Squiggly, that was fascinating. Sting comes across as a bit of a bitch, but at the end of the day, the music was great.
What was funny is, it took twenty minutes for me to hear a song from the "first" version of the movie that worked at all. All of the music was bloodless and funless until we heard the song Izma was going to have. Most of the fun of the music that resulted was actually in the arrangement and, of course, in Tom Jones. The bombastic, the fun, the flapping horns running up and down the scale...that's the stuff that makes the music kick for me, and there wasn't a lot of that coming from Sting's chair, from what I could tell.
Fun point of comparison, also, because I've spent a lot of the last few years really fascinated with musicals and the guys who write them. I think a lot of what I didn't respond to in much of Sting's stuff is simply the difference between a guy who writes for albums and a guy who writes for stage. Different schools of thought, and some folks can handle the transition (Elfman, pick a song off Only a Lad and pick a song from Nightmare and you guy "yup, this guy has two skillsets." Mileage obviously varies on Elfman, but, for instance.) and some seem to have trouble grasping it.
Anyway. Very interesting watch, and fucking more power to them, because The Emperor's New Groove is still my favorite Disney movie.
Teague Chrystie
I have a tendency to fix your typos.
