“Just because there’s no war, it doesn’t mean we have peace.” X-Men: Apocalypse

29 May 2016

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In the past decade and a half (plus), there have been a lot of X-Men movies – some kick-out-the-jams great (X2, Days of Future Past, The Wolvervine), some as tired as a day-old doughnut (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Last Stand), and a couple inventively transcendent (First Class, Deadpool). If nothing else, the fact that one intellectual property can sustain that many films with such varied output is testament to the allegorical appeal of a bunch of costumed oddballs whose spectacular difference makes them feared and loathed by the mediocre masses. ‘Murica.

Where does Bryan Singer’s latest X-entry Apocalypse rank? About smack dab in the middle. It’s a decent summer popcorn epic with a great cast, many of whom rise above the CGI detritus to land a moment or two of tear-jerking pathos. Per capita Oscar/Golden Globe winners/nominees, the X-movies have always far surpassed their nearest rivals. In this flick alone, you’ve got Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Hugh Jackman, Rose Byrne and series newcomer Oscar Isaac. I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see Nicholas Hoult (who plays Hank McCoy) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) similarly awarded for their (other) work. Joining them are equally strong up-and-comers Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, and Lucas Till. And Olivia Munn, who is about as vocal a proponent of animal rights (and as militant a one) as a Hollywood bombshell can be, plays bad-ass ninja mutant Psylocke like Xena Warrior Princess slaying a frat party.

The film is perilously overstuffed. (Could you tell from that cast list?) Apocalypse suffers, as so many of these enterprises do, from a dopey and predictable end-is-nigh narrative arc upon which to hang far superior character moments. Heck, truth in advertising time, “end-is-nigh” is the film’s very title.

Said title is also the name of the film’s antagonist “Apocalypse,” played by Isaac under so much make-up and costuming that he looks like a Happy Meal toy or a grape popsicle. He’s such a fun and frisky performer that mostly he rises above the cardboard operatic dialogue with which he is saddled. It doesn’t help that, well, he can’t move his neck in that get-up. Like at all. But Isaac does just fine being menacing enough that you believe the world actually might be in some trouble … and at the two-thirds mark of this overlong film, you might wish he would just hustle up and get it over with.

The rest of the cast isn’t given a lot to do, but they make the most of every moment, even if no member of the cast likely has more than two or three pages of dialogue in the entire film. Peters continues to be delightful comic relief as the resident speedster, though the sparkle of his “between the raindrops” slo-mo scene-work has lost a bit of its novelty since the last film. McAvoy is compelling as a baby Patrick Stewart, totally mastering the fine art of Stewart’s mind-reading, telepathic grimace face.

We get a fun (depending on how you view “fun”) bit with Jackman finally getting to unleash Wolverine’s full-tilt berserker rage. In fact, I was a little shocked the filmmakers were able to keep their PG-13 rating, as Jackman’s bloody pas-de-deux approached horror movie levels of carnage.

Byrne, Hoult, and Lawrence are rather neglected by Simon Kinberg’s rambling screenplay – which may have been just fine with them – but these three pros still bring welcome heart and wit to their too few impactful moments. Lawrence does get one of the film’s best lines, though: “Just because there’s no war, it doesn’t mean we have peace.” Amen, sister.

Fassbender is the film’s heart-breaker. His scenes aren’t well written – Singer and Kinberg, shame on you with this Lifetime TV melodrama – but he plays them so beautifully, so delicately, and so hauntedly you just may get teary. A bit. I did anyway, and I don’t think it’s because it is allergy season here in Michigan. Fassbender grounds the film with a kind of hyper-real pathos that also benefited his other two outings in the franchise. It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise this installment could’ve been a total candy-coated disaster. (Whenever wait-staff at Red Robin are wearing your film’s logo on their shirts as a cross promotional effort, while delivering a revolting concoction called the “Red Ramen Burger,” your flick may be in trouble.)

So what if the assembled performances here are tantamount to Halloween USA costume catalog posturing? It’s all good. Everyone deserves a paycheck. During one ponderous scene between Isaac, McAvoy, and Fassbender, I zoned out and just kept thinking to myself, “Damn, that is a fabulous trio of ACTOR noses right there. Look. At. Their. Noses.”

