The Wild Blog in the West

After completing my review of Love Never Dies , despite finding the Australian production boring, I became curious about the original London cast recording.  So I wasted perfectly good money in order to have a listen, and came to develop a rather twisted fascination with the recording, and the musical as a whole.  Not fascination as in I suddenly found it good, but in that I wondered how it could have been made less bad. It turns out that the Australian version is, in many ways, a significant improvement over the original.  The original is a train wreck.  That being said, it contained some interesting nuggets, and provided for some interesting contrasts, which I've detailed below. 1.  In my last review, I complained that Christine was "so passive, it's insulting," but remarkably, the Love Never Dies Australian production actually gives her more spine than she had in the original London production.  In the original production, when Christine first sees...

This is a bit of a cheat, I admit.  Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies is not a proper movie musical.  Rather, the cinematic version of this sequel to The Phantom of the Opera  is merely a filmed performance of the stage musical.  However, having done such an in-depth review of Phantom , I can't pass this one by. Often, the stage musical is filmed after a botched attempt at adapting it to the screen, to demonstrate how the musical is supposed to be.  Such was the case with the Final Performance of Rent , and the 25th Anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera .  Other times, the stage musical is filmed so that those who likely will never be able to see it live can still see what it's about.  That's likely the case with Love Never Dies , which won't be arriving on Broadway any time soon. It almost feels cruel to kick a musical when it's down.  The critical shredding of  Love Never Dies has been universal.  Most of it is ...

As I mentioned in my review, Pitch Perfect  was not exactly trailblazing cinema.  Nearly everything it did have been done before, sometimes better, by other movies.  What Pitch Perfect  had, however, was good chemistry between the characters, a relatively straight-forward plot, and energetic musical numbers.  None of which can be said for Pitch Perfect 2 . Pitch Perfect 2 is not horrible, mind you.  It's no Jersey Boys  or Rock of Ages .  It's not even Annie 2014.  However, it turned what was sort of fresh and fun into strained and tedious, which is why it is on the Wrong List. Plot Synopsis The Barden Bellas are the reigning champions of a cappella singing in the United States.  After Fat Amy has a "wardrobe malfunction" during a televised performance for President Obama, the Bellas are ordered to disband.  However, leaders Beca and Chloe convince the national a capella organization to reinstate the group if they become th...

I'm please to introduce guest blogger, Beth Kelly, who will give her take on Into the Woods, Sondheim, and other recent movie musicals. Theater lovers and cinephiles alike are buzzing about the movie adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods . The play, which has been running in some form for the better part of two decades, is a darkly twisted take on some very near and dear fairy tales, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. The plot twists and turns as the audience sees the characters they thought they knew in a whole new way. The movie, produced by Disney, stars well knowns such as Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp and Emily Blunt. Since "darkly twisted" and "Disney" are terms at odds with one another, some changes had to be made to the plot to make it a bit more family friendly. The original story line follows the baker and his wife, trying to break the curse of a witch so that they can have a child. The wi...

It's turned into musical movie month, hasn't it?  Beware of spoilers! If Into the Woods  isn't the most soul-stirring musical, it is still well made and highly entertaining.  Written by Stephen Sondheim and premiering on Broadway in 1987, it combines several classic fairytales and centers them around a semi-original tale involving a baker and his wife.  The movie version is directed by Rob Marshall (of Chicago  fame) and contains a star-studded cast, including Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, and Anna Kendrick. Plot Synopsis The Baker and his wife live a good life, except that they cannot have children.  One day, they learn from their neighbor, a witch, that their house has been cursed because the Baker's father once stole items from the witch's garden, including magical beans.  In addition to taking the Baker's parents' second-born (a girl), the witch proclaimed that his house would remain barren unless the Baker and his wife were able ...

After reading the reviews, I was prepared for the movie to be painfully awful to sit through.  Instead, I found it to be not-so-bad.  At times, it captured the spirit of Annie and even exceeded some aspects of the 1982 musical.  But in the end, its strengths couldn't overcome its weaknesses, putting the updated Annie on the Wrong list. I've already given an overview of Annie 's history and the basic plot line.  It doesn't really change in this version, except that now Annie is one of several foster kids being "raised" by Colleen Hannigan, a drunk and bitter never-was backup singer.  Daddy Warbucks is now Will Stacks, a self-made cell phone millionaire who is running for mayor of New York City.  After Stacks rescues Annie from being hit by a truck, his campaign manager realizes that it boosted his popularity, and before long she is living in his penthouse apartment. Will Smith got the idea of making an updated version of Annie  as a vehicle for h...