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ducktracy · 5 years ago

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160. porky’s duck hunt (1937)

release date: april 17th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: tex avery

starring: mel blanc (porky, daffy), billy bletcher (drunken fish, the guy from upstairs), the sportsmen quartet (singing fish)

disney has steamboat willie. warner bros has porky’s duck hunt (or, actually porky’s hare hunt/a wild hare, your pick). the moment we’ve all been waiting for... the fated day is here at last: the world is introduced to the enigma that is daffy duck. if you somehow have been living under a rock for the past 6 months and don’t know, or if you’re just a well meaning passerby who i needlessly insulted for my own failed attempt at comical grandeur and for that i really am sorry, daffy’s my favorite looney tunes character (porky a close second) and one of my favorite cartoon characters of all time, if not favorite. i know my icon is pretty subtle in conveying that. anyway, yes! daffy makes his debut here, as does mel blanc voicing porky. with joe dougherty gone, mel has gotten his feet increasingly wet in cartoons, and now he has his big break, voicing the stuttering pig (and others) all the way until his death in 1989. and, as we saw in picador porky, porky is considerably slimmer here, a model which would be picked up by ub iwerks and bob clampett. frank tashlin would eventually slim porky down as well, the last one to do so.

while daffy is a tex avery creation, he only has 3 tex cartoons total. he’s unnamed in this cartoon (model sheets label him as “that crazy darn fool duck”), earning his title in his second entry, tex’s daffy duck and egghead. bob clampett would seemingly “adopt” daffy from tex, pinning him as porky’s sidekick. while clampett carried on tex’s vision of daffy’s daffiness, he also calmed him down as well. by 1938, daffy wasn’t a caricature of himself anymore. maybe not the most sane (is he ever?), but he was capable of coherent thought and conversation. in this cartoon, daffy is just a heckling little pest (though he fulfills that role quite often). porky and his dog rin chin chin embark on a good ol’ duck hunt, but daffy has other plans—saving his own skin.

the introduction of the cartoon is deceitfully mild. you go in thinking it’s just another porky pig cartoon, how cute, maybe a few polite laughs. a great way to lure the audience in for what’s ahead. the cartoon’s theme, “a hunting we will go”, scores the opening pan of duck hunting essentials: a book on how to hunt ducks, a “sure fire” shotgun, one “wear-well” hunting suit, duck decoys, and shotgun shells. some nice multi-plane camera work as we settle in on the happy hunter: a triumphant porky poses in front of his mirror, donning his hunting garb and shotgun, obviously pleased with himself, fancying himself as some sort of revolutionary soldier.

eager to get a move on, porky practices his aim, aiming straight at his napping dog (this time named rin-chin-chin. porky will have many a dog with many interesting names. i think “black fury” is my favorite for how metal it sounds.) the terrified pooch wakes from his nap and yelps, seeking refuge in a cabinet. carl stalling’s musical touch accents the anxious blinks of the dog very nicely.

finally, we hear mel blanc’s first ever lines for porky as he laughs it off. mel’s stuttering is especially profuse in this cartoon, still testing the waters with his new character. “d-d-d-d-d-do-do-don-do-don’t worry, it’s n-n-n--ne-ne-n-no-n-no-not l-l-l-lo-loaded. eh-w-we-w-watch!”

and, because porky says it’s not loaded, the gun is absolutely loaded. he fires a big, gaping hole right in his ceiling. i love the slow, creeping realization that porky has as he finally registers what just happened. lots of gears turning in his head, some great acting. maybe this is just the Mel Blanc Effect, but porky seems to have the most personality in this cartoon yet. this scene also blew my mind when i first watched it: this was one of the first porky cartoons i checked out, maybe the second one after porky’s romance. i’m not too sure how i stumbled upon it (i think i was curious about daffy’s origins or something), but the musical timing just astounded me. there are 8 beats in the music, and 8 angry knocks on the door in conjunction with the music. succinct musical timing was still pretty foreign to me, and this scene REALLY heightened my appreciation for the 30s cartoons, especially the music. the music is such a pivotal factor in my enjoyment of these cartoons, and carl stalling is in top shape with this one.