I’m not sure where the series goes from here, and I admit a morbid curiosity to see how many more characters (for future toy sales) they can cram into … chapter nine, is it? I’m losing track. However, I hope the studio execs, plagued as they are by checkbook accounting and the collective creativity of a baked potato , take to heart the lessons that all of us mere mortals see in the success of a movie like Deadpool. Have fun, be light, tell a human story, focus, keep it small, and understand that these superhero movies are today’s fairy tales. We want a moral, we want to relate, and we need it told in less than three hours.

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Olivia Munn

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

WCBN’s “It’s Hot in Here” features The Penny Seats, Jacques Brel, roller skates, & walkie talkies

7 March 2016

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[Production photo by Frank Weir]

Thanks to Pearl Zhu Zeng, Sam Molnar, and Rebecca Hardin for welcoming our Penny Seats hijinks back into the WCBN studio as part of their fabulous weekly “It’s Hot in Here” radio program. The show is billed as ushering in a “new era in environmentally themed college talk radio with a focus on soul and R&B.”

And, occasionally, show tunes.

[Photo Collage by Author]

I think you’ll really enjoy our episode “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris: Feels That Connect Us All.” Just please look past the lingering laryngitis that makes me sound like Elaine Stritch … and the dodgy lyrical recall that makes me sound like Jonathan Winters.

The Hot in Here team have put together such a lovely overview here, with photos and descriptions that present the illusion we are consummate professionals! You can also link directly to the MP3 here if so inclined. (And if you missed seeing Jacques Brel live, five of the songs are performed during the broadcast!)

[Photo of Lauren and Roy by Pearl Zhu Zeng]

Here’s an excerpt from their write-up: “During our one hour radio show, the cast and crew offer insights and takeaways from the Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris show. They go into the origin of the show and the story behind the production, including why they brought the show onto the local stage and how the music came together. Laura Sagolla shares with us her story of being moved by Jacques Brel songs growing up, how it resonated with her and why she brought the show to the Penny Seats. Roy Sexton and Lauren London, with Rich Alder, Jr. playing piano in the background, bring their characters to life through on-air musical performances while also delving into their impressions of the characters they reenact. Their insights are a must hear and the tunes include Amsterdam, I Loved, Mathilde, Marieke, and If We Only Have Love.”

Xanadu poster We received such wonderful support on this sold-out run – thanks to everyone who came to see Jacques Brel or helped spread the word or both! And, yes, there is more to come …

The Canterbury Tales, adapted from the book by Geoffrey Chaucer – on stage Thurs, Fri, and Sat, June 16 – July 2

Xanadu, book by Douglas Carter Beane; Music and Lyrics by Jeff Lynne and John Farrar; the 2007 Broadway Musical Comedy Xanadu, based on the 1980 film of the same name – on stage July 7-23.

You can get tickets at http://www.pennyseats.org shortly, and, yeah, I’ll be playing the Gene Kelly part in Xanadu. Can’t wait!

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

P.S. If you didn’t see Zootopia yet, I highly encourage you to do so. It’s just the satirical fable our nation needs right now. You can read my review here.

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“We may be evolved, but down deep we’re still animals.” Disney’s Zootopia

6 March 2016

14 Comments

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

This political season is arguably the most distressingly fascinating one I can ever recall. Whether #ImWithHer or #FeelingTheBern or #MakingAmericaGreatAgain or #DumpingTrump, the vitriol and shenanigans, the dramatic tension and circus-world comedy, and the reality-television-fueled debasement of what it even means to be “presidential” are as titillating and train-wreck exhilarating as they are shocking and horrifyingly confounding.

Into this topsy-turvy world, where GOP elephants compare “hand”-sizes and Dem donkeys trade an endless stream of cocktail napkin memes, comes a funny little kids’ movie from Disney, an animated fable with mobster rodents and badge-wearing rabbits, hustling foxes and pencil-pushing sheep (who may or may not be political wolves). Disney’s latest effort Zootopia may very well be the allegory for our times, a medicinally incisive piece of camp that pierces the heart of our political juvenilia, not as a heavy-handed polemic but as a frothy noir merringue that still manages to offer timely (and timeless) critique of our national propensity toward ugliness, be it in the form of sexism, racial profiling, class distinctions, ageism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, crass marketing, leveraging abject fear to erode any and all civil liberties, or, yes, speciesism.

