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The Dreams.

Took Kate to her first PG-13 movie over the week­end — “Dream­girls.” I was will­ing to risk the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of bad lan­guage, drug use and some sex­u­al­ity for her to get a sense of what Detroit was, once upon a time. I don’t know if the les­son sunk in; I sus­pect for her it felt the same way it did for me when my par­ents brought up James Thurber. Yeah yeah, the night the bed fell, it fell in Colum­bus, but…yawn. Thurber didn’t come alive for me until I read “News­pa­per­man,” his essay on Gus Kuehner, city edi­tor at the Dis­patch. I don’t think Detroit will be Motown for Kate until (and if) she falls in love with “Dancin’ in the Streets.”

When­ever we go into Detroit, there seems to be a moment to dis­cuss the 1967 riots. They’re depicted in “Dream­girls” in sort of a montage-y way, using old news footage and stills. Last night at din­ner I said, “Did you get a sense of what the riots were like?” and my lit­tle media con­sumer said yes, she did, but “I don’t know how they could set a whole block on fire. Did they use green screen?” Green screen. I ask you.

No, I said, that was a real news clip of an actual city block on fire, but I kept think­ing about green screen. I avoid those “mak­ing of” doc­u­men­taries; I want to pre­serve what lit­tle magic moviemak­ing still has for me, and know­ing that some actor spoke all his lines to an empty sound­stage later peo­pled with aliens and a 25th-century city sky­line just makes me sad. If only the Detroit riots had been green screen.

“Dream­girls” was OK. It’s hard to catch light­ning in a bot­tle once, let alone try to dupli­cate it with Broad­way ver­sions of Motown songs. It’s one of those movies where you’re sup­posed to spend the first few beats of every scene mar­veling at the clothes and hair­dos, and you do, but lit­tle moments I liked best are not the ones in the trailer — most involv­ing Eddie Mur­phy, who can really really sing. I got a lit­tle tired at how heavy the roman a clef stuff was — nam­ing the Flo­rence Bal­lard clone “Effie” just for starters. And how amus­ing to see Murphy’s char­ac­ter turn from James Brown to Mar­vin Gaye, and just in case you didn’t get the mes­sage, they gave him Marvin’s knit skull­cap. Still. A wor­thy hol­i­day musi­cal, green screen or not.

Only one bit o’ blog­gage today, because it’s such a long read: Just because you’re para­noid doesn’t mean the gov­ern­ment isn’t try­ing to beam voices into your brain.

Posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 10:37 am
in Movies.

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31 responses to
“The Dreams.”

  1. brian stouder said on January 16th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    Another bit of Detroit-related break­ing news is that NASCAR cham­pion and broad­caster Benny Par­sons just passed away.

    He was a taxi­cab dri­ver (!) in Detroit, way back in the day —  if mem­ory serves

  2. Marcia said on January 16th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    Green screen.

    Heh.

  3. Sherry said on January 16th, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    IMO, best “feel­ing of Motown” movie of recent years was a doc­u­men­tary called “Stand­ing in the Shadow of Motown,” about the Funk Broth­ers. It’s a ter­rific intro­duc­tion to the music, the club scene and the racial real­i­ties of Detroit dur­ing the Motown period. Lan­guage may be a lit­tle coarse in a few spots, but most of it would air on nor­mal prime­time any more.

  4. Dorothy said on January 16th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    Any­one seen “A Night at the Museum” yet? We saw it over the week­end — took a young­ster from the neigh­bor­hood as a treat for his birth­day. It was just okay, noth­ing fab­u­lous. I can’t under­stand why it’s been the num­ber 1 movie for 3 weeks. How­ever on NBC Nightly News last night they did a nice story about the resur­gence in inter­est of muse­ums because of the movie. Sleep­overs for kids is a HUGE deal now. Events sold out weeks in advance, etc. Nice to know it’s hav­ing that kind of effect on kids (the movie, I mean).

  5. LA mary said on January 16th, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    Luck­ily, a neigh­bor mom took my son with her kids to see Night at the Museum. I think the lit­tler kids liked it more than my almost 13 year old.
    I want to see Pan’s Labyrinth, based on rec­om­men­da­tions from two very savvy film peo­ple I know. It’s R rated, and I’m ok with my 16 year old going, but I have to find out more about why it’s an R before I take the younger one.

  6. brian stouder said on January 16th, 2007 at 4:55 pm

    Pam took the young folks to see Night at the Museum, and they loved it! Then I took the young folks to the museum-museum, and they loved that all the more.

