http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...ords/print

`Cadillac Records' plays song you've heard before

By CHRISTY LEMIRE, AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire, Ap Movie Critic Thu Dec 4, 8:21 am ET

Darnell Martin could have made an entire movie about Muddy Waters. Or Etta James. Or Chuck Berry.

Instead, the writer-director has made a movie about all of them with "Cadillac Records," cramming their complicated individual stories into the larger saga of Chicago-based Chess Records, the label that launched those stars and so many others during the 1950s and '60s.

The result feels even more cursory and rushed than the average music biopic, a genre that's already difficult to depict without lapsing into self-parody. (Jake Kasdan, Judd Apatow and Co. had long known that when they made "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.")

It's all here, over and over, just as you've seen it countless times before: the early struggle, the rise to the top (accompanied by the obligatory montage of press clippings and positions on the Billboard chart), the waste of fame and talent with various controlled substances. Certainly there must be a better, fresher way to tell this familiar tale.

Despite the glimmers of potential for typically strong work from Jeffrey Wright as Waters, Mos Def as Berry and Adrien Brody as the label's founder, Polish emigre Leonard Chess, Martin too often gives them too little of substance with which to work. She also shows us the racism of the time — which Chess earnestly, persistently tries to break through by bringing blues and R&B to a mass audience — with facile platitudes and hand-holding voiceover provided by Cedric the Entertainer.

As songwriter Willie Dixon, Cedric tells us things that are already obvious, things we're already seeing for ourselves: that these performers were hooked on music, women and cars (namely Cadillacs, hence the title), on the flashy lifestyle talent and stardom afforded them.

Columbus Short gets some amusing moments as volatile harmonica player Little Walter, but Gabrielle Union gets too little to do as Waters' initially supportive but ultimately put-upon wife (yet another cliche in this type of movie, for those of you keeping score at home).

And Beyonce Knowles doesn't seem to have splurged on acting lessons since her wooden turn in "Dreamgirls." From the second she enters the film as the tempestuous James, you want to see her sing "At Last," then get out. No amount of wigs and padding can transform her.

The music itself is the most reliable star of all; Knowles does knock it out of the park a couple times, particularly on James' signature song, and Mos Def is insanely charismatic as Berry, though he doesn't appear in the film nearly as much as the ads would lead you to believe and when he's gone you want him to come back.

In fact, the music is often so good, with classics including Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man" and Berry's "No Particular Place to Go," that "Cadillac Records" makes you long for a documentary on the subject instead. That probably wasn't the intended effect.

"Cadillac Records," a Sony Music Film release, is rated R for pervasive language and some sexuality. Running time: 107 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Beyonce's acting limitations confirm she'd be perfect as Apollonia in the inevitable Purple Rain re-make.

CJBabyDaddy said:

Just from the trailer, I had a feeling

daPrettyman said:

so true

That sounds awful.

And there's nothing quite so offensive as simplistic racism that's explained and then underlined.

And so many biopics feel like little more than forming a plot from the encyclopedia's bullet points.

This great music, these great artists, deserve a whole lot more.

CJBabyDaddy said:

Even her version of At Last is wrong, so I'm not seeing this shit

Brendan said:

That's why I'm NOT watching that piece of shit.

Timmy84 said:

Hell, I was hopeful...for a minute.

Not a good review....the previews made it seem kind of promising. A movie you'd watch on a Sunday afternoon at home and enjoy enough.

Oh damn... unfortunately this will not stop Beyoncaswank, it will only make her will - to bore us all - stronger

CalhounSq said:

Ok, I've read a few reviews--but the thing that stands out to me is this...






So she co-produced the movie too I guess she aint gonna quit until she's attained that "icon" status she so desperately wants
[Edited 12/5/08 9:00am]

whatever i'm still watching this

and as are you all, you can't escape her admit it

i haven't read it, but i was glancing at home page at salon.com, and the reviewer appears to have given beyonce's performance a good review. at least it seems that way based on the headline from the review.

PricelessHo said:

Ya ALL saw B in Dreamgirls!

Cinnie said:

Yeah we saw B alright. I saw Eddie and J-Hud too.

PricelessHo said:

Yeah I'm thinking about seeing it. The trailer looked very interesting plus I'm a lover of musicals (and I loved Dreamgirls) so I might check it out.
The funny thing about critic's reviews are, they are so varied. I've been reading some of the reviews online and some are very good and others arent crazy about the film. In regards to Beyonce's acting, some critics say she does and excellent job here, others say...her singing is much better than her acting But all of them seem to agree that she knocks it out of the park on "At Last" and "I'd Rather Go Blind".

What it all comes down to is a matter of taste, all reviews are basically based on someone's opinion. Sometimes those opinions are right on, other times they are way off.

