[QUOTE=Marley23]
That’s an interesting point that I’d never considered. While I’m not a fan of musicals in general, for your “unrealistic” I’d substitute something like “hopelessly corny.” Popular tastes have gotten more ironic, and that doesn’t favor musicals.
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Eh…the old-style musicals were unrealistic, too, though. Crowd of strangers suddenly bursting into song and dancing step-perfect together, for one thing. Chicago took care of this by making all the musical numbers that didn’t occur onstage to be in the main character’s head. But then, this was done in the latter part of the movie musical heyday as well. Fosse did it in Cabaret…all the musical numbers occurred either onstage or as records playing (or the beergarden scene, which was logically explainable).
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
You mean, like Mama Mia? Or Enchanted? Or Hairspray? Or Sweeney Todd? Or Chicago? Or Across the Universe? Or Rent? Or* Moulin Rouge!*? Or Once?
Jeez, I dunno…why?
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A better question would be, why aren’t Broadway musicals made any more? I mean, something like Rent or Cats or Les Miserables – I can’t put my finger on it, but it just seems to be something fundamentally different from Oklahoma or Guys and Dolls. Not worse, just different – so different it probably requires a different genre-name.
[QUOTE=jayjay]
Eh…the old-style musicals were unrealistic, too, though. Crowd of strangers suddenly bursting into song and dancing step-perfect together, for one thing.
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Right. Musicals were always unrealistic, but people used to have an easier time with the conceit. The way people look at them has changed: audiences want something that looks truer to life, and satire of classic musicals has brought things to the point where you can’t watch somebody start to sing in a musical without a sort of involuntary chuckle. (At least, if you’re me.) Hardcore Broadway musical fans have a different experience, I guess, but as noted, musicals are a genre now and not mainstream the way they once were. I believe they were considered the pinnacle of Broadway class and entertainment decades ago. But jukebox musicals and movie adaptations are seen as lowest-common-denominator stuff.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
You mean, like Mama Mia? Or Enchanted? Or Hairspray? Or Sweeney Todd? Or Chicago? Or Across the Universe? Or Rent? Or* Moulin Rouge!*? Or Once?
I’m a straight guy who loves musicals. They aren’t making enough of them these days, so I get my fix with Bollywood films. Pretty much every mainstream Indian film is a musical. I wish the theaters near me would show them, as it is I have to make special plans to get out to the single theater in the far suburbs that schedules them.
[QUOTE=vetbridge]
Gotta mention (although I may be the only fan) Romance & Cigarettes
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Ah, thanks… I’d seen a clip of Walken’s DELILAH number but thought it was a music video. If that scene’s indicative of the movie I’ve GOT to see it. (For those who want to get straight to the music, skip to 1:35 of that video.)
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
If that scene’s indicative of the movie I’ve GOT to see it.
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You’ve gotta see it. James Gandolfino taking the trash to the curb and breaking out in song (“A Man without Love”), then joined by the garbagemen dancing with their cans. . .
One other thing: movie musicals used to be the preferred crossover medium for popular artists (singers) to find a more widespread audience. Musicals would either be written for or around them, or they would take Broadway shows (which they often starred in originally on stage) and translate them to the big screen. This was also true for exceptionally talented dancers who had singing ability as well.
With the advent of television in general and MTV in particular, recording artists now have that same access to a larger audience but through a more manageable (and less expensive) short form of movie musical–the music video. Sure, some music artists still want to expand their brand, visibility, and industry cred through film, but most are content with highlighting their singing and dancing talents on the small screen.
That would be another category entirely- musicals based on movies or TV shows…which is probably another trend Disney started with The Lion King.
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I can think of adaptations of films for use as Broadway musicals as early as the 1950s.
I’d like to make a two-point argument:
The decline of the movie musical first is apparent in the mid-1950s, when the movie studios begin to shut down their in-house departments that made original movie musicals, and, instead, shifted to focusing more on adaptations of stage hits.
The shift noted in 1) started to become a big problem in the late 1960s. Most of the pre-1965 Broadway hits that could be filmed had been or would soon be, there weren’t as many new shows that were both hits and which could be filmed (I only count thirty or so book musicals between 1965 and 1980 that were financial successes, and close to half of these have not been filmed), and changes to the film industry made the resurrection to the in-house departments of the past implausible.
As for television musicals, the original television musical was tied to a type of program (the “spectacular”) that peaked in the early years of the medium. Once that declined (the last concerted efforts that I can think of to keep it afloat were by ABC in prime time around 1967 and in late night in the early 1970s), so did the television musical.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
There’s also De-Lovely, which features many Cole Porter tunes and, mixed in there somewhere, a thoroughly inaccurate biography of Cole Porter.
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I don’t know much about Porter (the main thing I know about his life that’s different from the movie is that the real Porter, ironically, couldn’t sing worth a damn), but it’s got to be leagues better than Night & Day. Casting Cary Grant as Cole Porter would be about like casting Patrick Stewart in “The Don Rickles Story”.
That said, I really like the soundtrack to De-Lovely. The movie not so much- the whole bit with Jonathan Pryce as an angel (or some other worldly being) guiding the flashbacks was a bit too contrived (though Kline’s aging makeup was good).
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
I don’t know much about Porter (the main thing I know about his life that’s different from the movie is that the real Porter, ironically, couldn’t sing worth a damn), but it’s got to be leagues better than Night & Day. Casting Cary Grant as Cole Porter would be about like casting Patrick Stewart in “The Don Rickles Story”.
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Well, the OP was asking (more or less) about recent TV/movie musicals. I can understand Night and Day pretending Porter wasn’t gay, but I found De-Lovely treating him as gay but also being emotionally tortured about it because it hurts Linda Lee Thomas’s feelings, since she’s his true love, to be kinda… worse.
I’d like to see another biopic that is more casual about it - Porter’s gay, his relationship with Thomas is mostly a business arrangement, he writes good music, done. De-Lovely seemed more about catering to the stereotypical female fantasy about rescuing a cultured man from his gayness. I skipped the dialogue and just listened to the songs, including the duet between Porter (Kevin Kline) and “Jack” (John Barrowman) which I used to learn the lyrics to Night and Day (the song) which I then performed at a military Christmas party, to some appreciation.
[QUOTE=cbawlmer]
The brother of the blond girl (Sharpay?) is pretty clearly supposed to be gay. They never state it explicitly, but it was obvious to me when I saw it.
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Before I knew he was her brother & I saw the group pictured darn near everywhere, I thought- “There’s the black couple, the brunette couple, & the blond glamour queen & her gay friend.”