    Dorothy has it right; it’s all good

  7. Laura said on January 16th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

    Jen­nifer Hud­son and Eddie Mur­phy were great. Bey­once, not so much.

  8. basset said on January 16th, 2007 at 9:50 pm

    Benny Par­sons dead? the last man to win the Cup in an unspon­sored car? I used to watch him run ARCA back in the late Six­ties… that was when rac­ing was fun, before it got corporate.

    sad to hear that. real rac­ing just got a lit­tle bit fur­ther into the past.

  9. John said on January 17th, 2007 at 4:05 am

    Are you sure she did not say GASOLINE and not green screen? I wish I could under­stand or appre­ci­ate those times bet­ter myself. I do know that every­one has told me Newark (and Pater­son, Nj) were glo­ri­ous places until those riots. Newark has rebounded and has an amaz­ing down­town shop­ping area, but that is a recent devel­op­ment. Pater­son the birth­place of the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion is still a depressed war zone with an odd­ity, the cooolest mix of eth­nic din­ing (I dare say) in Amer­ica. Want Peru­vian food? No, what about Uraguayan? How about Ara­bic? What kind of Ara­bic? Well choose Egypt­ian, Mor­ro­can, Pales­tin­ian, Syr­ian, Lebanese, Emi­rati, the list goes on. Philipino? Cam­bo­dian? You have not lived until you have had a Columbian seafood din­ner.
    I may be wrong but I think Detroit’s prob­lem may be that they wrongly belived a city could live with growth expand­ing ever out­ward, and allowed down­town to die, sort of like Ft. Wayne.
    All the devel­ope­ment down near the “New” Lutheran Hos­pi­tal and off Dupont ROad and Maple­crest is great, but if the core dies, the city will too. We used to live two blocks from Lutheran on Fair­field. A bustling hop­si­tal tends to keep a neigh­bor­hood alive and safe. I would not live at the same place now. I look at NYC. In Wash­ing­ton Heights, the epi­cen­ter of the 1980’s-90’s crack epi­demic, Colum­bia Pres­by­ter­ian Hos­pi­tal cre­ated this small pocket of say four blocks around it each way that was still safe to live, work, shop, eat, and park. Move out of that “zone” and we’re talk­ing New Jack City. hence the movie.

    But

  10. Marcia said on January 17th, 2007 at 8:22 am

    Dorothy, yes, I took a gag­gle of girls to see Night at the Museum. They loved it; I thought it was decent enter­tain­ment. It would have been nice if they had spent the remain­der of the evening inquir­ing about Saca­jawea or Teddy Roo­sevelt, but it didn’t happen.

    Nance, did I tell you that my cousin (who had the heart trans­plant) is at Lutheran Hos­pi­tal? He’s actu­ally sup­posed to go home today, but he’s been “sup­posed” to go home a few times already, only to be held up by some com­pli­ca­tion. They’ve been great, though.

    John, Colum­bia Pres­by­ter­ian does some ground-breaking work with pre­ma­ture babies. I got a mail­ing for a con­fer­ence there once, and they offered, I’m not kid­ding, an armored bus from the hotel to the hospital.

  11. LA mary said on January 17th, 2007 at 11:56 am

    John
    Where do you live? I grew up in Pater­son and Hawthorne. I remem­ber the riots well.

  12. basset said on January 17th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    another Bas­set post drops with a damp, dull thud… unno­ticed, uncom­mented, wasted once again. Brian, you there? what are your thoughts on James Hyl­ton try­ing to make the Day­tona 500 this year? What’s the local slang for “no chance in hell” where you come from?

    could be worse, usu­ally the thread just dies right after I post. maybe I need to move to some­place more dangerous.

  13. nancy said on January 17th, 2007 at 9:13 pm

    Don’t you dare, babe.

  14. brian stouder said on January 17th, 2007 at 10:48 pm

    Hey bas­set! I under­stand what you’re say­ing — but keep the faith! Me — I’ve been afraid of look­ing like a thread-diverting troll, and so I’ve been try­ing (with lim­ited suc­cess) to pipe down a bit around here…but the folks here are always so darned interesting!

    Any­way — I’m a HUGE open-wheel fan; CART in the olden days (many trips to MIS @ Brook­lyn MI, and Belle Isle in Nance’s city — not to men­tion the beaut­ful Mid Ohio road course, and the breath­tak­ingly lovely Road Amer­ica at Elkhart Lake WI)…and For­mula One — which has me depressed now that Schu­macher has abruptly retired (for 2007 I’ll be root­ing for the kiddo at McLaren — Lewis Hamilton).