chuck jones animates the next scene as porky asks “who’s there?” billy bletcher’s grow grovels behind the door. “it’s the guy from upstairs!” ever good natured, porky opens the door, receiving a big fat punch to the face. the payoff is great as we see the peeved neighbor turn around, a giant hole in the right buttcheek of his pants, revealing his underwear beneath. great, drawn out timing.

tex deceives us with his tranquility of the early morning as we approach the fated duck pond, a sweeping, beautifully painted pan of the surroundings, accented by “william tell overture”. hang onto the peace and quiet, because it’s about to dissipate. porky shushes his dog, uttering the future wisdom of elmer fudd (but with a different speech impediment) as he whispers “shhh... shhhh! b-be-buh-be quiet. buh-be v-ve-very, v-v-ve-v-ve-very, v-v-v-v-ve-ve-very, ca-ca-ca-c-ca-ca-c-q-qu-qu-quiet.”

right on cue, porky’s prayers are answered as the telltale quack of a duck rings from above. one of my favorite gags of tex’s, relying wholeheartedly on deceitful timing as the duck floats on ahead. porky aims his gun, alone with only his dog, his target, and his thoughts...

when suddenly, an explosive cacophony of noise cracks through the entire pond as a gaggle of hunters pop up from their respective hiding places, firing mercilessly at the duck. so mercilessly, in fact, that porky has to dive to the ground to save himself. perhaps even better than the sudden eruption of action is the peace that comes after it: the duck flies along out of the gun smoke, completely unscathed. the hunters yell “AW, SHUCKS!” in conjunction with the mocking underscore of a hunting we will go. to quote daffy, very ingenious!

an appropriate score of “i only have eyes for you” as we hone in on a dim-witted cross eyed hunter (in the same vein as the cross eyed hitchhiker in porky the wrestler), who spots the duck in the air. the hunter aims his double barrel shotgun, but because he’s doomed to a life of loony hi-jinks thanks to his character design, he misses with both shots from each barrel, or so we think. tex takes quite a drastic turn out of left field as we see that the hunter HAS struck a target: two of them. two planes spiral towards the ground in black smoke, their pilots jumping out with the aid of their parachutes. a nonsensical gag that has little to do with the plot, but is hilariously unprecedented.

more chuck jones animation as we spot our chipper hunter placing his duck decoys in the water. with that, we are met with stardom, folks. porky turns away, just in time for daffy to fly down and land among the decoys, unidentifiable. half of daffy’s dialogue is limited to quacks and duck noises in this cartoon, which makes it all the more entertaining in my opinion. it’s so funny seeing daffy act like an actual duck. out of all the prototypes of say porky (if there is a porky prototype... i guess the entire dougherty era?) and bugs, daffy acts the most like his assigned animal species out of any of them. daffy quacks, causing porky to turn around. all he sees is a sea of decoys. porky reaches for his gun, another quack. yet the decoys are still there, no duck in (presumed) sight. a befuddled porky scratches his head before hatching an idea, winking at the audience in reassurance.

to hunt the duck, you must become the duck. carl stalling’s music score is lovely, nice and quaint and homely as porky ties a duck decoy around his head. he slowly submerges himself into the water, creeping across the pond, gun in hand. on the surface, it just looks like a regular, unblinking, plastic duck swimming. in all my viewings of this cartoon, i only JUST caught the trash littering the floor of the pond: what a great detail! it certainly adds a nice dose of sardonic humor.