If George Orwell’s Animal Farm had been reimagined by Bugs Bunny‘s Chuck Jones, you’d have Zootopia, as close to classic Looney Tunes‘ satirical irreverence as middle-class-family-friendly Disney may ever get.

“Zootopia” (the place) is an urbane promised land where anthropomorphic animals of all species coexist amicably – think Richard Scarry’s Busytown on steroids or Watership Down, Jr., with predator and prey working and playing side-by-side and setting a far better example than humans can ever seem to manage. Zootopia is a Manhattan-esque place, brimming with hustle and bustle, composed of boroughs distinguished by their unique climates (e.g. polar, rainforest, desert, etc.)

Judy Hopps (effervescently voiced by Once Upon a Time‘s Ginnifer Goodwin) is a brave bunny who defies her expected station (as a carrot farmer) to become a cop (a role typically taken by larger, more aggressive male creatures, like cheetahs and buffalo). As in human life, Hopps is quickly marginalized (for her gender and her size) by her co-workers, assigned the menial task of traffic duty.

Yet, something dire is afoot in this magical land, and the balance of animalia power is challenged as traditional “predator” animals revert to more violent ways of the past. (This is still a Disney movie, so that basically means angry eyes and lots and lots of snarling.) Lt. Hopps seizes the moment, and, with the aid of a con man fox named Nick Wilde (Bad Words‘ Jason Bateman, finding his animated doppelganger), cracks the case.

Or do they? That‘s really where the cheeky fun begins as the third act of the film inverts all of our notions of Zootopia, landing a stinging indictment of how society offers a phony face of inclusion and acceptance as long as things run smoothly with safety, security, and prosperity ostensibly guaranteed for all. The minute the “natural order” (which we mindlessly take for granted) is revealed as the wobbly house of cards it actually can be, all bets are off, and life starts to resemble a Trump rally or a Promise Keepers meeting or Hitler’s Nuremberg, with fiery, fearful rhetoric of us-versus-them, boundary walls, torture, and police states. Zootopia – accidentally or intentionally or both – holds a mirror to this truth and presents its audience, young and old, a cautionary hopefulness that we can still pull ourselves from the mire.

Yet, the magic of this film (not unlike similarly smart animated fare like The Lego Movie, Inside Out, or Wall*E) is that the message never comes at the expense of entertainment (maximizing impact and influence). This picture is just so. much. fun. In addition to Goodwin and Bates, there is sparkling voice work from Thor‘s Idris Elba (Police Chief Bogo, a blustering water buffalo), Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons (Mayor Lionheart, a scheming king of the jungle), Jenny Slate (Bellwether, the mayor’s browbeaten lamb assistant … lion and the lamb, get it?), Nate Torrence (Officer Clawhauser, a dispatch policeman cheetah for whom food is quite literally love), and Alan Tudyk (Duke Weaselton, a shifty little informant weasel). Uni-named pop star Shakira rounds out the cast playing uni-named pop star Gazelle, nailing some witty moments as a well-intentioned if misguided celebrity trying to bring cross-cultural unity through superficial lip-service. (Sounds like some recent Oscar speeches, eh?)

Zootopia is a visually stunning film throughout, and one viewing will unlikely do justice to the rich detail (and hidden references) of this animal planet. Directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) have realized a sumptuously immersive world here that is simultaneously transporting and sobering. Mayor Lionheart exclaims, “We may be evolved, but deep down we’re still animals.” These words (other than the disparaging implication of “animal”) are as true (if not truer) of we humans, struggling through as fractious an historical moment as many of us may see in our lifetimes. Zootopia may just be the tonic we all have needed. Lt. Hopps notes repeatedly through the film – as much warning as mantra: “Zootopia … where anyone can be anything!” Maybe we Americans should give that idea a shot again? What do you think?

