Battle Hymn of the Republic puts it away) and notoriously difficult to sing. Singing along to it, in fact, reminds me of my Lutheran pastor once instructing my confirmation class to recite the Lord’s Prayer, not with any feeling, just to prove we knew the words, which flashed me back to so many pre-class recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance and renditions of The Star-Spangled Banner before I-Cub games when my mind was anywhere else. Too often we sing the words without hearing them, a ceremonial formality, little else.

If, however, as Amanda Petrusich has argued for The New Yorker, the standardized Star-Spangled banner has made it sort of sacrilege to monkey with, what Lady Gaga did with the Anthem at President Joe Biden’s Inauguration last Wednesday was not reimagine it so much as refocus it. Like Bruce Springsteen seeing “When the Saints Go Marching In” not as joyful exultation but an apocalyptic hymn in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, or, more obscurely, how Jim O’Rourke heard something different and clear as a bell in mixing Wilco’s “I’m Trying to Break Your Heart” into a masterpiece, Lady Gaga saw The Star-Spangled Banner’s middle, not Heartbreak Hill, as the crux.

As The Washington Post’s Chris Richards notes, Key’s anthem contains a question, wondering if the American flag will still be there at Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814 after a night’s bombardment. Lady Gaga’s version of the song honored that question, filtering through the prism of what had transpired two weeks earlier at the very same place, the U.S. Capitol, where she was standing. (The War of 1812, really, was no less stupid than what transpired on January 6, 2021.) “Just as she sang, ‘But our flag was still there,’” Stephanie Zacharek wrote of the rendition’s crucial moment, “she turned and, astonishingly, with a sweep of the arm straight out of Puccini or Verdi or Bizet, directed our attention to the actual flag. Her intent wasn’t just a subtext. It was a shout of jubilation and defiance. After all of this, our flag is still there!” In that single sweep of her arm, Gaga bridged the gap of 207 years, drew on both the surrounding context and the words of the song, melding them as one, lifting it up beyond compulsory pageantry to give it a pulse. The end, then, became not the bombastic culmination, leaving space for imaginary F-16s, but the emphatic benediction.

I don’t know what Dr. Z would have thought about Lady Gaga’s National Anthem. Maybe he would have just thought: it ran 1:45. Or maybe he would have put the stopwatch down because occasionally, rarely, even a Star-Spangled Banner can transcend time.

Lady Gaga: Oscar Winner

The Oscars have spoken. And more than even usual, there seems a lot to say. But I don’t want to say all that right now. I don’t even want to think about all that right now. Like Kramer waving off Jerry trying to talk him down for celebrating a Tony he didn’t actually win, nothing is taking me down off this high. Gaga, my girl, my hero, is an Oscar winner. Everything else is just noise. Talk to me tomorrow.

Oscars 2019: Best Dressed

Hi, y’all! It’s Saturday February 23rd! That means the 91st Academy Awards are not until tomorrow! And that means the Red Carpet is still over 24 hours away, slated to get rolling around 3:30 PM (PST) with Jamie Luner, Brooke Theiss, Heather Langenkamp, and JoAnn Willette, former co-stars of the wacky ABC comedy “Just the Ten of Us” (1987-90), scheduled for hosting duties along with Ryan “I Didn’t Know There Was A 1976 ‘A Star Is Born’” Seacrest. As such, we have no idea what any of the Oscar megastars will be wearing until then. Still, one need not actually see Saturn’s rings through the window of a passing spacecraft to know its circular water ice is the universe’s most luminescent. And one need not actually see Lady Gaga’s dress to know it’s already the most chic.

That’s why today Cinema Romantico will go ahead and declare Lady Gaga as Oscar 2019’s Best Dressed. This is not confirmation bias, of course, because we do not yet even have evidence to be biased about, and this is certainly beyond the reach of any fashion market research, whether based on data-driven industry analysis or the whims of the “Just the Ten of Us” daughters. No, this is merely ahead of time inherent cosmic truth.

Speculative living sketch of Ms. Gaga’s Oscar dress

Ruminating on Oscar Nomination Eve (or: la meilleure affaire d’actrice)

Tomorrow, early in the California morning, nominations for the 90th Academy Awards will be announced. Instant reaction will spew forth. Cinema Romantico is traditionally among the spewers. After all, we retain a soft spot for Oscar festivities, even if we have, as most do, myriad nits to pick with the Academy’s practices, whether it is questions of the industry’s diversity or, of course, nominations that feel more indicative of the Eisenhower Era. However, this blog will refrain from spew tomorrow morning, not from any kind of self-righteous protest (ha!) but because we are taking a mini-vacation to parts elsewhere (more on that tomorrow) and our flight departs not long after the nods are revealed. Even so, tomorrow could bring glorious news seeing as how this blogger is a Little Monster and Lady Gaga may well be earning a Best Actress nomination for “A Star is Born.”

