Fosse, Bob

Cabaret

Willkommen bienvenue welcome to Cabaret. The winner of eight Academy Awards it boasts a score by the legendary songwriting partnership behind another film that would energize the movie musical genre with equal razzle-dazzle 30 years later: Chicago's John Kander and Fred Ebb. Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Joel Grey) sound the clarion call to decadent fun while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force. Cabaret caught lightning (and won Oscars) for Minnelli Grey and director Bob Fosse who shaped a triumph of style and substance. Come to this Cabaret old chum. You'll never want to leave.Running Time: 110 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS UPC: 085392798629

Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Director (Bob Fosse), Best Actress (Liza Minnelli), and Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Cabaret would also have taken Best Picture if it hadn't been competing against The Godfather as the most acclaimed film of 1972. (Francis Ford Coppola would have to wait two years before winning Best Director, for The Godfather, Part II.) Brilliantly adapted from the acclaimed stage production, which was in turn inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the play and movie I Am a Camera, this remarkable musical turns the pre-war Berlin of 1931 into a sexually charged haven of decadence. Minnelli commands the screen as nightclub entertainer Sally Bowles, who radiantly goes on with the show as the Nazis rise to power, holding her many male admirers (including Michael York and Helmut Griem) at a distance that keeps her from having to bother with genuinely deep emotions. Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub who will guarantee a great show night after night as a way of staving off the inevitable effects of war and dictatorship. They're all living in a morally ambiguous vacuum of desperate anxiety, determined to keep up appearances as the real world--the world outside the comfortable sanctuary of the cabaret--prepares for the nightmarish chaos of war. Director-choreographer Fosse achieves a finely tuned combination of devastating drama and ebullient entertainment, and the result is one of the most substantial screen musicals ever made. The dual-layered Special Edition widescreen DVD includes an exclusive 25th-anniversary documentary, Cabaret: A Legend in the Making, a 1972 promotional featurette, a photo gallery, production notes, the theatrical trailer, and more. --Jeff Shannon

Sweet Charity

After several years as the hottest musical director on Broadway, Bob Fosse made his film directorial debut with this movie version of his Broadway hit, which was based on Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. Shirley MacLaine is terrific as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold, one who is convinced that she will find the right man if she just turns enough tricks. The Cy Coleman score is a solid one; the film is at its best when Fosse lets his cast of singer-dancers (which includes Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, and Sammy Davis Jr.) unleash his leggy brand of choreography. While the film suffers from stylistic excesses of the period, you can see the seeds being planted for Fosse's future musical film forays in Cabaret and All That Jazz. --Marshall Fine

All That Jazz - Music Edition

Part tragic part comic this outrageous look at life in the fast lane in the Academy Award-winning musical about Bob Fosse's excessive life in show business. Played by Roy Scheider Fosse's alter-ego drives himself over the edge and soon finds he is caught between a recurring fantasy about his death and the reality of a near-death experience. Dazzlingly presented this electrifying story about the perils of pushing yourself too hard is filled with Fosse's legendary song-and-dance choreography.Episodes-Bonus Features:**Widescreen Feature**Audio Commentary with Film Editor Alam Heim**Portrait Of A Choerographer**Perverting The Standards**Making of the Song 'On Broadway'**Movie-oke 'Take Off With Us'**Music Machine (access musical numbers through scene selection)**Bob Fosse Gallery**Production Snapshots GallerySystem Requirements:Run Time: 123 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS Rating: R UPC: 024543434795 Manufacturer No: 2243479

Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) turns the camera on himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle musical, allegory to satire. It's an indication of his bravura, and possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script) literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon's heart in a key scene--an unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart procedure.

Roy Scheider makes a brave and largely successful leap out of his usual romantic lead roles to step into Gideon's dancing pumps, and supplies a plausible sketch of an extravagant, self-destructive, self-loathing creative dynamo, while Jessica Lange serves as a largely allegorical Muse, one of the various women that the philandering Gideon pursues (and usually abandons). Gideon's other romantic partners include Fosse's own protégé (and a major keeper of his choreographic style since his death), Ann Reinking, whose leggy grace is seductive both "onstage" and off.