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Enjoy this recent radio show, featuring The Penny Seats (and yours truly!) … “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris: Feelings that Connect Us All” – https://t.co/E9YMfoZN0C

“Been waiting for someone to tell me the color of MY wind.” Vanessa Williams at Detroit’s Motor City Casino Sound Board

11 October 2015

4 Comments

Vanessa Williams is an interesting figure in pop culture. One of the most (only?) successful (post-pageant winners) of “Miss America” … Lee Meriwether notwithstanding?

Yet, can she still be considered “Miss America” when she was de-crowned after her Penthouse pictorial scandal mid-way through her reign?

Yet, she was reinstated this year because even the “Miss America” people realized that, in this day and age of Gaga and Miley and … Trump, that maybe zapping the title of one of the few contestants to actually have a viable career (Grammy/Tony-nominations, Top 40 hit songs, a freaking Disney theme) was kinda dumb?

She’s had starring roles on just about every ABC dramedy of the past 15 years (e.g. Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives), and she has become, more or less, America’s b-list sweetheart.

Heck, she even plays Alan Cumming’s love interest now on The Good Wife – that’s a pair of celebrities who unexpectedly crawled from our nation’s puritanically judgmental margins to stand triumphant in the hazy comfort-glare of middle-America’s beloved boob tube. And they play a couple (sort of). Now that is something!

So, when I got a panicky email from Ticketmaster last week, breathlessly urging me to “buy one-get one free” of her still copiously available tickets for Sunday’s performance at Motor City Casino’s “Sound Board” night club, you betcha I snapped up two.

And I’m so glad I did.

Her show is like a comfortably chunky, still stylish, but totally retro sweater in the back of your closet. It is 90-minutes of timeless nostalgia, a little funky and a lot soothing with a smidge of regret that whatever you thought you would be doing years later and however you thought you’d be changing the world just didn’t quite happen. And that’s ok. (This may be one of my worst/most confessional metaphors ever.)

Williams was one of the stand-bys in my mix-taped 90s/00s life soundtrack: from the Teena Marie-lite blast of her debut The Right Stuff through the adult-contemporary fog of The Sweetest Days, through the edgy post-divorce Alanis-ish angst of Next through her reinvention as a Broadway Baby in Into the Woods, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Sondheim on Sondheim, culminating in the inevitable (and kinda genius) post-relevance cover songs albums Everlasting Love and The Real Thing.

I’ve stuck by Williams, as a singer and as an actor – a performer who always embraced an underdog’s moxie and the reprobate’s swagger, from her sparkling turn in the ABC TV-adaptation of Bye Bye Birdie to the standout scenery-chewer in soapy melodrama Soul Food.

Her stage show hit all those notes, covering the hits we love and the ones we’ve forgotten: “Dreamin’,” “Love Is,” “Oh, How the Years Go By,” “Betcha Never,” “The Sweetest Days,” “Colors of the Wind,” and, of course, signature torch song “Save the Best for Last.”

Every number was delivered with smooth sophistication and aplomb, with the polish of a performer who dove into the muck, climbed out if it, and narrowly avoided a life of cruise ship dinner theatre performances (but still carries a few of those blue plate special, “so happy to be here with you fine folks” tics).

Her band is a tight jazz and R&B combo, and they have played with her for 20+ years. It shows. With two keyboardists, two guitarists, and one drummer as well as two dedicated backing vocalists and additional vocals from some of the instrumentalists, Williams received exceptional musical support. The band showed such range, from disco to blues, ballads to soul; they could do it all … gorgeously.

Martinis and Little Caesars pizza … only at Motor City Casino

Carmen Ruby Floyd

She also featured back-up singer Carmen Ruby Floyd (an accomplished Broadway vet in her own right) who delivered a knock-out “Creole Love Call,” from the Broadway revue After Midnight.

Williams gave us a few carefully guarded insights into her tabloid storybook life, just teasing enough to let us know she hates her ex-husbands (still), loves her current (third), thinks her four kids are the best things she’s ever done, and really thinks Stephen Sondheim and Barbara Cook are the bees’ knees.

She did bring down the house with one joke in particular, noting that after Williams performed Oscar-winning “Colors of the Wind” at the Academy Awards, Whoopi Goldberg quipped, “I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me the color of my wind.”