Another thing I've read from reviews is that the movie isnt all that factually correct so...

NaughtyKitty said:

That's what turns me off about most musical biographies that some of the time, the facts are just wrong and are only used for dramatic purposes. I got pissed after seeing "Ray" for that reason though Jamie Foxx was brilliant in his role (as was Regina King, lol).

Timmy84 said:

Cinnie said:

I meant Jennifer Hudson.

Timmy84 said:

Then you def. probably wont care for this movie then

Chess Records film puts facts in check

November 30, 2008

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA dhoekstra@suntimes.com

Beyonce Knowles channels the scorched soul of rhythm and blues singer Etta James in covering her hit "I'd Rather Go Blind" at the end of "Cadillac Records," the cinematic story of Chicago's legendary Chess Records.

Gene Barge looks straight at the screen.

"Well," he says, "that movie was a Hollywood production that departed from a lot of the truthful things that happened."

"Cadillac Records," opening Friday, is advertised as a true story. Adrien Brody portrays Leonard Chess, the label's co-founder, and hip-hop star Mos Def nails a young Chuck Berry. The story is told through the narration of Cedric the Entertainer as Chess bandleader-songwriter Willie Dixon.

Barge, 82, is the right guy to take a test spin through "Cadillac Records." He was a producer, arranger and sax player at Chess from 1964 through 1971. He worked with Muddy Waters, Billy Stewart, Fontella Bass and many others.

Barge is also an actor. He was a cop in "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford, a cop in "Code of Silence" with Chuck Norris and a cop in the Pam Grier-Steven Seagal flick "Above the Law." All three films were made in Chicago -- unlike "Cadillac Records," which was shot in New Jersey.

"It didn't have the Chicago feel," Barge says. "The guy playing Leonard looked like him a little bit, but he didn't have a Chicago accent. Leonard had that Chicago accent, like [actor] Dennis Farina and those guys."

"Cadillac Records" depicts a torrid relationship between Leonard Chess and James (born Jamesetta Hawkins, and said to be the illegitimate daughter of pool shark Minnesota Fats). "I don't recall Leonard having that kind of relationship with Etta James," Barge says.

Leonard's son Marshall Chess, who still runs the family publishing company out of New York, is even more emphatic, insisting that while the two were "very close" they were never involved sexually.

"I asked Etta right to her face," he recalls in a phone interview. "She said, 'No, all the m----- did was kiss me on the cheek.' They had a close relationship and he felt protective of her. We had that with a lot of artists."

Chess, the film's executive music producer, knows people will walk away from "Cadillac Records" thinking the steamy Etta-Leonard relationship really happened. "Those are the things that bothered me," he said. "But it only really bothers the immediate family. All my life I've been getting blues artists mad at me for trying to expand the blues. This is the best thing for expanding the Chess legacy to a new generation."

Leonard Chess died of a heart attack in 1968 after leaving Chess Studios on the Near South Side. He was driving a Cadillac and hit a parked car after his seizure. He was 52 years old.

The movie makes no mention of Leonard's brother Phil, who co-founded the label.

"Phil was an integral part of the scene," Barge says. "The film was correct in how Leonard was always in the studio. Every day. But Ralph Bass produced Etta James. Nothing about him. He produced 'At Last' [her 1960 crossover hit for Chess]."

And "I'd Rather Go Blind" wasn't even recorded in Chicago. In 1967 Leonard Chess dispatched James to Muscle Shoals, Ala., to obtain the emotional depth shaped by drummer Roger Hawkins, keyboardist Spooner Oldham and the rest of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. The same 1967 session also yielded the James hit "Tell Mama."

Marshall Chess, 66, had only seen rough cuts of "Cadillac Records" as of last week.

"I know it's a Hollywood movie," Chess says. "But I was disappointed my uncle wasn't in it. To be honest, I don't think they wanted to buy his life rights. [Phil Chess is still alive.] He was supposed to be in it. They said they couldn't make everyone a character. I'm sure he has mixed feelings, but he hasn't seen it yet. Chess wouldn't have become Chess without the both of them. The biggest thing I had to remember is that it isn't a documentary. It is fiction based on fact.

"The point is that this is a great thing for Chicago blues. They're promoting this film in Harlem and not suburbia. Young black people and even white people will get exposed to Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry for the first time. The movie was not made for blues junkies, which is something I had to get over myself."

One person who knew nothing about Etta James was Beyonce.

She spent most of 2008 dividing her time among three personalities: herself, James and the hellcat alter ego of her new album "I Am ... Sasha Fierce" (Columbia). A "Cadillac Records" executive producer and Golden Globe nominee for her role in "Dreamgirls," Beyonce didn't meet James until the film was completed.

