Five reasons why Rami Malek can win the Oscar for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” 1. He plays a real person and is physically transformed onscreen. It’s awardsology 101. The combination of portraying an actual individual plus altering one’s outward appearance is the easiest way to ensnare the academy’s attention. In the past twenty years alone, Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry,” Adrien Brody in “The Pianist,” Jamie Foxx in “Ray,” Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote,” Reese Witherspoon in “Walk the Line,” Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose,” Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln,” Eddie Redmayne in “The Theory of Everything” and Gary Oldman in “Darkest Hour.” 2. He delivers what will likely be the flashiest performance of the final five. This year, Malek in “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the ultimate showstopper. Whether he’s in song, dance or discourse, he’s constantly acting for the camera. That’s over two hours of tears, torment and assorted theatrics. And then there’s the Live Aid concert at the end of the film, which has been singled out as the brightest bit in the movie. Malek’s fierce channeling of Mercury sends shivers down the spine. This might be considered his requisite “killer scene.” 3. He’ll win the SAG Award (and probably the BAFTA, too.) I’m abstaining from calling the Golden Globe race – but when it comes to SAG, Malek is the one to beat. Actors will see him as having the most challenging role. Can you imagine the risks of playing one of the most iconic singers of the twentieth century? Very, very frightening. 4. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a box office smash. Malek’s biggest Oscar obstacle is undoubtedly the mixed critical reaction to the film. It enjoyed a bigger opening weekend than “A Star is Born,” a film buoyed by two huge stars. As of this writing, “Rhapsody” is poised to cross the $100 million mark in the U.S. alone. 5. He might benefit from being the only first-time nominee. Malek is 37 and has paid his dues (time after time, although he's made mistakes – like last summer’s “Papillon”). Nonetheless, some voters might wish to reward someone more “overdue” for the Best Actor crown. There’s no shortage of contenders. Take Bradley Cooper in “A Star is Born,” hoping to produce his first victory after three previous losses. There’s Christian Bale in the upcoming “Vice,” who could use a bookend to his supporting prize for “The Fighter.” If just enough Academy members were rocked by Rami, he could be the champion on Oscar’s big night. Source: www.goldderby.com
The cast in Bohemian Rhapsody has plenty of recognizable names and faces that play these characters (of which are based on real-life individuals), bringing them to life. Leading the charge (and definitely shines the brightest in the movie) is Rami Malek as Farrokh Bulsara (aka Freddie Mercury). Malek, known for his role in Mr. Robot, truly does a fantastic job in the role. The movie also showcases the love (and interests) that Freddie Mercury courts, examining the lives of both Mary Austin (Freddie’s girlfriend / lifelong companion) and Paul Prenter (Freddie’s manager), who are played by actress Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express) and actor Allan Leech (The Imitation Game). Unfortunately, Boynton’s Mary complicated relationship with Freddie is a bit underdeveloped. It starts off strong, but becomes less and less important, failing to leave an emotional impact. We don’t get any real idea of who these people are outside of Mercury himself. There’s nothing to be learned about Mary Austin and why she was the most important figure in his life, nothing to learn about Jim Hutton or later Queen manager Jim “Miami” Beach (Tom Hollander). Is the Freddie characterization too gay, not bi enough, not gay enough? Freddie Mercury paid the tragic price for a hell-raising life of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Safe sex, he said, was possible, "But you can't expect to give up sex for ever." Ironically Mercury had claimed for years he was one of the loneliest men in the world. Freddie once told a close friend: "Love is like Russian Roulette for me, I've tried either side - male and female - but all of them have gone wrong. The one-night stands are just me playing a part. I can be a good lover but after all these years I'm not a good partner for anybody."
