22 posts
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Post by phantz on Dec 21, 2019 23:36:29 GMT
In Hoopers defence... I've never seen the stage show but wasn't Les Mis always performed with a huge pile of junk on the stage and people performing around/on said rotating pile of junk? So if someone was doing a solo it is just a person standing in front of a pile of junk singing? No. |
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Post by crabtree on Dec 22, 2019 0:01:33 GMT
Yep it is the dancers dancing certainly and look at the calibre of Fairchild, Hayward and Mcrae, but there's been a lot of tinkering, some wire work,much ignoring of gravity and physics and the editing does the dancers no favours, interrupting big sequences. I wish we could have just been allowed to watch the movement in sustained takes.
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396 posts
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Post by djp on Dec 22, 2019 1:08:04 GMT
Purr factor.
Ensemble sound good, but would have sounded better with more of them and more sopranos. The dancers were good , White Cat was good in an expanded, narrative role -as were Mr Mistoffelees, Rumple Teazer , Mungo jerrie and Taylor Swift. Danny Collins ,as Mungo Jerrie, stood out for actually given her cat characte,r and sounded great - one bit of really good casting there.
Hooper managed to take out Rumple and Mungos most iconic routine though. And also managed to produce a magical scene that's less magical than managed in any theatre performance.
Good try- Ms Hudson went for some emotion, but limited by her style of singing , and worse than many MT and pop performers at conveying the emotion the song or finding a money moment.
Growl factor and winners of the Russell Crowe, why name cast people who can't act the role , or sing it properly, award - Messrs MCkellen, Dench and Wilson. Dame Judy tried but was singing it 20 years too late , and her character was lost in the fluffy arm chair she was wearing.
Singing with Hair Ball award- Mr Winstone . No point at all him, or the boat, being there, given he can't sing , and the role was cut back to save time, or be PC.
Litter tray award - Mr Elba can't sing it, or act it and was frighteningly bad - but not in the way intended. And Mr Corden - who can't sing well enough, and seemed to play himself.
Many critics seem to have never seen the musical and many were just confused. No excuse for that as the story is heavily signposted here, and the concept is borrowed from most religions. It might have worked with more MT people and really good dancers . You would have thought they would have learnt the lesson of name casting after Les Mis butchered Javert, but no - this time we have gone to new heights of miscasting.
There was something better possible . I didn't have a problem with the furry people - but MT actors in make up would have been far better at conveying the cats individual characters, and emotions, and lithe enough to move convincingly.
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Post by ronnette on Dec 22, 2019 7:13:59 GMT
Apparently some cinemas are still showing an older version of Cats pre- CGI update....
Can’t work out how to post a picture, but Kristen Chirico @lolacoaster on Twitter is tweeting about it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 10:04:25 GMT
Original forecast for $17 million in USA this weekend has now been downgraded to $8 million! That would forecast UK as about £800,000 however when I saw it yesterday (3/10) the cinema was really busy so it looks as thou doing better here than US
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 12:01:22 GMT
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5,694 posts
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Post by lynette on Dec 22, 2019 13:11:47 GMT
Wouldn’t this be better as an old fashioned cartoon?
