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imo what they could have done to get that 45-50 forgettable but profitable movie score would have been the following: 1) make some sort of deliberately unsexy animated version of cats with pixar-style anthropomorphic animals 2) use people wearing costumes so you are always comfortable in the knowledge that it’s just people being sexy and acting foolish 3) make something else I was also thinking about the unimaginable option of making it like The Lion King (2019)
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Dec 27, 2019 07:16
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Delthalaz posted:imo what they could have done to get that 45-50 forgettable but profitable movie score would have been the following: The problem with option 1 is that it’s so safe and mundane that the movie would have to be carried by the music and not any inherent weirdness, and the music is just not all that good or even very memorable. I saw this movie less than 12 hours ago and I couldn’t hum a single tune from it. Option 2 is just filming the stage show, which as already been done. I really think going for soul-obliterating, eldritch weirdness with the CGI fursuits really is the best way they could have made this movie if they wanted people to have a drat thing to say about it. Imo a spectacularly bad movie is much better than a middling one.
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Dec 27, 2019 08:07
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Uncle Wemus posted:does poofing into dust mean they die? It’s an allusion to TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” This movie combines the frivolity of the poet’s most playful work with the horrifying intensity of his darkest in a clever commentary on a world that once again stares down at an abyss
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Dec 27, 2019 09:13
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Muppets Most Wanted is still my favourite recent musical.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:21
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Was the roach scene in the original musical?
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Dec 27, 2019 14:22
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Muppets Most Wanted is still my favourite recent musical.  Muppets Most Wanted is quite possibly the worst of the Muppet movies.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:37
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I finally saw this wonderful movie last night after consuming a bunch of Gummi edibles. It was waaaaay more insane than I thought it would be, and I already thought it would be pretty mad. One of the things that really got under my skin was bits where the score was just a stripped-down Moog synth. It really cranked the sinister feeling up to breaking point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHrryY5UL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijD-D0dKLbQ Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 16:36
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Mr mestipholes cat looked like he had a completely different animation team from all the other cats. Very jarring to have a guy in makeup singing and dancing with a bunch of freaky cat-person hybrids. Other than that it lived up to the hype as being a weird freaky trip into a land that no man should enter. Would spring on unsuspecting friends when they can't escape out of 10
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Dec 27, 2019 17:08
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Was the roach scene in the original musical? That was definitely a special thing for the movie. One of the weirder creative decisions. The most bone chilling part of the movie is the scene where they barely escape the dog because as soon as you hear the barking, your brain starts trying to rationalize what a dog in this universe could possibly look like. You've already seen the mouse and cockroach people, and a dog man would be absolutely terrifying. I was praying the characters would close the door.
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Dec 27, 2019 18:26
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Fish Of Doom posted:That was definitely a special thing for the movie. One of the weirder creative decisions. I wanted to see the dog so bad. Show me the dog. I would watch a spin-off about the mice and the dog.
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Dec 27, 2019 18:51
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I want to know what a sphynx cat would look like in this world.
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Dec 27, 2019 18:58
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Mullitt posted:I wanted to see the dog so bad. Show me the dog. So, Wilfred?
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Dec 27, 2019 20:06
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Doctor Faustine posted:The problem with option 1 is that it’s so safe and mundane that the movie would have to be carried by the music and not any inherent weirdness, and the music is just not all that good or even very memorable. I saw this movie less than 12 hours ago and I couldn’t hum a single tune from it. Yeah, maybe their best bet was option #2 but with famous actors and fancy CGI backgrounds/animations. Probably not possible to do in a way that worked. It was a joke in the play Six Degrees of Separation that Cats was impossible to turn into a film. The fact that characters believed they had been promised roles in a fictional film production of Cats was meant to demonstrate how gullible they were.
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Dec 27, 2019 21:02
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I dunno, it seems kind of easy to give CATS a basic 3 act structure and a plot.
