LORD OF BOOTY posted:

I dunno, I don't hate this. It recontextualizes the problematic element into a problematic character trait that the work as a whole no longer endorses. If you're gonna keep it as written, this is probably genuinely the best option.

Gianthogweed posted:

This just came up in my youtube feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6QhjZUM_1k

quote:

...this journey specifically started when I was walking through Soho on postproduction on Les Mis seven years ago. I suddenly had a feeling of sadness: Oh, I’ve so enjoyed doing a musical for the first time, and I’ve learned so much. It would be crazy if I never applied that learning curve to something else.

quote:

But there’s also a weird latent eroticism to Cats, right? They’re gyrating and dancing, and it still feels very 1979, 1980, 1981, the era of the original musical and the age of cocaine, disco, and wild, formfitting outfits. I imagine reconciling that notion with the idea of making a family film is a challenge.

As a kid, I remember thinking, If they were just playing humans, would my parents take me to this? And it was quite like, you know, because they were cats it was okay. But it was quite sexy, the show in ’81. I think part of how I handled it, I hope, was that Rebel [Wilson] effectively lampoons that very thing in her first scene. So one way is to acknowledge that pitfall comedically early on in the movie.

quote:

I like how the scale in Cats never makes any sense. When I first saw the trailer, it sort of bothered me, but now it just adds to the delirium. Sometimes things are comically huge; sometimes they’re a lot smaller than expected.

I mean, it was based on a bit of maths. If a cat was standing on hind legs, what’s the difference? And it’s about two and a half to one. So everything is built two and a half to one. But then you still end up with a street that’s only as wide as you can make it in the studio — whereas if you’ve applied the two and a half rule, it would be superwide. But it was never meant to be that literal. Obviously, if we’re cats, the world would be bigger. But it also puts you back in a childlike position because, of course, when you’re a toddler, the table is higher than you are. So it has that trick of perspective. The look on people’s faces when they visited our set was one of childlike wonder.

quote:

That also speaks to the artificiality of the environment. It all still feels like a set, though not in a bad way. Was there ever a thought to try to make it a more realistic version of London?

As I progressed through it, I began to realize that if the world was heightened, it would help to create a space of permission for my human cat designs. The film opens with the image of a cat formed in the night sky backlit by the moon. That was an idea I came up with during the editing. It’s a statement that we’re in another world. A lot of filmmaking in the mainstream is hidebound by a certain literalism and realism for very good reasons. But the fun thing about the musical form is the ability to be in a more heightened space. I definitely thought a bit about Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge and the way he wasn’t inhibited by creating a Paris that was photo-realistic.

quote:

The cockroach sequence that Andy [Blankenbuehler] choreographed for me so beautifully is obviously our nod to Busby Berkeley.

quote:

There’s often a very specific visual strategy to each of your films. The King’s Speech had those wide angles and the high head-space framing. And Les Mis had, for example, the Anne Hathaway single-take sequence. Did you make any decisions like that beforehand for something like this?

I had this phrase organic cat, which was a sort of non-choreographic cat, i.e., when the cats are moving as cats but in a naturalistic context — in other words, they weren’t moving on a beat, it wasn’t a musicalized movement. For that, I tended to shoot handheld because I felt the unpredictability of feline movement was best caught by the camera operator picking up the cues maybe a little bit late. And then I tried to use classical photography more for the way particular numbers were structured. So the Rebel Wilson scene becomes classical in a kind of Busby Berkeley style. Or Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is a nod to the great musicals of a different era; I wanted to shoot it with the honesty of the full frame and the head-to-toe size and being quite kind of graphic and simple. So it was threading between those two styles. In a sense, the clarity that a musical gives you choreographically is that your decisiveness is reflected by the decisiveness of the camera. And then, as you break out of that into the interstitial moments, the handheld quality tries to capture that sense of being back in a world not structured by melody.

quote:

I had this phrase organic cat, which was a sort of non-choreographic cat, i.e., when the cats are moving as cats but in a naturalistic context

Gianthogweed posted:

This just came up in my youtube feed.
https://youtu.be/H6QhjZUM_1k

Indie Rocktopus posted:

This early December (so pre-release) Tom Hooper interview offers some insight into the madness, but raises as many questions as it answers.

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

i mean, i don't know, the cockroach thing being a Busby Berkeley homage tracks? his thing was large groups of people in weird costumes doing elaborate synchronized routines, and that's more or less what the cockroach bit is, just with weird body horror added in

BigglesSWE posted:

The unzipping of fur will never not be horrifying to me.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I feel like the mouse design was worse than the cockroaches

caligulamprey posted:

It's the children's faces. They shouldn't have brought children into this mess, but they did and now everyone involved has to live with it.

Maxwell Lord posted:

I feel like the mouse design was worse than the cockroaches, though of course we see less of them. Like again, something you'd see in a British children's show.

Honestly if they had shot the whole thing with a "BBC in 1981" aesthetic it'd probably work a lot better.

just another posted:

I;m thinking about thos Cats

Maxwell Lord posted:

Yeah but the framing and staging just doesn't get across any of that elaborate spectacle. You just see the cockroaches marching around a bit. A Berkeley routine on film can get really abstract and the photography usually emphasizes the composition of the dancers as a whole, the pattern they create. There's none of that spatial sense because Hooper can't stage a production number to save his life.

BigglesSWE posted:

The unzipping of fur will never not be horrifying to me.

wyoming posted:

I love that it becomes a minor plot point to how the cats on the boat get free.

just another posted:

I;m thinking about thos Cats

Bogus Adventure posted:

Bogus Adventure posted:

Steven Spielberg's Cats:

A live-action adventure tale where the Jellicle Tribe are driven out of their home by the villainous Macavity and his minions. They wander the streets, searching for their way to the Heaviside Layer. The movie involves lots of shots of cats looking.

Steven Spielberg Presents Cats:

A wacky animated film that is meta, poking fun at the concept of the musical, and all of the characters are clearly in on the joke. Basically, it's the best thing anyone has ever seen since Animaniacs.

Dumb Lowtax posted:

I'm the extra ring they forgot to edit out on the non-wedding ring hand

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

i mean, i don't know, the cockroach thing being a Busby Berkeley homage tracks? his thing was large groups of people in weird costumes doing elaborate synchronized routines, and that's more or less what the cockroach bit is, just with weird body horror added in

Robotnik Nudes posted:

T. Hooper posted:

I imagine reconciling that notion with the idea of making a family film is a challenge.

Man Musk posted:

lol the film was literally financed in no small part by Mr. Spielspurr

caligulamprey posted:

ThePopeOfFun posted:

An erotic family film is either an oxymoron or incest. This guy has no anchor in reality after making some great movies. I think this shows in how Cats has no anchor in reality.

Barry Convex posted:

shot where James Corden drinks from a comically oversized champagne bottle, and the liquid that pours out is obviously CG and looks like a water effect from an early Xbox 360 game?

Bogus Adventure posted:

I guess that explains this shot