Telenovela Watch - September 12

Article with my thoughts on some of the current telenovelas.  I quite liked the quirky modest comedic Colombian telenovela MANUAL PARA SER FELIZ with featured a lovely lead performance by Marcela Mar.  Don't much care for LA MALQUERIDA, which is tepid.

Claudia Álvarez

I also mostly like HASTA EL FIN DEL MUNDO, the Mexican version of Argentina's DULCE AMOR, which has also seen adaptations in Chile and Colombia.  Claudia Álvarez has gotten some flack for her performance.  It is a tricky call - the character she plays is a bad actress given to drama queen tantrums, so from time to time, you have to assess whether it is Claudia Álvarez or the character whose performance you are witnessing.  Álvarez was the best thing in DOS HOGARES and up until the writers destroyed her character, one of the better things in PORQUE EL AMOR MANDA, and she imbues her character in HASTA EL FIN DEL MUNDO with enough vulnerability to give her the benefit of the doubt.

La Reina del Sur

LA REINA DEL SUR is a 2011 narco-novela from Telemundo that was the network’s only genuine hit.  Based on a 2002 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, it follows a Mexican woman who is caught up by circumstances into the world of drug-trafficking and finds she has a talent to succeed in that dirty enterprise.

Cristina Urgel and Kate del Castillo

The first half of the telenovela is the best thing Telemundo has ever produced – pulpy trash that is swift, sexy and exciting.  Kate del Castillo is a dynamic lead, strong and fiery.  Her sensuality has always been on the butch side, but that works here when offset by a pretty boy like Iván Sánchez.  Their chemistry is the best thing in the telenovela.  The international cast also features excellent performances from Mexican actor Humberto Zurita and Colombian actor Christian Tappan, but it is a pair of Spaniards who steal the show: Alberto Jiménez as an unflappable Russian crime boss and an androgynous lithe Amazon named Cristina Urgel who isn’t much of an actress, but is a compelling, peculiar screen presence that evinces ineffable star quality.

The second half bogs down into more conventional narco fare and is far less interesting.  It was Kate del Castillo’s first telenovela in eight years and she seems to run out of steam.  She is not helped by her lack of chemistry with Miguel de Miguel, the Spanish actor who becomes the leading man over the final weeks.

But ultimately, the biggest flaw is LA REINA DEL SUR tells the same lie the majority of the narco-novelas tell in depicting its protagonist as a “good” drug trafficker in conflict against “evil” drug traffickers.

The cast also features Gabriel Porras, Salvador Zerboni, Sara Maldonado, Ezequiel Montalt and Dagoberto Gama.

Utopia - series premiere

Billed as innovative and experimental, Fox’s UTOPIA is little more than a tired BIG BROTHER retread of strangers living together and filmed for twenty-four hours.  The series is meant to last a year, but there was so little of interest in the first two hours that I can’t imagine this series will last even a month on the air.  The cast of fifteen men and women are obnoxious made-for-reality-TV stereotypes and each play their boxed-in roles predictably.  Unsurprisingly, the producers of this show provided booze for their cast in an attempt to prod some drunken drama, but half of the episode seemed to concern whether some morons will stay in the Utopia community or depart.  Who could possibly care?

Evita - "A New Argentina"

The first act finale of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical EVITA is immoral and artistically untenable.  The number, called “A New Argentina” and sung by a rousing chorus, concludes on stage with the election of Juan Perón as the act ends.  The end of an act calls for applause from the audience, especially after a vocally exciting number like “A New Argentina,” but that moment depicted on stage - the election of Juan Perón – is not an event the audience should be compelled to applaud.

Ultimately, I applauded begrudgingly, wanting to acknowledge the talent of the performers, but I remained grumpy for the rest of the evening.  No responsible artist would ever put his audience in that type of bind.

Telenovela Watch - winter novelas

Julieth Restrepo in La promesa

A catch up article on some of the telenovelas to premiere this year in the US.  The Colombian-made tele-series LA PROMESA is the best of the bunch, but it is also a depressing hour and a half to take day after day.  It features Julieth Restrepo in a large role, a young actress with enough peculiarity to be fascinating on screen.  Even when given desk duty in a dull cop series like COMANDO ELITE, she draws the eye.