Fosse/Gideon's collision course with mortality, as well as his priapic obsession with the opposite sex, may offer clues into the libidinal core of the choreographer's dynamic, sexualized style of dance, but musical aficionados will be forgiven for fast-forwarding to cut out the self-analysis and focus on the music, period. At its best--as in the knockout opening, scored to George Benson's strutting version of "On Broadway," which fuses music, dance, and dazzling camera work into a paean to Fosse's hoofer nation--All That Jazz offers a sequence of classic Fosse numbers, hard-edged, caustic, and joyously physical. --Sam Sutherland

Liza with a 'Z' - Concert for Television (Collector's Edition)

Shot in 1972 for a TV special this Liza Minnelli concert shows her at the peak of her career. A medley from CABARET is among the songs and Minnelli demonstrates her impressive vocal prowess throughout.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS Rating: NR UPC: 758445116120 Manufacturer No: SHO1161D

The DVD Holy Grail for Liza Minnelli fans finally surfaces after 30-some years: Liza with a "Z", a splashy TV special from 1972. And wow, is it ever a product of its era. Minnelli and director-choreographer Bob Fosse were at the top of their popularity in 1972, having just made Cabaret, the blockbuster musical for which both won Oscars. Liza with a "Z" places the still-coltish Minnelli on the stage of the Lyceum Theater, in a one-night-only performance covered by Fosse's eight cameras. Songs by Cabaret composers John Kander and Fred Ebb provide a spine for the show, including a breathless rendition of "Ring Them Bells" and the tongue-twisting "Say Liza (Liza with a 'Z')," a goofball number that sounds more like one of Danny Kaye's patter songs than a tune for Liza Minnelli.

Liza treats each song as an emotional Mount Everest, never holding back a thing, and the result is a psychodrama played out in the klieg lights. (The outrageous costumes by Halston don't hold back a thing, either; Studio 54, here we come!) Memories of the all-or-nothing style of her mother, Judy Garland, are already heavy in the air by the time Minnelli reaches "My Mammy," and workouts on "God Bless the Child" and "Son of a Preacher Man" confirm the singer's approach.

As for Fosse's choreography, there are signature moves aplenty--his dancing so frequently suggested a choreographer lusting for actual sex to break out on stage. "Bye Bye Blackbird" gives Minnelli and her backup dancers a chance to stretch out in an echt-Fosse feast of bowler hats and white gloves. The bell-and-booty shaking in "Ring Them Bells" and the loony tuxedo-clad cowpokes in "I Gotcha" hint that Fosse was in the midst of a manic phase. Speaking of which, Minnelli tackling Joe Tex's "I Gotcha" is one of those jaw-dropping mismatches that she salvages only through dint of daft commitment. No quarreling with the Cabaret medley; say want you want about Liza, she owns those songs. Minnelli and Fosse won Emmys for the show. The restoration of the original materials looks about as good as can be expected, with the spirit of a glitzy seventies TV variety special quite intact. --Robert Horton

Star 80

Based on the story of Dorothy Stratten 1980 Playmate of the Year Star 80 explores a brief and tragic career that was engineered by Stratten's loutish husband and manager Paul Snider. Shunned by the rich and powerful people who court his beautiful ingenuous wife Snider makes her first the beneficiary and then the victim of his own ambition.Running Time: 105 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 085392001323

