Dreamgirls
Grade: C

Teaser trailers for Dreamgirls hit the screen before production even started. And for months Hollywood insiders have been saying that Bill Condon's adaptation of the 1982 Broadway musical is a frontrunner in this year's Oscar race. Pretty good publicity for a movie that no one had even seen yet.

Well, last night Dreamworks and Paramount Pictures unveiled their precious baby with preview screenings in L.A., San Francisco, Portland and other cities. Some critics are already creaming in their jeans. Tom O'Neil of The LA Times writes:

"DREAMGIRLS IS A DREAM COME TRUE - A PERFECT FILM"
Technically, we journos aren't permitted to review the film yet, so I won't go into much detail, but it would be negligent not to report on what happened tonight at the first media screening of "Dreamgirls" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills.
Bill Condon and crew blasted the roof off the joint. We now, officially, have a best picture frontrunner and one that's going to be tough to beat.
I eavesdropped on lots of conversations out in the lobby afterward and everybody was raving, gushing, shaking, cheering. Clearly, "Dreamgirls" is a dream come true as a film production. It transforms a Broadway classic into a movie masterpiece. In fact, it's even better than its stage original.

Dream on, Tom. I never saw the Broadway show, so I have no way of saying how the movie compares to the stage version. But I can say - despite my high hopes for an electrifying musical like Chicago - that Dreamgirls left me completely un-jazzed. It has some glossy and inspired moments, but for the most part it's a bunch of sappy pop songs (there are a few good numbers, to be fair) swimming in a corny and poorly developed story.

The plot follows the ups and downs of three black singers from Detroit (Beyonce, Anika Noni Rose and Jennifer Hudson of American Idol fame). After singing backup for a ladies' man played by Eddie Murphy, they get their own act under the divisive condition that beautiful Beyonce replaces Hudson, who is an overweight loudmouth.

Expect an Oscar nomination for Hudson, who has an undeniably commanding presence but no command of the concept of subtlety.

Dreamgirls hits NYC and LA on December 15, and then opens nationwide on Christmas Day.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
Grade: A

In 1978 the charismatic and certifiable preacher Jim Jones killed over 900 of his followers with cyanide-spiked Kool-Aid. Combining extensive film footage and interviews with surviving members of the Peoples Temple, director Stanley Nelson has crafted a mesmerizing and disturbing documentary that easily ranks as one of the year’s best films. Jones emerges as an enigmatic and tragic figure, a socially progressive visionary undone by paranoia and an oppressive quest for absolute power. In a bizarre footnote, it turns out that Jones had sex with male followers even though he proclaimed himself to be the world’s only heterosexual.

Suspension by Robert Westfield
(Harper Perennial, $13.95)

Several novelists have tackled the thorny topic of the September 11 attacks, with varying degrees of success. In his funny and touching book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer detailed the aftermath of the events from the perspective of a precocious boy whose father died at the World Trade Center. Ian McEwan gave a British account of the fallout of 9/11 in the expertly written but stilted novel Saturday.
Now gay American writer Robert Westfield makes his debut with Suspension, the tale of a young man who is bewildered by the surreal changes in his life after September 11. It’s an ambitious book that blends elements of mystery, romance and outright farce. While the first half is highly engaging, the second half suffers from slopping plotting, confusing changes of perspective and jarring tonal changes. Westfield may be up to something intrepid when he suddenly transitions from high drama to Three’s Company-style shtick, but it was lost on me.
Andy Green, the narrator, is a New Yorker who makes his living devising multiple choice questions for standardized tests. Through his best friend Sonia – a Russian cabaret singer who speaks mangled English- he meets a wealthy boyfriend who disappears under mysterious circumstances. Andy gets a grip on this romantic debacle, but he’s driven into hiding after he and his future brother-in-law get savagely beat up.
So far so good, but the plot really gets out of hand in the remaining stretch. The events of September 11 transpire while Andy is holed up in his apartment. When he finally emerges no one is who they seem to be, and there’s an unsolved murder and some white collar crimes to contend with. Without exception Westfield’s resolutions to these dilemmas are either uninspired or painfully contrived.
Without prowling for symbolism, the title refers to the suspension bridges that play a pivotal role in the plot. One is the Brooklyn Bridge, the site of a romantic interlude and, on a disturbing note, a death by gunfire. The second suspension bridge in question is in Wheeling, West Virginia, site of the novel’s anticlimactic climax.

Babel
Grade: B

What do a freak shooting in Morocco, U.S.-Mexico border woes and a deaf Japanese nymphomaniac have in common? Director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams) does his damdest to connect the dots, and he’s talented enough to make some of the preposterous plot twists stick. But the tone of each story grows increasingly hysterical, resulting in some unintentionally campy moments. The powerhouse ensemble cast includes Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt and Gael García Bernal.

My Sweetest Downfall

Until a few weeks ago I had never even heard of Regina Spektor, a singer/songwriter who hails from the "anti-folk" movement (I have no idea what that means). But after reading glowing reviews of her work in The Portland Mercury and Willamette Week - and hearing that her recent Portland show sold out - I decided to find out what all the fuss was about. Regina, who was born in Moscow but now lives in New York, has several CDs to her name, including Soviet Kitsch. I opted to download her latest release, Begin to Hope, and I gotta say that I'm becoming a Spektor addict even though some of her lyrics are terrible and she occasionally channels that whiney sexy girl hormonal sound that has made Tori Amos increasingly annoying over the years. The first six tracks are especially strong, my favorite being #2 ("Better"). And no matter how hard I try I can't resist the ultra-catchy opening number "Fidelity." Here's the link to the video for "Fidelity," courtesy of You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NBArHgZntE

THE BORAT INVASION

Borat, a character created by British comic Sacha Baron Cohen for his Da Ali G Show, will defile movie screens across America starting tomorrow. The film is lengthily titled Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Kazakhstan, and for the most part it lives up to the buzz that's been building up for months. It received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival despite projection problems, and Entertainment Weekly made a pretty convincing case that this is one of the funniest (and potentially influential) comedies in ages.

Filmed in low-budget documentary style, the action starts off in Borat's rural village in Kazakhstan. He introduces us to the local rapists and prostitutes (one of whom is his sister), and gives a blow-by-blow commentary on an anti-Semitic ritual called The Running of the Jew.

Soon Borat takes his broken English and his rotund road manager to "the U.S. & A" for a diplomatic tour of sorts. A biohazard of epic proportions, he takes a dump in front of the Trump Tower, pisses in a Central Park lake and unleashes a chicken on a NYC subway. Later, after bungling his way through meetings with politicians and a feminist group, he becomes obsessed with Pamela Anderson and makes it his mission to track her down in California. In the film's best scene, a disagreement with his manager results in a man-on-man nude wrestling match that must qualify as gay fetish porn for some poor souls out there.

I had never seen Borat on Da Ali G Show before, and he started to wear on my nerves after about an hour (luckily the film clocks in at a mercifully short 85 minutes). But I was tickled enough to check Ali G out of the library, and I've enjoyed watching the Borat clips on those DVDs.

For what it's worth, the movie was a monster hit at the preview screening I went to. The laughter was so loud and constant, that I missed quite a bit of the dialogue. To hear the script in all its glory I guess I'll have to travel cross-country with Borat again under less raucous circumstances.