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1,736 posts
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Post by fiyero on Dec 22, 2019 13:49:39 GMT
Any way to tell which ‘print’ we saw? I saw the 11:20 at Vue Piccadilly today and there were issues but none of them seemed easy fixes! I noted around 1000 animators in the credits!!! |
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Post by crabtree on Dec 22, 2019 14:02:32 GMT
A lot of feet didn't seem planted to the floor, and some of the faces shifted around on the skulls. But I think the worst sin in the film making was to have such a frantic camera interrupting the arcs of the dancing, making nonsense of the shapes and formations. There was a reason that Fred Astaire generally only allowed his dancing to be shot full length and in long takes - so you can see the actual dancing, and the physicality that went into it. And when you have dancers of the calibre of Hayward, Fairchild and Mcrae you rather want to see what they are doing.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 14:06:44 GMT
Any way to tell which ‘print’ we saw? I saw the 11:20 at Vue Piccadilly today and there were issues but none of them seemed easy fixes! I noted around 1000 animators in the credits!!! I'm not sure if there's any way of knowing which version it was, as they don't specifically say what changes/fixes they've made. |
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115 posts
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Post by Sotongal on Dec 22, 2019 15:45:42 GMT
Any way to tell which ‘print’ we saw? I saw the 11:20 at Vue Piccadilly today and there were issues but none of them seemed easy fixes! I noted around 1000 animators in the credits!!! I'm not sure if there's any way of knowing which version it was, as they don't specifically say what changes/fixes they've made. Don't know if this is correct, but we saw the film at the Reading Showcase cinema yesterday and Dame Judi was wearing a ring in that version. |
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1,736 posts
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Post by fiyero on Dec 22, 2019 17:24:13 GMT
I'm not sure if there's any way of knowing which version it was, as they don't specifically say what changes/fixes they've made. Don't know if this is correct, but we saw the film at the Reading Showcase cinema yesterday and Dame Judi was wearing a ring in that version. I wasn’t paying that close attention! |
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115 posts
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Post by Sotongal on Dec 22, 2019 17:39:37 GMT
Don't know if this is correct, but we saw the film at the Reading Showcase cinema yesterday and Dame Judi was wearing a ring in that version. I wasn’t paying that close attention! It just sort of glinted out amongst all the fur for a moment! |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 17:41:18 GMT
That picture alone is enough to confirm my decision not to see it - why on earth should I give them my money if they haven't even bothered to finish the film? They will have known for ages that it wouldn't be ready yet decided not to delay.
You can tell it's bad anyway when the cast struggle to muster much enthusiasm for promoting it!
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 22, 2019 17:53:11 GMT
That picture alone is enough to confirm my decision not to see it - why on earth should I give them my money if they haven't even bothered to finish the film? They will have known for ages that it wouldn't be ready yet decided not to delay. You can tell it's bad anyway when the cast struggle to muster much enthusiasm for promoting it! The theatres would've been booked at the busiest and most profitable time of the year. They'd have been contracted to have the film released into those theatres on that date. Companies pay an absolute fortune to have cinemas that time of year so no way could they have pulled it, they'd have been sued up the whazoo. They should've however been open about it with the public and announced it wasn't complete from day 1. The way these films are made it sounds more like the work was completed, but it takes so long to render CGI effects in full resolution that they didn't have time to have that complete before the release date. So the film was released with a whole heap of uncompleted FX shots in it. It is still the same film regardless of this. There are plenty of films released that have extra effects work done on them (even some of the Marvel films) before they are released on home video, especially 3D converted films that often have heaps of random 2D shots everywhere in the the cinema release. |
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7,061 posts
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Post by Jon on Dec 22, 2019 18:00:39 GMT
Universal IMO should have delayed Cats until February and have Dolittle during the Christmas period.
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751 posts
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Post by horton on Dec 22, 2019 18:02:21 GMT
This film has to go down in history as one of the most mis-conceived and mis-managed blockbusters ever.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2019 18:11:12 GMT
I wonder what this will mean for the movie musical of Sunset Boulevard. Very different source material than Cats, and it's not necessarily the genre at fault here, but will Andrew Lloyd Webber/studios be reluctant to proceed?
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Post by intoanewlife on Dec 22, 2019 18:55:50 GMT
Universal IMO should have delayed Cats until February and have Dolittle during the Christmas period. It's probably not finished either. If they'd have had a worthy alternative I'm sure they'd have done it. |
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Post by xanady on Dec 22, 2019 18:59:36 GMT
^Totally agree with crabtree’s comments about the way the dance has been filmed in the movie.Been watching the movie of ‘White Christmas’ and it is clear that in ‘The Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing’ for example that it is the dancers that do the work and not the camera.Guess it’s all done in one-take because at the very end of an elaborate routine,Vera-Ellen just about catches Danny Kaye’s foot on the last turn.However it is such a sweet duet that I guess they left it as it was?
Can you imagine Gene Kelly’s ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ with fancy dizzying fast cuts...sometimes less is more.
