Just listening to this now. I haven't seen the movie but it seems interesting, so I'll have to look it up.

Teague, what are your thoughts on the music for "Tangled"? I was re-watching it the other week and started out saying "The problem with this movie is that there's only one song" (because I only remembered "At Last I See the Light"). Halfway through the song my roommate said "There are lots of songs in this." I said "Yeah...but can you remember any of them? What was the melody of the song that JUST finished?" We honestly couldn't recall. So I looked at the credits afterwards to find out who wrote the songs, and was shocked that it was Alan Menken, because usually he's great. What happened there? Is it just me that can't remember any songs from that movie or did Menken drop the ball?

Motherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwssssssssssss

BEST

It wasn't regarding lightsaber choreography. Teague is asked about music, Brian is about science stuff, and you do lightsabers. We all stick with what we know

(sarcasm alert, for the uninitiated).

I think part of the problem is that Tangled is pretty different fare from Menken's Disney Renaissance material—stuff like "When Will My Life Begin" would never have appeared in a 90s Disney film. It's part of the unfortunate trend of musicals becoming more and more pop-oriented and less and less musicals of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein/Stephen Sondheim variety. It's regrettable, as Disney was the last bastion of that kind of thing during the Renaissance—now, music from films like Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame would never make it in a kid's picture, and that's horribly unfortunate. It's not that a traditional musical can't be successful—Sweeney Todd did well at the box office and was a critical smash, and the Les Mis film was a massive popular success—but the mainstream does lean more towards pop musicals, and where the mainstream goes Disney follows.

Another problem is that I just don't think Menken was particularly trying on this one. "I Have a Dream" in particular is what I think of here—the whole sequence plays out like something from a Dreamworks film, which is not a compliment. If Menken's music were more inspired it might make up for the cheesiness of the scene and Slater's lackluster lyrics, but I think he knows that the scene he's composing for is stupid and he's less inclined to try than he was back in the day when he was on top of the world and passionately involved in what he was doing.

I think an even bigger problem than the music, though, is the lyrics. I don't know what other projects Slater has worked on, but his lyrics for Tangled are pitiful compared to Ashman's and Schwartz's. That problem got way worse with Frozen—the lyrics in that film are completely godawful. While I like the melodies of a couple of Frozen songs (First Time in Forever, Snowman, etc.) I can't stomach listening to them because of how juvenile the lyrics are. "Let It Go" is the only one that passes in that regard, and that's all it is lyrically, passable.

Last edited by Abbie (2014-05-28 03:50:02)

For the record, Raul Esparza is amazing on Hannibal. He plays Dr. Chilton. He gets some great scenes with Eddie Izzard.

LatinAlice needs to come to LA so that we can do an incredibly annoying Intermission about musical numbers.

The "Frozen" thing baffles me too. I liked the movie, and I really liked "Let It Go", because Idina Menzel. "First Time in Forever" is pretty good too, but casting Jonathon Groff and giving him basically nothing to sing was sacrilegious.

I mean it's fine, but it's no Aladdin.

Into the Woods is two different shows, really, act two reversing the happy theme of act one. That's the POINT of the show, naturally, to give you what happens after "happily ever after", but without an actual act break to let audiences come in and treat the second half as its own thing I wonder how it will be received. I can certainly see DIF tearing the movie apart if they just do the play.

(there is a wonderful video of the original Broadway production, which everyone should check out. When my sister saw it on Broadway, the Witch part was played by the mother from The Cosby Show)

My biggest worry is their choice of Rob Marshall as the director; his Pirates movie was one of the worst-directed films I've had the misfortune of seeing.

Yeah, the film suffers from doubling the size of the orchestra; it certainly increases the grandeur and power, but it drowns out all the different harmony and counterpoint that's at work. I support most of Burton's cutting the crowd singing, but "God, That's Good!" suffers horribly from it. And as much as I agree that the film doesn't need The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, it would have been nice for them to still record it and slap it on the soundtrack, because it's my favorite number of the whole thing save "Pretty Women".

Yeah, it wouldn't hurt so much if it weren't for the fact that it's the best non-Ballad crowd song in the musical. I understand cutting the rigamarole with testing the barber chair, but losing the rest hurts.

....they're losing the Narrator?

........I will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger.

Last edited by Abbie (2014-05-28 02:38:11)

Sadly, yes: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180411/tri … =tr1983899

I'm not at all familiar with Jersey Boys, but the trailer looks interesting. Worth a chance, I think.

I like the '82 Annie. It has Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters, and it's just a lot of fun.
The upcoming 2014 Annie...the first half of the trailer made me hate it, but then it partially redeemed itself...so that's something to look out for. It's definitely been updated.
But since this is the 3rd film adaptation of Annie, can we call it quits after this one?

This movie's a great third position for that audience consent point from the Deceptive Practice / The Imposter Documentality.