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Showing posts with the label musical

MARY POPPINS RETURNS - REVIEW

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Review available on the new website .

POCAHONTAS - REVIEW

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Disney's Pocahontas was released back in 1995 and it was a relative box-office success despite critics not praising much more than the animation itself. To say that this is a loose adaptation of the Pocahontas real life story would be a gross understatement. Indeed, Disney's reluctance to approach Native American History in an honest way prompted quite a bit of criticism since the film's release, and rightly so. A lot of liberties are taken with what the film calls the "legend" of Pocahontas from the unlikely romance between Pocahontas (Irene Bedard) and British colonist Captain John Smith (Mel Gibson), the former being around 10 years-old in reality at that point, to the relationship between Native Americans and the English settlers. The film constantly romanticises otherwise not-so-pleasant events and replaces the more potentially uncomfortable conversations with cutesy cartoon animals and big Broadway-style musical numbers. A magical fantasy element is ad

MY TOP 10 BEST FILMS OF 2016

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I finally count down my Top 10 Best Films Of 2016 . Sorry Sausage Party ...

LA LA LAND - VLOG 18/01/17

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I finally talk about the much-lauded new movie musical La La Land .

LA LA LAND - REVIEW

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After a year peppered with cinematic disappointments, the Academy quickly jumped on musical comedy La La Land  hailing it as an Oscar favourite when it was released in late 2016. The film swept the Golden Globes and it looks set to win many more awards. Emma Stone is Mia, an aspiring actress who spends her time working in a coffee shop and running to auditions. She meets jazz pianist Sebastian, whose dream it is to start his own jazz club, and they hit it off. As their respective dreams start going off track, so does their relationship. Director Damien Chazelle, who impressed a few years ago with the excellent, low-key drama  Whiplash , this time tries his hand at an old-fashioned Hollywood musical complete with romance, tap-dancing and fancy sets, charming the pants out of everyone effortlessly. This is a stylish, gorgeous-looking movie packed with fantastic music, great performances and snappy writing. Even the casting of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling is inspired as their singing

PETE'S DRAGON (1977) - REVIEW

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As Disney puts the final touches on its upcoming remake of Pete's Dragon , it's about time I look back at a film I really enjoyed as a kid but did not get the chance to revisit... until now. This is certainly one of Disney's more dated live-action films: it's a pretty stagy Mary Poppins -style musical with an extremely earnest main character and most of the others hamming it up big time. It's also one of the Mouse House's most adorable movies ever and Elliott the dragon (animated by Don Bluth) is quite simply a joy from start to finish and even if the rest of the film is not your cup of tea it's likely you'll still fall in love with this endearing animated creation. I should point out it was ambitious of Disney to mix live-action and animation back in 1977 and, while it doesn't always merge that well, Elliott is so likeable that it doesn't matter how smooth that mix is plus younger viewers won't care, I sure didn't. By essentially

THE JUNGLE BOOK (2016) - REVIEW

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Disney continues its merciless rampage of adapting every single one of its classic animated films into live-action remakes and, this time, it's The Jungle Book 's turn. Jon Favreau directs an all-star cast of voice actors and a young newcomer in what promises to be a CGI visual treat. Indeed, pretty much everything in this movie is CGI from the talking animals to the jungle itself so if it's "realism" you're looking for, you might want to go for the 1994 live-action retelling instead. The film follows certain key plot points from the original 1967 animation but it definitely takes a lot of liberties with both the story and its characters. Mowgli (Neel Sethi) willingly walks away from his wolf pack before wondering why he has to leave and later comes back to fight Shere Khan which leads to a very different ending. Speaking of which, the unnerving build-up to Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) is now gone and we see the villainous tiger pretty much straight-

EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY - VIDEO REVIEW

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I finally review cult alien comedy Earth Girls Are Easy starring Geena Davies, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey.

SAVING MR. BANKS - REVIEW

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There's biopics and then there's sort-of-biopics which don't exactly go through a person's entire life's work but which instead focus on one specific, iconic event. Think Capote , Hitchcock or, more recently, Saving Mr. Banks : a look at how Walt Disney obtained the rights to Mary Poppins from the story's writer P. L. Travers. This one isn't even really a making-of movie as we see none of the filming for Mary Poppins or (wisely) meet any weird Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke lookalikes. Saving Mr. Banks limits itself to a few recording sessions with Travers (Emma Thompson) and The Sherman Brothers, who came up with all of the film's catchy songs, intercut with flashbacks depicting some of the writer's early life and conversations she had with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) as well as Paul Giamatti's chatty driver. Finding out why Travers resisted Disney's offers to buy the movie rights to Poppins for so long and why Disney was this insistent

INTO THE WOODS - VLOG 23/01/15

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Time to go Into The Woods ! And home before dark.