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7,061 posts
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Post by Jon on Dec 22, 2019 19:17:59 GMT
I wonder what this will mean for the movie musical of Sunset Boulevard. Very different source material than Cats, and it's not necessarily the genre at fault here, but will Andrew Lloyd Webber/studios be reluctant to proceed? As long as Tom Hooper isn't hired to direct, it should be fine. It'll probably be a lot cheaper as well. |
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Post by missbabs on Dec 22, 2019 19:43:23 GMT
I wonder what this will mean for the movie musical of Sunset Boulevard. Very different source material than Cats, and it's not necessarily the genre at fault here, but will Andrew Lloyd Webber/studios be reluctant to proceed? I was thinking the same, but Baz Bamigboye wrote this in his column on Friday: The next Andrew Lloyd Webber show to become a movie musical will be Sunset Boulevard.
The composer told me he’ll join Glenn Close, director Rob Ashford and studio chiefs at Paramount in February to plot their next move.
He said a screenwriter will be hired to add to the first draft by Tom MacRae, who wrote the story for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
Let's hope this whole debacle won't delay SB! |
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4,962 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on Dec 22, 2019 20:32:50 GMT
That picture alone is enough to confirm my decision not to see it - why on earth should I give them my money if they haven't even bothered to finish the film? They will have known for ages that it wouldn't be ready yet decided not to delay. You can tell it's bad anyway when the cast struggle to muster much enthusiasm for promoting it! Totally agree. But I suspect why should a few more days or weeks with the design geeks make this any better. Surley a lot of its fate is already sealed in the filming? You can't polish a turd... |
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Post by basdfg on Dec 22, 2019 23:35:00 GMT
I enjoyed it more than i thought it- yes it's creepy but they was more plot than I expected and certainly good singing.
I and my mum both noticed the ring but i thought it was part of the film.
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724 posts
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Post by basdfg on Dec 22, 2019 23:44:56 GMT
Just seen this in Bristol. A few thoughts: - I felt the reviews were on the whole unfair. Although not always for the right reasons, it was very enjoyable. Yes, some of the cats are clothed and some aren’t. One wears a wedding ring. One has nail varnish. Sometimes they disappear into thin air. But this isn’t the real world - the cats are singing and dancing, so if we can accept that, we can surely accept these other factors. - The worlds they’ve created - primarily London at night - are impressive, varied and atmospheric. - Like the stage show, it’s lacking a narrative (although they’re tried to create a bit more of one). People seemed to be able to get past this fact in the stage show, but can see it wouldn’t be for everyone. - Jennifer Hudson’s snot is as distracting as the reviews suggest. Highly unnecessary. - An audience member burped during the closing notes of Memory. This added a certain something to proceedings. - A LOT of missed opportunities when it comes to dancing. Cats is essentially a dance show, and it was extremely lacking in thrilling dance sequences. Before Cats, we had a trailer for In the Heights, and it looks like they’ve done a much better job in terms of set pieces. There were some things I really missed from the stage show from a dance perspective - like the acrobatics from MungojerrIe & Rumpleteazer - they were totally absent. - The orchestrations are excellent. Quite up-to-date. But I really didn’t enjoy the vocal arrangements. The mix seemed off. Sometimes there would be a harmony line which was really amplified for no apparent reason. And (presumably because of the way that Tom Hooper seems to favour ‘natural’ vocals), it wasn’t always on pitch. Some poor decisions from a vocal arrangement perspective - like giving Rebel Wilson practically all of the female vocal lines in the Gumbie Cat: I really missed the 1930s close harmony. - It was a bit grotesque at times - the cats often seemed to be rolling around in old food or milk. It’s a little revolting. - The cats are pretty horny in early scenes, which makes for uncomfortable viewing. The young couple next to us lost interest half way through and spent the second half practically having sex with each other (perhaps inspired by earlier scenes). - Judi Dench was enjoyable, but looked like the sun from the Teletubbies. And her Mr Tumnus legs were highly disturbing. - But nothing was as disturbing as Idris Elba’s cat body. Needs to be seen to be believed. - James Cordon was just as annoying as you would expect. Actually much more so. - The script is banal trite, with a constant stream of poor jokes. - Ian McKellan drinking water from a plate should never have been allowed to happen. - Race is a bit of an issue - the black actors play a criminal, a pimp and an ex-sex worker. - Victoria has been made into a central character, but not sure it works - she’s not very interesting. - Mr Mistoffeles - one of the few openly gay cats on the West End stage - is now a straight love interest. We weren’t sure how we felt about that! If you’re hesitating, GO! It’s fantastic, and its misgivings make it even more so  I wish we got a into the heights trailer. |
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