Back in September I wrote a post entitled Preparing for the Possibility of a Lady Gaga Oscar Nomination in the wake of its rapturous premiere. The post was tongue in cheek, I suppose, in that way of me wanting to frustrate loyal frustrated readers with one of my patented ridiculous recurring bits. But a funny thing happened on the way to the recurring bit – that is, I saw “A Star Is Born.” I never thought Gaga was going to be bad, mind you, but I also never thought she would take me to the mountaintop. I never thought she would make me feel like I was seeing her for the first time all over again, which is what she did when she sort of airily bounced away from the camera as her character walked out on her job, carrying me away on her Gaga feathers, and then showed up at the gig and almost impercetibly choked back vomit before she hustled out onstage and then closed her eyes and totally Gaga-ized the vocal and, sweet mercy. I waited a decade for her “Thunder Road” moment; that was her “Thunder Road” moment; I welled up.

Still, she was good in a way my exorbitant passion for all things Gaga does not do justice. She nailed line readings, sure, and added indelible little bits of actorly business, as that aforementioned nigh vomit suggests, but she was good in so much as she was, you know, giving a performance by creating a character. That her Ally could remain resolute as her star rose was directly connected to her father’s kitchen and her resolve in the face of him and his idiot friends. Gaga played the role like the character, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, knew where she came from every inch of the way. And so, her legit acting brilliance combined with my intense Gaga devotion made it so that I was no longer rooting for her Oscar nomination or even rooting for her to win the Oscar; I pulled a Jedi mind trick on myself and became convinced she really would win the Oscar.

She still might. Who knows? I certainly don’t. But Glenn Close winning the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Performance in a mild upset (in so much as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association typically opts for drooling over its biggest stars) brought me back down to earth. It makes me think it might be Close’s “time”. Granted, I was ready for it to be Annette Bening’s “time” two years and she didn’t even get nominated. But the drumbeat for Close’s “time” seems louder. And whereas once, in the unlearned wilderness of youth, I was strictly opposed to “It’s Her/His Time” Oscars, I am now completely cool with them as something like professional karma, and Ms. Close has starred in over 50 feature films while Ms. Gaga has starred in 1. That is not to suggest Close’s performance in “The Wife” is not worthy; it is. I had issues with “The Wife” itself, but not with Close, as I outlined in my review. And this is not to suggest Gaga’s performance in “A Star Is Born” is not worthy. As a critic, I think it is. And as a critic, I see an even more interesting angle.

Closes’s role, as the title suggests, is an inversion of the Long Suffering Wife archetype. Her husband is a Nobel-winning author who (spoiler alert!) does not seem to have actually written his Nobel-winning work; his wife did. Gaga’s role is as a sudden singing star who quickly surpasses the mentor – Bradley Cooper’s rock star – who discovers her. Yet if Gaga’s character and performance define the film, the film is about Cooper’s character realizing he is being passed by and, failing to cope, checking out, spiritually and literally. It’s a curious thing, empowering her even if the camera turns its gaze somewhere else, cosmically linking these two women in a way, both more advanced than the men they stand beside that (reluctantly) stand beside them.

Gaga and Glenn were literally linked at the recent Critics Choice Awards where they tied for Best Actress. Ties, reader, warm my jaded heart. “Ties are Switzerland,” sportswriter Stefan Fatsis recently said on an episode of the Hang Up and Listen sports podcast. “And who hates Switzerland?” he asked before taking the position of a prospective dissenter and continuing, “But you say, Switzerland is boring. And that’s why America hates ties. We hate neutrality, we cannot abide indecision, we demand resolution.” Indeed, at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi American skiing great Picabo Street had a mega beef with the scoring system that permitted for a Downhill tie between Slovenia’s Tina Maze and Switzerland’s Dominique Gisin. Too bad Street couldn’t be a little more like Maze who saw her co-Gold Medal not as cause for grousing but the genesis for “two happy faces.” And that’s what I thought of when I saw Gaga and Glenn standing together.

Who knows what would happen if the Academy somehow managed to replicate that tie. I imagine Film Twitter would be full of Picabo Streets. But the Oscars have been down this road. You might remember the 41st Academy Awards. You might remember a famous singer winning Best Actress for her first acting role and you might remember a legend, a lioness winning Best Actress too. Sounds a little familiar. Sigh. A boy can dream, can’t he?