Legendary director/dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse may have been a consummate entertainer, responsible for popular productions on the Broadway stage, but he was also an uncompromising filmmaker who wasn't afraid to explore the dark side of humanity. After the autobiographical intensity of All That Jazz, Fosse's final film was this honest and painfully authentic biography about Dorothy Stratten, who was Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 1979 and had just begun a promising film career when her jealous boyfriend took a shotgun to her head. Fosse tackles this brutal reality head on, opening the film with the aftermath of murder and telling the story in flashback, beginning in Vancouver when slick charmer Paul Snider (Eric Roberts, in a chilling performance) discovers Dorothy (Mariel Hemingway) and makes her his ticket to fame and unearned glory. He's a loser and a user, and when Dorothy rises to success and glamour at the Playboy mansion, Hugh Hefner (Cliff Robertson, perfectly cast) urges the blonde beauty to drop her troublesome boyfriend. Jealousy and rejection push Paul over the edge, but Star 80 (the title is taken from Snider's vanity license plates) is no simple tale of male ego gone bad. Fosse explores the chasm between fame and obscurity, and the self-destructive lengths to which some people will go to bridge that gap. The film is a darker telling of the kind of story Boogie Nights would tell nearly 15 years later--both films are set in the late '70s and early '80s, and both deal with the inevitable loss of innocence in a world where innocence cannot survive. In a bleak but fascinating way, Star 80 is masterful in its refusal to look away from the tragedy of its true story. It's a farewell statement from a director who clearly understood the high cost of stardom. --Jeff Shannon

Lenny

Based loosely on the Broadway play, this film biography of late comedian Lenny Bruce captures his fiery brand of provocative humor while looking at his less-than-savory personal life. Dustin Hoffman earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Bruce, a seminal figure in stand-up comedy who broke boundaries of language and subject matter by questioning hypocrisy and telling it hilariously like he saw it. Director Bob Fosse, working with cinematographer Bruce Surtees, used black-and-white to capture the shadowy nightclub world in which Bruce rose and fell, bleakly depicting the eventual loss of his livelihood when he became a victim of governmental obscenity prosecution. Hoffman is ably supported by Valerie Perrine as Bruce's stripper wife, Honey, as much a victim as a lover for Bruce. --Marshall Fine

Two-time OscarÂ(r) winner* Dustin Hoffman brings controversial 60s comedian Lenny Bruce tolife in this landmark (Variety) film that earned six OscarÂ(r) nominations,** including Best Picture. A jagged portrait of a man driven to mainlining honesty into the arteries of a hypocritical culture (Newsweek), Lenny is artful, imaginative (Los Angeles Times) and truly an extraordinary film (Saturday Review)! From his first gig as a nervous Catskillcomedian, it's obvious that Lenny Bruce is a force to be reckoned with. Armed with a shocking routine and a stripper as his muse (Valerie Perrine), Lenny turns comedyand Americaon its ear with his abrasive and often offensive humor. But life in the smoke-filled bars of the comedy circuit begins to take its toll. The drugs and arrests for his subject matter wear heavily on this maverick crusader but don't stop him from pushing the envelope right to his tragic and myth-making end. *1988: Actor, Rain Man; 1979: Actor, Kramer vs. Kramer **1974: Actor (Hoffman), Actress (Perrine), Director, Screenplay Adapted from Other Material, Cinematography

All That Jazz

Choreographer-turned-director Bob Fosse (Cabaret, Lenny) turns the camera on himself in this nervy, sometimes unnerving 1979 feature, a nakedly autobiographical piece that veers from gritty drama to razzle-dazzle musical, allegory to satire. It's an indication of his bravura, and possibly his self-absorption, that Fosse (who also cowrote the script) literally opens alter ego Joe Gideon's heart in a key scene--an unflinching glimpse of cardiac surgery, shot during an actual open-heart procedure.

Roy Scheider makes a brave and largely successful leap out of his usual romantic lead roles to step into Gideon's dancing pumps, and supplies a plausible sketch of an extravagant, self-destructive, self-loathing creative dynamo, while Jessica Lange serves as a largely allegorical Muse, one of the various women that the philandering Gideon pursues (and usually abandons). Gideon's other romantic partners include Fosse's own protégé (and a major keeper of his choreographic style since his death), Ann Reinking, whose leggy grace is seductive both "onstage" and off.

