Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Its a lightweight musical, everyone needs to calm down.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
the only one upset about the utterly predictable reviews appears to be you? the latest hollywood talking point is hardly even water off my back.

the CGI does seem mystifyingly bad, but it's hardly the first movie (or its director) to be bamboozled with new tech. the hobbit films look as terrible now as they did then.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-06 01:51:36)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Its easy to grab a bad frame if you go looking, the mice and the cockroaches were very small and they were fast moving scenes so it really didn't matter.

The film reviewer for the local Murdoch rag, and he's pretty rational, gave it a good review, so there you go.
Everyone else seems to have jumped on the bandwagon and made up their mind to hate it before they went in - if they even did.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
right. so one reviewer for a murdoch tabloid has made every other reviewer into a 'bandwagon' hopper. they can't have reasoned their own way, right? i guess, when it suits you, murdoch media have a monopoly on rationalism. that's a pretty perverse view, at the best of times. are you really going to dismiss the opinions of many other, more esteemed critics because it suits your pet-fantasies? get a grip.

the movie has bombed and been critically panned possibly because ... it's a bad movie.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
I think the movie would have done better if it was released at least a decade ago. The Broadway show stopped in the year 2000. You have to be in your early 30's to remember the commercials for Cats in-between reruns of Seinfeld. What's next Phantom of the Opera?

West Side Story is getting a new movie by Spielberg. I think that will do well though. Romeo and Juliet set in NYC is at least relatable to Americans. The love stories of Romeo and Juliet as well as the Great Gatsby are timeless.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Also I really like adaptions of Shakespeare in modern settings. The actual direct adaptions made in the 60's to 90's are too perfect to ever be redone I feel.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW


Trailer commentary. At 2:00 these guys (fairly I think) describe part of what is making people shy away. That, to paraphrase, VFX do not carry the art direction. I don't really see that the adjustment after this trailer made things better in the face of that. Resize some ears and add more neck hair. Change the tone of the lighting. Yeah, definitely 100% complete now.

I'm not sure if coming out 10 years earlier would have made much of a difference in reception in this respect.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
cats is an intrinsically terrible musical. theatre-land people hated it; broadway people hated it. it was just weird, a 'cult' favourite like rocky horror show or something. the idea that the sort of audience/buzz it got on broadway/west end could be easily transferred to film was a huge assumption. it's a fucking bizarro concept.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

One of these guys called it the worst musical ever.

I don't know why it has to at once be both the play and a movie. If they wanted to make a movie, they should have scrapped the broadway and cobbled together something different sourced from OPB of Practical Cats. Maybe cgi or traditional animation with cat-like cats. It might have turned into a nice little children's film. Isn't that who TS Eliot wrote the things for in the first place?

Instead we get roach boobs.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
t.s. eliot absolutely never wanted it to be adapted into anything else, ever. his estate set very stringent restrictions on the after-life of his work.

unfortunately andrew lloyd webber got around eliot's widow by inviting her around his house and dazzling her at the piano (so the story goes ...)

and, well, the result is Cats. the source material has no potential for adaptation because it was explicitly banned, like all the rest of his work, from being abused after his death.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Was Cats ever a nationally relevant media property anyway? I saw the commercials for Cats because I live in the NYC area and could actually go see the show. People in rural Virginia probably had no idea about what was on Broadway in the late 90's.

I have no idea what is playing in musical theaters in LA right now either. Do they even have a LA version of Broadway?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6602|949

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Was Cats ever a nationally relevant media property anyway? I saw the commercials for Cats because I live in the NYC area and could actually go see the show. People in rural Virginia probably had no idea about what was on Broadway in the late 90's.

I have no idea what is playing in musical theaters in LA right now either. Do they even have a LA version of Broadway?
Cats was advertised on local TV here throughout it's run on Broadway.

There is an LA version of Broadway, without the panache of Broadway or the West End. It's called Pantages. They run the same shows as Broadway, with different casts (obviously). The same casts as LA do runs here in Orange County too.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

uziq wrote:

t.s. eliot absolutely never wanted it to be adapted into anything else, ever. his estate set very stringent restrictions on the after-life of his work.

unfortunately andrew lloyd webber got around eliot's widow by inviting her around his house and dazzling her at the piano (so the story goes ...)

and, well, the result is Cats. the source material has no potential for adaptation because it was explicitly banned, like all the rest of his work, from being abused after his death.
I mean didn't he write the poems for his grandchildren in the first place? So if it's to be adapted (however loosely, "in spirit," or even in the sense of just sharing the name) to any other form of media, I think it should be intended for children and not for people who want to leer at hairy cat boobs. I'd be turning in my grave if I were him.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
t. s. eliot didn't have any children. his first wife spent most of her life in an asylum, and he met his second young wife (the one to whom he entrusted his estate) at his publishing house when he was about 70. he certainly wasn't a 'children's author'; cats isn't the poetry version of a roald dahl book. the cats poems were written as 'light verse' or whimsy, and i think included in letters. it was a form of amusement and fun, not a serious foray into genre writing for children's lit.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-06 13:29:46)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Was Cats ever a nationally relevant media property anyway? I saw the commercials for Cats because I live in the NYC area and could actually go see the show. People in rural Virginia probably had no idea about what was on Broadway in the late 90's.