Post-Golden Globes Oscar Predictions

The Golden Globes, Hollywood’s official Office Party, were last night. There were a lot of unexpected results. You can scroll through news, in a manner of speaking, relating to those and what they may or probably do not mean in the vat of sulfuric acid that is Film Twitter. Or you can just go see a movie and, like, form your own opinion, man. Either way, in lieu of the Golden Globes, we have officially revised our Official Oscar Predictions.

Best Picture: .....

Best Director: .....

Best Actor: .....

Best Actress: Lady Gaga, “A Star Is Born”

Best Supporting Actor: .....

Best Supporting Actress: .....

Best Original Screenplay: .....

Best Adapted Screenplay: .....

Best Foreign Language Film: .....

(Revised) Oscar Predictions

The National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle bestowed their 2018 awards last week with numerous other critics awards and nominations for Hollywood’s Office Christmas Party coming up soon meaning we have entered the First Sunday, so to speak, of Awards Season. As such, it is time for Cinema Romantico to Officially revise its Official Oscar Predictions.

Best Picture: .....

Best Director: .....

Best Actor: .....

Best Actress: Lady Gaga, “A Star Is Born”

Best Supporting Actor: .....

Best Supporting Actress: .....

Best Original Screenplay: .....

Best Adapted Screenplay: .....

Best Foreign Language Film: .....

Laying Our Cards on the Table

Cinema Romantico strives for intellectual honesty. Every review, or nearly every review, unless otherwise indicated, which will be addressed momentarily, on this blog is penned from a critical distance. I acknowledge, or hope to, the movie being reviewed on its terms, and then work through that movie to try and determine if it succeeds on those terms and if it breaks through to find some deeper truth and, if so, why. I am trying, in other words, to live in the image of that recent New York Times Magazine piece by Wesley Morris – Should Art Be a Battleground for Social Justice? – lamenting how so often these days critics start from an ideological point and work backwards rather than vice-versa. His piece mirrored a different piece written almost a whole year earlier by Michael Pattison at his site idFilm, who, throwing all kinds of agreeable shade, said, “Tired of form, we wanted meaning. The medium was no longer the message. ‘In fact, just give us the message.’” Cinema Romantico wants to extrapolate the message from the medium, see.

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Cinema Romantico seeks emotional honesty. A man goes to a movie, as they say, and he must admit he is that man. Biases, emotional or otherwise, are present in each of us. I try, however, to generally leave those biases outside the theater, or, perhaps more accurately, turn them off later when writing the movie’s analysis. And yet, my biases can occasionally override critical detachment and still seep in, if not gush right on through. If so, I recognize the infiltration of those biases and either 1.) Eliminate them or 2.) Acknowledge them and provide my analysis through their prism. I firmly believe the latter should not be ruled out of order so long as the critic is being honest with her/his self. And even if I have tried to siphon much of the emotionalism out of my reviews over the years, when it is time to review with my feelings, first, foremost, and maybe nothing else, I will.

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Ah, but Cinema Romantico contains multitudes, and sometimes our emotional honesty erupts into hyper-emotional honesty. You might say “hyper-emotional honesty? That’s just hyperbole.” But hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally, and while my hyper-emotional honesty is generally an exaggeration it is also absolutely meant to be taken literally. If, for instance, I say that Lady Gaga can breathe fire, a la a mythical dragon, I mean this figuratively, of course, obviously, but also literally, just not literally-literally, which is not metaphorically, understand, but a kind of mystical actuality. And I mean this literally, so to speak, because I am, full disclosure, a Little Monster. Now, that does not mean I am impossibly partial where Her Gaganess is concerned. I can tell you “Joanne”, much to my chagrin, was just eh. I gave a so-so review to “Gaga: Five Foot Two.” I was intellectually honest in my analysis of her turn in “A Star Is Born.” But.

While it is entirely possible – nay, probable – that Ms. Gaga’s “A Star Is Born” performance will not, at year’s end, be both the pragmatic “best” and my favorite, it will simultaneously and absolutely be both the pragmatic “best” and my favorite. Indeed, even if the Academy Awards are, as of today, precisely four long, long months away, the Best Actress Oscar race here at Cinema Romantico is, 100%, over. If someone else ultimately deserves the Oscar more, I will say so, while also saying that this speculative other person does not deserve the Oscar more at all. Both things, as the pundits make clear over and over and over these days, can be true.

Got it? Good. Go Gaga.