porky’s genius plan works in his favor as he slowly rises in front of daffy, effectively startling the duck as he points his rifle. daffy prepares for his fate, or lack thereof, shutting his eyes and closing his ears, but all that’s expelled out of the gun is a gush of water. while porky investigates his gun, daffy uses this as an opportunity to fly away, perching himself on top of a floating alcohol barrel a ways away from the potential crime scene. just as he thinks he’s outsmarted the idiot pig, a gunshot to the barrel below him proves daffy wrong. daffy flies into the air in an angry quacking fit, while we have some rather sloppy animation of the exposed alcohol spilling into the lake, the barrel sinking.

and, because why else? a few fish come across the alcohol. they swim into the barrel sober, and emerge hiccuping and inebriated. did you know that if a fish gets drunk, it can breathe and walk on land? a fitting, tipsy accompaniment of “when my dreamboat comes home” scores the fish giggling and helping each other into a spare rowboat lying on shore.

then comes a beautiful, drunken rendition of “on moonlight bay” sung by the drunken fish. the song would be used in many a looney tunes cartoon, whether it be underscores or full on song numbers (while he doesn’t sing here, daffy does sing a duet with porky of the song in chuck jones’ my favorite duck. seemingly sober, of course). billy bletcher voices the lone fish slurring “now don’t you ever go away!”, the fish staring right at the camera in the same manner as the drunks from picador porky. i believe this is also chuck jones animation. it checks out his rule of animating drunks and closeups! the song is just lovely, as is the banjo accompaniment. certainly worthy of a listen.

what other way to top off such a great moment than a ben hardaway level pun of porky muttering “there’s something fishy about that.” i digress, i enjoy the pun (i love my puns) and his animation is super appealing and cute. porky’s frustration melts as he hears the all too familiar call of a duck. cautiously does he pull apart the reeds that blocks him and his duck foe, attempting to get a good look...

and daffy retaliates by biting porky square in the snout. the daffy nose bite gag would be a running gag with him, long after the tex avery daffy days. what’s not to love? porky doesn’t appreciate the gag nearly as much as i do. instead, he reaches for his rifle, fires, and actually gets a shot in. daffy’s lifeless body flops into the water. oh joy, oh rapture! porky’s hard work has finally paid off.

porky is completely overjoyed, now an excited, stuttering mess. “i ge-ge-ge-gu-guh-guh-got ‘im! i ge-ge-ge-gu-guh-guh-got ‘im! eh-g-g-go-go ge-get the-the-the duck, rin-ch-chin-chin!” bobe cannon animates this great bait and switch of a gag as the dog dives into the water, tackling daffy’s body and swimming back underwater, now just a black blob. we finally think that porky has emerged victoriously, the music crescendoing in triumphant anticipation, when DAFFY emerges from the water, haughtily tossing the unconscious body of the dog on the shore in a huff. what a great gag! and a side note: i didn’t mention it before, but this is bobe cannon’s first animation credit. he’s a WONDERFUL animator who’d work for bob clampett and later chuck jones, responsible for so many great smears in the dover boys. however, he wasn’t too proud of his past. he got in full swing with the UPA craze, and because of its heavy focus on design, he viewed his past works at warner bros as inferior. his animation is terrific! one of his trademarks, at least in the B&W clampett cartoons, is having a character talk without animating the lipsync. you’ll notice this often with daffy especially, like in this scene here. a wonderful animator is he!

speaking of bob(e)s, bob clampett animates the next iconic scene that would shape the entirety of daffy’s character for decades to come. in perhaps one of the strongest fourth wall breaks yet to come from a looney tunes cartoon, porky pulls out a script from the recesses of his hunting suit and flips through it calculatingly. finally, he just lets the talking get to the bottom of the conundrum. “hey, that wasn’t in the script!” daffy laughs in a lispless, hayseed guffaw. his first words are “don’t let it worry ya, skipper. i’m just a crazy, darn fool duck!” and, with that, daffy makes his iconic exit, HOOHOO!ing into the horizon as he does his signature stan laurel hop and hugh herbert laugh, cartwheeling and ankle clicking and bounding into the horizon.