QUÉ POBRES TAN RICOS from Televisa, airing on Univision, and LA IMPOSTORA on Telemundo are dutiful, watchable, even enjoyable middle-of-the-road telenovelas.  POR SIEMPRE MI AMOR from Televisa, airing on Univision, reaches higher highs than POBRES or IMPOSTORA, but also lower lows.  It is also suffering from heavy Univision editing.

I found the Argos/Cadenatres telenovela INFAMES to be infuriating.  I found Telemundo's EN OTRA PIEL dire, the worst telenovela I've seen so far this year.  It is also badly overlit in many scenes, which I don't remember seeing on a Telemundo novela since the mid-2000s.

The article also has some words on DE QUE TE QUIERO, TE QUIERO.  I have been taking more and more time before writing about a telenovela.  Most critical appraisals seem to be made after a single episode, which is ludicrous.  I used to take a couple weeks into the novela's run before writing my thoughts; I'm now usually taking three or four weeks.  I didn't do that with DE QUE TE QUIERO, TE QUIERO, and almost immediately regretted it as I was too harsh.  While I don't think the first seven episodes were very good, it improves a great deal in this, its third week.  But like LA IMPOSTORA, it is a telenovela where the subplots and supporting characters are of more interest than the central plot line.  Unlike LA IMPOSTORA, it is the writing rather than the actors playing the protagonists that is the problem.  Still, Cynthia Klitbo, Marcelo Córdoba, Marisol Del Olmo and the temper-tantruming antagonist played by Esmeralda Pimentel are what I'm enjoying on that novela so far.

THE HYPNOTIC EYE

Alternately nasty and tedious 1960 b-flick that sells itself as a some kind of cautionary tale of the dangers of hypnosis. Women are disfiguring themselves and the police can’t figure out why, but the audience can by the third scene. With Allison Hayes slinking about, it is easy to guess what she has to do with the diabolical goings on. Directed by TV director George Blair; also with Jacques Bergerac, Marcia Henderson, Merry Anders and Joe Patridge.

Reign - pilot episode

The pits. American teen network CW does Mary, Queen of Scots. Everybody is conventionally TV attractive, bland and interchangeable with the casts of every other show on the network. The heroine is limp, sullen, and pale as is the current vogue, which I find preferable, even if that favor is infinitesimal, to the plucky spitfire cliché – the only TV alternative for shows of this type. The bastard brother of the dauphin in named “Bash.” Does more really need to be said?

The Goldbergs - series premiere - "Circle of Driving"

THE GOLDBERGS is a family nostalgia sitcom about growing up in the eighties. The comedy is alternately shouty and coy, and I’m not fond of either. Humor based on bygone fads is terribly easy and cheap – variations of look at the crazy stuff people used to (fill in the blank - wear, eat, watch on TV); the other major comic strand, the dysfunctional wacky family, is as cliché as they come.

The Mindy Project - season 2 premiere - "All My Problems Solved Forever..."

THE MINDY PROJECT is amiable and pleasant, if not terribly funny. The sitcom speak is a bit less obtrusive than in worse shows, but the dialogue still occasionally betrays the situations and characters for unnatural comic lines. Not as distrustful of the audience as a laugh-track sitcom, it utilizes the single-camera alternative: cutting to close up, mugging comic reactions from the actors, an elbow in the viewer’s side, nudgingly pleading for acknowledgement of the jokes, “Get it, get it.” You know in an early scene with Mindy and her beau seated precariously on a tree branch they will fall off it, and they do. Outside of the appealing lead, the cast is bland and forgettable.

2 Broke Girls - season 3 premiere - "And the Soft Opening"

2 BROKE GIRLS is an odd couple comedy: Beth Behrs is the chipper, vivacious, chic, optimistic blonde Caroline and Kat Dennings is her opposite, the dour, slothful, slovenly, pessimistic raven-haired Max. The pair are waitresses in a diner who in this episode open up a cupcake shop in a back room. Roughly half of the humor is derived from dick jokes, another twenty percent from vagina jokes, the remaining thirty percent divvied up among ethnic and racist stereotypes, drug jokes, jokes about Matthew Moy’s diminutive stature and jokes about Kat Dennings’s ample chest. The show’s racism is delivered with carefree aplomb, unlike the aggressive, attention-seeking, desperate racism of Fox’s DADS; and the crude humor comes with a snappy and cheerful zing – the nastiness never feels nasty because the characters take the insults with shrugs and indifference. The story becomes moralistic as it wraps up – the characters’ learn a corny lesson and hug it out. Not having seen this show before, which is now in its third year, I’m puzzled by Dennings’s muddied delivery – one would hope after two years she’d be better at getting lines out, but nearly each of her quips gets snagged and garbled in her throat.

