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Post by ceebee on Jul 20, 2018 13:00:56 GMT
Is it true he's reviving Cats Never Die? I'd imagine there's a claws for reviving old shows in feline form. Can't wait for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcat.
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Post by Baemax on Jul 20, 2018 13:48:49 GMT
I always thought Aspurrcts of Love was a greatly underrated piece that could use the cinematic treatment.
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Post by kathryn on Jul 20, 2018 14:04:26 GMT
Corden - just no. Sir Ian fair enough (though no doubt this will be speak singing). Taylor Swift - would rather MT voices than 'pop.' And J Hud - she's good and should be able to belt Memory. Surprised though - thought Sherzy had this in the bag. I predict a heavy reliance on autotune, especially with Swifty - who struggles to sing her own songs well, from what I've heard of her stuff. I quite like Corden - but even I don't need to see him in every film going and on TV! Moderation, man, you don't need to do everything all at once.
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Post by Jon on Jul 20, 2018 14:08:12 GMT
I supposed if movies about talking animals can be successful, then a movie about singing Cats should be a hit. We have The Lion King coming next year which could be a precursor to how Cats could do.
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Post by distantcousin on Jul 20, 2018 14:10:01 GMT
Not sure about Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella. I was hoping for someone a bit older, who could convey the fragility and the sadness of the character. Loving the idea of Sir Ian McKellen as Gus, though. I wonder which character will get the new song? Or will it be an ensemble number? Too many people say this, but MOST actresses have ever played Grizabella were in their 30's
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Post by d'James on Jul 20, 2018 14:24:39 GMT
Not a fan of Jennifer Hudson’s singing really. Her + James Corden + Tom Hooper = something less appealing than the carcass my cat dragged in earlier.
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Post by ceebee on Jul 21, 2018 7:37:49 GMT
Not a fan of Jennifer Hudson’s singing really. Her + James Corden + Tom Hooper = something less appealing than the carcass my cat dragged in earlier. Aaah - you mean "Stephen Ward"?
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 21, 2018 7:52:07 GMT
So is this just going to be their voices or are they actually appearing in it?
The thought of McKellan camping it up in ears and whiskers makes me physically retch, frankly.
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Post by d'James on Jul 21, 2018 8:57:42 GMT
Not a fan of Jennifer Hudson’s singing really. Her + James Corden + Tom Hooper = something less appealing than the carcass my cat dragged in earlier. Aaah - you mean "Stephen Ward"? Oh dear. I didn’t realise we’d started naming all the pigeons; sorry Stephen.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 21, 2018 11:10:53 GMT
I’d rather scoop out my eyeballs with red hot teaspoons, and poke knitting needles in both ears
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 16:34:26 GMT
And J Hud - she's good and should be able to belt Memory. Surprised though - thought Sherzy had this in the bag. You can imagine the quandary they had though. Do we go for the Oscar winner or that woman from the yoghurt adverts?
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Post by anthony40 on Jul 21, 2018 17:56:47 GMT
Can anyone else see the irony? In the film version o the play Six Degrees of Separation, Ian McKellan plays a South African who is conned into believing he will be cast in a production of Cats, and here he is actually about to be doing it!
On a personal level, despite having cat as part of my surname (yes, seriously) I'm really not a cat person. I'm a dog person.
And despite not really liking cats- the animal, I do like Cats- the musical
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Post by crabtree on Jul 21, 2018 21:22:14 GMT
We are doing Cats at oru local theatre next summer, and it's interesting what is off limit - everything, basically, save the songs, though I don't know which of the many versions we are doing. But no type face similiarities, nor design and so forth. You can understand it, and it will be a challenge to reinvent it. In a way I wish that would happen for Les miserables and Phantom.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 22, 2018 6:13:52 GMT
Perhaps you could do it without the cats?
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Post by viserys on Jul 22, 2018 6:38:11 GMT
We are doing Cats at oru local theatre next summer, and it's interesting what is off limit - everything, basically, save the songs, though I don't know which of the many versions we are doing. But no type face similiarities, nor design and so forth. You can understand it, and it will be a challenge to reinvent it. In a way I wish that would happen for Les miserables and Phantom. An open air theatre here was faced with the same problems - they set it in an old circus. It was stunning and completely bonkers at the same time. While it couldn't hold a candle to the original production (and I was glad to see that one again a while later), it was wonderfully fresh as I found myself looking forward to every number, wondering what they had come up with for it. So it will be a challenge, but a very rewarding one if you get it right. Mind you, they had been very lucky with the great stage management in the sky that evening - it had been cloudy all evening but just as Grizabella came out to sing "Memory", the clouds parted and she got to sing her song under a genuine full moon. Perfection. Oh and I have zero opinion on the movie, except that Cats is a show that simply shouldn't be a movie. So they could cast the Kardashians for all I care. I'll see it out of morbid curiosity, but the few big selling points of Cats are the magic atmosphere of the "junkyard" in the theatre, the dancing and Memory and these are exactly the things you can't really bring across on screen.