INTO THE WOODS - REVIEW

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If you go watch Into The Woods today... You might leave with mixed feelings. Adapting Stephen Sondheim's musical to the big screen was always going to be a challenge seeing as the whole thing's like one big song sung by loads of main characters, each of them doing their own thing at the same time around a purposely convoluted plot. As the film is an hour shorter than the play, a lot of songs and plot threads were always going to get the chop and this could have easily destroyed a film with a lot of potential. Luckily, director Rob Marshall has his share of experience making movie musicals ( Chicago , Nine ) so he keeps the film afloat through succesfully capturing the essence of the stage play and getting the best out of his all-star cast. The songs are as endearing and catchy as ever from the long opening ensemble number "Prologue: Into The Woods" to the heartbreaking "Stay With Me" and the upbeat "Giants In The Sky", not to mention The Wo

LES MISERABLES - REVIEW

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Bit of a late review this one... After all, this gritty movie version of Les Mis is now a full-blown Oscar-winning blockbuster! Which is pretty cool considering it isn't a tongue-in-cheek crowd-pleaser like Chicago and actually tried something different with the musical genre rather than settle for a generic template. Something which Nine soon learned just is not always the way to go. Not that Les Miserables isn't an Oscar-friendly flick, it totally is, it's simply that it manages to be that and more. Having never physically been to see the musical prior to seeing the film and having never read Victor Hugo's novel (I know, being French it's especially shameful of me), I wasn't 100% sure about what to expect. I'd heard most of the songs from the show, though, so I wasn't completely oblivious as to what Les Miserables was about. Recorded singing directly on camera, sometimes in long one-shot scenes, the cast sure had their work cut out. Hugh J

TOYING WITH LES MISERABLES

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LES MISERABLES - NEW PIC

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You know, I've never actually seen Les Miserables , any version of it, but... ...something tells me I'm gonna watch THIS one. Pixar really have outdone themselves this time. Cannot. Wait.

WICKED - REVIEW

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The Wizard Of Oz is great, and I LOVE Return To Oz . I even enjoy The Wiz , as strange as it is. So Wicked , as teen-friendly as it seemed, I was expecting to enjoy at least as a diagonal look into the darker side of that world. The result was pretty much what I expected with the odd surprise here and there. Some good, some not so good. The musical plays out like a Harry Potter / Legally Blonde crossover with green-skinned Elphaba taking her sister to Shiz University where she is soon ridiculed and cast-aside because of her peculiar looks. On the other end of the spectrum is the crazy-popular Glinda, a typical dumb blonde stereotype you've seen in every single US high-school teen comedy. The musical follows both characters as they clash, become the best of friends and come apart again when life in Oz gets a tad too complicated. You've got a basic love triangle going on in which some dude called Fiyero goes out with Glinda at first only to later fall in love with Elpha

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT - REVIEW

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For a Monty Python fan, the idea of a musical celebrating one of the iconic comedy group's finest achievements ( Monty Python And The Holy Grail ) was nothing short of spamgasmic. Nudge nudge...? In many ways, the marriage of Monty Python and musicals is a perfect one: the tackiness of some musicals crossed with The Pythons' bad taste humour promising a bit of a match made in heaven. That said, I'm not convinced that Holy Grail was the right musical to do. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Spamalot . As silly as it was, there was a lot of good stuff there and it really was complete,  glorious escapism: entertaining nonsense the whole way through. But even then I must admit that it is one hell of a hit-and-miss effort. The way I feel about it is that the best songs come from Eric Idle poking fun at Broadway musicals and most of the Holy Grail stuff falls flat either due to it being so familiar or it just not really working on stage. Sure hearing the Camelot song i

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: THE MUSICAL - REVIEW

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Had I known as a kid that one day a Young Frankenstein musical would ever exist I think I would have gone through the roof with pure geeky giddiness. Well, I wasn't a kid but when I heard Gene Wilder say in an interview that Mel Brooks was working on that show but I can honestly say that I creamed a tiny bit. Now it's 2011 and...you know what? I completely missed the damn thing! Living in London sucks. I did get to check out a filmed performance though so at least I got to see it eventually. Thoughts? This is one big, expensive musical indeed. Hell, the Overture itself is like 4 minutes long! But I guess seeing as this is based on what is essentially Mel Brooks' best film and follows a huge hit like The Producers it's bound to be big and expensive. From what I understand critics were mixed upon its release but from my side of things, I loved every minute of it. Roger Bart, originally cast as Igor, turns out to be the perfect choice for Dr Frankenstein (read: F

THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL - REVIEW

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 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list

TANGLED - REVIEW

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Before Disney had the mega-hit it was looking for with Frozen , there was an attempt to nail the non-Pixar 3D animation formula with  Tangled , a new take on the classic Rapunzel fairy-tale.   With The Princess and the Frog , it looked like Disney was ready to be Disney again, bringing back a unique style of 2D animation now long dormant. Sadly, Tangled isn't another hand-drawn effort but rather a quality, polished-looking 3D treat which looks about 10 times better than any of the Shrek films yet still very 90's in spirit... in a good way. Tangled looks modern but it's very much a throwback to the likes of The Little Mermaid so your enjoyment of the film will probably depend on whether you like that type of Disney film or if you hate it with a passion. The story of Rapunzel, like the Frog Prince, is an inevitable, safe choice for Disney but both stories have clearly been handled with a lot of heart and with 80's kids in mind. Now the film itself, it should be

THE ROBOT - REVIEW

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CGI babies, talking mosquitos, dancing aztecs, singing robots, lion-bots, a giant snake-bot, unmotivated violence and blood, naked suicides...these are all the wonders (and much more!) you can find in S. Shankar's latest sci-fi extravaganza! And I'm not even counting Rajnikanth 's hilarious wardrobe which makes him look alternatively like Ronald Chevalier out of Gentlemen Broncos or Deep Roy's Oompa Loompas from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . The story itself is a cross between I, Robot , Frankenstein and Bicentinnial Man and is the typical "scientist creates monster, can't control him, monster turns against him" deal. The first half being the more light-hearted one, the second being darker and more action packed. And by action packed of course, I mean DEMENTED. Overall, this is very odd, very silly, very random and predominantly awkward BUT it is also a lot of fun and one of the wackiest 3 hours you'll ever spend. Plus, did I mention the g