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Dec 27, 2019 22:41
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Cats is a film about being an animal who knows that they will die and the insanity bought on by the implications send tweet
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Dec 27, 2019 23:17
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Jonas Albrecht posted:I dunno, it seems kind of easy to give CATS a basic 3 act structure and a plot. It is, but it's not easy to do that while retaining all (or even most) of the songs. You basically have to strip it down to the basic concept of a tribe of cats performing a religious ritual and then rebuild it from there, which won't appeal to the original fans since they're there for the music and dancing. At that point you have a film based on the concept of Cats, but not an adaptation of the stage musical.
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Dec 27, 2019 23:24
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I grew up watching the Robin Williams Popeye movie on HBO every day so I'll go with that as my favorite.
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Dec 27, 2019 23:30
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sethsez posted:It is, but it's not easy to do that while retaining all (or even most) of the songs. You basically have to strip it down to the basic concept of a tribe of cats performing a religious ritual and then rebuild it from there, which won't appeal to the original fans since they're there for the music and dancing. At that point you have a film based on the concept of Cats, but not an adaptation of the stage musical. Just don't do the songs as big musical numbers, then. Have the melody of a character's song be their leitmotif in the score and incorporate the important bits into spoken dialogue (where that leitmotif prominently plays as a little nod).
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Dec 27, 2019 23:48
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sethsez posted:It is, but it's not easy to do that while retaining all (or even most) of the songs. You basically have to strip it down to the basic concept of a tribe of cats performing a religious ritual and then rebuild it from there, which won't appeal to the original fans since they're there for the music and dancing. At that point you have a film based on the concept of Cats, but not an adaptation of the stage musical. You don't adapt things for the fans, some of them will show up regardless. You want to attract a wider audience.
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Dec 27, 2019 23:52
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I am by no means an expert in theater but I feel like adapting CATS without music numbers is the wrong direction.
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Dec 27, 2019 23:57
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Yeah gently caress watching a version of cats where train cat and magic cat intros are not sung
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Dec 27, 2019 23:58
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If this movie had had less creepy visuals it would have probably been much better received, no plot changes needed.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:00
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I wouldn't change a hair on this film's head. I can see myself becoming mildly obsessed with how it turned out like this. I hope there are decent special features on the Blu-ray.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:09
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Just don't do the songs as big musical numbers, then. Have the melody of a character's song be their leitmotif in the score and incorporate the important bits into spoken dialogue (where that leitmotif prominently plays as a little nod). Who the gently caress would want to watch that
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Dec 28, 2019 00:17
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YggiDee posted:I am by no means an expert in theater but I feel like adapting CATS without music numbers is the wrong direction. Yeah, I agree. The musical numbers shouldn't be axed, they make up the entire identity of the musical.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:18
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Jonas Albrecht posted:You don't adapt things for the fans, some of them will show up regardless. You want to attract a wider audience. The point is that Cats without a huge emphasis on the music and dancing isn't Cats, any more than Cats is Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. It would be a different, third thing that's related to but separate from the first two things. If the goal is to bring Cats to the big screen (and even after seeing this and enjoying it, I'm still not convinced that's a sane goal), it's going to be almost entirely plotless. That's just what Cats is, it's a fundamental aspect of the show. Removing some of the songs to make room for the plot is missing the entire reason anyone gives a poo poo about it, and a full rewrite is... well, a full rewrite.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:19
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Yall know it's hard to imagine, but "don't focus on the small audience of impossible to please people familiar with the source material" doesn't mean "get rid of the singing and dancing".