Dads - pilot episode

The pilot episode of DADS could almost play like a satire of every bad Fox sitcom from the mid-1990s if its creators were cleverer. Instead, it just seems a continuation of that brain-dead legacy. Do “audiences” really still hoot and howl when an attractive actress enters a scene wearing a “sexy” getup? Perhaps due to network standards, its misogyny and racism do not raise offense, but shrugs, the show is impish rather than transgressive. What it never is is funny.

Telenovela Watch - summer novelas

A couple of my recent columns covering most of the telenovelas that have debuted in the United States this summer are available here and here.

The one gem is SECRETOS DEL PARAÍSO on MundoFox, a Colombian telenovela based on an early 1990s telenovela that seems utterly modern – a serious, complex look at devastatingly sad, lonely people. It’s the best telenovela of the year so far.

Telemundo’s DAMA Y OBRERO started well, but deteriorated into a mess. While the novela does not work, its lead actress Ana Layevska is doing some fantastic work. It is depressing seeing an actress with this much to offer slumming at Telemundo in parts frankly beneath her talent; one hopes she’ll one day get a juicy role where she can really stretch and show what she’s got.

Telemundo’s MARIDO EN ALQUILER is the best of their current lineup. Its lead actress, Sonya Smith, is badly miscast, but she’s so good, the telenovela mostly works anyway. It seems to exist on two realities – one side has solid, grounded performances. On the other side, there is some appalling cartoon acting from Martiza Rodríguez, Daniela Navarro, and Alba Roversi that keep this novela from ever becoming more than just decent. It’s hard to believe the same directors can be responsible for such a contrast in the quality of performances.

Televisa’s LA TEMPESTAD on Univision, while not the horror show we were rumored to be getting based on the press in Mexico, isn’t very good either. The central problem is the green leading lady, Ximena Navarrete – a spectacular blunder to cast a complete newcomer, especially as leading man William Levy is best as a reactor - he needs to be able to bounce off of somebody else’s energy. But Navarrete gives nothing, her inadequacies especially show up opposite a fine actress like Nora Salinas. Laura Carmine, an actress who proved capable of giving subtle, sensitive performances in QUIÉN ERES TU?, overacts fiercely here, but is enormously entertaining and strangely moving in what is ostensibly a spoiled villainess role. LA TEMPESTAD at least has enormous camp value which puts it a step above the rest of the duds making up the network’s current prime time lineup.

Finally, there is the thriller SANTA DIABLA on Telemundo. Telemundo execs were boasting in recent Variety articles about how their telenovelas, being produced in Miami, better reflected American life – and then they unleash this telenovela which shows not even the slightest understanding of the American legal system. The surprises and revelations in this novela come quick, but they aren’t grounded in anything substantive, so they seem like cheats. It is better looking and better produced than Telemundo's other two current novelas, and Carlos Ponce is an amusing villain - his unappealing screen presence finally put to good use; but its protagonists, Gaby Espino and Aarón Díaz, are ultimately weaker and less interesting than Layevska and José Luis Reséndez on DAMA or Sonya Smith and Juan Soler on MARIDO.

VIVA KNIEVEL!

The motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel stars as himself in this piece of the 1970s cheese. Drug lord Leslie Nielsen wants to arrange for Evel to suffer a fatal accident during a jump in Mexico so he can smuggle drugs across the border in Evel’s funeral trailer.

Like many athletes and showmen, whatever charisma Knievel may have displayed in his television specials vanishes when called upon to act a character, even himself.

Knievel seems an awfully square daredevil, an establishment hero, in red white and blue, promoting an anti-drug message, to push back against the counterculture. A real manly man, Knievel butts heads with feminist photographer played by Lauren Hutton, but she’s converted after a ride on his crotch rocket.

From 1978, directed by veteran Gordon Douglas; featuring Gene Kelly, Red Buttons, Cameron Mitchell, Dabney Coleman, Marjoe Gortner and Frank Gifford as himself. Some of the action in the climax is better executed than one would expect in a movie like this.

GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL

A spaceship buzzes an airplane causing it to crash on a barren rocky landscape. The survivors are offed by a space vampire. The title promises a wacked-out ride, but this Japanese science fiction horror movie from 1968 is mostly a boring rehash of misanthropic clichés about the savagery of humankind in extremis and the typical throat-sucking monster attacks. Some late 1960s era turmoil is horned into the proceedings including assassination, terrorism, Vietnam, and of course the bomb, imbuing the movie with an appropriately apocalyptic backdrop. Hajime Sato (TERROR BENEATH THE SEA) directs; the movie stars Teruo Yoshida, Tomomi Sato, Eizo Kitamuro, and Hideo Ko.

Ratings

I have never fully understood why box office grosses and television ratings came to considered news of any importance outside of those with an actual monetary stake in the success and failure of the enterprises.

Now there are whole websites devoted to analyzing daily box office numbers and television ratings. The comments sections of the sites are filled with commentators who tout the numbers of their favorite movies and shows or denigrate the movies or shows that don't connect with audiences, their egos somehow boosted vicariously through a puerile assigning of "winners" and "losers," like the fans of sporting teams, pathetically needing their own tastes validated through utterly specious evidence of merit.

Los Peores Pasteles de Londres

A clip from the 2008 Madrid production of the Stephen Sondheim / Hugh Wheeler musical SWEENEY TODD, Vicky Peña performing Mrs. Lovett's first song, "The Worst Pies in London," as spectacular an introduce-a-character number as exists in musical theater.

The Spanish translation of Sondheim's lyrics do a fairly good job conveying the gist of what is said, and the rest of the work can be carried by the music - the character is all right there, even without the words - the humor, the chatty daffiness, the flightiness, the abrupt shifts in thought and attention.

The 'Mrs Mooney' section can't capture the brilliant construction of the original in detailing how she deals with the scarcity of meat:

Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop,
Does a business, but I notice something weird--
Lately all her neighbors' cats have disappeared.
Have to hand it to her--
Wot I calls
Enterprise,
Popping pussies into pies.
Wouldn't do in my shop--
Just the thought of it's enough to make you sick.
And I'm telling you them pussy cats is quick!

That marvelous onomatopoeic consonance of "Popping pussies into pies" and the surprise kicker at the end "And I'm telling you them pussy cats is quick."  Here's Caroline O'Connor's performance of "The Worst Pies" from the 2011 Paris production.

I'm not sure if the song's final joke every quite gets across,

Is that  just revolting?
All greasy and gritty,
It looks like it's molting,
And tastes like--
Well, pity

because it is too unnatural to say "And tastes like shitty" - the intended missing word to rhyme with the gritty, so I'm not sure the audience ever makes that connection - unless the actors somehow sell it. The joke only becomes apparent after the fact with Mrs. Lovett's improvised, "Well, pity," and then the audience figures out what the previous missing word is meant to be.

Surprisingly, the joke hits better in the Spanish version, merely because the rhyme is true:

Sólo grasa y nada más
Por más que lo intento

Por más que me esfuerzo
No logro que pierda
Su aroma de --

The mind naturally and immediately fills in the rhyming blank, "mierda," in a way that doesn't happen in the English original.

Finally, a 1980 British documentary made for the London premiere of SWEENEY TODD, Sheila Hancock, the actress playing Mrs. Lovett, talks about performing "Worst Pies" with some rehearsal footage and the composer performing the song at piano, while detailing the business.

Telenovela Watch - LA TEMPESTAD debut

This week's Telenovela Watch with a brief preview of LA TEMPESTAD, starring William Levy, 2010 Miss Universe Ximena Navarrate, and Spanish actor Iván Sánchez.  LA TEMPESTAD has struggled to catch on with viewers in Mexico, indeed, most of Televisa's latest efforts are floundering.  Any call for more original, modern, innovative telenovelas is seriously undermined by Televisa's lone hit - CORAZÓN INDOMABLE - as old-fashioned and tired a remake as Televisa has produced in recent years.

Telenovela Watch - CORAZÓN INDOMABLE

Some thoughts in my Telenovela Watch on the Mexican telenovela CORAZÓN INDOMABLE.  It’s a big hit in Mexico and is doing okay in the US.  I kept delaying tackling it as my opinion kept shifting: I liked the first episodes, hated the next 20, liked the Pygmalion stage, don’t care for what has followed.