I am curious about your opinion, what was the best song in TBS Vs OMWF.
As I compulsively rank songs I save to disc, I decided to check what I recorded for both.
In OMWF, I gave “What You Feel,” “Standing,” and “Where Do We Go From Here” five stars. In TBS, I gave “What’s Still Unwritten” and “War & Peace” five stars.
Just out of curiosity: for those of you who like television or movie musicals, are you vexed when songs are dubbed because the actor is not gifted musically? I’ve heard people complain about that re: the Xena musical and praise the Buffy musical for requiring all the regular cast to sing their own parts.
I don’t mind dubbing as long as it’s done well. And I think it was a major mistake not to find an singer close enough in range to Aly Hannigan for OMWF and give Willow a song. I mean, she was arguably the second-most important character in the series; her not getting a song of her own was glaring (particuarly when she just looks on wistfully as Tara sings.
(Although I can understand just wanting to listen to Amber Benson sing, as she was amazing.)
This is really easy. Sweeney Todd, by several orders of magnitude. Second place doesn’t even stand in its shadow.
The problem with Sweeney Todd is that you end up hating every single character. Despite the brilliance of the story, I kindof like being able to like SOMEONE.
Okay, I admit I didn’t hate Johanna in the movie version. But the lass who played her in the Lansbury/Hearn production was so odious I was hoping, during all of “Sweet Linnet Bird,” that the creatures she was serenading would suddenly peck her eyes out.
I’m gonna give West Side Story another chance.
:waits until the SDMB stops rioting with joy:
I was in my early 20s when I saw it, we’ll see what the intervening… :cough: … years brings to my experience.
It will be on TCM May 21st at 9:30pm (EST) and I’ve set it up so they’ll send me a couple of reminders so I won’t forget.
TCM: America’s greatest cable channel.
No love for Avenue Q? Perhaps not the greatest music, but for a comedy musical, I honestly know I haven’t laughed harder than I did during that show. Even after knowing the soundtrack backwards and forwards, seeing it on stage still made me leave with my sides split.
For serious musical, I’ve always been a Miss Saigon fan. I’m not sure how it translates on stage, but I love the music and story from Ragtime. I really want to see that.
Not quite the first.
It tried, they came close…but the musical as performed originally was NOT fully realized. There were all sorts of what were called “specialty numbers” thrown in–“we’ve got a star who can do impersonations? We’ll cram an impersonations number in”. “we’ve got a star who can play the harmonica(?). We’ll throw a harmonica number in”.
When you excise these numbers, you get something very close to a post OKLAHOMA! “modern” musical, but as performed pre-OKLAHOMA!, it doesn’t make the cut. (Which isn’t to say that it’s not profound, moving, groundbreaking and so forth–but it’s not a “modern” musical–but it’s certainly the harbinger of them. If you can get your hands on a book called “Make Believe: The Musicals of the 1920s” by Ethan Mordden, he spends about 3 chapters (out of like 10) examining Show Boat. He loves it.
And I’d argue that Guys and Dolls is the perfect musical. There’s not a single note-a single lyric that doesn’t advance the plot or define a character, the dances are brilliantly integrated, the characters are wonderfully defined and, much as I like Runyon’s work, Abe Burrows (or whoever wrote the book) actually managed to improve on the source material. I’ve read “The Idyll Of Sarah Brown” and the other story that G&D was based on and G&D is an improvement.
Well, A), I don’t necessarily agree, although B), I don’t really see that as a disqualifying criterion even if I did agree.
It’s hard not to identify with Todd/Barker: we all hold a secret grudge we fantasize avenging with the kind of violent abandon that Todd indulges. But even if you don’t, the musical itself has no peer musically, lyrically, or dramatically in the history of the American stage.
I’m not inherently opposed to dubbing, if the actor is really really beyond holding anything resembling a note (which I think is rarely something that can’t be made passable with training), the dubber is chosen whose speaking voice sounds much like the original actor, and the actor does a spectacular job of lip synching.
But it’s a last resort sort of thing, and the effort really needs to be put in to do it well so it doesn’t seem jarring. I have to wonder though - in this day and age marvelous things are being done with production, it might be interesting to just clean up the original voice like they do with pop stars who sound sucky live but fantastic on CD.
I think Buffy definitely made the right call. It would have been weird to have only one of the players be dubbed. I actually think she would have been fine singing, if you found the right style of song for her. It wouldn’t have been the kind of song you rock out to, but it wouldn’t have been a screechy ear killer either. I could imagine her singing something sweet and kind of funny, like Phoebe Buffay or various singer songwriters who sing interesting things in a less than perfect voice like Dan Bern. The main reason she didn’t sing is because she was self conscious about her voice and didn’t want to even try. But having all the actors do their own stuff just works better, it sounds so much more authentic. And this fit the story in that there was an ‘explanation’ for the singing and the characters were aware of the strangeness of the phenomenon, so it worked better to have them really singing.
But I don’t begrudge Xena - they were in some kind of mystical dimension or something so having the voices be less realistic fit with the story.
I remember seeing AQ in previews in a little tiny theatre that was about a quarter full, and thinking “either this show is going to sink or it’s going to be amazingly popular.”