I have no idea what is playing in musical theaters in LA right now either. Do they even have a LA version of Broadway?
Cats was advertised on local TV here throughout it's run on Broadway.

There is an LA version of Broadway, without the panache of Broadway or the West End. It's called Pantages. They run the same shows as Broadway, with different casts (obviously). The same casts as LA do runs here in Orange County too.
Thank you for the clarification. Follow up question: Which is bigger and came first? California Disney or Florida Disney?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6602|949

California Disneyland was the original.  Worth reading up on the formation of Disneyworld and Celebration, FL though.

I think Disneyworld is bigger, but I don't know off the top of my head. I imagine swampland in central FL is a hell of a lot cheaper than prime real estate in OC.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

uziq wrote:

t. s. eliot didn't have any children. his first wife spent most of her life in an asylum, and he met his second young wife (the one who was entrusted his estate) at his publishing house when he was about 70. he certainly wasn't a 'children's author'; cats isn't the poetry version of a roald dahl book. the cats poems were written as 'light verse' or whimsy, and i think included in letters. it was a form of amusement and fun, not a serious foray into genre writing for children's lit.
Godchildren apparently, not grandchildren.

https://tseliot.com/a-life-in-pictures/ph_card_019_alip

I'm not an Eliot expert by any means, but I don't consider him a children's author. I do consider this material more suited for (loose) adaptation into a children's film that's 100% about being a film, than trying to keep or revive the musical's relevancy or whatever.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

I'm proud of dilbert and macbeth for embracing their furry fandom though. You do you, guys!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I'm proud of dilbert and macbeth for embracing their furry fandom though. You do you, guys!

SuperJail Warden wrote:

RTHKI wrote:

the fuck
If you had a Taylor Swift Cat as a friend and had her and others over for a X-Mas or whatever party and after everyone else has left she crawls into your bed and gives you this look...you would tell her she had to leave?
https://i.imgur.com/h0wTIpU.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
The CGI is nothing compared with the costumes for the stage show.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTulb7NDfKOnKn2N-N_hkYLUIILA29_x30xYiouxy4FXfZK5jDB

Really, its a wacky set of poems adapted into a weird stage show converted into an oddball film.

Its not part of a Marvel series and its not intended to be mainstream, if you don't get it there's no need to hate.

But yes its about ten years too late for the fanbase.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-01-07 01:29:43)

Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
the difference being, the costumes for the show are weird because it's a stage show, with very human actors, acting live, y'know. so to make them into cats and to do the usual dance-and-song gubbins that the great unwashed masses demand at musicals, the best concession they can make to being a 'cat' is to put on some usual theatre makeup. ballerinas doing a dance number are still going to require a human physique to do that pas-de-deux, surprisingly.

in a movie using heavy amounts of CGI, there is no need to have a human form. you can have a movie, you know, with CATS! there is no live stage show! it's about as inane a stylistic choice as the recent disney remake of the lion king, which just animated it with BBC wildlife unit-style 'realistic' animals. what's the point? you have all the technological means in the world -- you can use some stylization and flair. the result (for both movies) is that they are deeply weird and uncanny, and wholly unnecessary; they just don't work.

likewise, even when using acres of computer processing facilities, there's no real justification for the wild swings and inconsistencies in scale. this would be stuff that a journeyman director gets castigated for in film school. why are the cats in about 5 different physical scales? why are the rats that big? why are the cockroaches sometimes the same size as the rats, and sometimes not? why does everything have a standard-scale human face? aaaaaa!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
You still haven't seen the film have you?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
sorry i forgot i have to go pilot school to comment on a plane crash.

i have too much self-respect to suffer through any musical.

Last edited by uziq (2020-01-07 02:42:01)

DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6654|United States of America
Isn't it by the same guy who did the Les Mis movie adaptation? I enjoyed that for the most part, but there's probably only so much he can do with the sources for both.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689

SuperJail Warden wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I'm proud of dilbert and macbeth for embracing their furry fandom though. You do you, guys!

SuperJail Warden wrote:

RTHKI wrote:

the fuck
If you had a Taylor Swift Cat as a friend and had her and others over for a X-Mas or whatever party and after everyone else has left she crawls into your bed and gives you this look...you would tell her she had to leave?
Of course no one is going to answer because you don't want to face the truth.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/Ve8STsKn8IWhW/giphy.gif
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg

Board footer

Privacy Policy - © 2024 Jeff Minard