2008 Woodie Awards
'Universe' stimulates audiences
"Across the Universe" sold out movie theaters in September and will be released on DVD Feb. 5
Dana Johnson
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Intermission
From beginning to end, Julie Taymor's 60's musical, "Across the Universe" told two stories at once, one personal, the other generational. The plot is written around 33 Beatles songs that are thoroughly incorporated into each scene. Each song is recorded and performed by the cast.
From the first moments, when Jude (Jim Sturgess) sings, unaccompanied, the opening lines of the Beatles song "Girl," the audience becomes hooked. As a factory worker from Liverpool, Jude goes to the United States in search of a father he never met. As he finds his father, he also meets Max (Joe Anderson), a frat boy at Princeton, which is where his father works. Max eventually introduces Jude to his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a girl from upper-class East Coast suburbia.
The plot quickly creates a star-crossed love affair between Jude and Lucy that is tested, as most people were being tested, by the changes of the 1960s. But "Across the Universe" leaves the romance genre of movie making by incorporating the sub plots of all of the characters who enter Jude and Lucy's lives. As Max and Lucy drop out of college, the three head to New York to settle into a East Village tenement.
Their landlady, Sadie (Dana Fuchs), is one of the sub plots followed by the movie. As an aspiring rock singer, with a voice naturally resembling Janis Joplin's, she performs "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Helter Skelter." She is involved in much of the night life party scene that the three main characters find themselves caught up in.
A few other characters living with the group in the strange tenement are Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy), a guitarist who accompanies Sadie, and Prudence (T.V. Carpio) a lesbian cheerleader who leaves her home in Dayton, Ohio and (in a joke on a Beatles song title) crashes into the tenement through the bathroom window.
As time progresses, the group's partying comes to an end when Max receives his draft notice. Sadie and Jo-Jo's rock group struggles, Lucy begins protesting the war in Vietnam and Jude embraces his artistic talent.
Jude's performance reaches a peak when he sings "Strawberry Fields Forever," when times are extremely difficult for him and his relationship with Lucy. Surprise performances by Bono as the acid guru, Dr. Robert and exciting drug influenced scenes put icing on the cake for this hybrid movie musical.
Between the beautiful, natural performances by the actors and the unique filming techniques used by Taymor "Across the Universe" feels emotionally true both to the Beatles and to the decade it remembers.
From the first moments, when Jude (Jim Sturgess) sings, unaccompanied, the opening lines of the Beatles song "Girl," the audience becomes hooked. As a factory worker from Liverpool, Jude goes to the United States in search of a father he never met. As he finds his father, he also meets Max (Joe Anderson), a frat boy at Princeton, which is where his father works. Max eventually introduces Jude to his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a girl from upper-class East Coast suburbia.
The plot quickly creates a star-crossed love affair between Jude and Lucy that is tested, as most people were being tested, by the changes of the 1960s. But "Across the Universe" leaves the romance genre of movie making by incorporating the sub plots of all of the characters who enter Jude and Lucy's lives. As Max and Lucy drop out of college, the three head to New York to settle into a East Village tenement.
Their landlady, Sadie (Dana Fuchs), is one of the sub plots followed by the movie. As an aspiring rock singer, with a voice naturally resembling Janis Joplin's, she performs "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and "Helter Skelter." She is involved in much of the night life party scene that the three main characters find themselves caught up in.
A few other characters living with the group in the strange tenement are Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy), a guitarist who accompanies Sadie, and Prudence (T.V. Carpio) a lesbian cheerleader who leaves her home in Dayton, Ohio and (in a joke on a Beatles song title) crashes into the tenement through the bathroom window.
As time progresses, the group's partying comes to an end when Max receives his draft notice. Sadie and Jo-Jo's rock group struggles, Lucy begins protesting the war in Vietnam and Jude embraces his artistic talent.
Jude's performance reaches a peak when he sings "Strawberry Fields Forever," when times are extremely difficult for him and his relationship with Lucy. Surprise performances by Bono as the acid guru, Dr. Robert and exciting drug influenced scenes put icing on the cake for this hybrid movie musical.
Between the beautiful, natural performances by the actors and the unique filming techniques used by Taymor "Across the Universe" feels emotionally true both to the Beatles and to the decade it remembers.