The highlights for me of this stellar show? A one-two punch of Pocahontas’ “Colors of the Wind” and encore “Harvest for the World” (Isley Brothers). The lyrics for both detail, in a strikingly similar blend of the hopeful and the cynical, how this world and its resources and those inhabiting the Big Blue Marble demand an appreciation and a respect that transcend the commercial, the crass, and the opportunistic.

I know that Williams has always championed progressive causes, and I’m guessing she’s a longtime friend of Mother Earth, but from her delivery of these two numbers, I daresay she is about as “eco-friendly” and socially conscious as they come. Can’t beat a pop legend who takes the time to wring a social message or two from her back catalog of hits.

Thanks, Vanessa – come back to Motown soon, please!

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Drawing of yours truly as a superhero by Lee Gaddis of Gaddis Gaming

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital)In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

She’s fun; she’s frisky; and she doesn’t give a f*ck. Madonna’s #RebelHeart Tour in #Detroit

2 October 2015

5 Comments

Madge

Madonna albums are like cast recordings for a film or stage musical. You buy the album before you have a sense of the visual or of the narrative that overlays the music.

Iconic

It isn’t until you watch the music performed live or in video form that you really “get” the intent.

Holiday

And then the album becomes a kind of souvenir, an aural remembrance of the pageant and all its themes and provocations.

That is not to say Madonna’s music doesn’t stand on its own (generally it does, even the lesser works … <cough> Hard Candy) but it doesn’t really come alive until you see, sense, feel, taste (?) the spectacle swaddling her nursery rhyme-like tunes.

I’ve had the good fortune now to have seen her live on four occasions (and one additional stalking moment when I spied her gliding into a Traverse City movie theatre for the premiere of her documentary I Am Because We Are; I was perched precariously with one knee on a parking meter and one foot on John’s shoulder at the time to get the best view I could … I’m not subtle).

Body Shop

In 2001, she brought her Drowned World Tour (supporting Music and Ray of Light) to Detroit after years of not stopping in the Motor City. I had practically committed to memory the cheeky joys of Blonde Ambition and The Girlie Show (both of which had been broadcast on HBO) so the somber, take-no-prisoners/play-no-hits/look-at-me-wearing-a-kilt-and-playing-an-electric-guitar-badly approach of this production was an unintentional let down.

Holiday

I wanted camp and kitsch and got sturm und drang. As the years have passed, I’ve come to reconsider my initially superficial disappointment with that show, realizing that she was predicting musically and visually the angst and anxiety and chaos that have come to define America in the 21st Century. Go figure.

Iconic

I caught The Sticky and Sweet Tour when it stopped at Ford Field in 2008. While Hard Candy was a bit of a Milk Dud upon first listen, that show which supported the much-maligned album opened a world of confectionery delights in its rainbow-colored, kaleidoscopic staging.

In many respects, the show was a return to multi-culti appropriation form for the Material Girl as her years living hand-to-mouth in New York and her interests in hip-hop, eastern rhythms, and gypsy folk were distilled into a revelatory, propulsive brew.

Bitch, I’m Madonna

A dark heart still beat at the center of the show as Madonna continued to channel a justifiable rage against the machine, skewering a society that consumes relentlessly and persecutes shamelessly.

If the dark heart of Sticky and Sweet was hidden behind a coating of tasty caramel, it was on full corrosive display in The MDNA Tour (supporting the EDM-chugging album of the same name). Madonna, freshly divorced from director Guy Ritchie, was letting her angry Id freak flag fly, and it was glorious … and cold.

Whereas the album at times seemed a meandering if compelling mess, the show was a silver bullet to the heart of America, with a series of pneumatic projection screens that raised and lowered to depict gun-ridden crime scenes, oppressive religious structures, and a cracked political landscape. It was a brilliant show though a tad impenetrable and joyless.

Madonna and Nicki Minaj

With my talented pal – actor and designer – Barbie Weisserman

Which brings us to her latest – The Rebel Heart Tour – which was performed at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena last night (October 1).

I’m a big fan of the particular record this tour supports (see my review here) which, to me, is a spiritual sequel to the caustic, intoxicating Erotica album but with a level of maturity, exhaustion, and peace that only 20+ years of living could bring. Needless to say, I was curious, excited, and a bit nervous about what interpretations she might bring to this superior collection of ditties.

