good evening and welcome again to a fistful of popcorn here it is i'm marilyn campbell and i'm moderating stand night and with me are two of our regular panelists janet stared and bob brown and then we're going to be talking about a film made by a princeton native damien chevelle who last year i think it was only last year was nominated for best picture for whiplash  loosely on his experiences with the music teacher in princeton high school and this year he has made a much larger more elaborate production a musical film called lala land aspiring jazz musician jazz aficionados who would love to have his own jazz club and they through various encounters there are there's a meet cute that isn't so cute at first because a she can't stand jazz he finds out he's not much into her as for a chanst but for some reason they get together and they develop a relationship where each begins to recognize that the other has artistic ambitions are very deep seated and the problem is they're kind of going in different directions you've got a compromise at some point so i think that's one of the problems of the film that they have to work out but meanwhile  all you get wonderful vistas of the valley high above the city you get marvelous and dancing and and musical numbers where they are courting and other things happen i don't want to give it all away but it's really a love story that is to end all of stories in a very hollywood musical matter and very high tech color  and luckily this lady went on to explain why she hated it and the reason she hated it was because ryan gosling and emma stone are not that great  some no right right so then so i began to thinking well why would you make a musical casting in the lead roles and it was main talent oh though i understand emma stone cast those actors in those so this is your because mainly it's about the the characters rather than the the dancing as i read your suggestion is no i can suggest something else i want to hear from you for boxoffice well i think that they are the this is actually something eluded to by a friend of mine who was with us there is perfection in their imperfection they she's basically trying to be an actress he's trying to be a jazz pianist they're not trying to be singers and dancers like that that's not what they're trying to be the fact that they do that is just because life is so to continue your point that that was part of the point is is hiring people weren't quite that very highest professional level because he's trying to say he's trying to say one of the premises of the old style walking in they just suddenly break into dancing in the dark which is actually the choreography and one of the numbers every day and then the on the dark one in the in the planetary rises and this and that was the sort of phony premise of a lot this natural spirit unlike say a back stage musical where they are supposed to be professionals but there's a lot of musicals where they're not supposed to be right professionally i know dame inches al the director has said that he was trying to what he was trying to do was to have a very realistic love story or a romantic story with an utterly  there in l a and but then they you know their careers which is really their true love is their career their respective careers are there and loves and whether that which becomes a little bit more impossible yeah we did that work so that's what i think he was trying to do and it's up to what the viewer to say whether it did or not but i think it did for me to that it the lack of their top dancing and singing abilities and i do think it was deliberate not to have highly polished dancers and singers in these roles well name two that would be highly polished that would fit i mean we don't have that kind of actor or actress anymore there used to be films where there were vehicles for well i'm going to bring a brace here ok i think there are african american entertainers in both sing and dance of a very high level now that i've done musicals recently and act and act and act yes ok yeah and you're for example well for example dreamgirls which of course is another sort of back stage musical they're supposed to be entertainers but did they dance they moved perfect their not being perfect ryan gosling learned to play the piano right for three months before this that is the instrument that john legend is known for right but in the movie he had to learn how to play the guitar not supposed to be a mediocre jazz pianist you know he's supposed to be very good yet he supposes you see his fingers flying but if you listen to the music carefully his fingers are approximation at least in the first one yes they didn't have to they didn't have to hire a body double but he is not playing on the soundtrack you know that's correct that it well mine my feeling about their imperfection is what i get back to in the beginning is when you're going to a fred astaire ginger rogers film you're looking to see them dance you're not look at them to see them act right and i hear the fact that they if they were such perfect perfect dancers i think you would get is involved in the character  right anybody in the world right but but there's a lot of films where he may say with with frank sinatra who is a singer not an answer where they do routines they're supposed to be sailors or baseball players or wherever and they're just supposed to ordinary guys breaking into dance they're not they're not supposed to be as almost all the fred astaire ginger rogers are they are performers but i think in this movie i think i go back to your question