I have decided to come out. I like GLEE. I really like GLEE.

When my macho partner wasn’t around I tuned in again last evening for episode 8 to watch Sue (played by the incredibly versatile Jane Lynch) and Will swing dance to “Sing, Sing, Sing”.

The club sing and dance to Young MC’s hip-hop classic “Bust a Move“. And it it was really good. Will (Matthew Morrison) seemed to channel his inner boy band and was adorable geeky and funky at the same time.

The big drawing card last night, Will entertains the idea of doing a mash-up of both the “Thong Song” (Ken’s choice, so he can shake his ‘money-maker’) and Emma’s choice of “I Could’ve Danced All Night” for their wedding, but in the meantime Will sings Sisqo’s the “Thong Song” to Emma in her wedding dress.

According to EWs Louis Virtel:
It’s officially been a good week for Glee, which has just secured two big deals: 1) a mid-season DVD release and 2) access to the sacred works of highest-caste leotard god Madonna. EW has it that Glee will film an all-Madonna episode early next year featuring songs from the pop star’s ouevre. The Fox show prides itself on picking unusual, controversial songs to pad its running time, and this occasion should be no different. After the jump, Movieline selects its most preferred, and most challenging Madonna classics for Glee.

Here’s what Louis Virtel thinks:

1. “Justify My Love”
The world has an admirable habit of trying to forget blatant Public Enemy rip-offs and Lenny Kravitz’s songwriting in general, but Glee should make an exception in this case. “Justify My Love” is a semi-racy song whose horniest coo is, “I wanna run naked in a rainstorm / make love in a train cross-country.” Sue Sylvester mutters something a hundred times more lurid every week. If they can make this song work (perhaps by giving it to Sue? Out-of-the-box-thinking, world), the episode enters the realm of legend.

2. “Open Your Heart”
Plenty would argue that “Vogue” is the quintessential show choir tune for its easy choreography, but “Open Your Heart” is a tinge more urgent, even carnal. If Rachel’s going to profess to Finn, “Open Your Heart” would lend the show immediacy. Anything but a teary-eyed, lovelorn ballad, please. No one needs to hear “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” when the mind is settling in for a night’s slumber.

3. “Love Profusion”
Mind you, the core of Glee is saccharine, not sultry. The oft-forgotten, pleasant single from the self-serious drudge of American Life references Cole Porter (a glee-clubber totem) and a worldly confusion that matches the average tenth-grader’s hormonal discontent.

4. “Borderline”
Will, the glee club coach, requires a fun, frothy tune to ignite his troops. He’s also mildly inappropriate with those kids, and “Borderline” provides the right level of orgasm imagery to keep fans titillated and a little worried.

5. “You’ll See”
To clarify: I condemn lovelorn ballads for Glee sampling, not ballads in general. Since it’s possible that Madonna will appear in the episode, why not cast her as an life-wary voice instructor and pair her with that cherubic fashionista Kurt for a duet of her most mature tribute to self-empowerment? No Andrew Lloyd Webber bombast necessary.

GLEE can be seen Wednesday nights at 9PM, EST on Fox.

Review

With so many reviews sites on the Internet, I rarely write reviews unless I’m moved to express my opinion, good or bad. Last night’s media preview of Sex, Relationships, And Sometimes…Love, directed by Ryan Singh, had a mix of both.

The bottom line - The bad by far was outweighed by the good.

Originally, written and directed by Joelle Arqueros, Sex, Relationships, And Sometimes…Love is a compilation of dramatic, comedic and melodic monologues that takes a provocative and insightful look into the lives of contemporary men and women from all walks of life and sexual preferences.

Based on real-life experiences, Sex, Relationships and Sometimes…Love currently has a five-year open-ended run off-Broadway at The Michael Chekov Theater in New York City.

Toronto’s mounting of Sex, Relationships, And Sometimes…Love, is a total of 26 monologues, presented by a collection of 39 local actors at various stages of ability in their careers.

What’s more important to me as a reviewer of this particular piece is the fact that this stage play is all about ‘Diversity‘. Sexual, Cultural and Thematic Diversity, something we strive for on an international level in our film programming over the last 6 years at ReelHeART.

To sit in that SRO audience last evening and look around at a sea of faces from different neighborhoods in the GTA, is what it’s really all about. To reach an audience in Toronto, forget the niches and just get everybody in the same room to enjoy an exchange of artistic expression.

The whole space at the Poor Alex Theater was utilized as part of the set, with some monologues performed in the seats, at a table or at the bar, which was especially appropriate when musing about hook-ups, lap dances and the merits of being a Gigolo. Some stagings worked well, while others fell flat or were obstructed by the bobbing heads of audience members.

