mordorbund

How about movies turned into musical plays? Have any been adapted well? Any of Dreamworks or Disney productions? Others such as The Producers, Rocky, Spamalot, or Legally Blonde?

Back on songs from musicals I don’t like: Chicago is burlesque so I don’t like it. But watch the lawyer play the press:

I think Ashman’s techniques for music / dialogue blending are only useful once you’ve committed to the musical format. The question is, what films can get away with the musical format? Traditionally the highly stylized form of musicals required vibrant visuals. On the stage it may be difficult to see faces, but I’ll know who the main cast is because they’re wearing bright colors and don’t change their palette. These bright colors used to be translated over to the silver screen and you see them in all the classics you love - West Side Story, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and so on. Even the set still maintained an artificial stage-like look forced you to fill in the reality behind the image. Then the 70s rolled around and either audiences weren’t buying it anymore or the producers weren’t selling them anymore. The traditional format didn’t cut it for live musicals (with 3 exceptions which I’ll get to). The 80s musicals were either animated or Muppet films. And then comes along Ashman’s films seeming to confirm his philosophy. Back to the 70s, the 3 exceptions I’m seeing are Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Grease. For Grease, I rather suspect that there was a lot of nostalgia at play, not only for the 50’s but also for the 50’s coming-of-age films that already placed the setting slightly outside of reality so you know you’re not seeing how it really was but how your self from 10 years ago fantasized your teenage self wanted it to be. This nostalgia allows the audience to be more forgiving than otherwise. For the other 2 films, Norman Jewison gets it. He understands what the musicals are trying to portray and adapts that into the new medium. For Fiddler, the set is a foreign land and a foreign time so we have to go along with there being some slightly different rules there. And just in case we think it’s just another town like so many we’ve seen, Tevye pulls us into his confidence to let us know that we need a guide and he’ll get the job done. It’s a fourth wall break that works because of Jewison’s technical handling. When Tevye speaks to us he’s actually only talking to me because the shot is so tight. When Tevye works through his feelings on various marriage proposals not only is time stopped (which could be awkward by itself) but there is instantly a physical distance drawn between the two. Tevye is working it out on a different plane and this happens frequently enough that we are never fooled into thinking this is a standard drama or that it’s going for the “gritty realism” that is so popular today. And credit to Jewison for not leaving it at the freeze frame from the stage, but adding to it the distance that only film could allow (same praise for visuals in Tradition). For Superstar, I think Jewison differed from the play by making it a play within the film. The odd thing is that there doesn’t seem to be an audience and we may be voyeurs spying on a rehearsal. By allowing us to see everyone get set up we know we’re not seeing a singing Jesus - we’re seeing a singing actor who represents Jesus. In recent history, Chicago did a good job of adapting the stage to film. The choice there was to make portions of it look real like a traditional crime film but the musical portions would exist in their own sphere. The use of the nightclub announcer serves as the transition to this burlesque world that shows the lawyer giving arguments before a judge and jury but because the two are kept separate we know he didn’t really tap dance in the well. One that did a mixed job was LaLa Land. It opens with a bright stylized dance number in rush hour traffic. Clearly this is fantasy. Everything about it says it’s fantasy: they’re singing, the colors are vibrant, and even the lyrics describe LA as a dream (as they’re stuck in traffic). When they’re in love they dance among the stars at the observatory. It’s An American in Paris or Singing in the Rain, but it doesn’t go far enough. I don’t recall any songs when they hit their lows. When they’re fighting it’s not an angry duet. And there’s no sulking solo when they break up. It’s like “life happens” and life is by definition gritty and gloomy. As I think on LaLa Land, I think they could have done the film with more realistic costuming (instead of the bright yellow dress and such) and more grounded love-dancing (without the flying) and it could still have worked. West Side Story is already pretty realistic. If they took the original and toned down the bright colors and, you know, people actually bled when stabbed (and maybe stabbed multiple times if it needed to be lethal) then I don’t think it could be reasonably argued that “it was good except the singing and dancing pulled me out of it”. So I guess I would say in my mind Ashman is correct that it’s more difficult to write a live movie musical simply because the modern formula for it hasn’t been captured yet.

I’ve looked for a clip on YouTube but it looks like it isn’t there. Apparently Ashman and Menken were hired by Disney and Ashman said he preferred to be attached to an animated film. The reason was that when you go to a play there’s a larger suspension of disbelief that allows you to get away with song and dance. When a person goes to a play and sees a street lamp on the stage that think, “ah, yes, so we’re pretending this is a street and a sidewalk.” Once you start playing along they can easily convince you that in this world emotions burst out in song and, when even that’s not enough, dance. Ashman said he figured animation would similarly have a lower threshold to cross. Once you’ve agreed that fish can talk, how much more does it take to convince you that they already know the words to spontaneous songs and all the steps (?) for a complex choreography?

