Felt very 90s at points. Whaling Bad. Waterworld 9000. Can't think of a particular, contemporary oceanic documentary that was significant on the scale of Blue Planet, but the movie felt very indulgent on that past the first act.
Thinking about how before Hitler, Napoleon was the stock Anglophone Ultimate Evil, and wondering if Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats came out a few years later, Cats would call Macavity “the Hitler of crime”
You know it is a great treatment for imposter syndrome to see how in Cats 2019, Taylor Swift, master lyricist Americana storyteller, is just not that good at writing in the post-Sondheim singing-about-yourself Broadway musical tradition, that her performances are highly based on mimicry but her sense of the stuff to be mimicked is still at a band-geek-in-YBWM’s level of Cats fan, that her sense of role is clearly leaning on Grizabella – a character already in this exact musical! – and wherever the scene is not specifically catering to her, her sense of stage is that of a freshman that doesn’t get a part
i got a new tablet and to break it in i started to sketch some things. that only partially explains what the fuck just happened to me but that’s all i’ve got. i’m sorry, but only because of mike myers.
They do a really good job assembling the material into a kinda coherent plot, with the “Victoria” character.
And the way they vision the Jellicles as like, a theater troupe of street kids putting on a show is brilliant.
As is the way they kind of make the setting the early 80s of the show’s debut by making it pre-WWII London.
Skimbleshanks!
Taylor Swift manages to make being a slinky naughty catgirl astoundingly sexless.
She is not used well in this at all, but she (& Judi Dench & Ian McKellen) really seems to be enjoying herself.
They really do right by Mr. Mistoffeles.
They do Memory well. You have to do it, and make a big thing of it, but there’s so many directions you could go overboard.
Really feels like they got to the end and realized they didn’t give Judi Dench a song and were like “What do we still have? ‘The Ad-dressing of Cats’?”
The key is Taylor is clearly living out the relationship to the material she had as a kid, before she discovered sex
It also works as an unironic tribute to Dench and McKellen as stage elders, which kind of undercuts Grizabella.
They do a really good job assembling the material into a kinda coherent plot, with the “Victoria” character.
And the way they vision the Jellicles as like, a theater troupe of street kids putting on a show is brilliant.
As is the way they kind of make the setting the early 80s of the show’s debut by making it pre-WWII London.
Skimbleshanks!
Taylor Swift manages to make being a slinky naughty catgirl astoundingly sexless.
She is not used well in this at all, but she (& Judi Dench & Ian McKellen) really seems to be enjoying herself.
They really do right by Mr. Mistoffeles.
They do Memory well. You have to do it, and make a big thing of it, but there’s so many directions you could go overboard.
Really feels like they got to the end and realized they didn’t give Judi Dench a song and were like “What do we still have? ‘The Ad-dressing of Cats’?”
The key is Taylor is clearly living out the relationship to the material she had as a kid, before she discovered sex
They do a really good job assembling the material into a kinda coherent plot, with the “Victoria” character.
And the way they vision the Jellicles as like, a theater troupe of street kids putting on a show is brilliant.
As is the way they kind of make the setting the early 80s of the show’s debut by making it pre-WWII London.
Skimbleshanks!
Taylor Swift manages to make being a slinky naughty catgirl astoundingly sexless.
She is not used well in this at all, but she (& Judi Dench & Ian McKellen) really seems to be enjoying herself.
They really do right by Mr. Mistoffeles.
They do Memory well. You have to do it, and make a big thing of it, but there’s so many directions you could go overboard.
Really feels like they got to the end and realized they didn’t give Judi Dench a song and were like “What do we still have? ‘The Ad-dressing of Cats’?”
listening to the Cats (2019) soundtrack again, as someone who used to listen to the original Broadway cast recording
Wow did they not cast Broadway singers. Even where they cast professional stage performers OR professional musical performers!
Tayswift’s “Macavity” sounds like a grown-up wash on singing it in front of the mirror when she was 8, which I would totally believe
Well,
Danny Collins & Naomi Morgan could actually be cast as more-dancers-but-hold-their-own singers; Morgan had already played Rumpleteazer on tour
James Corden is game, and okay sing-talking by himself, but doesn’t hold up in multi-voice sections
Robbie Fairchild – he gives it his all, and he’s a great dancer, but if they were going to use Munkustrap as a singer that much they should have cast him as one
Francesca Hayward… sings like a ballerina, wispy and thin and a little radiant, but not in a way that really sells the new-kid insecurity. They use her well as a dancer, though.
The chorus cats are used as dancers first, and with cats singing their own theme songs they don’t have to carry that weight and can have a bit more vocal character, but still.
Laurie Davidson is mostly used as an actor, carrying the emotional arc and mostly acting his way through Mr. Mistoffeles.
Judi Dench and Ian McKellen creak through on charisma, playing elders of the theater set creaking through on charisma. She’s not to blame for the bizarre setting of The Ad-Dressing of Cats
Steven MacRae pulls it off by not even trying to keep Skimbleshanks’ character or accent consistent.
Taylor Swift – like I’ve said, she sings like a kid dancing around in her room and she writes a song that’s not very musical theater but is very Taylor Swift.
Jason Derulo… sure, he’s a singer. He’s not a Broadway singer.
Jennifer Hudson… it’d be a stunt casting, but she could pull off Grizabella on stage with that voice and no CGI snot closeups
Just bought the Cats (2019) soundtrack and it is a completely different version from the movie like it’s counting itself against the Original Cast Recording instead of the stage show
To its detriment! The movie was decidedly not cast with first-run Broadway singers!
also these versions of The Old Gumbie Cat and Old Deuteronomy have their sun-speckled Victorian bourgeois intros sounding a lot more 90s Squaresoft than the stage, that’s something
Just bought the Cats (2019) soundtrack and it is a completely different version from the movie like it’s counting itself against the Original Cast Recording instead of the stage show
To its detriment! The movie was decidedly not cast with first-run Broadway singers!
Skimbleshanks is obviously the breakout star of the movie, but it’s a bit off that people are posing him as a figure of fun when he’s explicitly described as a managerial type who disapproves of “hilarity and riot”
On that note, I’m just now realizing there’s a reading of Mungojerry & Rumpleteazer where they’re mostly scapegoats that the domestic servants in the rich part of town use to shift blame for theft or damage
