I'm a gay man. Sure I have neither a penis nor an innate fashion sense, and I only rarely have anonymous sex in public washrooms, but still....I love musicals.
Absolutely adore them. Out of my five favourite movies of all time (Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story, The Producers, Gaslight and Wayne's World 2), two are musicals and I'd argue that the Producers and Wayne's World 2 should count as well. I listen all day to Accuradio Broadway, a streaming radio station that plays nothing but Broadway showtunes. I've seen Les Miserables more times than I'd care to admit. And I walk around with my iPod in dread that someone is going to ask me what I'm listening to, and they'll discover just how deep my geekiness runs. But, in fact, musicals cover all sorts of different genres: when I want some glam-rock, I have Hedwig. When I'm in the mood for bubble-gum pop, Zanna, Don't is the thing. And in those rare moments when I feel like a fucking Commie, I turn to Hair.
But the reason why I'm writing this is because I can't stand the new movie musicals that have been put out in the past few years. Chicago was mediocre, and Rent and Phantom were almost unwatchable. Moulin Rouge would have been good if the director hadn't been popping speed instead of Ritalin. I'd say that High School Musical, that piece of prepubescent fluff, is probably one of the best out there now, which shows how dire the situation has become. Even stage musicals seem to be sucking. I'm all for revivals and jukebox musicals (Moving Out was divine!) but what happened to originality? To innovation? To something that hasn't been done a million times before?
And while I'm bitching about culture...I've been running low on reading material so I asked my librarian to recommend a good novel. She gave me a turd. A turd in the form of a James Patterson book, but a turd nonetheless. It's formulaic, predictable and badly written. In fact, he makes Dan Brown seem like James Fucking Joyce. But I have to keep on reading it because the librarian might ask me what I thought of it. So I'm slogging through, balancing it out by rereading The Rebel Angels which is delightful. And I saw that Robertson Davies made a reference to my department, which I find exciting! Almost exciting enough to make up for all the other shit that counts as culture out there in the rest of the world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You have a librarian that you are close enough with to: a) refer to him/her as "my" librarian and b) worry about what said librarian thinks of you? Your librarian is your peer group?! My G-d, Leors, you pushing nerdiness to a whole new level. You are like the Dungeon master of nerdiness. You must be like one LAN party away from nerdvana.
As a rule, I hate musicals... but I have an oddly long list of exceptions: Little Shop of Horrors, The Producers, Phantom of the Opera, and Starmania. I don't add Grease to that list simply because I still get a pang of inner loathing for actually liking it.
I've seen video clips of one of the Wicked numbers performed at the Tonies, and I can't for the life of me understand who's idea it was to make a musical out of that book (it was a wonderful book, btw). >.<
Lyds, you have no idea. I'm BFF with about a dozen librarians. But when I'm in at least 5 different libraries each week, I guess that's to be expected.
And Erin, I'm so happy you said that about Wicked. I also liked the novel but it was dark. Really, really dark. The musical basically cut all those parts out (you know, everything that made it good), scored a couple catchy musical numbers and made it into fluffy adolescent girl fantasy comparable to a Hillary Duff movie. (You know, misunderstood outsider learns to accept herself, get the guy, they live happily ever after.) That's all fine and good but it's not what Gregory Maguire intended. By the by, have you read his Confessions of an ugly step-sister? It's quite good too. I look forward to seeing its fluffy musical adaptation.
Post a Comment