Yes, as you may have guessed I am adding my own thoughts on the music of one Whitney Houston.  Saturday evening, I received a text from my cousin asking me if I had heard of Whitney’s passing.  Right after reading the message, I checked out the hub of social activity and sure enough there were already 20 posts devoted to the diva.  Growing up in the 80s, I was lucky enough to have lived to see and hear the infectious music of two powerhouse phenomenons: both of them are gone.  However, they each left an indelible mark on the music world that still has yet to be surpassed.  In the 1980s, Ms. Houston shared a stat of having 7 number one singles in a row!   Not only was she a pop diva but frequently returned to her gospel roots with such notable entries as the soundtrack to her film The Preacher’s Wife.

The 1990s was also a high point for Whitney with the monstrous film and soundtrack to The Bodyguard which featured a cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” as well as performing what is arguably the finest performance of the National Anthem of any Super Bowl.  Who else can claim to have had their version played on radio stations across the country weeks after it was presented?

Say what you will about the tragic life outside the music.  I choose to leave that for the tabloid mongers.  Anyone who lived during the 80s-90s can name at least one Whitney Houston song.  Like it or lump it, her music is infectious whether it be a hit pop ditty that makes you want to get up and dance (With somebody who loves me) or a powerful torch song.  OH… and lest I forget, she served as the Executive Producer and Fairy Godmother on a multi-ethnic version of a televised version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.

My favorite Houstons song is a duet with Jermaine Jackson that I do not believe was a major hit.  I only discovered it as part of a Greatest Hits compilation more than a few years ago.

And her remarkable Anthem from 1991:

She could have so over done this but chose to keep it straight and simple and is all the more powerful for it.  Thank you Whitney!

We managed to fit in some movie watching this week while the kids are with Grandma, and I was attempting to put them all together in a clever blog post title, but it wasn’t to be.  Probably my lack of sleep with the new baby and my recovery process has inhibited my creativity.  I hope to be back in full swing soon, but it will probably take a few months, especially because once I’m feeling better, I have lots of stuff around the house I need to catch up on and as much as I would like blog posting to come first, it doesn’t.  As people keep reminding me oh so helpfully, a c-section is major surgery 🙂  Don’t I know it. 

So the 3 movies we saw this week are Hellboy 2, American Psycho, and Fortress.

I did not like Hellboy 2.  I actually would have left the theater, but I never got around to asking my husband if he wanted to and that was a good thing because he liked the movie.  It gave me a good laugh when we were walking out of the theater and he told me he liked it because we always have the same taste in movies and I really didn’t like this one.  That also means I don’t have much to say about it except that the Abe fish-like character reminds me of C3PO from Star Wars, and I can’t believe the actor who plays Hellboy, Ron Perlman, was also Vincent the Beast in the old Beauty and the Beast tv show from the 80’s with Linda Hamilton.  I thought he was going to be some Andre the Giant huge guy wrestler type, but it turns out, he is just a regular actor.  I suppose my impatience with this movie had to do with the fact that my infection flared up and I was raging with fever yet again in the movie theater.  So even though I felt crappy and wanted to leave, I could not pass up a night out with hubby while the kids were away.  Even if it was to see Hellboy 2…  I’m just glad one of us enjoyed the movie.

Next up is a movie from the early 90’s called Fortress.  It’s set in the future – and it’s always fun to see what people thought the future would be like when the movie was made over a decade ago – and revolves around a corporate owned underground prison (think Walmart does Alcatraz).  The main characters are sent there when they break the “one child per couple” rule.  They had lost their first child, and now they’ve been caught trying to have another, so they are both sent to prison, even though she is pregnant.  This is a fun action-packed movie.  When I looked it up on imdb.com after we watched it, I learned that it is actually a kind of cult classic movie and there are actually multiple endings.  Our version was the less happy of the endings, but I still liked the movie.  It’s kind of violent for early 90’s, and if you look it up on imdb.com, don’t let the keywords fool you.  Let’s put it this way, if I had seen the keywords first, I wouldn’t have watched this movie, but in retrospect, I don’t think there was really much adult stuff in it – just violence and gore, but they didn’t overdo it like they do in some movies nowadays, like the Saw movies for instance.  American Psycho on the other hand…

I will start by saying that Christian Bale was excellent in this movie.  I wasn’t so impressed by him when he was Batman in The Dark Knight, but he definitely shows versatility and depth in this movie.  He plays a Wall Street executive who is just about as big a jerk as one can be.  Also, he has blood lust and likes to kill people in his spare time.  The movie is very strange for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.  For one, I was confused about what the movie was trying to be.  I guess it’s just a story about this man, an American Psycho.  But at times throughout the movie, the music was strange, and it just didn’t play like a normal movie.  And then there were the constant 80’s references.  I guess it was supposed to take place in the 1980’s, given the characters’ huge cordless phones and constant talk of musical artists such as Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, and Whitney Houston.  Why they would change the time period of the movie, I don’t know, but they did a good job because if Reese Witherspoon (who is about my age and would have been a kid in the ’80’s) wasn’t in it, I would have been convinced the movie was actually filmed in the ’80’s.  And I have to say the end confused me a lot.  I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil anything, but if anyone who reads this has seen this movie, maybe you can answer a question I have.  I don’t think I’d recommend this movie since there are many disturbing scenes and it didn’t seem worth it to me to sit thru them for what you get from the rest of the movie.  I don’t think I’m going to put it on my list of baddies however, but then again, Hellboy 2 isn’t going on there either.  Just 2 movies I didn’t really like and wouldn’t see again, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching either of them, and that’s always a good thing.   

There have been countless interpretations of the classic tale of “Cinderella.” There is the classic Disney film, Ella Enchanted, Pretty Woman, Cinderfella (starring Jerry Lewis in a movie with a male twist to the tale), and several others in all media. My personal favorite is the Rodgers and Hammerstein version which began as a television special in 1957 starring a young Julie Andrews (fresh from her role as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady).

I believe the role of the fairy godmother in this version is different than most interpretations. She not only creates a fancy dress, a wonderful carriage, and all the accessories to get Cinderella to the Prince’s ball; she also encourages the young lady to get up and get out of her life of servitude to her evil stepmother. “Fal-do-ral and Fiddle-de-de. Fiddly faddly foodle; All the dreamers in the world are silly in the noodle.” It is fine to dream about something but if you are unwilling to try and pursue a dream then a dream is all it will be.

Of course any musical is only as good as its supporting characters. One of the most memorable roles in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella is the Herald. He has the dauntless task of announcing to the townspeople that “The Prince is giving a ball.” He has to sing through the mile long list that is the Prince’s name as well as the King’s and Queen’s. The Prince’s name: Christopher Rupert Vwindemere Vlademere Carl Alexander Francois Reginald Lancelot Herman. Quite a mouthful! The Queen’s name: Queen Constantina Charlotte Ermintrude Guinevere Maizie. The King’s name: King Maxmillian Godfrey Ladislaus Leopold Sydney. Hope I did not forget anyone.

This version has been made into three other films and has been staged by numerous theatres. Most recently, a version was seen on television in 1995 starring Whitney Houston, Brandy, Whoopi Goldberg, Victor Garber, AND Jason Alexander. A perfect movie for the whole family.