"One thing Etta taught me is her fearlessness," Beyonce said in a statement from her label. "She was Etta all the time. She did not try to change for anyone. If it weren't for her crossing over -- she was the first African-American woman to cross over on the radio -- I wouldn't have the opportunities I have. It was the best performance I've done on screen. It gave me the strength and the confidence to step out of my comfort zone even more."

Barge liked Beyonce's performance, although he thought she was too thin to play James. Beyonce reportedly put on 15 pounds for the role.

Eamonn Walker of HBO's "Oz," the first African American to portray Othello at the Old Globe Theatre in London, plays Howlin' Wolf.

"Howlin' Wolf was great casting," Barge says. "Cedric the Entertainer didn't look like Willie Dixon. He was a massive figure and weighed close to 300 pounds. He was a militant guy, a friend of Malcolm X."

The source material used by "Cadillac Records" writer-director Darnell Martin ("Their Eyes Were Watching God") included Chess biographies and interviews with Howlin' Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin and Willie Dixon's widow, Marie. Chess says Martin "was a big Little Walter fan and she uses him a lot in the script."

Little Walter -- harmonica great Walter Jacobs -- is seen drinking a lot, talking back to cops and driving around in a Cadillac without the doors. "Little Walter was crazy," Barge says. "They had that right. At the end of his days, he was hanging out with Johnny Pepper [the owner of Pepper's Show Lounge, home base of Muddy Waters] around Harvey after the show lounge closed. He was out of money and playing his harmonica."

Chess was not interviewed in depth for the film. Does he wish he had been?

Chess pauses and answers, "Oh, God. What good would it have done? It was a great lesson to me how this works. These are not documentaries. Its just about an era that no one knows about. Everyone's driving Cadillacs and wearing do-rags."

The dialogue in "Cadillac Records" doesn't always ring true. When Leonard Chess finds James TKO'd from a heroin overdose near a fireplace in her home after her furniture had been repossessed, Brody actually says with a straight face, "Sure, marshmallows and smack go real well together."

Barge says, "The film really needed a Chicago lingo, a Chicago language."

Chess adds, "What I missed was a lot of the laughter that went on at Chess Records. This movie was deeper, darker."

Jeffrey Wright, who plays Colin Powell in Oliver Stone's "W.," delivers one of the film's strongest performances as Muddy Waters. Sumlin even plays guitar on Wright's cover of "I'm a Man" (written by Bo Diddley, also missing from the film). Throughout "Cadillac Records," the even-tempered Waters never strays far from Leonard Chess' dream of running the label as family.

"Muddy bought into it, but at the end of the day if you talked to Etta James she was bitter," Barge says. "She felt like Leonard screwed her.

"On the day of Leonard's funeral, Ralph Bass and I flew out to the West Coast to record Etta. We left the cemetery on the West Side, and Phil Chess said, 'Since you already have the studio booked, go ahead.' In the meantime Leonard had paid for Etta's house [in Los Angeles] and kept the deed so she wouldn't lose it." Marshall Chess said Chess bandleader Paul Gayton held the deed for his father.

But it wasn't always like family. Barge looks around the empty movie theater and whispers, "Willie [Dixon] got his money, but he didn't get it from Chess. He got it from his publishing company because he was a songwriter. I helped Willie copyright some of his songs at the end of his time."

Dixon sued Chess' partners, Gene and Harry Goodman (the brothers of big-band leader Benny Goodman), who had formed Arc Publishing. When an artist covered a Chess song, the royalty did not go to the original artist, but to Arc. "Willie got a lot of his music back," Barge says.

Chess is full of stories like that -- maybe too many for one movie. " 'Cadillac Records' was a nice story," Barge says, "but fictional."

http://www.suntimes.com/e...30.article

Cadillac Records


December 3, 2008

Tri-Star Pictures presents a film written and directed by Darnell Martin. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language and sexuality).

by Roger Ebert (rating: 3 stars)

An argument could be made that modern rock 'n' roll was launched not at Sun Records in Memphis, but at Chess Records, 2120 S. Michigan, and its earlier South Side locations since the early 1950s. The Rolling Stones even recorded a song named after the address. The great Chess roster included Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry and Little Walter. They first made Chicago the home of the blues, and then rhythm and blues, which, as Muddy said, had a baby, and they named it rock 'n' roll.

"Cadillac Records" is an account of the Chess story that depends more on music than history, which is perhaps as it should be. The film is a fascinating record of the evolution of a black musical style, and the tangled motives of the white men who had an instinct for it. The Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, walked into neighborhoods that were dicey for white men after midnight, packed firearms, found or were found by the most gifted musicians of the emerging urban music, and recorded them in a studio so small it forced the sound out into the world.

