Prouvaire

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

Yeah, for some people find it difficult to accept the conventions of musicals ("why do they start singing - it's weird") when audiences accept people flying through the air fighting a sky beam while wearing tights and capes without batting an eye. I suppose that's why star power is so important for genres that don't have that mass appeal. The Color Purple and Les Miz's opening day box office was almost the same (not adjusting for inflation), but after that The Color Purple hasn't been keeping pace with Les Miz. Partly I suspect because Les Miz had Wolverine fighting Jor-El (or Maximus, the Gladiator) while rescuing Catwoman's kid from Borat.

Audience behaviour in the theatre (both movies and - shockingly - live) is another barrier these days unfortunately, as is cost. An imax ticket here costs over $50 and even more for the good seats, and even normal ticket prices are over $30.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

I'll send you my Venmo details.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

Thanks very much for this. I've been hoping that raltsm4k updates Floating Subs List to incorporate collections, but they haven't been active since mid-last year.

Given your code is partly based on this script, I wonder if you might consider modifyingraltsm4k's Floating Subs List script so that collections appear as part of the sidebar. As a fallback, maybe modify your script so that collections appear before magazines rather than after. This would make it easier to use both scripts, one to access magazines in the sidebar, and the other to more easily access liked collections.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

Movies:

• Rebel Moon. If you gave an AI the prompt: "A Star Wars movie written and directed by Zack Snyder but with all Star Wars copyrighted material disguised" this is what you'd get. I know that's exactly what the movie was, minus the written by AI bit (though I wonder), but it felt almost like a parody of itself.
• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Mediocre, except for Patrick Wilson who elevated every soggy line he was given to read. They desperately wanted to recreate the Thor/Loki dynamic to the point where I thought in one scene I actually heard Aquaman call his brother "Loki".
• One Life. Schindler's List if Schindler's List focused more on the red tape needed to rescue people from the Nazis, and Oskar's twilight years. Kidding aside, a decent movie, but more on the "worthy" end of the spectrum than the entertaining.
• Poor Things. The best movie I've seen this year. May still be true 51 weeks from now.

TV:

• For All Mankind. I enjoyed the "retro" early seasons more, but it's still a very watchable show, and one I still consider to be a Star Trek prequel if I squint and look at it slightly sideways. They certainly seem to be heading towards a Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies scenario this season. One of the few shows I'm watching week-by-week instead of saving up and bingeing.
• A Murder at the End of the World. Well acted, somewhat slow moving murder mystery. Unfortunately I guessed the identity of the killer after two episodes, and thought both that, and a certain revelation about one of the characters, were overused tropes in the early 2020s.
• Bodies. Decent crime mini series set across four time periods. I thought the more modern settings and characters were more interesting than the oldey timey (wimey) ones, but the show managed to bring all four storylines together in a pretty satisfying way.
• Silo. Halfway through. Pretty good, but maybe not as good as I heard it was.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

If you enjoyed On the Basis of Sex you should check out RBG, the 2018 documentary about Ginsburg. Ginsburg also appears as a character in a couple of episodes of the fifth season of The Good Fight, played wonderfully by Elaine May.

I think I preferred the early Wes Anderson, before he went full Anderson. Check out Rushmore and (what I think is his best movie) The Royal Tenenbaums.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

For All Mankind is the Star Trek prequel we should have had. Co-created by Ron Moore (Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica), the show has a bunch of Trek alumni working behind the scenes. It features human drama (and sometimes melodrama), geopolitical diplomacy, sweeping cultural change and scientific adventure against the backdrop of a multi generational future history, starting with the first moon landing.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

As others have pointed out, Foundation isn't a particularly faithful adaptation of Asimov's stories, but there good things in it. It might be more accurately titled Foundation and Empire IMO, because it focuses as much on the Empire side of the story as the Foundation. The first season was lopsided. The Empire plotline was compelling, the Foundation ones were... not. Haven't watched the second season yet, but apparently it's more consistent.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

Anyone who has the chance to see this show before it closes in April should do so. It really is a gem. The best new musical of last year with the best performance.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

I wanted to love Smash so much - a serialised dramatic musical with original songs - that's right up my alley. But I have to say that I found it boring. Not exactly bad, just boring. I barely made it past the start of the second season and then I bailed. But that did mean I loved this line from 30 Rock:

Hey, I don't bail. I am still watching Smash, Criss.

It's interesting that the Variety article doesn't say if the workshop is for a musical based on the TV show itself, or for a musical of Bombshell, the show within the show. The idea was always to turn the fictional stage show from the TV series into a real Broadway musical.

Prouvaire, 4 months ago

Totally agree about the new staging of Les Miz. While the current production is still very good, the original staging is iconic and still has never been beaten.

John Doyle, who directed the Raul Esparza Company used the "actors playing instruments" conceit on a number of other productions, including a Sweeney Todd with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone, although I don't think any of these were recorded for commercial release.

That Company documentary by DA Pennebaker is a classic - it was even parodied in the Documentary Now! series as Original Cast Album: Co-Op.

You know, you're absolutely right about a more intimate JCS. I've seen a lot of productions but they all embrace the rock opera grandeur. I think a smaller-scale, maybe even acoustic, production could work really well. One of best things I've ever seen is a very intimate production of Ragtime, which was put on in a tiny theatre on top of a pub in a space no bigger than a living room and an orchestra reduction pared back to (IIRC) strings, bass, drums and two pianos. Even though Ragtime is one of the most epic shows there is (the original production featured a orchestra and cast of 60-odd I think), there was something about the way this production stripped away the big sets and sound and focused on the personal journeys of the characters that just produced magic.

The Maria Friedman Merrily (currently playing on Broadway) and Jamie Lloyd Sunset Boulevard (about to conclude its London season and heading over to Broadway) are two very different revivals. Friedman is very much an actor's director (having a long and storied career as a performer and acted in Merrily herself), and she extracts every piece of nuance, subtlety, pathos and joy from the text. I think it's a magical production even though it's not in any way "flashy". (I suppose the flash is provided by Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff, but the show works even better without big name stars in the cast.) On the other hand, Sunset Boulevard is very much an example of "director as auteur" theatre. It's all about Jamie Lloyd's vision - the black & white production design, the bare stage, the huge video projects, and the presentation of Hollywood as a soulless machine that feeds on people's dreams as it chews them up and spits them out. I didn't like the production, but if you're interested in two very different approaches to mounting a show, both shows are worth seeing.