Women also gave the superstar sleepless nights. For the past years, blonde Mary Austin caused Freddie deep emotional turmoil and heartbreak. They met in the early '70's as Freddie was shopping. He later said: "Mary is my only friend in the world." Within days they moved into a flat in London's Holland Park. Their love blossomed for seven years and they even considered getting married. "The sex was good," Freddie said. "The only thing that got Mary mad was when I would jump up in the middle of the night to write lyrics." Mary quit her day job to become his personal assistant. She traveled the world with his group, Queen, booking their hotels and concerts. In 1982 they split up but remained good friends. When Freddie dabbled in hard drugs like LSD and Heroin, Mary helped him kick the habit. Freddie bought her a £400,000 four bed-roomed flat in Kensington, near his Edwardian home. And two years later, when the romance was rekindled, she asked Freddie to give her a child Freddie responded by making her the sole heir to his massive fortune in his will but told her: "I'd rather have another cat." Freddie said of Mary: "Ours is a pure friendship but friendship of the highest standard. It's an instinctive thing. I still love her. I couldn’t fall in love with a man the same way as I have with Mary. We'll probably grow old together." Source: www.ageofthenerd.com
"Under Pressure" is a 1981 song by the British rock band Queen and British singer David Bowie. It was included on Queen's 1982 album Hot Space. The song reached #1 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Queen's second number-one hit in their home country (after 1975's "Bohemian Rhapsody", which topped the chart for nine weeks) and Bowie's third (after 1980's "Ashes to Ashes" and the 1975 reissue of "Space Oddity"). Mercury and Bowie were friendly but rivalrous, both strong-willed and competitive. “Freddie and David locked horns, without a doubt,” Brian May said in a 2017 interview with Mojo magazine. “But that’s when the sparks fly and why it turned out great.”
A brief, kaleidoscopic overview of David Bowie's conquests: actresses Susan Sarandon and Candy Clark, Playboy model and actress Bebe Buell; dancer Melissa Hurley; singer Ava Cherry; Jean Millington, of the rock band Fanny; and model Winona Williams, whom he invited to live in Berlin with him. Along the way he paid court to Monique van Vooren (twenty years his senior), had an affair with Dana Gillespie (who was then fourteen to his sixteen) and a dalliance with Cyrinda Foxe (a glamorous Monroe doppelgänger), and—in the spirit of his continuing rivalry with Mick Jagger—toyed with Jagger’s onetime girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, backing singer Claudia Lennear (the inspiration for Mick Jagger’s song “Brown Sugar,” and about whom David wrote “Lady Grinning Soul”), Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes and briefly dated Mick’s first wife, Bianca Jagger.
According to David’s ex-wife, Angie, who hawked a variety of negative stories about David since their divorce, there may also have been a moment with Mick Jagger himself. In Angie Bowie’s version of the alleged event, first published in her 1981 autobiography Free Spirit, she returned from a trip to find Mick and David in bed together, something which David took the rare step of denying. At the young age of ten, Bowie was already aware of girls, and claims to have fallen head-over-heels in love with one of them. “I went out with her years later, when we were about eighteen—but I fucked it up. On our second date, she found out that I’d been with another girl. I could not keep it zipped,” he said. However, his propensity for assuming that any girl was fair game, no matter who else had already laid claim to her, led to one of the most seminal events in his life. In the spring of 1961, when David was just fourteen years old, a girl named Carol would inadvertently be the architect of the first tragedy of his life—one that would ultimately become the cornerstone of his image. His best friend George Underwood had fixed his amorous attentions on Carol and arranged a date with her. David, who had designs on Carol himself, told a massive lie to George, declaring that Carol wasn’t interested in George and therefore wouldn’t be going on the date he had set up with her. When George learned the truth, outraged, he took a swing at David and caught him in the eye. David stumbled and fell down. His punch had caught David’s left eye at an odd angle and scratched the eyeball, causing the muscle that contracts the iris to become paralyzed.
David Bowie’s left pupil remained permanently dilated, giving that eye the appearance of being a different color from his right eye. It also left him with damaged depth perception, so that when he drove, cars didn’t come toward him but just appeared to get bigger. His unmatched eyes also lent his gaze a hypnotic quality, and although it took him some time to adjust to the fact that his eyes were no longer identical, and he thought that he looked “weird,” he admitted, “I quite enjoyed that as a badge of honor.” David Jones had traveled inordinately far from the winsome, saxophone-playing thirteen-year-old boy who was already his school’s Casanova, and whose desires had in those early days appeared to be directed exclusively at girls, and only girls. When asked by this author to name his ideal woman in bed, he cracked, “Snow White.” “There was a certain spikiness between Lou and Iggy, and they obviously didn’t get on very well,” David remembered about his American rock friends. While Iggy regaled everyone with stories about growing up in a trailer park and his forays into heroin and crystal meth, David’s bond with Iggy was forged. Years later, David said, “Iggy’s a lot more exuberant than I am. I tend to be quieter, more reflective. He’s always a little bit on the dangerous line. I’m not particularly; I’m much more of an observer.” His friendship with Lou Reed was equally problematic, even more thornly due to Reed's moody personality.