A Star Is Born

The title card of the 2018 version of “A Star Is Born” evokes the predecessors on which it is based with an opulent, Technicolor-ish red even as it offers something new, stretching across the whole screen, leaving a small space in the middle for the eponymous star, Ally, to fit right through, twirling, like all the world’s a stage and she was born to glide across it. That’s true of Ally but also of the woman playing her – iconic pop star Lady Gaga. If Gaga intended her 2017 Netflix documentary “Gaga: Five Foot Two” as revelatory, she still felt guarded, covered up, even when she was literally topless onscreen. In Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, however, Gaga comes to life, playing Ally with an insecure exterior and a more forceful interior born of an Italian Catholic iron will. The latter is glimpsed in home scenes with her father (Andrew Dice Clay, moving, really) where she emotes with the loving exasperation of an entire upbringing, suggesting what has held her back and giving her strength to move forward. Even later in the film when Ally becomes a sensation and dons costumes and wigs, Gaga has so nimbly laid the groundwork in removing her character’s mask, that her real soul shines bright.

If Ally finds her way, Jackson Maine (Cooper), a country-western superstar, is losing his. Cooper’s croaked mumbles recall the Oscar-winning turn of Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake in “Crazy Heart”, yes, but his head-down, demurring attitude is just as evocative of Joaquin Phoenix’s more polite moments as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line.” Indeed, even if Jackson pops pills, drinks too much, suffers from tinnitus, and feuds with his manger brother Bobby (Sam Elliot, who cocks his head with as much get off my lawn gusto as Gary Cooper wielded a six shooter), Cooper invests Jackson with enough haggard compassion to suggest he’s less trouble than flawed. But he’s spiritually underwater, which his physical sluggishness illustrates, and he needs a way up.

He finds one when, in search of a drink, he unwittingly enters a drag club and sees Ally perform. That the gaggle of kindly drag queens makes way for a straight woman is written off in one line, and may or may not be rooted to truth, but comes across like one of those Golden Age films where a boarding house have banded together to navigate a patriarchal word. And Ally slithering around the club singing “La Vie en Rose” feels born of the Golden Age too as Gaga channels the ghost of Rita Hayworth as much as Judy Garland, eventually splayed across the bar and looking right into Jackson’s eyes in an electric scene evoking how the right music show on the right night can see right through you.

When he approaches her afterward in the dressing room there is less an air of fantasy than anxious hesitation as Gaga plays the moment with with a convincing, halting suspicion about what he really wants, pulling away her hand when he takes hers, demonstrating an honesty within her character and about the whole world. No, he must prove his courtliness, and does in an extended sequence where he tends to her wound after a bar fight. It is familiar stuff played with a ring of truth, where her eyes betray an escalating enchantment and his eyes are not puppy-dog so much as dumbfounded. And while Jackson removing Ally’s false eyebrows might symbolically connote her character’s veneer crumbling, when she spontaneously breaks into a song in a parking lot she is not just signaling her immense talent but saying to him “I trust you.”

Visually the scene mirrors the whole movie, with big close-ups the preferred angle, not that Gaga frequently over-emotes in them. When Ally is about to surge onstage, Gaga’s choking back vomit is ephemeral rather than emphasized. And while the banter over Ally’s nose is properly playful, you sometimes wish Cooper more often just let that nose speak for itself. You also might wish for a few more master shots, whether to establish scene and situation or just let moments breathe, the few wide frames being less for our benefit than Ally and Jackson’s, giving them flickers of privacy. Still, the visual strategy correlates to the movie’s narrative intimacy, mimicking “Million Dollar Baby” in so much as a movie about someone going global deliberately refrains from showing us the masses.

Jackson functions less as Ally’s mentor than a conduit to the industry, which happens when she walks out on her job to attend one of his gigs. Gaga plays this moment not with devil-may-care defiance but giggling like she can’t believe it as she throws caution to the wind, with Cooper intelligently not ending the scene on Ally’s boss punctuating the scene with some dumb one-liner to ensure the moment is hers. And when, arriving at the show in a palpable moment of adrenalized delirium, Ally seeming to float, momentarily disappearing in the popping bright white of a spotlight, emblemizing the turn her life is about to take, the whole movie becomes hers. Jackson summons Ally to the stage, leading her in a duet of a song, “Shallow”, she’s written, the lyrics, a la “Once”, matching the moment, Ally having swum, so to speak, far out from the shallow end, a fear which Gaga’s eyes evince even as that full-throated sonic uppercut she eventually unleashes signifies a self-confidence that had been rumbling inside all along.