    NASCAR is OK by me, but is gen­uinely loved by my brothers.…and (tellingly) by my mom! My old­est brother is a Tony Stew­art fan from when Stew­art was a sprint car racer; brother 2 is a Jeff Gor­don fan from way back; brother 3 always roots for Kenny Schraeder (akin to being a Cubs fan)…in past years I’ve liked Jeff Bur­ton best.…but in 2007 — it’s Juan Mon­toya, baby!!!

  15. basset said on January 18th, 2007 at 12:34 am

    ‘pre­ci­ate that, Nance… I have dri­ven a Kia through Flint *and* Sag­i­naw dur­ing a GM strike, and since I’m still breath­ing I guess I have used up my allot­ment of luck for this life…

    Brian, my first race was open-wheel… UMRA midgets at the Daviess County fair­grounds in Elnora, Indi­ana, in, I don’t know, 1968 or 9, some­where in there. Been to MIS, let me think, three times, don’t remem­ber ‘em much .

    I pull for Ster­ling in the Cup races, spent a race week­end at Atlanta doing a video with him when he was dri­ving for Hoss Elling­ton in the early 80s. I don’t pay nearly as much atten­tion to that cir­cuit as I used to, though, not remotely as inter­est­ing since the big money came in. Was a lot more fun when we were red­necks, y’know? where’s H.B. Bai­ley when you need him? Or J.D. McDuffie? Or any­one who didn’t have to be approved by some mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive before they let him in the car?

    If I could only go to one race this year it’d be ARCA at Spring­field, Illi­nois… the last refuge of full-body stock cars on a dirt mile. For­mula 1, how could you pos­si­bly sup­port any­one except Guido Sarducci?

    Took my 16-year-old tree-hugger veg­e­tar­ian hip­pie son to his first sprint race last sum­mer, though, and he was into it, so I sup­pose there’s some hope. Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to go to Bloom­ing­ton, I dunno.

  16. basset said on January 18th, 2007 at 12:36 am

    Mean­while, email me if you would, Brian, at bassetf5@yahoo.com… there must be some way to pull your address off this site, but I’m tech­ni­cally challenged…

  17. basset said on January 18th, 2007 at 12:36 am

    Mean­while, email me if you would, Brian, at bassetf5@yahoo.com… there must be some way to pull your address off this site, but I’m tech­ni­cally challenged…

  18. Dorothy said on January 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am

    bas­set it’s not you. I always think it’s ME who brings con­ver­sa­tion to a dead stop around here. Maybe we all take turns occa­sion­ally?? But I agree with Brian — every com­menter here always has such inter­est­ing obser­va­tions and I am OC about check­ing back mul­ti­ple times a day to see the new comments!

  19. John said on January 18th, 2007 at 10:35 am

    Dorothy…so you come here for the com­ments rather than our Ms. Nall’s obser­va­tions and bril­liant writing????

  20. brian stouder said on January 18th, 2007 at 10:40 am

    I am OC about check­ing back mul­ti­ple times a day

    Dorothy — this made me laugh out loud; well — first I had to fig­ure out ‘obses­sive compulsive’ — but yes — Amen!!

    In keep­ing with the (darkly humor­ous!) arti­cle that Madam Telling Tales linked to, about the well-dressed para­noid lunatic (and his tele­con­fer­enc­ing para­noid lunatic sup­port group), I have some­times won­dered if Nance has a hit-counter for the site…and if the counter notes par­tic­u­lar hits from the same visitor…maybe this is all going onto our per­ma­nent records!

  21. Dorothy said on January 18th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    Now John don’t go putting words in my mouth! I’m bad enough at it myself! Of COURSE I am here for Nancy’s obser­va­tions and bril­liant writ­ing! It’s what got me here in the first place. You guys and gals in the com­ments are the icing on the cake.

    Yeah, Brian, that occurred to me a long time ago (the counter thingy) but I don’t give a crap. That per­ma­nent record thing stopped both­er­ing me the minute I walked out the door of high school in 1975. Not that I ever HAD any­thing bad there anyway…!

