what has happened to the quality of movie musicals? why are they all crap now? what happened to movies like sound of music and singin' in the rain and annie? now we just get drivel like chicago and mamma mia! which i think should be renamed mamma mia? as in, really?
i do not understand the casting choices at all. pierce brosnan sounds like he is trying to be david bowie and looks like he's choking whenever he sings. meryl streep sounds like a cat in heat and everyone else is painful, too. good casting couldn't have saved the movie but it could have made it a lot more tolerable. ugh. just because you cast a big name actor, or just because meryl fucking streep wanted to do mamma mia does not mean that she would be the best choice or should even be a choice. it just sucks when there are so many talented actors with no work who really can sing and they chose name actors that just didn't fit.
not like the script was all that great. or the music for that matter. and i even like abba but god, what a chopjob. it was so bad.
oh well. i just miss the gold old days when actors could actually sing, dance, and act and people knew how to write stories and put them to music.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Little Me
So, I just watched Drama High on ABC and my heart just blossomed. It followed a high school musical from auditions to fruition. It was beautiful.
I especially related to the piece because I so saw myself in the girl who got the lead. The play was The Wiz and naturally, every girl wanted to be Dorothy. I don't really understand why. When I was in high school we staged a small scale Wizard of Oz and I really, really, really wanted to be the Wicked Witch, which is THE best part in that play. Dorothy is so boring, so fa-la-la. Anyone could be Dorothy. I actually felt like I had an uphill battle to NOT be Dorothy because I had played the ingenue in every other thing since I had started doing drama. But thank god, they believed in me and I got to be the Wicked Witch, which I to this day believe is the best role I ever got to play. Green face? Prosthetic nose? Cackling and screaming? Scaring children? The best. Anyway, that is not why I related to Drama High so strongly.
So, everyone wanted to be Dorothy. And especially little Martina who had never been in a play before. So everyone was shocked when Martina got the role, especially the girl that everyone thought would get it, Ms. Claire "I've gotten the female lead in everything else so naturally I should get this one too and if I don't then it's cause I'm white." I don't think so. I saw a beauty and freshness in Martina that shone through, something quite lacking in Claire. Anyway, I really really related to Martina because she struggled through that show after getting the part. Not because she wasn't good enough but because she was full of doubt. It didn't help that Claire was cast as her understudy. I felt for Martina every step of the way, as she struggled and wondered if she could actually pull this off to the end when she beamed after the performance. I think I know what she was feeling.
As a junior I auditioned for my first high school play. I had never been in anything else before and was hoping to be cast as one of the "dancing girls." I got the lead of Little Me. Cast as my understudy was Beth, who had been the lead in the last musical and was a card carrying member of the drama clique. I was so intimidated. I did feel that I was the best for the part, I believed that I deserved it, but it was so hard to remember that during rehearsals, during Halloween when my leading man and Beth showed up at school dressed as the two main characters, during every time that someone else insinuated that I didn't deserve it for whatever reason. It was one of the best times of my life but it was terribly bittersweet because I was not a part of that crowd and did not feel accepted.
I forgot all of that on opening night. After the play was over, I ran around the auditorium several times just screaming with joy. It's a feeling unlike any I'd ever had before or since. I had done it. Nothing is like the high I get when I'm on stage.
So, now that I am rarely ever on stage, except for that rare moment when I can drag people to karaoke with me here in downer Seattle, I feel so far from that feeling. Drama High really brought it across. I loved watching every minute of it and feeling like I was reliving my high school drama days.
I was Belle in Little Me. In so many different ways, I still am. My opening number was "On the Other Side of the Tracks" a song about social mobility. I didn't have to act much to play the poor girl in rags, hoping for a better life. That part was me. Just like Martina was Dorothy. It was just amazing watching those kids on stage and knowing that they are having the time of their lives, whether they know it or not.
It made me wish that I was still involved with drama. Like I often wish. Maybe one day. It gives me hope that my AP English teacher was in a community theater play during our senior year. I like to picture being a professor and acting at night in the local theater. I don't know if it will ever happen. But maybe I could help out in the Drama dept or something. Ah, the magic of the stage. I know everyone wants to get to Broadway but how many do? We can all be stars in our high school musicals.
I especially related to the piece because I so saw myself in the girl who got the lead. The play was The Wiz and naturally, every girl wanted to be Dorothy. I don't really understand why. When I was in high school we staged a small scale Wizard of Oz and I really, really, really wanted to be the Wicked Witch, which is THE best part in that play. Dorothy is so boring, so fa-la-la. Anyone could be Dorothy. I actually felt like I had an uphill battle to NOT be Dorothy because I had played the ingenue in every other thing since I had started doing drama. But thank god, they believed in me and I got to be the Wicked Witch, which I to this day believe is the best role I ever got to play. Green face? Prosthetic nose? Cackling and screaming? Scaring children? The best. Anyway, that is not why I related to Drama High so strongly.
So, everyone wanted to be Dorothy. And especially little Martina who had never been in a play before. So everyone was shocked when Martina got the role, especially the girl that everyone thought would get it, Ms. Claire "I've gotten the female lead in everything else so naturally I should get this one too and if I don't then it's cause I'm white." I don't think so. I saw a beauty and freshness in Martina that shone through, something quite lacking in Claire. Anyway, I really really related to Martina because she struggled through that show after getting the part. Not because she wasn't good enough but because she was full of doubt. It didn't help that Claire was cast as her understudy. I felt for Martina every step of the way, as she struggled and wondered if she could actually pull this off to the end when she beamed after the performance. I think I know what she was feeling.
As a junior I auditioned for my first high school play. I had never been in anything else before and was hoping to be cast as one of the "dancing girls." I got the lead of Little Me. Cast as my understudy was Beth, who had been the lead in the last musical and was a card carrying member of the drama clique. I was so intimidated. I did feel that I was the best for the part, I believed that I deserved it, but it was so hard to remember that during rehearsals, during Halloween when my leading man and Beth showed up at school dressed as the two main characters, during every time that someone else insinuated that I didn't deserve it for whatever reason. It was one of the best times of my life but it was terribly bittersweet because I was not a part of that crowd and did not feel accepted.
I forgot all of that on opening night. After the play was over, I ran around the auditorium several times just screaming with joy. It's a feeling unlike any I'd ever had before or since. I had done it. Nothing is like the high I get when I'm on stage.
So, now that I am rarely ever on stage, except for that rare moment when I can drag people to karaoke with me here in downer Seattle, I feel so far from that feeling. Drama High really brought it across. I loved watching every minute of it and feeling like I was reliving my high school drama days.
I was Belle in Little Me. In so many different ways, I still am. My opening number was "On the Other Side of the Tracks" a song about social mobility. I didn't have to act much to play the poor girl in rags, hoping for a better life. That part was me. Just like Martina was Dorothy. It was just amazing watching those kids on stage and knowing that they are having the time of their lives, whether they know it or not.
It made me wish that I was still involved with drama. Like I often wish. Maybe one day. It gives me hope that my AP English teacher was in a community theater play during our senior year. I like to picture being a professor and acting at night in the local theater. I don't know if it will ever happen. But maybe I could help out in the Drama dept or something. Ah, the magic of the stage. I know everyone wants to get to Broadway but how many do? We can all be stars in our high school musicals.
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