Search And Destroy: Musicals

http://members.tripod.com/Point202/GuysandDolls/lament.html

(should be read with New Yoik accent)

"City of Angels": by two guys I haven't heard about since, all big- band jazzish and torch songy, parallel black and white world private- eye movie/writer writing private-eye movie color world storylines. Confusing in description, but much fun.

"Little Shop Of Horrors": can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet. Rice and Menken, big man-eating plant and wimpy nebbish, based on a Roger Corman classique, and the movie version is a pitch perfect and has Steve Martin, Bill Murray, John Candy, and Rick "really pretty brilliant until I started making those family-Disney-shrinking pics" Moranis, who has an impressive set of pipes. Also features: Gina from "Martin," as in the "Gina! You so crazy!" Gina. If someone has mentioned this, I'm sorry to go on about it more.

Destroy: Dinner theaters. Do y'all have dinner theaters on the Isles? So ... unfortunate. *Shudder*

I like Phantom and Les Mis.

Destroy: Everything else by ALW. Cats... Cats... the horror. There was a joke on SNL at one point long ago when Dennis Miller was still on that went something like...

"For the 4,760th time the broadway musical 'Cats' was performed on stage, eclipsing the old mark of A Chorus Line. And for the 4,760th time, a man killed his wife."

Tommy. I mean, the movie and stage vers. And the studio album, actually. The live versions ROCK LIKE HELL tho...

Sorry. I went a little tangential there.

Annihilate - "Grease 2".

destroy: almost everything else by Lloyd Webber.

all Troma iz shite

"I don't know how to love him/how to touch, how to move him/he's just a man, JUST a man/and I've had so many men before, in oh so many ways/ he's just one more"

I loved to sing along to that (singer = Miriam D'Abo?), aged 11.

COMPLETELY TANGENTIALLY, does anyone else remember the movie Mary Mother of God or something to that effect? It was about the Virgin Mary and it was on CBS or NBC a few years ago. The reason I bring this up is because it starred Christian Bale as Jesus, just prior to it being announced he'd play Patrick Bateman. For the longest time no one would believe me that this was true, so I'm just curious if I'm the only one who actually remembers it. I mean, I looked it up online one day just to prove myself right, and sure 'nuff, there was Christian Bale, smiling in a beatific way from the poster. It rocked. If the Catholic church would use Christian Bale as their propaganda instead of the Jesus they usually use, I'd so be in church right now. "Oooh, Jesus, save meeeee"

Ahem. Sorry. Anyhow, Jesus Christ Superstar is a terrible musical and should be destroyed with the rest of Sir Webber's collection, but that PBS version was fantastic and I think me and Ethan saw the same one because I also saw this version just before Easter.

My Musical obsession is pretty much reserved for Rogers & Hammerstein. C'Mon South Pacific anyone. Happy Talk, Wash That Man Right out Of My Hair. Sound OF Music - especially Goatherd (never gets a reprise unlike the rest of the tracks, which makes the film a bit too long). The appearance of Singalong-A-Sound Of Music in London has been a rejuvenating thing for the whole idea of musicals. It reintroduces the idea of them actually being a whole shedload of fun.

Oaklahoma is top mad skills too, not to mention Pal Joey (not R&H but Sinatra's finest Musical moment). And I'm off to see Kiss Me Kate tonight at the NFT in the origianl 3-D. Unfortunately I don't have stereoscopic vision, but the gaudy nonsensical idea of a musical filmed in 3-D will keep me going.

Oh, and Candide is a very funny piece of musical theatre. "All's for the best" is in my top ten tracks of all time.

Destroy: Les Mis, without compunction. Especially since it has managed to destroy the book in popular culture terms. Oh and Notre Dame de Paris, especially "I've Got A Hunch About You". It might as well have been the Planet Of The Apes musical on The Simpsons (worth inclusion for "You'll Never Make A Monkey Out Of Me").

Destroy: "Godspell". And yeah, the rest of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stuff has got to go. I do remember dancing wildly to the Disco Evita version of "High Flying Adored", though, when I was a dizzy madcap teen. I didn't know where the song came from, I just thought it had a cool, queeny chorus.

If you have even the vaguest interest in the art of writing songs that use the English language to its fullest, you have to investigate Sondheim, the lyricist's lyricist. Simple as that.

DESTROY: Ticket prices. Thirty quid plus for a decent seat? Not exactly music for the masses, is it? Cheaper to get the original cast CD to pore over repeatedly in the comfort of your own cave.