This movie sidesteps the existence of Phil Chess, now living in Arizona, and focuses on the enigmatic, chain-smoking Leonard (Adrien Brody). Starting with an early liaison with Muddy Waters, who in effect became his creative partner, he visited "race music" radio stations in the South with his artists and payola, found and/or created a demand, and gave his musicians shiny new Cadillacs but never a good look at their royalties. Muddy (Jeffrey Wright) was probably paid only a share of the money he earned, but the more ferocious Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), seemingly less sophisticated, held onto his money, made his own deals and incredibly even paid health benefits for the members of his band.

It is part of the legend that Muddy was nice, Howlin' was scary, and they disliked each other. In the film, they are guarded but civil, and fierce competitors. Walker plays the 6-foot-4 Wolf as a scowler who somehow from that height looks up at people under hooded eyes and appears willing to slice you just for the convenience. The real Howlin' Wolf must have been more complex; he couldn't read or write until he was past 40, but then he earned his high school equivalency diploma and studied accounting, an excellent subject for an associate of Leonard Chess.

Did Chess love the music? Brody's performance and the script by director Darnell Martin leave that question a little cloudy. Certainly he had good taste and an aggressive business instinct, and he didn't sit in an office in Loop but was behind the bar at the Macomba Lounge on Saturday nights in the late 1940s, when some of his more alarming customers must have figured, hey, a white man that crazy, maybe it's not a good idea to mess with him.

Leonard was married but maintained a wall between his business and his family. "Cadillac Records" speculates that later in his career, he may have fallen in love with his new discovery Etta James (pop superstar Beyonce Knowles). If so, romance didn't blind him to her gifts, and in a movie where the actors do most of their own singing, her performances are inspired and persuasive.

The Chess artists had an influence in more than one way on white rock singers. The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" has the same melody as Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen." Frank Zappa borrowed Wolf's favorite exclamation, "Great googley moogley!" The Rolling Stones, who acknowledged their Chicago influences, paid a pilgrimage to South Michigan Avenue and arranged a European tour for Chess stars; later, Keith Richards talked Chuck Berry into the concert shown in the great doc "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" and even played backup guitar to Berry.

Given the number of characters and the time covered, Martin does an effective job of sketching the backgrounds of some of her subjects and doesn't go out of her way to indict Leonard's business methods (did the singers know their Cadillacs were bought with their own money?). There is a poignant scene where Leonard arranges the first meeting between Etta James and her white father (who was -- are you ready for this -- Minnesota Fats). And a close look at the troubled but durable marriage of Muddy Waters and his wife Geneva Wade (Gabrielle Union).

The casting throughout is successful. Columbus Short suggests the building inner torments of Little Walter, and Cedric the Entertainer plays the singer-songwriter Willie Dixon as a creator and synthesizer. Nobody can really play Chuck Berry, but Mos Def does a great duck walk.

Eamonn Walker, at 6-foot-1, is three inches shy of the towering Howlin', but he evokes presence and intimidation. Sometimes I'm amazed at actors. Seeing Howlin' Wolf bring danger into the room in this film, you'd never guess Walker started as a dancer, was a social worker, acts in Shakespeare, is married to a novelist. Could any of the regulars at 2120 S. Michigan have guessed they would be instrumental in creating a music that would dominate the entire world for the next 50 years?

http://rogerebert.suntime.../812039993

NaughtyKitty said:

You're damn right.

Had to post this one--Beyonce on cursing

Beyonce Knowles' marriage 'struggle'
Dec 5, 2008, 11:45 GMT


Beyonce Knowles says being married to Jay-Z is a "power struggle".


The 27-year-old singer - who wed the music mogul in April - admits the relationship can sometimes be tiring, but she wouldn't have it any other way.

She said: "My marriage is a power struggle. But if I didn't respect someone, and they didn't have that strength, then I would be bored. I wouldn't be attracted to them."

Beyonce also revealed her mother Tina was banned from the set when she filmed upcoming movie 'Cadillac Records', because she wasn't used to seeing her daughter curse.

Beyonce, who plays blues singer Etta James in the film, added to America's Elle magazine: "My mom had to leave the set. I don't normally curse. Maybe twice a year. I have to be really livid. Somebody saying things or scheduling something where I'm not in control.

"Cursing was freeing, but the shoot was also the most emotionally draining time of my life. Every day I would come home - my eyes would be completely swollen."

http://www.monstersandcri...e_struggle

LOL @ her only cursing "twice a year"

EDIT: She also had this to say to a reporter at the movie's premier:



[Edited 12/5/08 11:10am]

NaughtyKitty said:

Beyonce, Beyonce, Beyonce... (((sigh))) what are we gonna do with you, girl?

Timmy84 said:

-----
I hope some of you read to the bottom about the copyright issues

laurarichardson said:

That was for the music, right? Well but of course.

Beyonce is a not a great actress to Play Etta James .... she doesn't have the heart and soul and realness .... of her.