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Revisiting The Next Best Thing


Drownedboy
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Ok, so I became a fan during her peak with ROL and later the Music album, so naturally I went to see TNBT to the cinema when it was premiered and never got to see it again till yesterday.

Things that went through my mind, last night:

The photography or the lighting or both are strange.

The movie is not very exciting or good but it is watchable and not so bad as they say.

Madonna looked gorgeus for some parts, specially with her ROL hair when the movie starts, but strange in other parts, why? And definitively like a experienced woman, which is not bad at all, but you can tell in order to look so youthful for the next 20 years she must have had A LOT of things done. Still, even though I don´t think her acting was so bad as they often say, it´s like it´s difficult seeing her a the girl next door in the movie, too much superstar power?

The music it is pretty good. She never fails with songs for movie, she is incredibly talented for this.

How do you see this one currently? 

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4 hours ago, Drownedboy said:

Ok, so I became a fan during her peak with ROL and later the Music album, so naturally I went to see TNBT to the cinema when it was premiered and never got to see it again till yesterday.

Things that went through my mind, last night:

The photography or the lighting or both are strange.

The movie is not very exciting or good but it is watchable and not so bad as they say.

Madonna looked gorgeus for some parts, specially with her ROL hair when the movie starts, but strange in other parts, why? And definitively like a experienced woman, which is not bad at all, but you can tell in order to look so youthful for the next 20 years she must have had A LOT of things done. Still, even though I don´t think her acting was so bad as they often say, it´s like it´s difficult seeing her a the girl next door in the movie, too much superstar power?

The music it is pretty good. She never fails with songs for movie, she is incredibly talented for this.

How do you see this one currently? 

I went to see it to the cinema too. I enjoyed it at the time because I was in an in between stages of my life and not in the best place. But not because of the quality of the movie.

I never bother to see it after. I don't enjoy Rupert Everet at all, I have the feeling that they will come across as not realistic. A bit like the Tv coms from the 90s, you know the whole situation is fictional and just for entertainment.

The soundtrack is good but I despise American Pie.  I don't like the original, it goes to the bucket of songs that irritate me: Hotel California, Macarena, The Joker..

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It's a bittersweet one for me. I like(d) it but it's not that good.

Any movie following "Evita" would have been a difficult one cause she was great in "Evita" and it was a big movie. The idea of "The Next Best Thing" was good and different and I understand why she was attracted to the script. It was also a little bit ahead of its time, probably it would have been received better today. Mainstream critics were never going to accept those kind of themes back then.

But the movie didn't work in the end, I always found the change from light comedy to heavy court drama a little bit too much. Also, the movie was marketed as a romantic comedy, so that change was even more drastic when you saw it.

I think she was good in it, actually, it was peak of "Cool Madonna", her chemistry with Rupert Everett was great and, while not perfect acting, it's not one of her worst:

I'm still trying to understand the retouching on the movie poster though:

MV5BY2VhNzI1ZTYtZGEyYy00Y2QzLTliYzYtMGM0

I love the soundtrack! One of the best things from this project.

And only for this GEM it was all worth it:

 

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15 minutes ago, Aiwa08 said:

 

I'll never understand why Warner didn't release "Time Stood Still" as a single. It could have been number 1 worldwide.

The old trick of "you have to buy the full album if you want to have this one". She/they always did that: "Spotlight" only on "You Can Dance", "Can't Stop" only on the whole soundtrack, etc. etc. "Beautiful Stranger" wasn't even released a single in the US.

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I really love Time stood still and it has a special place in my heart, but at that time, after Beautiful Stranger and American Pie I think they wanted the public to be hungry for new songs cause she was already working on Music, so I suppose she had to be out of the spotlight for a while in order to do a proper comeback with Music. Oh, it worked brilliantly. What an era for being a fan, Music, the single and the recocord, came and were so strange yet fasciniting and well done and beauitufl and it did amazing on the charts. Most of pop artist would have explote more of the Orbit sound and a ROL 2, but not out girl, who found the way of reinventing herself one more time while staying at the top. I miss that Madonna so much.

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57 minutes ago, Prayer said:

The old trick of "you have to buy the full album if you want to have this one". She/they always did that: "Spotlight" only on "You Can Dance", "Can't Stop" only on the whole soundtrack, etc. etc. "Beautiful Stranger" wasn't even released a single in the US.

don't forget more recently forcing us to buy the deluxe edition of MDNA for B'day Song

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7 minutes ago, rescueme said:

don't forget more recently forcing us to buy the deluxe edition of MDNA for B'day Song

Let me get this straight, you own MDNA, an album that promotes drug use, you where so offended about it lately. You should burn all the copies you own immediately, this album is a devil work!