Although it’s been referenced in the handbooks and in General Conference talks I find that many Saints don’t know a lot about disciplinary councils. As a teenager I knew what was in the scriptures, and for a standards night the wife of one of the high councilors shared with us about her husband’s change of demeanor when he sits in such a council; but it was decades later before I asked a high councilor directly about his experience and he shared with me that the first meeting is not supposed to be the last. That part of the intent is to have a plan in place for the member to come back into full fellowship. It was a tremendous witness to me of how such discipline can be done with the sort of love shown by the father of the prodigal son: the son may be reluctant to come home and face him in his shame and humiliation but the father embraces him before he has a chance to apologize. if you have had similar experiences, you don’t need to discuss your days as a swineherder but you can certainly testify to the incompleteness of a single meeting and the love of God shown by His servants. And you can share how that love is expressed in your own life as you’ve embraced the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

@anatess2 isn't on these boards anymore. I know there's a number of people on the right who defend nation building, but I haven't seen nearly as much this board. Maybe I'm missing something. Quick poll: Who here thinks that when we deploy troops (or even drones) there should be a well-defined scope and it should not include nation-building? Bonus question: Who here thinks Congress should grow a spine and formally declare war before deploying troops? As for the initial wars - I'll remind you that there was bipartisan support for both Iraq and Afghanistan (including Senator Clinton), can the same be said for such infrastructure as universal pre-K? Spending bills are set for 10-year windows. Should we compare it against total Medicaid spending without drawing attention to the difference in time scales? Now that we're out of Afghanistan we might save $1T over the next 10 years (I don't think that's how the actual numbers work but let's use it) then that means we can now fund almost 1/3 of this spending bill. In other words, this proposed bill is 3 1/2 Afghanistans! @Grunt and @JohnsonJones have expressed that what bugs them about this bill is how it will affect our debt. Assuming they were okay with the Afghanistan spending I'm sure you can see how replacing that with triple spending might make a taxpayer or citizen nervous. And the Afghanistan spending was done by Federal agencies directly accountable to both the Executive and Legislative branches. This bill includes some Federal things (like Medicaid expansion) but a significant portion is going to the States to administer. @mikbone expressed concern about how the funds would be handled (incompetently) locally. Even if he was okay with the Federal administration of tax dollars for the Afghanistan War I'm sure you can see how including State and local governments in the administration would make a person nervous when they haven't shown themselves to be very trustworthy in the past (such as the light rail train to nowhere in recent years). I could see a person wanting FEMA to come offer relief instead of passing money to your mafia-run construction agencies. All this rhetoric is built on "if". Your comment is a complete non sequitur if most posters on here would like less hawkishness from our Executives.

Wikipedia provides an estimate of 1.1 trillion for Iraq and the AP estimates almost 2.2 trillion for Afghanistan. Are you bringing this up because the new spending bill is also spread out over 2 decades? Or because you think this bill is justified by “promoting the general welfare” just as that spending was justified under “providing for the common defense”? Or do you think the comparison will have bite because most people on this site support the nation building parts of those wars?

The choice against adultery was refreshing and the biggest positive in the story. As a musical though, I'm not a fan. That link's not going to link correctly so I'll quote it here.

2 specific areas I would be interested in is K-12 education (since that's the context for this thread) and the legal system (since that's the origin of the theory). But if a more general setting is more manageable, I'm up for hearing that too.

So let’s talk about it. Where today is the segregation that’s cutting off bootstraps? How has the legacy of slavery so stigmatized skin color that interracial marriages are not uncommon and African immigrants perform so well in this country? Are the arguments for CRT stuck in the ‘60s? Shouldn’t they be updated since the governmental systems of systemic racism have been removed?

The brainchild of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman — the same duo that brought us The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and half of Aladdin. They should have kept the play ending for the movie. The devil always wins when you make a Faustian bargain.

Which brings me to my point that I don't think we as members of the Church can say that the Church and its ordinances have no reason to exist if living a faithful, covenant keeping LDS life isn't requisite to enter into the Celestial Kingdom. I don't have a bright, crisp line but I do have some mile markers I use when reflecting on my own life -- a sort of vision of what the "eternal life" person looks like. they receive the testimony of Jesus they believe on his name they are baptized in the proper manner according Jesus' commandment they keep the commandments (including the ordinances) that they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins they receive the Holy Spirit in the proper manner and by the proper authority they overcome by faith they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise Yes, it includes making and keeping covenants offered through the vehicle of Jesus Christ's church.