can you make such a musical today was really interesting to me because a o scott amongst other reviewers i think the variety reviewer also said that the movie the greatest thing in the movie is the last twenty minutes right in their relationship and they end up in the technicolor happy ending and that was it in there in the sort of illustration of what you can't do anymore because this movie is in some ways it's not dark it's certainly in that dark by movie standards but it explores the fact that it's difficult to have a relationship and that and it's difficult to make it as an actor and as a musician in a world that maybe it's not it's very competitive and yeah yeah i knew it was you have the idea that this is a movie about which you sacrifice for art in a way book and what you do for yourself it seems that one of the two characters has a little more satisfactory personal life to go along with it than the other but they've both fulfilled their artistic ambitions apparently but wouldn't have i think we were led to believe they wouldn't have had they not met yeah that they  expecting that to happen and it didn't happen at all nobody said i hated this but my wife turned to me and she said nobody applauds in movies anymore and i don't think that's true but i did expect a little more react little off and when you think about it if there were some scenes it felt to me as though they might have been edited back a little bit that some sequences might have been extended a little the balcony and jumping into the pool and it's also a party holding it's also it's it's also you know happy and upbeat and then these sorts of don't think i can still remember the piano solo where usually when you see your music the first time you don't remember it he said this was deliberate what you're saying you pointing it out it starts with the sort of grand tour of the city it's the whole go to the planetarium and and and and take to the air god i love totally unrealistic but beautiful so that's the sort of trajectory is is that the romance pig so so that film is also famous for the saturation of the color of the red jacket that jim wears throughout james dean character jim wears throughout the movie is famously really really read the yellow dress that there are really probably dozens of allusions to prequel film absolute which i probably picked up three but but it's fun to do is they're fun and one of them i think and i didn't pick this up was shoestring with its very similar story of a jazz musician and in this case a student who may or may not go into acting but they begin a romance and this the film which is striking formally because there's practically no dialogue whatsoever and in fact most of the music is instrumental it's not there's no lyric but it meeting that getting together the happiness and the gradual dissolution of a relationship through through basically music  film and he the people who are fellow harvard students he made it at when he was a student at harvard but at the end of that film there's a number one where the woman character who is a broken up but she's working mia she's working as a waitress in a diner and she gets up on the counter and tap dances and it's a great like it's great you know gorgeous colorful musical number to sort of s it's been a good relationship it ended she'll she'll be ok and i have to mention a personal thing the star of that is was deseret garcia who is now a professor of film at the university of and that that film the library the princeton library has it in there d v d collection in either doing worth a look because it has it shows the sort of way he was thinking i think  that film and then with a budget but it was probably you know when a time one could really manage go friday in on him and say that all three films have had a very strong whiplash as you send with a second one jazz is unfinished i'm talking about the character sebastian in a movie and that his idea is having this club that goes back right in time to when jazz was really pure before it became right the sort of hybrid that he plays with now so jazz is very much in his head all the time and then ultimately well ultimately well i think that there's enough to go back to the point we boast we all started with here jazz jazz improvisation is is the sort of thing where it allows you to be an individual within a group and i think that it's also unexpected and that's maybe why you also have people who weren't polished in this film so so to get them to say well you know learn to play the piano ryan yeah you know maybe something will happen or learn how to dance and maybe something will happen maybe we can make something  and not have people come with with with previous experience to get over to be fresh on the other hand he could have chosen a known actors he could have i don't know if we could raise that kind of touch both of these were not being like not quite as pretty and not better than anybody else is good but not i will say that the the the camera work the editing all of the music and all of that almost looks effortless i'm sure that it was hellish oh but it looks effortless and yet even with all those technical accomplishments the scenes between the two characters are very very well sum up yeah i was actually fascinated to hear that there was someone you encountered who didn't like it i think it's got an eight point nine on i m d everyone i know speaks about the last twenty minutes worth the price of admission i think it's utterly surprising and lovely i don't know what else to say you know search arming and i just love the