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Post by Dave25 on Jul 22, 2018 9:45:54 GMT
I am really curious about how they are going to approach this. In the Beauty and the Beast movie, they had certain actors just doing the voices for CGI characters for the most part (Lumiere, Cogsworth, Wardrobe).
I think this artform on film only works if you stay away from the literal. For the voices that means to stay away from speaking. Because that would mean apologizing for the artform and chosen language, constantly separating the singing from the acting and switching in 1 line makes it cringeworthy. This artform is about sung thoughts, so we need to travel and soar with these thoughts. If you let the actors cry, speak or moan constantly it turns into a self-pitying literal mess. The essence of the artform lies in the opposite.
The setting and space should match this. It will not feel more raw or real for the audience if a pavement looks as realistic as possible. Play with cinematography, editing, lighting, create a dreamworld that is beyond real life. It is what in the character's mind that counts. Non-literal but respecting their sung thoughts. For example, if there would be a Miss Saigon movie, I like to see Last Night of the world as something better than life, not the cold concrete small empty room that was probably realistic, but in their minds it is sweltering, passionate and soaring. Show what's in their minds. Thuy's death does not have to be in an alley between a trash can and a clothes line either, because when she shoots him, it's the end of the world for her. Her worlds stops. So instead of some pedestrians singing the choir, why not take Kim to a big, black undefined space, holding Thuy while a creepy smoke surrounds her that turns into a choir of 1000 ghosts, like shades of guilt, singing (not necessericly mouthing the words, voice over will do), really turning it into a very haunting scene.)
For Cats, I think they should not have people in costumes, pretending to be cats. The given is so fantasy like, that animation is the only way to go. Just like the new animated Lion King that's in the works now. The only problem is the dancing, the current movement in 3 animation still looks off and like moving dolls, it has not yet reacted the perfection of 2d animation, so I don't think they will animate the dancing, but maybe use real dancers and then animate over that including the faces/voices of the announced actors?
In musicalfilms the only scenes that seem to work is where they really embrace their thoughts, for example a Whole new world in Aladdin, an animated musical, it's almost like a videoclip, it's like a rollercoaster ride, with their voices as the wind in your hair. Same goes for "The lady's got potential" in Evita, that scene is a whole movie in itself, a masterpiece, and this movie really understood the given of sung thoughts in undefined spaces, for example the duet between Eva and Che in this undefined space, which is just wonderful. The "high flying adored" is sung in a way where none of the other guests hear them, it's their thoughts. With more natural singers this movie could have been great. The other thing that sometimes works is if the singing is supposed to be a performance, or has a purpose story wise, such as in certain scenes in the Sound of Music but that is not the case most of the time.
A musicalfilm (any film) is a bunch of scenes, but especially in musicalfilms every scene and song should be almost like a videoclip. That does not necessarily mean fast editing, it can also be small, smooth and romantic, but that's the beauty of the possibilities of film. I have always seen Cats as a bunch of little concerts/performances. A collection of beautiful scenes. Like Walt Disney's Fantasia or maybe as certain parts in Sleeping Beauty.
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Post by tommy on Jul 22, 2018 10:10:04 GMT
Always interesting to see when a musical gets to the big screen, but as theatre lovers I think most of us prefer stage versions after all? My view on (musical) theatre completely changed after having seen Cats in London all those years ago, what an impact this had both leisure and professional. But never experienced this with a musical movie:)
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Post by tonyloco on Jul 22, 2018 10:10:44 GMT
We are doing Cats at oru local theatre next summer, and it's interesting what is off limit - everything, basically, save the songs, though I don't know which of the many versions we are doing. But no type face similiarities, nor design and so forth. You can understand it, and it will be a challenge to reinvent it. In a way I wish that would happen for Les miserables and Phantom. That reminds me that after Cameron Macintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to go ahead and create their own version of 'Phantom of the Opera' and not proceed with adapting Ken Hill's version that they saw at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, Ken was then free to mount other productions of his work, but he did get some strictures from the Really Useful Company that he had to make it clear that his show had nothing to do with the Andrew Lloyd Webber one. Well, some of the music in Ken's 'Phantom' was taken from the rather spooky Wolf's Glen scene in an opera called 'Der Freischütz' by a German composer called Weber and the RUC said that the name 'Weber' was not to appear in the billing of the show alongside other names that included Verdi, Offenbach, Gounod and Mozart. It looks therefore as if the RUC don't know how to spell the name of their boss, or they think the general public can't tell the difference between 'Webber' and 'Weber'! Ken went ahead and included 'Weber' among the list of other composers and there was nothing the RUC could do about it.
