Mentally, I've always had a problem with musicals. The standard male issues - the oddity of people breaking out in song mid-sentence, show tunes being "gay", the songs being boring, etc....
And yet, I really enjoyed Moulin Rouge. The first fifteen minutes or so were a bit jarring because I was trying to pigeonhole the movie....and at first, the quick cuts, quirkiness, and use of modern songs felt cringeworthy and almost laughable.
But then I got sucked in. It really is very romantic, if you're in that sort of mood. And the movie is undeniably stylish....it's supposed to be this overblown, larger than life, romantic opus. Watching it for the first time in my home theater - huge screen, crystal clear sound - I remember that by the time McGregor's character starts to sing "Your Song", I was very interested in seeing the rest of the picture.
See, the plot is extremely straightforward....the movie isn't so much about what happens, but rather how it happens, and how it's presented. It's one of those things you either get because you're in the right mental wavelength or you don't.
Welcome to A2K, zandunga -- a good, well written review.
Broadway wouldn't survive if it just depended on gay people going to see shows. Neither would "The Sound of Music," "The Music Man," "My Fair Lady," "Moulin Rouge" or "Chicago" done so well at the box office without drawing in a straight audience. That's really a addressing a long standing myth.
I think there is the same attitude to Woody Allen's Everybody Says I Love You... it was a bit much the bursting into song.
Strangely, I have almost no opinion about Moulin Rouge, except I don't know how people can listen to the soundtrack separately, it is embarrassing. Don't ask me why.
Better to see Nicole's tonsils whilst listening to the pap is much better than JUST the music.
The score could be considered the weaker aspect of the film but within the context and milieu of the film, it doesn't bother me at all. Ebb and Kander's score for "Cabaret" is vastly superior to "Chicago" but when one sees it staged, it can be dynamite. The movie was one of the top ten film musicals of all time and since "Cabaret" is amongst that list, that's quite a feat.
Moulin was a bloody awful film, and I'm really into that kind if stuff!
Cabaret was a sublime film, taken from a great book with great music and fantastic choreography......totally evocative of the period.....Sally Bowles, flashing her green finger nails whilst exclaiming "Devine Decadence"...............it's just to die for!
Closely followed by: Sweet Charity?
To take "Berlin Stories" and "I Am a Camera" and make a musical out of it was truly as inspired as "Sweeney Todd." Coming up is Sam Mendes directing "Sweeney Todd!"
"Moulin Rouge" will continue to be an either love it or hate it movie. It did prove that a musical film could bring in box office, otherwise we wouldn't see producers getting finances to produce more. I've stated before that an ideal stage musical for film would be "City of Angels" as it's about Hollywood and detective film noir.
Not much about "Sweeney Todd" yet:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408236/
Sure like to know whose in it.
the whole thing about Bazz, is he seems to be in his own world of dream state when pitching... has anyone seen this man trying to explain something... I am not sure that we are all watching the same thing. Maybe that is the problem with Moulin Rouge... it can never compare to old musicals especially Cabaret.
I either like a movie or I don't there is rarely a middle ground for me, and I liked Moulin Rouge, particularly the use of the music. The friend I saw it with hated it, she thought it a waste of money, (ours and the studios).
But then she thought that inane piece of fluff Legally Blond was hilarious
oh god!
(There was need for blasphemy, I applogise! I couldn't even sit through the first 5 minutes of Legally Blonde...)
Moulin Rouge was a fine movie. McGregor and Kidman did an excellent job and I thought they played there roles well, It was a departure from Obi Wan for sure,
The music was fantatstic and it was a good, sappy, love story/tradgedy.
We saw Moulin Rouge on acid ... the decor and colours and everything looked pretty amazing ...
I sorta enjoyed it for the bit of fluff it is... as LW mentioned, the energy was really engaging, and the visuals were lush ... a very nicely photographed piece. Even though I'm not a big pop music fan, the score didn't put me off at all (though I wouldn't add the soundtrack to my collection) and I thought it worked well in the quirky context ... if anything, the score might just be the high point. The choreography was imaginative, if not exactly original, and very competently performed. Overall, the production quality was top-notch, the sound was excellent, and its a great show-off film for a good home theater rig.
I'm wierd though; I still like
Paint Your Wagon. Clint Eastwood doin'
THAT ... whoda thunk?
Luhrman's version of the Apache dance was fantastic -- besides the Green Fairy sequence, my favorite part of the film. The film might be like someone's first sip of a martini. Yikes, that's strong!
I know I've always given Timber a bad time about liking "Paint Your Wagon" but is does have Harve Presnell, a highly respected baritone, singing "They Call the Wind Maria." It's all the extended dull dialogue inbetween that makes it difficult to watch.
Joshua Logan is a stage play director who just did not seem to know how to translate musicals to film . He did the same thing to "South Pacific" and "Camelot." He did direct "Sayonara," "Bus Stop" and "Picnic" but filmed musicals seem to elude him -- someone should have told him, "It's the music, stupid."
you have made me interested to see the films you are talking about. Bet they are hard to find for me in Fabulous Lille... but I will see.
Buhrmann did Romeo + Juliet too, right? I loved that movie. So incredibly versatile and inventive and exhilerating.
he did indeed.
They even let him loose on The Australian Opera Company in the past. They always got really good reviews for the spectacle. In some ways we can thank him for making opera a more acceptable form of "entertainment". Although, "La Boheme" is not the happiest opera. People didn't seem to mind.
I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, so I actually have no opinion of Moulin Rouge, even though I saw it. Mr. glitterbag seemed to like it and he is not a fan (unless of course you are talking about Nicole Kidman). I did like Chicago, even bought the DVD. My son won't watch it because he heard the audio over and over again because his wife loves it, and he couldn't get into the spirit of the music (and he is a musician) and whoever said that you need to see it with the music (not the music separately) was right. I did like Evita better on stage than in the film. Madonna did a passible job on the vocals, but the voices of most leads on stage are so much stronger than hers, she almost seems weak in comparison. I'm not saying she did a bad job, maybe the sound people muted the volume because it was on film and not live.
I have never seen Evita live, not being an ALW fan... but do you honestly think that they muted the sound on Madonna? I don't know. Don't think much of her music either. So perhaps I am being unjustly harsh?