  22. brian stouder said on January 18th, 2007 at 11:56 am

    See — the temp­ta­tion is to respond to Nance’s dis­mis­sive ref­er­ence to D’Souza’a stu­pid book, with a ref­er­ence to the sim­i­larly stu­pid, oddly anachro­nis­tic ‘dooms­day clock’ – which makes ME have to con­sciously think “main­tain your sense of humor”.…but such a post would either foul up the thread — and sex threads are NOT to be fouled up! — or else ignored.

    SO maybe this is the best solu­tion — post­ing in the day-old threads, and leav­ing the fresh-baked ones for the best customers!

  23. LA mary said on January 18th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

    I check in here when­ever I’m on hold, which is often.

  24. basset said on January 19th, 2007 at 12:43 am

    I don’t under­stand why any­one on this side of the Atlantic would care in the least about For­mula 1. No Amer­i­can cars, only one Amer­i­can dri­ver and last year he crashed on the first turn of the first lap of the only race they run in the USA… For­mula 1’s czar is a Brit who refuses to stay in Indi­anapo­lis when they run there because it’s just too provin­cial for him and insists on tak­ing his heli­copter up to Chicago where they have hotels up to his stan­dard, as a native Hoosier I say (exple­tive deleted) him… the cars don’t touch and rarely pass, they are so frag­ile that if half of the starters are left run­ning it’s a lot… and, once again, who can ya pull for? given a choice of F1 at the Brick­yard or a good ARCA race at Salem I’d take Salem.

  25. brian stouder said on January 19th, 2007 at 9:43 am

    No no no -

    see, in addi­tion to race day, you go down there on the Sat­ur­day for prac­tice & qual­i­fi­ca­tions and so on — ad do the people-watching thing. Lots of silver-haired men with expen­sive watches on, who appear to be escort­ing their beau­ti­ful daugh­ters (but the women are not their daugh­ters); lots of drunken, flag wav­ing young men (and the flags are Columbian or Ger­man or Ital­ian, and not stars & bars like at NASCAR!) chant­ing and singing in an adver­sar­ial way; and lots of fel­lows from all over the US who fly in for the week­end to finally see and HEAR a 19,000 rpm For­mula One engine at full song.…

    I have had many inter­est­ing con­ver­a­tions in the grand­stands, as the Sat­ur­day whiles away, with folks like that.

    By way of sayin’ — it’s ALL good!!

  26. basset said on January 19th, 2007 at 11:41 pm

    So the attrac­tion is… rich men with rented women, drunken noisy idiots, good con­ver­sa­tion, and high-strung machin­ery that’ll prob­a­bly break before the day’s out? I can get most of that right here at home…

  27. brian stouder said on January 20th, 2007 at 12:12 am

    well, when you put it that way…

  28. John said on January 20th, 2007 at 11:10 am

    I grew up in Glen Rock, and over the years lived in Clifton and North Hale­don. I miss north jer­sey food all the time, but not the traf­fic, expenses, etc. And I love Pater­son even if it’s downtrodden.

  29. LA mary said on January 23rd, 2007 at 3:47 pm

    We were very close neigh­bors, then John. I was within an easy walk of Glen Rock, near Rock Road. Paterson’s been down­trod­den for a long time, since the silk mills started clos­ing down.

  30. LA mary said on January 23rd, 2007 at 9:18 pm

    I miss the Dutch bak­eries, the Ger­man butcher shops, the Ital­ian delis and places like the Gof­fle Brook Inn (not far from Glen Rock) which was a bar but also served food. You could order huge trays of mus­sels with good spicy gar­licky tomato sauce and a bas­ket of bread for very lit­tle money. I miss the Ital­ian bak­eries as well, come to think of it. Remem­ber how pizza places just reeked of olive oil and you could taste it in the pizza? I miss that a lot. Then there’s places like Johnny and Hanges in Pater­son with hot dogs all the way, and Clix­ies, in Glen Rock. I only found out last year that Clixie is a rel­a­tive of mine. And Shortway’s Barn? On Gof­fle Road and Lafayette Avenue? Found out I’m related to them too. Short­way was Amer­i­can­ized from the Dutch name Cortweg. My brother is a city coun­cil­man in Hawthorne now so I get updated reg­u­larly.
    Did you know a teacher/principal in Glen Rock named Carol Frank, or her daugh­ter Mary­beth Frank?

  31. newcritics - » Tonight’s Setlist said on January 31st, 2007 at 9:57 pm

    […] Gotham Gal pans the Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Photography’s exhibits. Nancy Nall thought Dream­girls was OK, but she didn’t find the real […]

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