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PAGE 6
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2014
ALBUM REVIEW
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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'Louder' emerges from tragedy
IMCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
LOS ANGELES — "I didn't record one word I didn't feel whether or not I wrote it," Lea Michele said during a recent listening session for her debut album. "These are words that are parts of me."
"Louder," released last week, shows the Broadway veteran and star of Fox's hit musical "Glee" making a solid bid for pop stardom.
While "Louder" is packed with club-ready dance anthems and sweeping ballads, some beautifully crafted by pop expert Sia Furler, the album doesn't sidestep the personal tragedy that changed the singer's life. Last July, her longtime boyfriend and "Glee" co-star Cory Monteith died from a toxic mix of heroin and alcohol, sending shock waves across the legion of the cheery show's loyal "Gleeks" who watched the pair fall in love both on- and off-screen.
With the highly anticipated
album finished in June, Michele opted to head back into the studio after she postponed the project in the wake of Monteith's death.
"Now that I had this experience happen to me ... we decided to write about it," she told reporters at Pulse Recording, where she cut the album. "We decided that's what felt organic."
Michele teamed with Furler to pen the album's stunning closer, "If You Say So," which was inspired by the last conversation she had with Monteith. That collaboration quickly altered the direction of the album.
"After we had this very, very emotional writing session, we were about to end the day, and she says, 'Listen to this song.'" Michele said. Furler then left Michele alone with "Cannonball," a track produced by Stargate and Benny Blanco that became the singer's debut single.
"I just literally keeled over,
because grief is a very scary thing, and there comes a point where it can really take you down," she said of her reaction to hearing the inspirational ballad. "(The song) lifted me up. It was what I needed to get through my difficult situation."
"And now I will start living to day, today, today / I close the door / I got this new beginning and I will fly / I'll fly like a cannonball," she sings.
"As awkward as it might be, we needed to put something out there to explain to people how I am." Michele added.
"A lot of people don't know how to touch this situation. It's like walking on eggshells. I felt 'Cannonball' ... kind of puts it all out there. It's like this is really hard, we're not denying that it's hard, we're going to get through it, and so it made sense for it to be the first single."
Since "Glee" premiered in 2009, all eyes have been on Michele and her cast mates
to capitalize on the show's early success for solo careers. Michele admits she always wanted to record an album, even if she "never really knew what kind," but the breakneck shooting schedule of the series made it difficult.
"I was really settled at 'Glee' and settled in my personal life, and I thought, 'OK, I get (the show) well enough now I know how to juggle that," she said. "It's like I felt like I had one kid and now I'm ready to have another, and so I decided to make this album."
Despite its often reflective lyrics, Michele's rafter-reaching voice remains the core of the album.
"My goal in all of this was to make an album that was honest, and true to me," she said. "It's something beautiful that came at a very difficult time. If I've learned anything from this past year it's that you have one life. You have to live your life to the fullest. I feel like 'Louder' really expresses that."
MCCLATCHY PHOTO
Lea Michele arrives for the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards show at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, January 13, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
'Grand Budapest Hotel' close to comedic masterpiece
MOVIE REVIEW
MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE
Bill Murray stars in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" along with Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton and Jude Law.The movie came out Thursday, March 6.
I'm not sure what the formal definition of a masterpiece is, but "The Grand Budapest Hotel" strikes me as something very close. Wes Anderson, who wrote and directed those modern classics "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Moonrise Kingdom," now gives us "Downton Abbey" on laughing gas.
Sophisticated, silly and wildly incident-packed, it creates a mad rumpus at center stage while hinting at tragedies waiting in the wings. There are fantastically elaborate comic set-pieces, obsessively detailed puppet-theater art direction, and brilliantly crafted action sequences.
MCCLATCHY PHOTO
This rare fusion of technical rigor and madcap wit seals Anderson's claim on the title of America's finest comic filmmaker.
Anderson nimbly evokes a once-upon-a-time Europe of beaux-arts architecture, comic-opera armies and filigreed pastries. He populates this dream world with a sharply drawn regiment of lunatic aristocrats, plucky commoners, and blackguards. The production design is eccentric and inspired. The clashing tones of the hotel's scarlet walls and the staff's royal-purple livery is a visual joke with a color punch line. As before, Anderson frames his players fastidiously, like gems in an elegant display case.
First among them is Monsieur Gustave, peerless concierge of
the Grand Budapest, a gigantic wedding cake of a resort in fictional, Zubrowka. Posture erect to the point of distortion, chin a quarter inch higher than anyone else's, this well-turned-out, narcissistic, over-talkative fellow is a cross between Jeeves and Pepe Le Pew. He not only serves the guests, he also services the richest, blondest and oldest dowagers.
Ralph Fiennes plays M. Gustave with leaping eyebrows, tart line readings and a fey nonchalance about Austro-Hungarian sexual repression. Fiennes is 51 now, a specialist in melanolylo aloof romantics and villains. But here this comedic light bloomer is a mercurial miracle. The discursive plot resembles a Russian nesting doll, with four timelines spanning most of a century. As we step back from present day to the 1930s, the frame shrinks from widescreen to the anachronistic boxy ratio of prewar studio films. Knockabout comedy plays well in that squarish visual scheme, and what a farce this is. One of M. Gustave's most satisfied customers, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton, done up as an ancient grande dame) expires in mysterious circumstances, leaving him a priceless Medieval portrait. As the poker-faced executor of Madame's will, Jeff Goldblum spouts arias of gibberish legaleus in a tone so blandly astringing it's almost musical. Her glowering son (Adrien Brody, all splitters, rages and
tantrums) and his sinister henchman (Willem Dafoe with a werewolf underbite) set out to retrieve the painting by any means necessary. There are breakneck chases and imprisonment, hair's-breadth escapes and giddy, spectacular clifhangers.
At M. Gustave's side for most of the film is his protege,
lobby boy Zero Moustafa (performed with bright, sparrow-like innocence by 17-year-old first timer Tony Revolori). Soaking up his mentor's words of wisdom, and repaying them with acts of boys' adventure derring-do, he's the resourceful sidekick who frequently saves the day. He also gets the girl, a brave
pastry chef played with winning pluck by Saoirse Ronan. There are significant actors in almost every role: Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law and Tom Wilkinson for starters.
As various narrators dip in and out of the story, we're left to wonder how much of
it, if any, is true. If there is a naturalistic moment in this madhouse, I missed it. It's sheer screwball delight from one of the most original and brilliantly funny filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood.
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