I know the discussion has been carrying on, but I wanted to respond if only to show my appreciation of your consideration. I think that given the difficulty of actually taking a rape case to trial the police report is a fair compromise. If a woman is actually raped she needs to report it. If she was not actually raped the report in reality won't actually harm the father (usually) - but it will alert him to the kind of woman he's dating/hooking up with/(or unthinkably, married to). In order to prevent the retroactive rape accusations, I would like the police report filed before the doctor's pregnancy test. Actually, it would need to be reported within a certain window of the rape to prevent the home test->police report->doctor visit timeline, but I'm not familiar enough with rape cases or pregnancy to nail down the window now. As for the sons of Zion vs the children of Babylon - well, we live in a culture where even respectable couples have sex outside of marriage. Minimize abortion and the risk of pregnancy, parental, and fiscal responsibility return as credible deterrents to casual sex in non-committed relationships. I don't think we'll need to pile the threat of rape accusations on top of that. I am not unsympathetic to the traumas bona fide rape victims suffer. I do question how we can sort them out. You've described a distinguishing feature of a rape victim (or at least, one who's life should be considered over the infant's) is the level of trauma currently experienced. Frankly, I don't trust those who measure such things to do so in a way that also considers the infant's interests. As a social science, psychology is filled with practitioners who correlate with pro-choicers. Will they share with their patients the traumas of abortion when weighing the decision? The APA has shown that they are willing to change diagnoses based on political consensus and not hard data. Will abortion become the de facto psychological treatment for rape? Let's add it to the sex ed curriculum. If you are raped report it right away. If you get pregnant from that encounter you'll need that report for an abortion. If you are having consensual sex, use the tools we've been teaching for 50 years or accept the risk. If you wait until marriage, you'll be eligible for a temple recommend. (huh, they left that last part out in my classes).

Yes. And as a bonus, how would you protect the infants involved in these fraudulent (?) cases?

I’ve been giving some thought to the jukebox musical. I mentioned before that I tend to not like them. I once saw an “honest movie poster” of sorts for Rock of Ages that retooled it Karaoke: the Musical! and I think that sums up my issues with them. If I want to listen to Billy Joel’s music I’m not rushing to hear someone else cover it theatrically. I would prefer to listen to the covers performed at his Kennedy Center award show before going to Moving Out. My exceptions seem to have two general forms: the originals were already theatrical, or the treatment is so transformative of the originals that I don’t care about the loose (or stupid) plot. in the first category I have Singing in the Rain. Only one song was original but I’m not familiar with any of the earlier performances. And my understanding is that these were already written for Vaudevillian style films. Similarly I enjoy some Gershwin. The particular play that introduced me to his work was Crazy For You, which was written after George and Ira’s death. It’s not the only one written posthumously either. For these the story still has to carry it (there’s some stupid treatments of Gershwin numbers) but the music isn’t as shoehorned because it was originally written to capture tropes. Additionally, it’s not some theater major performing BB King’s blues theatrically*; it’s theatric jazz written for the stage performed on the stage. For the other category I mentioned that I enjoyed Across the Universe (don’t watch it just because I enjoyed it. There is nudity that should have been omitted). Julie Taymor lined up visuals to really make the songs something else. I Want You is sung by Uncle Sam while drafting young men (check out the clip on YouTube). Strawberry Fields works for me because she doesn’t have the character explain an analogy of soldiers bleeding out like crushed strawberries. She takes advantage of film and creates a visual metaphor. I respect that. I’ll probably never watch Moulin Rouge again (I’m not a fan of burlesque, Baz Luhrmann uses clownery too much (there’s a technical term for it but it escapes me at the moment), and the whole story is the Bohemian style of love that’s stupid (I could probably grant some leeway on the last one because that’s how the majority of entertainment media presents love, but it already had other things working against it)) but I thought it was clever with some of their arrangements. El Tango de Roxanne has way more passion than the original and the music better matches the pathetic lyrics. The play does a smooth transition of Rolling Stones songs in Sympathy for the Duke (normally not a big deal, but it gets messed up so often) and Backstage Romance has an arrangement that uses a Gaga song for a mashup that’s a bop. Yes, I give you permission to rag on me for my taste. * just to clarify: listen to this and tell me what’s changed for the better. The arrangement is nearly identical, the voice is your standard Broadway voice (that’s not saying it’s bad, it’s just not bringing anything new), and at the end of the day it’s karaoke built around a single songwriter.