Tracy (Diana Ross), an aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world’s top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.Read More »
Lady Sings the Blues, like many enjoyable biopics, has little to do with presenting fact and everything to do with presenting the essence of a life. It has been both rightly and unfairly reviled by passionate fans of Holiday’s music as being highly fictionalized—and so it is, just as Amadeus, Funny Girl, and St. Louis Blues also use seeds of fact to grow fanciful tales of their respective subjects’ lives. It is also true that Diana Ross has little in common with Billie Holiday; their singing styles are markedly different, and Ross is far too slender and beautiful to believably imitate Holiday; to her credit, she does not try.Read More »
Sidney Lumet’s 1978 adaptation of Broadway’s all-black musical resembles
Saturday Night Fever more than The Wizard of Oz.
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader wrote:
Sidney Lumet’s 1978 adaptation of Broadway’s all-black musical resembles Saturday Night Fever more than The Wizard of Oz. There is the same dark disco lighting, the same romanticization of urban rubble. And the theme is no longer “There’s no place like home,” but a learning-to-love-yourself homily that might have been lifted from Werner Erhard. Still, it’s one of the more competent neomusicals of the period, if only because of Dede Allen’s punchy editing and Tony Walton’s cavernous sets. A lot to look at, little to contemplate, and nothing to hum. With Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, and a curiously restrained bit by Richard Pryor.Read More »