Ask FlickChick Did the actors in Nashville really do their own singing Plus What movie is this and more questions answeredQuestion I recently saw Nashville for the first time and have two questions First the end credits for the songs seem to indicate that most of them were actually sung by the actors and actresses rather than dubbed Were they really singing the songs If so they sounded pretty good to me Second maybe I missed something but why was the singer shot at the big rally -- what did the shooter have against her Thanks -- Marty FlickChick Not did the cast of Robert Altmans Nashville 1975 -- who with the exception of Ronee Blakely had little or no professional music training or experience -- perform their songs but many wrote them as well And almost without exception theyre terrific For me the only truly unconvincing performer is Lily Tomlin who plays white gospel singer Linnea Reese She just plain cant sing and putting a genuine gospel choir b
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Question: Why are actresses playing transsexuals in movies lately? First Felicity Huffman and now possibly Catherine Zeta-Jones. I think it's completely ridiculous/offensive that these roles aren't being cast with actual transsexual actors. Not only would that be a wonderful way to represent more diversity in Hollywood, but it makes sense to cast someone whose own life is the same as the character's. Being a transsexual is not a mere lifestyle choice that an actor can emulate; it's a gender. This new trend is like having a man play a woman, a woman play a man or even having one race play another — a practice I thought had finally left Hollywood.Answer: First, I need to point out that even by the laziest J-school standards, it takes three instances to make a trend. Right now we've got one confirmed instance — Felicity Huffman as a fictional pre-op transsexual in Transamerica
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Question: I recently saw and loved the movie Crash, and was especially intrigued by the way all the stories intersected and converged. Could you possibly give me a list of some other films whose stories are structured in the same way? Answer: I certainly can: First, for the benefit of readers who haven't seen Crash (2005), its structure is one in which multiple narratives are developed simultaneously and overlay or intersect at key points before converging at the end. Unlike ensemble movies in which there's a main plot and a series of subplots, films like this give more or less equal weight to all the story strands and derive a significant part of their thematic power from the apparently random way in which different characters' destinies come together. To my mind, the greatest of all multiple-story narratives is
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