Was David’s “I’m gay” announcement a cynical ploy he resorted to promote Hunky Dory, and a way of starting the process of launching Ziggy on an unsuspecting world, or was it a battle against sexual conformity? In a 1997 interview, Changes: Bowie at 50, a BBC radio program released in conjunction with his fiftieth birthday, he looked back at his revolutionary revelation that he was gay and said, “I did it more out of bravado. I wanted people to be aware of me.” “He was always very flirtatious. He looked you straight in the eyes, but he wasn’t condescending. He treated women with the same equality as he treated men, and looked at your intelligence as well as your sexuality,” Cherry Vanilla remembered. “The sex was as dirty, rough, and aerobic as anyone could want, but it never felt like we were just having sex. It felt like we were really making love.”
In 1972, David played Carnegie Hall, to great acclaim. That night, backstage, nineteen-year-old groupie Josette Caruso made a play for David. “When I arrived at the hotel suite, which included a living room, a piano, and two bedrooms, David was sitting on a couch, wearing a black shirt and black pants. I sat next to him. He poured me a glass of wine and started talking about Catcher in the Rye and he told me that he identified with the book’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield,” Josette remembered. “He was in a very playful mood and sang ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ to me. Then there was a knock on the door, and Ian Hunter and some other guys from Mott the Hoople turned up and we all chatted. Then they left, and David and I went into the bedroom together. “In bed, he was a wonderful lover, massively endowed. David was very romantic, kissing me, holding me, calling me ‘Josie,’ whereas everyone else called me Josette. He was a wonderful lover, but it wasn’t about size, but about his technique. He didn’t just fuck, he made love. He was romantic, charming,” Josette remembered. “But there was nothing gay about him, nothing effeminate. I wouldn’t have thought he was bisexual. He was all man. He was aggressive, took charge, knew all the moves, wasn’t kinky, but really controlled me in bed.”
For while Bowie had once relished her uninhibited sexuality when they were both single, childless, and flouting convention, the moment Angie had became the mother of his son, he instantly reverted to Victorian tradition and wanted her to stay home and play the role of wife and mother. Instead, she continued to have lovers, both male and female. As a settlement during the divorce process, Bowie paid her $750,000 in 1980. “It was like living with a blow-torch,” Bowie said later about Angie, and “She has as much insight into the human condition as a walnut and a self-interest that would make Narcissus green with envy.” Angie said in 2016, shortly after Bowie's death: 'I knew I had to save David - and by giving him our son, he had a reason to live.'
David Bowie was always very gracious with me, and deferential to Lou. David genuinely wanted to help Lou succeed as a solo artist, but he also knew that being associated with Lou and his legendary cult status with the Velvets would, by association, bring him cachet and prestige himself, too. Lou wasn’t particularly enamored with Angie; she was David’s wife, though, so Lou was always respectful to her. With women Lou was polite, shy, and almost behaved like a high-school kid. I had bought a white crepe floral dress in London, when Angie and I went on a shopping spree on the Kings Road. Lou kissed and said quiety: ‘I love you. There are no words to tell you how much, Princess.’ That night we took dinner with David and Angie at the Ginger Man. I remember Bowie abruptly turned around to Angie and said, ‘Why can’t you wear a dress, like her?’ Both Lou and I noticed there was some tension between David and Angie, but we didn’t dwell on it. They had an entirely different relationship to us, and they drew very different boundaries around their marriage than either Lou or I would be comfortable with—an open relationship with lovers. From the beginning of our relationship I told Lou in no uncertain terms that if I saw a needle anywhere near him, I would—without fail—leave him. Hard drugs were his Achilles’ heel, and I knew they would destroy him if he started taking them again. —"Perfect Day: An Intimate Portrait Of Life With Lou Reed" (2016) by Bettye Kronstad
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