Nine (2009)

This is the fourth year in a row that Jack, Amy, and I have gone to a musical on Christmas day (last year, Cadillac Records; Walk Hard in 2007, Dreamgirls in 2006). Yesterday we enjoyed the spectacle, the smoke, the mirrors, the dancing, the costumes, the eye makeup, the vistas, and the high production values in a story about a Federico Fellini-type director in 1965 with writer's block. Some have called this a sequel to Fellini's 1963 autobiographical movie 8½, but I would call it an homage (and there is a recurring gag that made me think of the recurring gag from Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), where Allen's fans say, "We love your movies, especially your earlier, funnier ones."). Anyway, as far as we were concerned, the songs Cinema Italiano (danced and sung by Kate Hudson) and Be Italian (Fergie) were worth the price of admission. 

In an interesting coincidence, Amy and I had watched the Glee episode about "hair-ography," choreography with flying hair, the night before, and Nine has lots of hair-ography, including in those numbers. I also appreciated the use of the big stage set for dancing and climbing and jumping. We had an inkling that this was based on a Broadway production but knew nothing of the source material. Today I bought the soundtracks to the movie and the 2003 Broadway version (after reading complaints on some websites that the songs from the movie weren't all in the play and vice versa) and will do that research later. 

Speaking of research, imdb's trivia page for this movie has a lot of details of the sort I usually put in, so thanks to them for saving me time. You should especially read the big long bullet point about the cast and pretend I wrote it (I will add that La môme (2007), also known as La Vie en Rose, which won Marion Cotillard her Oscar, was a bio-pic about Edith Piaf, but Cotillard did little of the singing). I can't believe that Nicole Kidman had recently delivered a baby when this was shot--her waist is miniscule (perhaps that was part of the visual effects department's job). Black suits and skinny ties look great on Daniel Day-Lewis (in addition to his big hits I really liked The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), written/directed by his wife, Rebecca Miller, daughter of playwright Henry), and I was surprised that he's not bad as a singer.

I was going to mention that this was the third 2009 number nine movie, after 9 and District 9, but imdb beat me to it and added a fourth that was new to me: $9.99 (2008). I like numbers, particularly nines and eighteens, so I was glad I didn't hate this one. It doesn't really have much of a story but is accumulating nominations and one should see those coastlines on a really big screen. If you keep your expectations reasonable, you won't be disappointed by spending a couple of hours with Nine.