Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch To Feature Song And Dance Numbers?
I'm wildly curious to see what's going on in Sucker Punch. Zack Snyder's follow-up to Watchmen features a wild cast (Emily Browning, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish, with Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn and Oscar Isaac) with the first five names as a group of girls locked in an unsavory mental institution, from which they escape through fantasy. It is said to be violent and weird and full of monsters. And now Abbie Cornish says there is...singing and dancing? Rad, count me in.
Anyone who says you can't just throw a dance number in a genre film needs to re-familiarize themselves with The Happiness of the Katakuris (Takashi Miike) and/or Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano) or just go back to (500) Days of Summer, though the latter obviously isn't a genre flick. But it's not as easy as just dropping in a number here and there. There's a big tonal shift that has to work, and not just anyone can do it. If Snyder nails this, I'll be impressed.
Cornish tells Movieline:
...it's always fun to try different things and take on new challenges, and this film has definitely been a new experience for me. There's been three months of training, all the martial arts and swords and guns, and on top of that we're dancing and singing. I've absolutely loved it.
This isn't even the first time song and dance has come up with respect to the film. In November Carla Gugino told Movieline:
I do have a really cool song-and-dance number that I've been working on...Oscar Isaac and myself, we sing a duet. I don't know if I can say what the song is yet, but yes, I do sing and dance.
Yeah, we missed that one. Embarrassed face. But now we know that at least three characters are involved in dance numbers for the movie which is fairly brilliant. It's almost a full-fledged musical. With swords and dragons and straitjackets. Sounds like Grease 3.
Abbie Cornish, by the way, was (not to put to fine a point on it) fucking spellbinding in Bright Star. It's one of the year's best films, though it has so far been passed over as awards have started to roll out. Don't make the mistake of thinking it isn't worth a look just because of that. Jane Campion makes a fine return to form with the tale of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and Cornish's performance must be seen. Not that I begrudge Carey Mulligan anything, but if her performance in An Education hadn't become the buzz-role of '09, it could have been Cornish in Bright Star.