When it came time to announce the Tony for best musical that year, the people from Wicked where getting ready to go on stage to accept it, the TV cameras were on them preening and getting ready to stand. When the announcer said “And the Tony for the best musical goes to…Avenue Q,” I don’t know which cast was more shocked–Wicked or AQ.
The show has played overseas to good audiences. It’s a marvelous idea with wonderful execution, and the songs are so much fun.
My favorite would probably be Candide. At least it’s the one I’ve listened to most often.
Perhaps you missed where I wrote that I need a character to like. If I’d meant the general “you” as in “the audience,” or the particular “you” as in lissener, I would have written “you.” Or “the audience.”
Can I identify with Barker’s feeling persecuted and ill-served by both life in general and Judge Turpin in particular? Of course I can. But in his quest for revenge he outdoes Turpin in evil by an order of magnitude. One might make an argument that his killing of Turpin and Bamford are justifiable; but he killed a lot more people than that, people whose only crime was to walk into his barber shop. And he came within seconds of murdering hsi own child.
Um … the explanation for the singing in OMWF was no less mystical. The characters were spontaneously able to compose fairly complex lyrics, with rhyme schemes, puns, coordination with other singers not in their physical presence, and invisible orchestras supplying accompaniment. Not hard to imagine that they might also be given buckets in which to carry their tunes as well.
Wouldn’t they all have to lip sync anyway? Since the singing isn’t usually done while filming, but rather dubbed in (by the actor) afterwards?
It goes with the territory(ies) - both performing arts and the SDMB.
Why? IMNSHO:
a) Theater, music, dance, etc. are both highly subjective and highly competitive. As such, they resist and encourage value judgments and one-upmanship.
b) Much of the energy and life force of the Board is also competitive, in more of a political/legalistic way. Look at a Great Debates discussion sometime - most eventually turn into fact-based nerd-jousting.
The truth is out there for the fact-based folks - and they believe they’ll eventually reach it. All the arts community has is the hope of superior bluster and posturing.
All these musicals, and no mentions the actual best musical romantic comedy ever written?
She Loves Me. I go back and forth on the best musical ever (although 1776 does have the best book of a musical, but certainly not the best score,) but when it comes to romantic comedies? She Loves Me. It’s also the best show Harnick and Bock ever did. Yes, even better than Fiddler on the Roof, although possibly that show’s overexposure makes me underrate it a bit.
She Loves Me has charming lyrics, good characters, a lot of stuff for all of the leads to do, and an amazingly beautiful score. Just listen to “Dear Friend” or “Vanilla Ice Cream” or “She Loves Me”. Or “A Trip to the Library” (“Of course it’s a novel / But I didn’t know / or I certainly wouldn’t have SMACKED HIM!”)
As long as were including TV shows with great musicals, I did forget the greatest TV musical of all time, bar none.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (rewritten by Harold Hecuba).
[Hijack]The sound quality on that is amazingly good for a 45 year old show. It’s apparently been remastered.[/Hijack]
Duuuuuuuuuude! Heavy Metal!
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:: Does little Ozzy Salute Thing::
I see your point, but I don’t agree. The impression I got in Buffy was that the characters, although mystically amped up, were still just expressing themselves and their own core issues. Using their own voices is definitely preferable. If they opened their mouths and out came someone else’s voice it still would have made sense as a mystical spell musical episode, but it wouldn’t have made sense with them singing about such personal and specific issues. The songs would have had to have been more generic or iconic.
For Xena, I still think authentic voices are better, but given they were in a mystical dimension, the impression I got was that although they were playing out their own issues, those issues were just being used as lynchpins for larger iconic forces, and they were more channeling these larger forces which were attracted to their polarity, then really just expressing their own particular issues. But that’s still a bit of a fanwank - authentic voices would have been preferable though the particulars of the cast ma have made that technically hard to accomplish. But still, based on the stories, if I had to choose one to be real voices and one to be dubbed, I would have chosen them the way they ended up.
Yes, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to lip synch to your own voice, and also easier to lip synch to something you yourself recorded.
LOL which reminds me of possibly the greatest musical number in an otherwise non musical episode: the church scene from the “Taming of the Shrew” episode of Moonlighting.
But the OMWF sings WEREN’T generic or iconic. The songs Xena & Gabrielle sing are explicitly about their situation. If you had thrown Hercules & Iolaus into Illusia, those songs would have made no sense.
And, of course, Xena & Gabrielle are the only “real” characters in Illusia anyway. Callisto, Joxur & Ares are as illusory as the rest of the realm. We don’t get to explore the latter three’s psyches, because Xena was almost more centered, character-wise, than Buffy. Everything is always about the leading ladies, whether their relationship with one another or a comment on one of them individually.
Which is why I like Xena in general better than Buffy, and “The Bitter Suite” in particular better than “Once More With Feeling.” Toward the end of Buffy, there was talk of replacing Sarah Michelle Gellar with Eliza Dushku and making it Faith the Vampire Slayer. That was conceviable because Buffy was essentially plot-based. No such thing was conceviable with Xena, because it was character-based; the fans would never have accepted the show without at least Lawless, and probably both Lawless & O’Connor.