She did great.

The show is a standard Madonna production, with top-of-the-line choreography, lightning fast costume changes, a healthy dose of sociopolitical sniping, and some flat-out stunning visuals (both digital and set design). What sets this show apart from the three live shows already described is that, well, Madonna seems happy. Not goofy or forced or self-aggrandizing. Just happy.

Lourdes [Photo Courtesy Glenn Nolan]

Her University of Michigan-attending daughter Lourdes was seated just a few rows over from us and Madonna’s father was somewhere in the crowd, so Madonna seemed genuinely, authentically giddy to be back home.

(By the way, watching Madonna’s daughter beam with pride and delight as her famous mom did her thing pretty much made the show. I suggest that somebody set up a live-feed of Lourdes to run on a screen somewhere at every tour stop from here on out.)

Material Girl

The show is structured in the Madonna boilerplate: four sections – a religious pastiche, a desert garage, a Latin party, and the roaring 20s. New songs from Rebel Heart are juxtaposed with left-of-center arrangements of classic hits, in a successful effort both to freshen up the old and validate the new.

Our seats [Image Created by Becca Mansfield]

Set changes are simple but effective, achieved mostly through digital projections and some props, and Madonna’s costumes are less glam than we typically see and more utilitarian, a base costume for each of the four sections, adjusted with the addition or deletion of pieces depending on the song being performed.

The stage

One of my favorites from the new album – the title track “Rebel Heart” – is a high point of the evening. Madonna strums a guitar (she’s gotten quite proficient at it over the past 15 years!), standing alone on the catwalk stage (shaped like a crucifix, a heart at the end and spanning the entire arena floor), with a series of fan-created tribute images behind her.

Who’s That Girl?

As we watch hundreds of interpretations of Madonna’s famous mug morph one into another – water color, photo collage, pen and ink, and so on – what would have once seemed yet another exercise in her seemingly limitless supply of hubris is instead touching and loving, a capstone on an exceptional career that continues to brim with unbridled potential.

Her mother’s daughter [Photo Courtesy Glenn Nolan]

As I viewed those images, I thought of college-age Lourdes sitting a few rows away, gobsmacked myself at how time slips away and wondering what must be going through Madonna’s daughter’s head as she watches countless depictions of her mother’s famous stances and poses sail by.

The show is riddled with such visceral, thoughtful, and, yes, entertaining moments. Opener “Iconic” with a guest video appearance from Mike Tison is a bombastic gut punch, Zack Snyder’s 300 if designed by Bob Mackie, with Madonna, the Warrior Queen, descending from the ceiling in a gilded cage.

Music

Thereafter, we quickly enter Madonna’s favorite territory – pop blasphemy lite – with a sequence that ends in a “Last Supper” tableau, that is if the Last Supper had been held in a discotheque in Miami. What a pip!

The show slows down a bit after that, allowing both performers and audience, to stop clutching their pearls and to catch their breath.

Motown

As Madonna strums away, she turns classic chestnut “True Blue” into a campfire ode and makes the raunchy “Body Shop” sound like a salute to old-fashioned courtship and love.

Classic club track “Deeper and Deeper” makes a glorious return to stage in one of the most epic line-dances I’ve ever seen, and we even got a winking re-branding of “Material Girl” (a perfect song that Madonna has always inexplicably claimed to hate, which is a shame because it’s … perfect).

True Blue

Merchandise!

Madonna, possibly still smarting from not getting cast in Chicago, struts atop a steeply angled platform, dressed as a 20s flapper and crooning all those famous “some boys” lines from the tune, knocking one male dancer after another off her perch as they slide down the raked stage into a tuxedo-garbed heap on the floor.

There is a glorious flamenco-style medley of her classic tunes that spins out of Madonna’s torreodor-from-space visioning of her recent hit “Living for Love,” and she slaps “Like a Virgin” on the behind and turns it into a dub-step R&B banger. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Brilliantly.

And then there was the moment where she sang “La Vie En Rose” … in powerful voice … in French … with a ukulele. Simply because her daughter loves the song and asked her to sing it. Not a dry eye in the house.