Swiftly, marking the nature of Our Times, she becomes a star, culminating in a shot onstage playing piano alongside Jackson where her face appears on the giant video board hanging above. Cooper sets the shot so that essentially she’s singing to herself, visually demarcating the moment when the apprentice surpasses the master, and when the narrative hands itself off from Ally & Jackson to Jackson and his tailspin. The latter stems from jealousy over his her sudden success, though that jealously is born more from his increasingly alcoholic fog and an emergent dissatisfaction with, to quote “Shallow” itself, the modern world. All this tracks along a predictable line and to a predictable conclusion, whether or not you have seen the previous versions, which is not so much the problem as how many story beats need to be hit at precise intervals to get us there, sadly letting so much atmospheric air out as it opts for more basic and expedient narrative filmmaking.

It also suffers from a lack of Gaga. But then, her character has found herself, and this back half is not about Jackson losing himself so much as realizing he is obstructing her ascendant superstardom. That point is conveyed by Cooper’s sheepish smiles throughout, as if he’s almost embarrassed to still be the camera’s point, a fascinating, vexing paradox wherein the leading man seems to know he’s in the way even as the director – who, of course, is the leading man – makes him the focus anyway. You admire it more than embrace it with arms outstretched, this backslide into tragedy, which, inadvertently or otherwise, makes a solid case for the rock star fantasy of burning out rather than fading away.

Preparing for the Possibility of a Lady Gaga Oscar Nomination

Hi, friends. It is merely mid-September and so most of you, if not all of you, have no interest in a State of the Oscar Race missive. The Academy Awards, after all, are but a faraway Alpha Centauri-ish glimmer in the sky, and so there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of films striving for critical and peer praise that have yet to be released. But there have been significant developments in the last couple weeks. “A Star Is Born”, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut and remake, of sorts, of the 1978 movie which was a remake, of sorts, of the 1954 movie which was a remake, of sorts, of the 1937 movie which was a remake, of sorts, of 1932’s “What Price Hollywood?” screened at the Venice Film Festival and then at the Toronto International Film Festival and was met with critical rapture, believe the hype tweets, and standing ovations. “A Star Is Born Looks Like An Oscar Contender”, brayed The Atlantic. “Oscar Voters Are Sure to Go Gaga for Bradley Cooper’s ‘A Star Is Born,’”, declared Variety in what sounds like a headline straight outta Tronc-approved journalism school. The latter is what interests us. Is it true? Might one Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta earn an Oscar nomination?

We are not here to say yay or nay. And we are definitely not here to say whether or not she will win if she is nominated. No, Cinema Romantico is merely here to prepare you for the possibility that Lady Gaga will be nominated for an Oscar. What, you might be wondering, will the pop culture landscape look like in the wake of such an event? Awards Backlashologists are already predicting the adverse response might be beyond the the damage assessment measuring capabilities of The Hathaway Scale. However, this blog is in a unique position to answer the most pertinent questions in the face of this suddenly very real possibility – that position being a person with a picture of Lady Gaga and Bruce Springsteen stuck to his refrigerator (which his Beautiful, Perspicacious Wife lovingly tolerates). We feel like any worries you might have should the name Lady Gaga be called the morning of January 22, 2019 are worries we can talk you through.

You Are Worried That….. Lady Gaga Will Wear A Meat Dress To The Oscars. Hey, you’ve lived through Barbra’s mauve cape, and Bjork’s swan, and Juliette Binoche draping herself in velvet, okay, so you’ll be fine wehther Gaga quotes Mitzi Del Bra, or shows up in a Gaultier sack-back gown, or, evoking her 60 Minutes interview, shows up sans makeup and drinking whiskey.

You Are Worried That..... Lady Gaga Will Make Some Sort Of Overdramatic Entrance. This is a problem? Give me a choice of Jimmy Kimmel dropping candy from the sky for the third straight Oscars or Gaga channeling her Venice entrance where she perched on the edge of a taxi boat wearing black stilettos and blowing kisses, her hair up in victory rolls like she was Betty Grable on her way to the premiere of “Song of the Islands”, and I’m taking the latter in a heartbeat. I hope she shows up to the Oscars riding a giant mechanical dragon puppet breathing foam fire. Try and ask the dragon a question before it eats you, Seacrest.

You Are Worried That….. Lady Gaga’s Acceptance Speech Would Be Over-Earnest, Cringe-Worthy Dreck. I was at Lollapalooza 2010 when Ms. Gaga had but one and a half albums at her disposal was forced to significantly banter between songs to fill time, though her banter was less Neko Case-y comical than counting her blessings, over and over, which struggled to blend with declarations of taking a ride on other people’s disco sticks, and such. It didn’t really work, even for me, person with Lady Gaga on his refrigerator, and I can only assume if she did somehow win the Oscar that her speech would last way too long and get way too emotional. She already went Sally Field at TIFF. But Sally Field went Sally Field at the Oscars and the world’s still turning.

