Donna Summer is well-known for her overplayed hits on her epic album Bad Girls (the title track and "Dim All the Lights"). The modern audience may be a bit tired of her. We've seen and heard it enough. We watched her in a black pantsuit on a well-performed but calculated VH1 performance that lacked any of the gloss or excess of the Studio 54 era. "Hot Stuff" conjures the image of Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza. And too, disco still gets a bad rap from some music snobs. This excellent article by Simon Price points out how disco has inspired many acclaimed indie and alternative music acts.
Donna Summer's Bad Girls still sounds great today, especially in an era of a lot mindless pop, and the album's influence is everywhere. New Order's "Blue Monday" riffs off of the stuttering beat of "Our Love." It's a long record for the period (over 70 minutes and 2 LP's) and a varied one to boot. Aided by the skilled production and songwriting of Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, the songs blend seamlessly into each other. Besides the singles, which were played on many radio formats including rock, the album is a bit sparser on orchestrations than one would expect of a disco record. Harold Faltermeyer provides some memorable tunes including the country ballad "On My Honor." And then there's Summer's voice, which has remarkable moments of height and some quiet restraint. On one of her own penned songs, "My Baby Understands," she seems to blur the line between assurance and fear. It's a late night album (the streetgirl image, which inspired the title song, of the album art is quite appropriate). My favorites are the final trilogy of songs: "Our Love," the shimmering "Lucky," and the rhythmic finale of "Sunset People" which makes me think of a bygone era.
centers on two families in 1973 Connecticut suburbia. Ben Hood (
has a surprisingly ancient feel. Sparse and percussive, it would later influence other suburban dramas such as 
appropriate for a film like this, since it is, in some regard, a disaster picture) are put to good use. All of this is tempered a bit by the performances of a fabulous cast. As one of the ineffectual parents, the usually broad, Shakespearean actor Kevin Kline delivers a quiet performance that ranges from comic to intensely somber. The usually wonderful Joan Allen delivers another bravura turn. In a winning moment, she mimics her daughter by riding a bike and then, unsuccessfully trying to steal lipstick from a drugstore. And Sigourney Weaver, who is often flat, is given a really wonderful role here. A bitter, relentlessly serious wannabe vixen, she goes through much of the film without a flicker of happiness. Her ridiculous waterbed (her husband hates it) captures her susceptibility to trends and her own marital and emotional unease. Her bored, cutting reaction ("I have a husband. I don't have a need for another one.") to a blabbering Kline is particularly priceless. And the younger cast members, notably Maguire and Ricci, are well-suited to their roles.
. In concurrence with the image of ice, the visuals are full of glass and geometry (in the clothes, the furnishings, the wall art). Filmed in spring, the "ice" itself was sculpted and cast in resin--trees dipped in silicone, hair gel on windows. It still looks beautiful, haunting and real in an era of CGI. The effectiveness of the effects lends to the emotional wallop of the film's final tragedy: the death of a child on ice.