 Child Devil GIF

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52 minutes ago, proxy said:

Let me get this straight, you own MDNA, an album that promotes drug use, you where so offended about it lately. You should burn all the copies you own immediately, this album is a devil work!

 Child Devil GIF

Yep I own everything, good and bad. I just don't pretend that shit smells amazing like some of then stans do

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I was 15 when this came out and went to see it on opening night in NYC. Completely sold out crowd full of mostly gay men. I don't think I've ever had that experience with a movie since but I never went to see any Lady Gaga movies and I imagine its the same case there.

This movie bothers me because the first half is actually cute and like others here have said a bit ahead of its time. And then it tries to become this serious courtroom drama. Like give me aliens, turn Madonna into an axe murderer, something, anything but this!

The "Sex & The City" scenes with M and her girlfriends who have no chemistry. You have Lynn Redgrave and do nothing with her. "American Pie" acapella at the funeral...Esther, please! PLEASE, ESTHER!

And that movie poster. Who's hair is that? Why did they remove her neck?

I love the soundtrack. TSS is easily one of her most beautiful songs ever. I actually like American Pie and it's videos. The JB mix is one of her best remixes ever. Shame it's still not officially released. Groove Armada "If Everybody Looked The Same" and Olive "I'm Not In Love" and Beth Orton "Stars All Seem To Weep" stayed on repeat.

Oh and she looked absolutely gorgeous in the black and white evening dress.

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I love the movie and I adore American pie.  It was a time in my life I was coming into adulthood and going to see the movie with one of my first boyfriends was everything.  
I still listen to American pie to this day and show my daughter it so she sings along with me - and I was sooooo happy we got the video in HD ! Thought Madonna would keep on pusnishing the song.

 

if kill for this song live.  TSS Is also gorgeous 

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5 hours ago, popsong77 said:
During the making of this, an anonymous production assistant had a blog about what a mess the shoot was. Is this still online somewhere? I remember being so excited for the online trailer premiere and then waiting 15 minutes for it to load via AOL dial-up, haha.

I’d be interested to read that blog.

Re the movie itself…

I think its overall lighting direction was built around the apparent need to soften her on camera.

Alas, it was all worth it for those two new songs and new music video.

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Legendary out director John Schlesinger, who died in 2003, blamed Madonna's prima donna behavior on the set of his final film, The Next Best Thing, for his 1999 heart attack. The New York Daily News quotes a letter written by the hospitalized filmmaker to his agent in which Schlesinger writes, "I am fucking angry with [producer] Tom [Rosenberg] being influenced by Madonna. I do not for one moment think that their behavior has not added to the reasons I have ended up here." Another Schlesinger memo said that Madonna wanted producers to use postproduction computer imaging to "beautify" her in 34 separate shots. The director also said that Madonna lobbied to have a key scene removed because she felt it was too "gay," much to Schlesinger's disgust. Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg told The [London] Daily Telegraph that she was surprised by Schlesinger's allegations, adding, "No one has ever questioned her level of professional behavior."

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49 minutes ago, androiduser said:

Legendary out director John Schlesinger, who died in 2003, blamed Madonna's prima donna behavior on the set of his final film, The Next Best Thing, for his 1999 heart attack. The New York Daily News quotes a letter written by the hospitalized filmmaker to his agent in which Schlesinger writes, "I am fucking angry with [producer] Tom [Rosenberg] being influenced by Madonna. I do not for one moment think that their behavior has not added to the reasons I have ended up here." Another Schlesinger memo said that Madonna wanted producers to use postproduction computer imaging to "beautify" her in 34 separate shots. The director also said that Madonna lobbied to have a key scene removed because she felt it was too "gay," much to Schlesinger's disgust. Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg told The [London] Daily Telegraph that she was surprised by Schlesinger's allegations, adding, "No one has ever questioned her level of professional behavior."

I believe John. Liz was paid to reply that way.

She obviously had that postproduction imaging applied to her face for her Die Another Day film scene.

WearyPerfumedHorse-size_restricted.gif

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1 hour ago, Vasili said:

I believe John.

 

of course, Madonna's number one problem with movies is that she never really understood how the movie industry works and that rules from the music industry don't apply in film making .. and that her status in the music industry didn't mean much in the movie industry so micromanaging everything wasn't an option, and she was just an actress hired for the role, not the producer or the director.

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