Barbie with new friends all the way from Australia – Glenn and Philip

(I daresay this is a direction she might want to pursue more fully for her next reinvention. Please? If Lady Gaga can monkey around with Tony Bennett, Madonna can go full Edith Piaf.)

The show has its flaws. Any big arena tour doesn’t hold up under intense scrutiny. These are circus acts for the new millennium, full of false emotions, phony posturing, smoke and mirrors.

But what Madonna does so well on this tour is humanize: herself, her personae, her history, her songs, her legacy.

We have lived with a rigid, defensive Madonna for about 15 years now (I blame Guy Ritchie … or England), and we are starting to get our quintessentially American street urchin, our mugging-Horatio-Alger-rag-dolly back, and I couldn’t be happier. She’s fun; she’s frisky; and she doesn’t give a f*ck.

Welcome back, Madge.

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Speaking of Rebel Hearts …

This past Sunday, September 27, I married my long-time partner John Mola in a ceremony officiated by Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor and Pastor Ian Reed Twiss and attended by a small gathering of family and friends. We honored our guests with donations to the Huron Valley Humane Society and also gave, on behalf of the wedding officiants, to Equality Michigan, 826Michigan, and the Jim Toy Center.

John and Roy

Dinner at Weber’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan, immediately followed the ceremony and included a three-tiered wedding cake that gave a nod to John’s and my shared interests in Disney, superheroes, and classic cars.

Family

Our parents Susie and Don Sexton and Luci and Simone Mola (respectively) presented the grooms, and readings (1 John 4: 16-21; excerpt from the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges, and “Maker of Heaven and Earth – All Things Bright and Beautiful” poem by Cecil Frances Alexander) were given by Stephanie Kassman, Rachel Green, and Gabby Rundall (our niece). Lori Rundall, John’s sister, presented the toast, and photographs of the event were taken by Gabby Rundall and Kyle Lawson.

Vision in green – Zach & Susie

About the day, my mom wrote on her blog (here) …

“Took a tumble off some steps and directly into prickly shrubbery, rode in a limousine–my virgin ride, kept my hat on, lost my dress and my shoes, urged the Ann Arbor mayor to prevent deer culling, learned I am not alone in detesting Bing Crosby, spoke to a journalist about the Last Tango in Paris and why I sorta love Trump and not Bernie and that I want to vote for Hillary, posed with Zach because we are kindred spirits and love mint green, met my second minister that I see eye to eye with since the beginning of time, and today am sore all over ‘my little body’? And the wedding occurred on schedule in spite of it all and was the happiest moment of my lifetime! Congrats, John and Roy ♥!!!!”

John and I dearly love this description – it makes me smile every time I read it!

Ian, John, Roy, & Christopher

Thanks to our parents and our family for their love and support and their unyielding championing of bravery and authenticity and kindness. Thanks to our friends for giving us this wonderful network of fun and joy. Thanks to Ian and Christopher for their guidance and their important and gracious roles in making it all “official.” Thanks to the Supreme Court for doing the right thing in the face of a wall of political foolishness.

And, I can feel John rolling his eyes now, but thanks to performers and artists like Madonna, who have pushed for compassion and inclusion for decades for us all, for anyone who is different or who is judged unfairly based on gender, age, race, species, sexuality, faith, financial status, and so on. We are a nation that can do so much good by just being kind. Let’s do more of that.

____________________________

Drawing of yours truly as a superhero by Lee Gaddis of Gaddis Gaming

Reel Roy Reviews

…to the chagrin of true arbiters of taste

Tag Archives: donald trump

“Just because there’s no war, it doesn’t mean we have peace.” X-Men: Apocalypse

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WCBN’s “It’s Hot in Here” features The Penny Seats, Jacques Brel, roller skates, & walkie talkies

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“We may be evolved, but down deep we’re still animals.” Disney’s Zootopia

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“Been waiting for someone to tell me the color of MY wind.” Vanessa Williams at Detroit’s Motor City Casino Sound Board

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She’s fun; she’s frisky; and she doesn’t give a f*ck. Madonna’s #RebelHeart Tour in #Detroit

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