SEARCH: Sunday In The Park With George (truly beautiful), Assassins (truly tap dancing Lee Harvey Oswald plus love song to Charles Manson), Follies (includes "Losing My Mind" as covered by Pet Shop Boys/Liza Minnelli, Company, A Little Night Music (includes "Send In The Clowns"), West Side Story (Sondheim & Bernstein). Also any Sondheim revue CDs that mop up his best songs, eg Side By Side By Sondheim.

AVOID (until you've developed a taste for him): Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along.

NON-SONDHEIM:

SEARCH: Cabaret - wonderful film, peerless tunes, essential soundtrack. Barbra Striesand's "Broadway Album". Man Of La Mancha. Pirates Of Penzance & The Mikado... light operas being the forerunners of the musical. That 80s pop film of "Pirates" with Angela Lansbury, Kevin Kline, and Linda Rondstadt is a riot. Also: any musical by Cole Porter, especially High Society, and anything by Rogers and Hart, especially Pal Joey.

DESTROY: "Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire" - early 80s film musical featuring a singing Phil Daniels, Dracula, and, um, snooker. I'm sure it looked good at the planning stage.

Have you heard Liza Minnelli's 70s version of "Dancing In The Moonlight"? As in the Toploader song. You should.

Regarding a musical of The Breakfast Club, I would like to point out that I have Molly Ringwald's dance moves down to a "t", and am available at very short notice for understudy duties.

I have to go, I'm late for the "half"...

Phew, Dickon. This is quite a concept to swallow. But intriguing.

The Terror of Tiny Town is quite possibly the best musical of all time. Click on the link and you can watch the film - ALL OF IT. Including the Marlene Dietrich whore midget. Apparently, this is the film she is watching right now on television; Arizona, you know?

DESTROY: HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING - I just finished an excruitiatingly long month run of that show and I now despise it with everything that I have. If I had to sing "A Secretary is Not a Toy", cha-cha to "Coffee Break", or listen to the ever-so-annoying song "Old Ivy" again I think I would have died.

Me and my mum were there - we watched the first half, and then at the interval when we came out for drinks I decided I couldn't bring myself to go back in, and just walked out of the theatre. My mum ran after me, and then when she was outside she seemed to realise it was best if we slip away. So we walked out of the place, back to the car park, into our car, and drove all the way back home without saying a word to each other.

I'll say it again just to stir up controversy and encourage youths to fight in playgrounds.

Destroy: Please gey rid of Cats, Les Mis. and Miss Saigon! In college in London all my friends would sing those deppressing songs - I wanted to slit my wrists!

so yeah, search that: it's classic!

But how does it match up against Holiday Inn?

You people hate Sondheim?

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYEROOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2qNJupQTW8I
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0kHYzt9UbB0&feature=related

I recently saw "Spamalot" in London and that one is to be searched for certain. If not necessarily mainly for the music, that is.....

What, a non-musical post?

Yeah, I saw Spamalot in January. It was alright I suppose.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055572/

Poor phrasing on that last item, but its referring to the choice of the actors and actresses.

"In the Heights" was never really renowned for its book, which doesn't have a huge amount of conflict or a big arc (the movie did actually change quite a lot from the stage version, though). it's more the characters, the music, and the choreography that really sold that one.

that said I really enjoyed the movie, but I ventured to NYC to see the original in 2008

the biggest change in the movie is that Nina's mother is alive in the stage version and butts heads with Nina's dad a lot and removing her took a lot of that dynamic away

Yeah, good songs, blah story, too long. Don't know how long the original show is but this felt like they didn't want to cut anything from it (though I see from Neanderthal's comment, they did)

there were two full-fledged songs cut from it, yet the length was still about the same, weirdly

I imagine cutting songs when adapting musicals to screen is done very carefully for fear of risking fan backlash

one of the songs cut was like a powerful second act song that many people used as like audition pieces/etc. was very surprised.

weirdly, no songs were added, either, which is usually a ploy to become Oscars-eligible for Best Original Song. almost all movie musicals have at least one song added (Hairspray had several)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/arts/dance/in-the-heights-dance.html

Scott, who comes from the street dance world of Los Angeles and is not Latino, worked with a team of associate choreographers who specialized in a range of styles, including Latin dance, hip-hop, ballet and contemporary dance
...
His team of associate choreographers is solid: Eddie Torres Jr. for Latin dance, with Princess Serrano as assistant Latin choreographer; Ebony Williams for ballet, contemporary dance, Afro and dancehall; Emilio Dosal, a popper who is versatile in many styles and brings the hip-hop element to the film; and Dana Wilson, who had a hand in everything — like all of the choreographers — but specifically worked with the actors to help them nail the physicality of their characters.

Above NY Times article is on the dance aspect and not the songs as referenced above