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Dec 28, 2019 00:24
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The Little Death posted:If this movie had had less creepy visuals it would have probably been much better received, no plot changes needed.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:31
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Jonas Albrecht posted:Yall know it's hard to imagine, but "don't focus on the small audience of impossible to please people familiar with the source material" doesn't mean "get rid of the singing and dancing". How do you insert a plot into Cats while retaining the songs? The two-hour version we have already cut out a few songs entirely, cut down almost all of the rest, and expanded the plot beyond what the stage show had. There's only so much you can do with a long sung-through musical in which none of the songs advance any sort of plot at all or characterization beyond a basic introduction.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:38
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sethsez posted:How do you insert a plot into Cats while retaining the songs? The two-hour version we have already cut out a few songs entirely, cut down almost all of the rest, and expanded the plot beyond what the stage show had. There's only so much you can do with a long sung-through musical in which none of the songs advance any sort of plot at all or characterization beyond a basic introduction. I know this is a copout, but I don't want to spend my weekend writing a treatment for CATS.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:41
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Pull a completely 180 and make it some kind of prestige miniseries. Now there's time for more songs. And a plot.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:45
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Galaxy beain takes that the really important thing about Cats is the characters and plot. I still have no idea what the name of the main narrator cat was and he was in like 80% of the film. Hell i thought he was meant to be Victoria's love interest but about two thirds of the way through he just mostly stops existing.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:49
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Jonas Albrecht posted:I know this is a copout, but I don't want to spend my weekend writing a treatment for CATS. I'm just saying there's a reason it took almost 40 years to get an adaptation of this massive multi-billion-dollar international sensation, why it was considered such an impossibility that the mere notion has been a joke for about as long, and why the eventual result is being treated like a dare to come up with the most evocative way to describe how goddamn strange it is. And that reason is that it's actually not particularly easy to hammer this formless revue of ballet and nonsense songs into a three-act structure with a meaningful plot.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:50
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Jonas Albrecht posted:I know this is a copout, but I don't want to spend my weekend writing a treatment for CATS. I'm pretty sure you do, and I hope you do it.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:51
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sethsez posted:I'm just saying there's a reason it took almost 40 years to get an adaptation of this massive multi-billion-dollar international sensation, why it was considered such an impossibility that the mere notion has been a joke for about as long, and why the eventual result is being treated like a dare to come up with the most evocative way to describe how goddamn strange it is. That and its people dressed as flamboyant cats.
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Dec 28, 2019 00:57
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piratepilates posted:I'm pretty sure you do, and I hope you do it. My computer's broke 
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Dec 28, 2019 01:06
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Lid posted:That and its people dressed as flamboyant cats. well yeah But even if you animated it like a Disney movie the structural issues are still there Which is why I'm so glad this just decided to go all-in on being weird as gently caress instead. I consider this the best possible result.
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Dec 28, 2019 01:06
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caligulamprey posted:I've tried to conceive of any way to make Cats work on the big screen where it catches on with a wider audience and the closest I've come to it maybe Rotoscope it Scanner Darkly/Waking Life-style? This is a nut that will forever be uncracked and I'm so happy we got what we got. Agreed. While this movie made me squirmy and uncomfortable that very effect is what I was going in for, based on the reviews. I can easily imagine subjecting my friends and family to this movie many times in the years to come, a gleeful smile on my face as I watch them experience cat Rebel Wilson unzipping her skin for the first time.
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Dec 28, 2019 01:14
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YggiDee posted:Pull a completely 180 and make it some kind of prestige miniseries. Now there's time for more songs. And a plot. Now you have an even bigger insane VFX workload, and proportionally less money to spend on it. You think these Cats look bad, these are the best Cats money can buy. TV grade VFX cats are beyond mortal conception. The Little Death posted:Agreed. While this movie made me squirmy and uncomfortable that very effect is what I was going in for, based on the reviews. I can easily imagine subjecting my friends and family to this movie many times in the years to come, a gleeful smile on my face as I watch them experience cat Rebel Wilson unzipping her skin for the first time. And the second time.
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Dec 28, 2019 01:30
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josh04 posted:And the second time. The second time was interesting because up until that point I'd been willing to treat at least some of what happened in the musical numbers as non-diegetic. Then she uses her unzipping skin to escape her chains, and that second time my skin crawled like I had tap-dancing roaches with human faces underneath it.
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Dec 28, 2019 01:49
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