You Are Worried That..... Lady Gaga’s Oscar Nomination Will Complete Her Mainstream Ascension. Ah, I see you original Gaga fan! You, Little Monster, before Little Monsters became as trendy as Hufflepuffs. And you should know better than anyone that Gaga is neither Mainstream nor Punk Rock; she is Artpop. An Oscar nomination will merely make her more powerful.

You Are Worried That..... Lady Gaga’s Oscar Nomination Would Inevitably Lead To A Lady Gaga Jukebox Musical. Too late! I am already shopping my “Highway Unicorn” script around Hollywood!

You Are Worried That….. Lady Gaga Will Get An Oscar Nominaton Before Kirsten Dunst. This is a very real fear, and it is a very real fear that I understand. I am, after all, a Dunst Completist, a Kiki Enthusiast. That she has not received an Oscar nomination is a literal crime in the kangaroo court of Hollywood. And yet, if in the wake of a Gaga Oscar nod I was called to testify on behalf of Ms. Dunst, given my long-standing love of her acting and steadfast belief she gave the best performance of 1998, I would raise my right hand, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then tell everyone clamoring for Stefani’s head, in my official capacity as a Dunst Devotee, to just, like, chill out, okay?

You Are Worried That...... Lady Gaga Can’t Act. That’s probably only because you think Lady Gaga can’t sing.

You Are Worried That….. Lady Gaga’s Nomination Will Push Out A More Deserving Performance. For the love of god, this happens every year. Remember when Cinema Romantico was convinced two years ago that it was Annette Bening’s “time”?

You Are Worried That….. It’s Supposed To Be Glenn Close’s “Time”. If it’s her “time”, it will be. A Gaga nod will not impede Close.  It’s not Gaga’s “time”; it’s Gaga Time. It’s always Gaga Time, at least in Little Monster Land, perched beneath the big rainbow between Mountain and Pacific. And if she gets that Oscar nod, whether you like it or not, all time in the United States, from coast to coast, will be governed according to Gaga too.

Parallelism vis-à-vis Cinema Romantico-ism

“Hey...” 

“What?”  

“I just wanted to take another look at ya.”

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“What are you looking at, sir?” 

“Why I’m looking at you, miss.” 

Gaga: Five Foot Two

The key scene in the just-premiered Netflix documentary “Gaga: Five Foot Two” finds the titular pop star playing the title track to her new album, “Joanne”, for her grandmother. This is because Joanne was her grandmother’s daughter, Gaga’s father’s sister, and Gaga’s aunt, though Gaga never met her because Joanne died at the age of 19 from lupus. Before playing the song, however, Gaga’s Grandmother shows her granddaughter a poem that Joanne wrote, and when Gaga reads it, Lord, it’s like she’s looking in a mirror. The poem goes: “I wear a mask / a thousand masks / so I play the game / the glittering but empty parade of the masks.”

“Gaga: Five Foot Two” opens in the throes of her recent Super Bowl halftime show, the camera positioned just below her dangling glittery boots as she is suspended in mid-air from a harness, her face off camera, before the wires pull her up, up and up, as if disappearing into the heavens. It then cuts directly to her at home, in sweatpants, feeding chicken to her dogs. This is clearly a mission statement, the documentary seeking to cut through the makeup and wigs and artistic artifice, to find Stefani Joanne Germanotta. And occasionally the finished product does stumble into a delightfully unforced intimacy, like the aforementioned scene at her grandmother’s, where Stefani asks her father if he wants a cup of coffee, and her father’s smartphone peeks out from the top of his button-up’s front pocket, which isn’t anything really other than a happy accident of natural costume design. On the other hand, when Gaga, in the middle of a backyard business conversation, appears topless, it feels less real than calculated. Either way, director Chris Moukarbe can never connect any of this normality, real or imagined, to the documentary’s through-line.

That through-line is the recording of “Joanne”, which we see in bits and pieces, at the studio, in the mixing room. We only hear a handful of songs, like the title track, like “A Million Reasons”, but very little insight is convyed about the record’s intent or how it connects to who she is. “I am Joanne. I am my father’s daughter. That’s what this record about,” she tells New York Times writer Darryl Pinckney. Pinckney’s expression remains rather blank, like he’s taking this statement as the banality it is rather than an unpacking of what that statement means, which is what “Gaga: Five Feet Two” repeatedly avoids, whether by accident or design.

