CATS is closing!!

TS Eliot would have liked Cats (2019 film) says his estate

Eliot himself, she said, would probably have approved. “We know he would have liked the lines because he wrote them. Then, he loved dance … his nickname at Harvard was Elbows Eliot, he loved dance so much. He also used to go to musical theatre all the time with [his wife] Valerie. So I can’t see how he wouldn’t have liked it, with all those things he loved being in one film. I think he would have had a sense of humour about it, he was very open-minded, he liked having his head blown. He was an unusual person and this is such an unusual thing.”

Reihill acknowledged that “there’s always been so much derision about the musical and that’s carried over to the film” and that “seeing Judi Dench’s face covered in fur is going to startle you, of course”.

But she said that Eliot’s widow Valerie “loved the musical and she knew him so well … If you take all those things he loved, they’re all in the film, and I like to imagine him sitting in the cinema with a smile on his face,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/19/ts-eliot-would-not-have-minded-cats-reviews-says-his-estate

I think it's fair to say that anyone who died prior to the advent of shitty CGI and who has subsequently been made aware of the existence of shitty CGI (by like say a psychic medium or the ghost of a latter-day decedent who described in vivid detail that one infamous scene with the Scorpion King) is thankful that they never had to experience shitty CGI with their own living eyes.

Which is to posit that a miraculously-resurrected Eliot who bore witness to this celluloid abortion would likely scoop his eyes out of his skull in a fit of abject horror for what has become of humanity.

We lost our minds when the train cat exploded into dust pic.twitter.com/dsXcvOmhVx

— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) December 20, 2019

genuinely stoked to see this now tbh

I think I'm gonna wait and see how many Razzies it wins. I mean I expect at least two but if it clinches four or more I'm totally there.

if you wait that long it might already have been shamed out of theaters

"He was an unusual person and this is such an unusual thing”

^^^this is also why i will like it and also why you sad normies are missing out iirc

I need to know that it's elicited Lonely Lady levels of excoriation before I plunk down my hard-earned money.

I assume because of the season, I've been seeing a lot of images from the Grinch movie popping up lately. This movie is giving off very similar 'how could anyone involved who wasn't heavily intoxicated for the entire span of its production ever have thought this was anything but an irrefutable denunciation of the human act of creativity' vibes.

if all the dollar/discount theaters in my area hadnt gone out of business this would 100% be a classic postholiday hangover cheapo matinee

I wager that it's best experienced via bootleg download projected from an iPhone onto an alley wall.

Train cat has me puriently wanting a starlight express adaptation with the same direction and cgi tech. What could go wrong.

^^^this is also why i will like it and also why you sad normies are missing out iirc

Prognosticating about which terrible films will actually be fun and palatable despite their terribleness is, at best, an imprecise art.

This film comes 37 years after the stage megahit. Surely a record?

next s&s "greatest films" round-up is in 2022, time to topple vertigo

will zizek have also pencilled it in?

xpost I'm pretty sure the 2015 film was the first adaptation of 1897's stage smash Daddy, Won't You Buy Me a Hoop and Stick? Oh, Say You Will, Daddy Dearest!

i really miss dollar theaters

used to be a dollar place near me that offered "the big deal" a couple days a week - ticket, drink, and popcorn for 4 bucks. the gas to drive there & back was the most expensive part of the evening.

Matinee at my local place is $6 for anything before 6pm, weekends included.

Saw it...

...liked it!

So look basically you have about one, two minutes at the start to get used to what this is out of the gate. My theory is that if you buy that the rest happens — you buy the Lloyd Webber, you buy Holland’s direction, you buy the CGI, or you just don’t. And it was all surprisingly very easy to buy. After that everything just flowed as it should. Trust me I’m surprised too.

great take

have yet to see this because a) I generally can't deal with Cats b) I think I've reached the age where "Memory" starts hitting a little close to home, and I'd rather not confront that just yet

can't be worse than the phantom movie was though

Ben Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.

My son went to see this yesterday for the lulz and he was still a gibbering traumatised mess when I saw him two hours later, apparently at least one small child was taken out crying mid-picture

Still kinda disappointed this isn't Tobe Hooper's Cats

That's what I keep thinking when I see his name too.

can't have been worse...

https://s9.rr.itc.cn/r/wapChange/201611_8_20/a8rq0c2240676214188.jpg

"mmmeeeeeeeeemorieeeeeeeeees...."

Latest Dailies

Fri Dec 20
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker $90,000,000
Jumanji: The Next Level $7,100,000
Frozen II $3,300,000
Cats $2,620,000
Bombshell $1,830,000

I kinda liked it! I’ve never been a musical theater person so I didn’t know the songs or the characters or even what the hell was going on but it was weird and colorful and never boring

the entire legacy of this show in my world is David Letterman's rendition of that song

Meeeeednight
And the kit-ties are sleeeeeping

lmao morbs i hate to tell you this but this is 100% true for me as well

I just think that critics don't 'get' musical theatre. Audience score is 62% at RT which isn't great but isn't terrible.

plenty of ok musical theatre gets ok reviews

this doesn't seem that

audiences don't necessarily get musical theatre either, hence the popularity of the terrible not-really-musical-theatre Greatest Showman

don't get me wrong i still really want to see this car crash but it's not even a great stage show

starlight express is the only good musical

bcz the trains fuck

https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DD0woFSXoAAJqhS.jpg

CGI Starlight Express must be built

Was trying to explain to a group of 20-something’s what starlight express was. Didn’t go well

I’d much rather see this than star wars

abuse your ears in your chosen way

FWIW, "Greatest Showman" on Rotten Tomatoes is currently 56% critics, 86% audience. "Cats" (for now) is 19% critics, 62% audience.

Cats has been a punchline in the musical theatre community for decades.

I'm kinda shocked the audience score is that high but I had one group of friends who went purely to gawk at the trainwreck so...maybe that accounts for it?

tag yrself i'm a jellicle critic

It just keeps getting worse for Universal / Amblin / Working Title’s Cats, with business now down to $7.6M in fourth place for the weekend, well below the $15M that tracking was seeing. More injury: CinemaScore audiences pronounced the movie dead with a C+ to go along with its awfully updated PostTrak exits of 2 stars. Word is that there’s advance ticket sales for Christmas Day, but Cats isn’t looking like The Greatest Showman, which despite its slow start of $8.8M over three days and $19M over six days mushroomed to $174.3M stateside off an A CinemaScore.

ppl who show up at Cats are predisposed to like it

:D

This isn’t a joke: CATS was rushed into theaters before being finished so a new version is being sent to theaters with updated effects. How do you know if you have the old version? Look for Judi Dench’s human hand, wedding ring and all. pic.twitter.com/VDUOevePU9

— Jenelle Riley (@jenelleriley) December 22, 2019