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Post by Dave25 on Jul 22, 2018 10:49:19 GMT
Always interesting to see when a musical gets to the big screen, but as theatre lovers I think most of us prefer stage versions after all? My view on (musical) theatre completely changed after having seen Cats in London all those years ago, what an impact this had both leisure and professional. But never experienced this with a musical movie:) I think you can experience this with a musical movie, if done right. There is this big misunderstanding that general audiences can't handle singing. They turn most musical movies into apologizing messes. While in fact, it really is the reason why "A whole new world", "The sound of music" and "Hopelessly devoted to you" stand the test of time and made audiences love the movies. People love truthful singing and listen to sung music all day. People love acting through song (above mentioned songs) but they find acting in spite of song cringeworthy. Because the latter is done in most musicalfilms lately (Les Mis), people wrongly assume they dislike the first, but that opinion is based on experiencing the 2nd.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2018 18:04:05 GMT
I was thinking this earlier, who are considered the the actual leads in Cats? It is truly an Ensemble show,, and because of course we all think Grizabella when we think Cats but she is only on for 10 minutes. Would we say Tuggar? Munkustrap? Someone else?
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Post by vabbian on Jul 22, 2018 19:16:19 GMT
J Hudson as Grizabella..... deary me Dreamgirls was perfect casting for her voice, Cats is not! Wouldn't mind having Nicole Scherzinger back, but would certainly prefer a mega theatre star ala Elaine Paige, Betty Buckley, Bernadette Peters etc I mean if they are going to CGI the f*** out of them anyway, then why not bring in the greats?
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Post by vabbian on Jul 22, 2018 19:17:56 GMT
I was thinking this earlier, who are considered the the actual leads in Cats? It is truly an Ensemble show,, and because of course we all think Grizabella when we think Cats but she is only on for 10 minutes. Would we say Tuggar? Munkustrap? Someone else? There is no lead, people just sit through it for Memory
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Post by distantcousin on Jul 22, 2018 19:58:26 GMT
I’d rather scoop out my eyeballs with red hot teaspoons, and poke knitting needles in both ears Say how you really feel, won't you x
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Post by distantcousin on Jul 22, 2018 19:59:58 GMT
We are doing Cats at oru local theatre next summer, and it's interesting what is off limit - everything, basically, save the songs, though I don't know which of the many versions we are doing. But no type face similiarities, nor design and so forth. You can understand it, and it will be a challenge to reinvent it. In a way I wish that would happen for Les miserables and Phantom. I know amateur groups can't copy anything, so they should have some decent carte blanche for creativity.
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Post by The Matthew on Jul 22, 2018 20:37:31 GMT
people just sit through it for despite Memory FTFY
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2018 13:33:06 GMT
I was thinking this earlier, who are considered the the actual leads in Cats? It is truly an Ensemble show,, and because of course we all think Grizabella when we think Cats but she is only on for 10 minutes. Would we say Tuggar? Munkustrap? Someone else? Good luck telling Elaine Paige that she was part of an ensemble. She'll rip your throat out, put it back in and rip it out again.
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Post by Dave25 on Jul 24, 2018 0:23:58 GMT
Celine Dion could be a great Grizabella in my opinion. A little bit older and bigger star.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2018 8:16:41 GMT
So WoS ran a facebook poll with regard to reception of the Cats casting news...
36% "Can't wait to see it" 64% "Oh Goodness NO!"
More definitive than Brexit.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2018 10:34:37 GMT
Celine Dion could be a great Grizabella in my opinion. A little bit older and bigger star. But doesn't Grizabella go off to die on the old tyre? It wouldn't work, Celine's heart will just go on. Or perhaps it was just me that lost the will to live by the end.
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Post by tommy on Aug 28, 2018 17:13:28 GMT
I was wondering, as Judi Dench was originally supposed to play the part of Grizabella, has her version of Memory ever been recorded?
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