Whatever meaning the doc does impart just sort of intrinsically rises from the footage itself. The most genuinely affecting moments in “Gaga: Five Feet Two” are seeing her cope with grueling physical injuries suffered from her arduous concerts, as well as confessing to a doctor the emotional stress constantly eating at her and that, contradictorily, sadly, the only place she feels free from that emotional toil is the place that causes her physical toil – that is, the stage, and, even more, the act of performance, which, judging by so much of the content here, might be, as has been the case for so many artists, her genuine addiction.

“She had a lot of talent,” says Gaga’s grandmother of the real Joanne, “but she didn’t have much time.” You can’t help but wonder if Gaga has taken that as something like a personal creed, to pack in everything, which is why we see her jumping from project to project throughout the film, from recording her album to acting on “American Horror Story” to playing her music live to planning her Super Bowl halftime show. And the movie ends there, at the Super Bowl, where, just before she takes the stage, her handlers fasten a mask to her face. Then the movie cycles back around to the opening shot, where she is lifted into the air and vanishes.

Pitching Lady Gaga/Muppet Duets

Did you hear the news?! Lady Gaga is filming a Muppets Holiday Special! We here at Cinema Romantico have been clamoring for a Gaga/Muppets collaboration since way back when, and are overjoyed to see it come to fruition in any capacity. I can only imagine such a special will involve a number of song performances featuring Gaga and her various Muppet cohorts, and so Cinema Romantico - a full-fledged and utterly unashamed Little Monster - is here to provide a few suggestions as to just what such a primetime special could include.


Kermit. “I'm Sticking With You”, Velvet Underground. Close your eyes. Go ahead. Don't be bashful. Close 'em. Now, remove all pre-conceived notions from your mind. C'mon. Remove 'em! All right? We good? Good. Imagine Kermit & Gaga singing this song and, I swear, it will just feel......right.


Miss Piggy. “I Shot Mr. Lee”, The Bobbettes. People of a certain age likely know The Bobettes’ “Mr. Lee” as being part of the stellar “Stand By Me” soundtrack. But people of a certain age, and of other ages, may not be as familiar with the follow-up, the slightly more sinister minded “I Shot Mr. Lee.” (“One, two, three, I shot Mr. Lee. Three, four, five, I got tired of his jive.”) Can you imagine a Gaga/Piggy duet on this tune? CAN YOU IMAGINE??? I’m inclined to say this is the one I most want to see.


Gonzo. “Suspicious Minds”, Elvis Presley. I feel like Gaga and Gonzo would get along pretty well, two creatures enamored with show-biz and a craving for the spotlight. And I feel like putting The Great Gonzo in his patented cape - evoking a late-era Elvis - and Gaga in an Ann-Margret wig and having them croon this classic together would bring the house down. Perhaps over the closing credits?


Fozzie Bear. “Spirit in the Sky”, Norman Greenbaum. Performing this number with the Muppets' resident funny man will indulge the meta side of Gaga, being that Greenbaum more or less wrote the song as a joke, tossing off a “gospel” song just to prove he could write one despite never having written one and knowing nothing about gospel music. Plus, the thought of hearing this song in Fozzie's voice leaves me in stitches.

Rowlf. “Faster Than The Speed Of Night”, Bonnie Tyler. You might not know that the resident E Street pianist (which is to say, Bruce Springsteen's pianist) Roy Bittan played on this totally righteous track, and if anyone can possibly live up to the majestic Bittan Sound, well, it’s Rowlf. Imagining Rowlf rocking the keys as Gaga struts and preens and shrieks in the foreground makes me joyously delirious. (Admission: I have long been desperate to hear Lady Gaga sing this song, partially because I think my single greatest wish is for Roy Bittan to produce a Lady Gaga album.)

I’d like to take this moment to advise the Lady Gaga/Muppet Holiday Special should include a cameo from Emily Blunt reprising her role as Miss Piggy's sassy Parisian secretary. Make this happen, ABC. No excuses.

Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem. “When The Levees Break”, Led Zeppelin. Some contend Animal is based on The Who’s Keith Moon, but I’d like to think of him more as a John Bonham. If you can’t envision Animal riding a motorcycle through a Muppet Theater hallway, you’re crazy.


Beaker. “Physical", Olivia Newton-John. Here we’d get Gaga into one of her more less-than-existing outfits and have her chase a terrified Beaker around his laboratory while belting out this song before finally Beaker’s head just explodes.


Statler & Waldorf. “Pass the Mic”, Beastie Boys. Really, what are Statler & Waldorf but old-school bomb-droppers from the balcony?

Machete Kills

"But then I realized, there's not a lot going on up there." This is what a particular character says at a crucial juncture in the film of our title character, Machete (Danny Trejo), an unrepentantly old school ("Machete don't Tweet") secret agent, who has been tasked to save America and, by extension, the world itself. I would argue, however, that this assessment is unfair.