Fosse/Gideon's collision course with mortality, as well as his priapic obsession with the opposite sex, may offer clues into the libidinal core of the choreographer's dynamic, sexualized style of dance, but musical aficionados will be forgiven for fast-forwarding to cut out the self-analysis and focus on the music, period. At its best--as in the knockout opening, scored to George Benson's strutting version of "On Broadway," which fuses music, dance, and dazzling camera work into a paean to Fosse's hoofer nation--All That Jazz offers a sequence of classic Fosse numbers, hard-edged, caustic, and joyously physical. --Sam Sutherland

Part tragic, part comic, this outrageous look at life in the fast lane in the Academy Award-winning musical about Bob Fosse's excessive life in show business. Played by Roy Scheider, Fosse's alter-ego drives himself over the edge and soon finds he is caught between a recurring fantasy about his death and the reality of a near-death experience. Dazzlingly presented, this electrifying story about the perils of pushing yourself too hard is filled with Fosse's legendary song-and-dance choreography.

Cabaret (Special Edition)

Winner of eight Academy Awards, including Best Director (Bob Fosse), Best Actress (Liza Minnelli), and Best Supporting Actor (Joel Grey), Cabaret would also have taken Best Picture if it hadn't been competing against The Godfather as the most acclaimed film of 1972. (Francis Ford Coppola would have to wait two years before winning Best Director, for The Godfather, Part II.) Brilliantly adapted from the acclaimed stage production, which was in turn inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and the play and movie I Am a Camera, this remarkable musical turns the pre-war Berlin of 1931 into a sexually charged haven of decadence. Minnelli commands the screen as nightclub entertainer Sally Bowles, who radiantly goes on with the show as the Nazis rise to power, holding her many male admirers (including Michael York and Helmut Griem) at a distance that keeps her from having to bother with genuinely deep emotions. Joel Grey is the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub who will guarantee a great show night after night as a way of staving off the inevitable effects of war and dictatorship. They're all living in a morally ambiguous vacuum of desperate anxiety, determined to keep up appearances as the real world--the world outside the comfortable sanctuary of the cabaret--prepares for the nightmarish chaos of war. Director-choreographer Fosse achieves a finely tuned combination of devastating drama and ebullient entertainment, and the result is one of the most substantial screen musicals ever made. The dual-layered Special Edition widescreen DVD includes an exclusive 25th-anniversary documentary, Cabaret: A Legend in the Making, a 1972 promotional featurette, a photo gallery, production notes, the theatrical trailer, and more. --Jeff Shannon

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to Cabaret. The winner of eight Academy Awards, it boasts a score by the legendary songwriting partnership behind another film that would energize the movie musical genre with equal razzle-dazzle 30 years later: Chicago's John Kander and Fred Ebb. Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emcee (Joel Grey) sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force. Cabaret caught lightning (and won Oscars) for Minnelli, Grey and director Bob Fosse, who shaped a triumph of style and substance. Come to this Cabaret, old chum. You'll never want to leave.

DVD Features:
Documentary:15 minute documentary with new Liza Minnelli, Joel Gery, Michael York interviews
Featurette:Documentary Featurette 1973
Other:"Legend in the Making" 1997

Moulin Rouge!/All That Jazz

Sweet Charity [Region 2]

After several years as the hottest musical director on Broadway, Bob Fosse made his film directorial debut with this movie version of his Broadway hit, which was based on Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. Shirley MacLaine is terrific as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold, one who is convinced that she will find the right man if she just turns enough tricks. The Cy Coleman score is a solid one; the film is at its best when Fosse lets his cast of singer-dancers (which includes Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, and Sammy Davis Jr.) unleash his leggy brand of choreography. While the film suffers from stylistic excesses of the period, you can see the seeds being planted for Fosse's future musical film forays in Cabaret and All That Jazz. --Marshall Fine