Yes, I am one of the few people on the planet who have never seen The Sound of Music. Last night my SO and I went to a Sound of Music sing-a-long - :smack:
I know.
So not only was I amazed at the fully packed theater, I was amazing at all the people who knew every word, every phrase, every yodel…I was constantly looking around watching people noticing that everyone was mouthing the words. :eek:
Now I agreed to go because I don’t want to be *“that guy” * who goes along just to please his SO and is grumpy the whole time - so I walked into the theater with an open mind and ready and willing to watch the flick, and listen to everyone else sing along…they even had the words of every song flashing on the screen…
So, about 2 hours into it, right before the wedding, I notice the movie is quite long and my bladder is telling me to get up and hit the mens room. So I do. Just out of curiosity I grab my iPhone and Google “How long is the sound of music?”
174 minutes.
:eek:
Are you F*cking kidding me? Ok, I decide to remain calm and I go out to the usher and ask the 17 year old kid what time the Sound of Music get’s out…and he says, 10:15. Noticing the look on my face, a look well worn because I have been in the theater since 6:30 [there is a 35 min. history of sound of music to start the whole thing off then the move starts] he say’s: I know man…you’re brave.
So…anyone else who has never seen it been surprised by it’s length? What is your opinion of the movie as a whole? It was kind of cool seeing Christopher Plummer so young…but it was a little weird with the whole 7-kids and with a hybrid nanny who bests the baroness and all that… weird.
I remember talking to a friend who had gone to see the movie Reds (194 minutes: wikipedia) upon its theatrical release and complained that the story seemed to end very abruptly. I had to explain to him the concept of intermissions (a rare thing here in the USA)and that he missed the second half of the movie.
Every time I read a complaint about The Sound of Music, I get my back all up ready to defend it to the death. Then I realize that I’m confusing the Music Man, which is awesome, with the Sound of Music which is boring. So. Carry on.
Heh. Just be glad you didn’t go to a sing-along for Shoah (544 minutes).
The last intermission I remember is when Gettysburg first came out in 1993, all 261 minutes of it. I was in grad school, so I saw it on a weekday afternoon (ah, the lost pleasures of being a student). It was me and about 50 men in their sixth or seventh decade. They almost knocked me down getting to the bathroom.
But WSS has good songs and good dancing. TSoM has nothing but one insidious earwig after another, no dancing (though lots of skipping and prancing) and Julie Andrews at her worst (because she can be very good when she wants to be).
It’s a long movie but it feels even longer (at least when I saw the Sing-Along, it was in London at the Prince Charles, where it takes on Rocky Horror dimensions).
There’s Lawrence of Arabia (216 minutes of sand), Titanic (194 minutes of water) and Dr. Zhivago (192 minutes of snow). They make TSOM (174 minutes) look like a Three Stooges short.
At least the Alps are pretty and the songs are nice.
So, as far as he knew, Reds was a movie about Communism that ended with immediately-post-revolution Russians marching through the streets triumphantly singing the Internationale. Didn’t he find that a little odd for an American film?
The 1996 Hamlet, btw, was the last movie I attended that had an intermission. 242 minutes.
I think you saw it in the wrong setting. TSOM is best seen on TV on Christmas day, so you can nap in between the Do-a-deer song and when the Nazis show up, and the nuns hide the spark plugs.
I like West Side Story, though these days I view it more cynically than when I was a kid. Now I see it and I think:
[ul]
[li]Wait, did these people look like gang-bangers in the 60’s? Because today they look like a bunch of theater majors, sorted by color into rival gangs.[/li][li]Wait, Natalie Wood is Puerto Rican?[/li][li]Why is the estimation of life in America split along gender lines?[/li][li]All these gang-bangers own tight-fitting suits?[/li][li]So, does that dance symbolize an actual rape, or an attempted rape?[/li][li]After depressing me for two-and-a-half hours they don’t have the guts to kill off the girl, too?[/li][/ul]
I don’t remember any of the kids wearing suits in TWSS, but guys certainly did wear much tighter clothing back in that time. Wearing their trousers with the waistband around the knees as a uniform for gangbangers is a much more recent phenomenon.
ETA: The Sound Of Music is a good film as musicals go; I could watch it again. But a sing-a-long sounds dreadful.
watched that movie in 40-50 min snippets in english class. it is forever in my mind etched as the 2nd longest (feeling) movie of all time. #1 was dr. zhivago where i fell asleep, woke up, fell back asleep, woke up again and still had 15 mins to go.
As it happens, *The Sound of Music *was one of the first movies I ever saw. My mother took me to see it when I was about five years old. She thought I might like it because I seemed to be interested in music in general. I enjoyed it, or so she tells me.
So it’s always been part of my life, and so have movie musicals in general.
Ok, I knew it was long. I know it is a classic, and having seen it I acknowledge it is a classic and a masterpiece.
BUT WE GET IT! IT’S HOT AND SANDY! EDIT THE FILM AND MOVE ON!
As to TSoM, was there not an intermission? Of course that just drags the cruelty out longer.
I know that originally there was an intermission. On my DVD of The Sound of Music they include the intermission (a pretty picture of mountains, with background music.)
Yes, I like The Sound of Music! Sue me.
Another long movie, the double version of Little Dorritt (based on the Dickens novel), where you see the same story twice, but filmed from two different points of view. I haven’t seen it since my theatre experience, I’ll have to get it from Netflix.