<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>




































































  <rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
      <title>Comments On: Make mine music
    
      by Andrea Gronvall</title>
      <link>http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music</link>
      <atom:link href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/Rss.xml?oid=941955&amp;id=comments" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />      <description>Comments On: Make mine music
    
      by Andrea Gronvall</description>
      <language>en-us</language>
      <copyright>Copyright 2009 Chicago Reader. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Chicago Reader readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Chicago Reader.</copyright>
      <webMaster>wil@desert.net (Chicago Reader Webmaster)</webMaster>
      <pubDate>Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0600</pubDate>
      <lastBuildDate>Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:45:00 -0600</lastBuildDate>
      <generator>Foundation</generator>
      <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
      
        
          <item>
    
    <title><![CDATA[Re: Make mine music]]></title>
    
    
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#955264]]></link>
    
    <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#955264]]></guid>
    <author><![CDATA[Robert]]></author>
    <description>
      
      <![CDATA[Here's something I found on a site that lists information on Prince bootlegs.  I think even Albert Brooks would laugh at the following appraisal of his singing.
    
    "The remainder of the songs on here are rather hit-or-miss, and certainly of very little importance to the casual listener - unless comedy is your thing. Albert Brooks versions of 'I'll Do Anything' and 'There Is Lonely' is pure comedy gold and has all the appeal of a rapist whispering in your ear before he attacks. Likewise, Julie Kavner (yup, Marge Simpson) rasps her way through a number of Prince-penned tunes with hilariously awful results."
        
        <br />
        
          Posted by Robert]]>
    </description>
    <pubDate>Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:22:27 -0600</pubDate> 
    <source url="http://www.chicagoreader.com">Chicago Reader</source>
  </item>
        
          <item>
    
    <title><![CDATA[Re: Make mine music]]></title>
    
    
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#973797]]></link>
    
    <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#973797]]></guid>
    <author><![CDATA[Robert]]></author>
    <description>
      
      <![CDATA[It's true that the scenes revolving around test marketing have an extra layer of meta-comedy if you know "I'll Do Anything's" tortured history.  I remember reading that Brooks kept testing the movie with one more musical number removed at each test screening, but to no avail -- the audiences kept walking out or giving the film low scores.  But since the edited version only made $10 million, I don't see how the unedited version could've fared  much worse.
    
    I agree that test marketing has a downside -- test audiences hated "E.T." back in '82, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" was given only a limited platform release by Fox last year because of poor test screenings possibly attended and scored by the kind of people Judge pokes fun at in his movie.  But some filmmakers think they help, especially when it comes to the ending of a film, and Brooks may be one of them, even though he does mock test screenings -- but not the people who conduct them -- in "I'll Do Anything."
    
    If you know where a bootleg of the musical version of "I'll Do Anything" exists, please send out a smoke signal.  I've heard bootlegs of two of the songs that Prince wrote for the film -- "Don't Talk 2 Strangers" was apparently supposed to be in the scene where Tracey Ullman says goodbye to Whittni Wright before being taken to prison ("Remember: stranger danger!").
        
        <br />
        
          Posted by Robert]]>
    </description>
    <pubDate>Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:02:00 -0600</pubDate> 
    <source url="http://www.chicagoreader.com">Chicago Reader</source>
  </item>
        
          <item>
    
    <title><![CDATA[Re: Make mine music]]></title>
    
    
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#953390]]></link>
    
    <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#953390]]></guid>
    <author><![CDATA[Jonathan R.]]></author>
    <description>
      
      <![CDATA[Having seen the musical version of "I'll Do Anything," I consider it far and away Brooks's best film, and much, much superior to the nonmusical release version, even if not all of the numbers "work," at least in any conventional way. But I'm told that the studio will never release it in any form because they'd have to pay for the song rights, which they obviously don't want to do. It's too bad--and ironically, it appears that the real villain of this grotesque tragicomedy is Brooks himself, who insisted on adhering to the voodoo science of test marketing, even in a movie about test marketing-- perhaps as some sort of carryover from all his TV work.
        
        <br />
        
          Posted by Jonathan R.]]>
    </description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:14:41 -0600</pubDate> 
    <source url="http://www.chicagoreader.com">Chicago Reader</source>
  </item>
        
          <item>
    
    <title><![CDATA[Re: Make mine music]]></title>
    
    
    <link><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#950720]]></link>
    
    <guid isPermaLink="true"><![CDATA[http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2007/12/09/make-mine-music/#950720]]></guid>
    <author><![CDATA[Robert]]></author>
    <description>
      
      <![CDATA[Now that musicals are back, albeit in a small way, I'd like to see Sony put James L. Brooks's musical-number-free musical "I'll Do Anything" (1994) on DVD in its original form, possibly on a two-disc DVD that also includes the theatrical version.  It wasn't a big earner for Columbia, making only $10 million at the box office, but since everything else is on DVD these days in "special editions," why not?
    
    I loved "I'll Do Anything" when I first saw it in 1994, but I'm still curious to see the musical version, even if Nick Nolte and Julie Kavner's singing voices turn out to be terrible.  I seem to remember reading in Entertainment Weekly back in '94 that Danny DeVito was going to prep the musical version for release on laserdisc the following year, but it never happened.  Oh well, at least the movie works well without the music, thanks to Brooks's writing and great performances from Nolte, Joely Richardson, and Albert Brooks as a Joel Silver-type producer.
        
        <br />
        
          Posted by Robert]]>
    </description>
    <pubDate>Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:47:04 -0600</pubDate> 
    <source url="http://www.chicagoreader.com">Chicago Reader</source>
  </item>
        
      
    </channel>
  </rss>