The first four monologues were insubstantial ramp-ups to more provocative pieces. Monologue #5 called, My Mission was both provocative and funny due to a well-timed delivery by actor Zahir Gilani, who measures the odds of getting laid against his dis-interested model of affection played by statuesque Laura McKay. McKay, later on in Monologue #18 called Ally, draws us in with a strong and sincere ode to longtime ‘party-girl friend’ Ally who’s death was inevitable yet unexpected.

Monologue #6, Fearless, featured a petite and sexy MILF, played by Barb Johnny who’s daughter of 3 proves to be her ‘man filter‘ when trying to hook up with a hunk-du-jour at a local club.

To my extreme surprise and delight, Monologue #7, Bon Appetite, featured terrifically unpredictable character actor Mary Goldman as a saucy, Southern, silver-tongued Cougar mentor to cougarette-in-training, Kelly Marie-Murtha. The laughs were fast and furious as Goldman extolled the virtues of various flavors of ‘man meat’ when choosing whom to invite to dine between your legs.

Someone, Monologue #9, performed by Anne Shepherd about her awakening as a lesbian, was slightly uneven, but I believe will improve as the run continues. What took us out of the moment was the fact that her character was Jewish but didn’t know the difference between a bar mitzvah and a bat mitzvah. The upside, Anne can sing.

Erica Levene showed us the meaning of swagger, working the room from the back of the Poor Alex until she landed in all her chocolatey voluptuousness in Monologue #11, and totally convinced us she was indeed the ‘real’ Wonder Woman. I can’t let the joke out of the bag. You’ll have to pay to hear it for yourself.

Toronto casting agents, would probably bypass Raymond Ho, because he’s not on paper what he might give a director on stage or on-screen. Guess what – It would be their loss. Ho’s performance in Sumi’s Hands, Monologue #13 was so genuine and authentic, that both my companion and myself were drawn into his piece. We’re both hard-asses, so it’s not an easy feat. The fact that he remained on stage as the short-lived fascination of a raging same-sex, “lemon-colored g-string” date from hell, made him even more lovable. Yes, insert “Awwww”, right here.

Ever After, Monologue #19 blasted onstage with jerk-fired island-cockiness in the form of actor Rory Davies, who, as the monologue progresses transforms from a player to a man fearful that his cheating wife is going to leave him. Nice debunking of an obvious stereo-type, well played by Davis.

Polish born character actor, Mark Munro, sexed us up as the Gigolo in Expensive, Monologue #21. Munro recounts his waywardness as being due to the time he was a teenager and he went downstairs (no pun intended) with the mother of his friend to find a bottle of wine. It was he who got his ‘cork popped’ and when they were done, she threw $50 bucks at him, making him the richest teenager on the block. Great story, told by a local actor who may have found his niche telling stories on stage and in film. He has a knack for it.

For pure pathos, I tip my hat to Sandy Duarte and her turn in Bulgarian Princess, Monologue #22, for churning the audience’s emotions by reminding us of the important role of the father in child development.

The emotional tug-of-war her character goes through while unexpectedly dining with a ‘Bulgarian princess’ and her adoring father is too much to bear and we worry what might happen to our protagonist when she goes home. She’s a broken human being with a fragile veneer. Will she do something awful to herself after an excruciating night of witnessing third-person father-daughter time that she has so longed for? We feel uneasy as the lights dim…

Duarte is fast making the rounds in Toronto as a respected actress who knows that the first word in the film business is respect and the second word is talent. Mad props to her on both…

Located 1 block west of Bathurst on Dundas, and running until November 8th, Sex, Relationships, And Sometimes…Love is a play for everybody. Plain and Simple.

For a show times and tickets, please visit the Sex, Relationships, And Sometimes…Love website here.


]]> http://www.reelheart.com/reelblogs/2009/10/09/review-sex-relationships-and-sometimes-love/feed/ 3 http://www.reelheart.com/reelblogs/2009/09/27/neil-patrick-harris-from-doogi-to-hot-dog/ http://www.reelheart.com/reelblogs/2009/09/27/neil-patrick-harris-from-doogi-to-hot-dog/#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:03:32 +0000 RHIFF http://www.reelheart.com/reelblogs/?p=1212 by Shannonn Kelly
8:46AM, EST, Sunday September 27, 2009 

Like the quiet ramp up of Justin Timberlake’s comic timing, nobody expected, the steady momentum catching crash into the mainstream for Neil Patrick Harris.

Last Sunday Neil emceed a successful Emmy Awards show that I covered in my blog and did moment by moment updates on Facebook and Twitter. The next day the headlines bowed to all that is good in his life right now. Poised to be the next big star on the A-List, being more the news is that he’s doing it as a ‘openly gay actor’.

According to Emily Nussbaum

Neil Patrick Harris used to be an underage doctor on TV. Now he’s another Hollywood first: an out gay actor who can host award shows, play a womanizer, walk the red carpet with his boyfriend, and then get cast in movies as a straight dad. Neat trick.

Great story (and photos) at New York Magazine. To read it, click here.