(C or D)/(S and D): musicals

I'd consider the Broadway musical form to be America's most overrated, weakest addition to the music of the world. Catchy doesn't make it OK and famous doesn't make it good.

I like some film musicals, like Gigi, Singin' In The Rain, and My Fair Lady, so I don't have a particular aversion to the genre. Let's face it, the whole concept of a musical is kind of silly - people don't often break into big production numbers in the middle of conversations - so it's surprising that, considering how self- conscious and in-jokey so many movies and books are, modern musicals seem much less clever and aware of their own absurdity than the classic ones were.

I don't like musicals either, but I've always had this nagging feeling that there's a whole world in there if I put the effort into digging into it.

Kurt Weill's good, isn't he?

I figger we can't get a full understanding of the 20th cent. pop thing without a good handle on the Weimar-euro-doom/Harlem-minstrel axis (ie musicals). In the years B.E.(lvis), the country blues that rockists like to write about was only a small piece of the pop pie. Brit music hall, too. Totally clueless there. How many bop standards are based on "I Got Rhythm"?

So, what should we be lookin fer? Anyone?

I don't know musicals very well, but every time I do sit down and watch one (without prejudice) I'm constantly impressed by the fact that the stories tend to be better (deeper and more cynical) than your average Holywood movie. And the music tends to have good tunes and more interesting bridges and fillers than your average pop album.

Like all good Englishmen I grew up dispising Andrew Lloyd Weber, but every time I watch one I get won over : South American political drama, biblical revisionism, punk-T.S.Eliot ... then there's the monster that's "Les Miserables" (I saw the original RSC production with my parents when I was a child, and then I took my girlfriend to see it, pretty much unchanged, a couple of years ago.) Poverty, revolutionary rhetoric, grave-robbing, prostitution, moral torment, a debate about whether criminality is caused by poverty, a debate as to whether "bad" characters can ever reform. "Les Mis" has a lot more interesting drama than anything out of Holywood and in music, the only comparisons that can be made is with good hip-hop.

The older stuff too ... "Guys and Dolls" has great music and Runyon characters. "Fiddler on the Roof" is an amazing chronicle of Russian jewish life, anti-semitism and the struggle to preserve an independent culture. "Porgy and Bess" and "My Fair Lady" gave us great jazz standards. (And Pygmalian is a work of genius, which MFL pretty much fails to screw up) "Showboat" ...

In fact ... now I'm on a roll, it's actually the height of ignorant rockism to think that musicals are less great or profound than the rock / pop genres which seem to have displaced them since the 60s.

Mary Poppins??????? Chitty Chityy Bang Bang (sort of Mary Poppins meets Benny Hill), West Side Story is a great film (the opening sequence is cklassic!) CABARET with Liza Minelli and Joey Grey, do animated disney's count?

THE SOUND OF MUSIC THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW?

Recently here in Holland we have a big revival of newly produced musicals on stage, mostly american material but sometimes specially written. I did get the chance to see one last month and it was AWFUL what a piece of crap: totally outdated revue humour, stereotypical bad acting and singing...it was like watching an evening of commercial television but then sucked in your brain with no escape but to close yiur ears and eyes and wait till the titanic has finally sunk.

Extra points: it is a very short one!!!

I haven't seen the stage version of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", but the movie was DEEPLY DISTURBING and far more rock than "Rocky Horror".

Why do musical always have a better counterpart in film versions?

While that's certainly true in some cases, I've always been partial to the original cast recording of Hair. The movie, however......if it's not Milos Foreman's worst film I don't know what is. All of the film's versions of the songs are inferior to the OCR and they even left off a couple of really great tunes.

I just saw All That Jazz, which was wonderful and has me thinking about how brilliant and odd Bob Fosse was. That has to be the most self-indulgent movie of all time. Hello, I'm a drug-addicted workaholic womanizing genius who is going to make a completel over-the-top self-indulgent musical about a drug-addicted workaholic womanizing genius who is clearly me and how it kills him early, and I'm going to do this a few years before I die.

that's a common argument, and it makes absolutely no sense. people don't often band together to save earth from an invading alien attack force, and people don't often narrate their own lives after they've died, and yet no one complains that the whole concept of films or novels is silly.

search, in addition to many of those already mentioned: "damn yankees." insightful, hilarious and often risque songwriting, and damn near every melody is catchy as hell. and the story is about selling one's soul for the sole purpose of beating the new york yankees, which people in the real world should be doing as often as possible.

destroy like bad milk: "rent."

This is the film for which the director (Minnelli) resorted to telling a child actress (Margaret O'Brien) that her dog had been run over and killed, in order to get her to cry properly in the next scene to be shot.

I decided 2011's New Yrz Rez is to watch musicals. One a week is what I am thinking would be a reasonable amount.

I own/watch more musicals than any other film genre. (49 reasons my wife thinks I'm gay...) They're my go-to cinematic comfort food.

Knock yourself out!

http://www.musicals101.com/chronology.htm

the sincerity of this scares me and threw me off what I thought It would be like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEh1EXSlwHY