Machete may stalk through the entire overlong film with the same scowl, but this does not mean he fails to process the avalanche of exposition he overhears. He relays all the pertinent facts each time he is called upon for the 411, it's just that these pertinent facts disinterest him. Except they are only disinteresting to him because he is acutely aware of their uselessness. No movie in 2013 will include more gobbledygook about the who, when, where, why, and how than "Machete Kills." Everyone explains everything. In fact, they over-explain everything to the point that it's difficult to comprehend anything, and this is what leaves Machete with that dull scowl. Why all the details when the only detail that matters is Machete kicking ass? He's just in a hurry to get to the action scenes and can't understand why no one will shut up.

Robert Rodriguez's sequel to his 2010 opus which itself was based off a fake trailer featured in his 2007 two-part ode to the "Grindhouse" is far less a movie about politics south of the border and yada yada than a collage of characters and images and set pieces with purposely poor special effects and scattered bits of machine gun fire and push-up bras. There may be a few humorous nods to the "Star Wars" franchise but more than that Rodriguez riffs on Russ Meyer, in so much as every.single.woman featured features to the extreme their cleavage.

I don't mean to imply Rodriguez is a sexist. He lets his ladies - be it Amber Heard as Miss San Antonio and Machete's handler, be it Michelle Rodriguez in an eyepatch, be it Sofia Vergara running a brothel of scantily clad assassins - get in on the action, throw punches, kick people in the face (and other lady-centric places), fire guns, and the whole what-have-ya.

The problem is not the action's stylistic lack of style, the problem is there being so much of it. At first it's a little funny, but a bad key being banged on the piano over and over and over becomes grating after twenty minutes, let alone one-hundred and forty-seven. Canny ideas remain on the periphery, unwilling to even try to sustain themselves. I'm aware it's not the aesthetic for which Rodriguez is aiming here, yet each "Machete" film has desperately made me long for that first half-hour of "Desperado", a virtual ballet of action-movie choreography accomplishing nothing beyond being cinema for cinema's sake. Making movies cheaply and on the fly is admirable in this age of out-of-control budgets, and the man's work ethic is impressive, but it would be nice to see Rodriguez shoot for the stars figuratively rather than literally. (Yes, "Machete Kills" goes to space. Sort of.)

The actors, at least, generally appear to be having fun, particularly Demain Bichir, who is really allowed to cut loose, and Amber Heard who, bless her soul, is truly acting her ass off, and Mel Gibson as the requisite villain, playfully spoofing his own image and actually re-demonstrating what a clever, committed actor he is regardless of what a terrible human being he may (or may not, I don't know him) be.

Oh. Right. "Machete Kills" also stars Lady Gaga. You didn't think you were getting out of this review with at least a paragraph about this blog's beloved siren from the lower east side making her feature film debut in a role that may (or may not) be three (or four) roles at once. Which is key. You say she's merely playing herself, I say none of us even know who she is. The opening of the film is actually a make-believe trailer that touts Lady Gaga "starring as whatever the hell she wants to be." Which is sort of what she is and what her role in "Machete Kills" is. Whether she's really her, or whether her is someone else, or that someone else is someone else, is not explicitly clear, and would, as is often the case, be less interesting if it was. A chameleon in her own life, a chameleon on camera. So what if she's only in it for 120 seconds?

Over-Analyzing The Machete Kills Trailer Part 4

In opposition of this post's title and this ongoing series of updates no one that reads Cinema Romantico really wants, sometimes there is no need to over-analyze. Sometimes it's best to simply let an image speak for itself.

Over-Analyzing The Machete Kills Trailer Part 3

We're back! The third trailer (version: red band) for Robert Rodriguez's forthcoming "Machete Kills" just dropped via IGN. The previous installments of over-analyzing these previews have involved much speculation regarding the specifc role being played by fair devious maiden Lady Gaga. This latest trailer, however, officially ceases all speculation. Her specific role is now clear.

Lady Gaga is playing the baddest mama jama since Beatrix Kiddo sheathed her Hanzo sword.

How do we know this to be true? We know this to be true for two reasons.

1.) Lady Gaga is apparently driving a Volkswagen Bus.

2.) Lady Gaga, while smoking a cigarette, thrusts a gun out the window of her Volkswagen Bus and melodiously declares "Hola, motherfucker."

I already know she will be defeated by Machete, but I also know that her defeat will simply be one of those sweet-scented lies told on the silver screen to appease patrons yet to find true belief in Our Lady Of Perpetual Gaga.