{"id":2204,"date":"2018-11-30T21:28:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T21:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2204"},"modified":"2018-11-30T21:28:38","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T21:28:38","slug":"pre-oscars-2019-a-star-is-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/11\/30\/pre-oscars-2019-a-star-is-born\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Oscars 2019 \u2013 A Star Is Born"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We don\u2019t yet know what\u2019s on Academy voters\u2019 minds for next year, but it\u2019s a near-certainty that Bradley Cooper\u2019s directorial debut will feature heavily. I confidently expect to see half-a-dozen nominations for A Star is Born<\/em>, not just making up the numbers in Best Picture, but likely some or all of Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Score and Best Original Song too.<\/p>\n

Not that this is a new story of course. First filmed in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March as a bitter satire on Hollywood\u2019s star-making system, it became Judy Garland\u2019s comeback vehicle in 1954 when she made a musical version with James Mason. In 1976, Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson kept the music, but moved the action away from movies and into rock concerts, and that\u2019s the pitch for the 2018 incarnation, which stars Lady Gaga as waitress-singer-songwriter Ally.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue with the story, across all these variants, has always been \u2013 whose is it? Very often, the female lead has been the bigger name, but the structure of the plot generally means that the male lead takes over in the final third. Here, it\u2019s much more Cooper\u2019s story than Gaga\u2019s all the way through. Previous incarnations of her character have been given new names as part of the star-making process (so Esther Blodgett becomes Vicki Lester). Here, slimy producer Rafi Gavron simply takes away Ally\u2019s surname \u2013 a moment that never really lands because, almost unbelievably, we never find out what her original surname is!<\/p>\n

Both Cooper and Gaga have families around them (which isn\u2019t always the case in earlier versions), but Cooper\u2019s is much more fleshed-out and his interactions with brother Sam Elliot (never better), and Dave Chapelle drive much of the action. What\u2019s weird is that, Gaga aside, this is a woman-free story. Ally has a father (Andrew Dice Clay \u2013 no, really!) but no mother. She sings at a male drag bar. Her best friend is a gay man. Where are her female friends??<\/p>\n

Little of this really matters while the film is on though. Cooper and Gaga have chemistry to spare, and even if the film closely hugs the contours of previous versions, it consistently finds ways to make them fresh and engaging. Ally\u2019s first song on-stage with Jackson Maine is particularly fine, with Gaga pitching Ally\u2019s uncertainty, strength, talent, delight and terror perfectly. Only the end of Jackson\u2019s story seems a little hasty. Norman Maine overhears Esther Blodgett deciding to give up her career to look after her husband. Jackson Maine just takes his wife\u2019s producer\u2019s word for it and obediently fetches a sturdy belt.<\/p>\n

As director, Cooper occasionally falls prey to some TV-commercial lighting and framing, and his sometimes eccentric editing rhythms don\u2019t always work, but overall, this is confident, engaging, character-driven movie-making. It deserves its bonanza box office and if it does take home armfuls of Oscars \u2013 well, it will be a safe but not undeserving choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We don\u2019t yet know what\u2019s on Academy voters\u2019 minds for next year, but it\u2019s a near-certainty that Bradley Cooper\u2019s directorial debut will feature heavily. I confidently expect to see half-a-dozen nominations for A Star is Born, not just making up the numbers in Best Picture, but likely some or all of Best Director, Best Screenplay, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,11],"tags":[521,19],"class_list":["post-2204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","category-culture","tag-oscars-2019","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-zy","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2204"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2207,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2204\/revisions\/2207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}