on animating this scene, clampett says: “tex told me, ‘make him exit funny.’ i asked, ‘can i do anything i want?’ and he said ‘yes—anything.’ so i had daffy cross his eyes, do a stan laurel jump, and then do cartwheels, and do a ballet pirouette, and bounce on his head, and so forth. now, at that time, audiences weren't accustomed to seeing a cartoon character do these things. and so, when it hit the theaters it was like an explosion. people would leave the theaters talking about this daffy duck.” well, he was certainly right about the scene making an impact: here we are dissecting it today! while daffy’s personality turned in favor of the greedy, miserly type chuck jones and friz freleng gave him in the 50s, bob mckimson would still occasionally cling to daffy’s HOOHOO! exits and ways, even into the 60s. quite the important scene!

the scene after is rather meaningless and random, inserted possibly to fill up time or just as a declaration for tex’s love of gags, yet it amuses me nonetheless. tex works his sign gag magic as we spot a long, stringy fish making its way through the pond, an offscreen hand holding a sign that reads THIS IS AN ELECTRIC EEL, FOLKS. confirming our suspicions, the eel jolts with electricity, turning into a literal lightning bolt, a physical metaphor for its deadly touch. daffy spots the eel, completely unaware of its caveat. the animation and acting for daffy is very nice—the way he hides behind a log to “sneak” up on it, peering his little head out to get a good look. the duck strikes, swallowing the eel in one big gulp, swallowing and gleaming at the camera with his best “ain’t i a stinker?” grin. as he carries on his duck duties, swimming away contentedly, he receives a startling jolt of electricity from the eel inside him. the gag itself is a homage to the same gag in tex’s porky the rain-maker. once calm and content, daffy now skitters across the pond in a fit of terrified quacking, receiving jolts of electricity all the way. the gag has no relevance to the plot really—it just fades out and that’s the end of it, but i enjoy it regardless.

elsewhere, a different plight on a different character: hunger. porky sits in his boat, rifle in hand, waiting for his next fateful visitor to fly across, but the giant sandwich perched next to him is all too tantalizing. he licks his lips in anticipation—surely a quick lunch break can’t hurt if nobody’s coming to be shot, right? interesting to note that the past two cartoons to feature porky as a glutton have been tex avery cartoons—gold diggers of ‘49 and the blow out.

unable to stand it, porky reaches for his sandwich, discarding his rifle for the time being. just as he reaches for his lunch, a gaggle of ducks land right on the boat, quacking at him mockingly. the animation of porky scrambling to reach his gun is great. he doesn’t just reach for it, he swats around aimlessly for a few beats, trying to collect himself. i love how he looks in this cartoon, too. very cute and very appealing. porky finally grabs the gun, preparing to shoot, but all the ducks have flown away. oh well. porky goes back to his lunch, and his visitors fly back down again. in the midst of his scramble, porky grabs the gun the wrong way, nearly killing himself as he shoots the rowboat instead, collapsing into the water. all hopes of a delicious sandwich lunch is gone.

no matter! a random caricature of comedian joe penner is hiding in the pond to bring solace to porky, holding out a duck and giving his garbled catchphrase of “you wanna buy a duck?” something tells me that porky isn’t too enthused.

fade out and in to porky’s trusting hunting dog rin-chin-chin signaling for his master to come over quietly. porky marches out of the pond, swapping his duck decoy for his hunting cap and seeing what the matter is. i’m wondering if this scene was swapped around last minute, or maybe to indicate the passing of time (and more failures), seeing as porky didn’t have his duck decoy hat on in the last scene. nevertheless, magically changing hats aren’t on the top of porky’s mind: daffy swimming tantalizingly right in front of him is.

porky prepares to fire, and daffy once more anticipates his doom... but all he receives is a series of malfunctioning clicks. today is not porky’s day. however, daffy is pleased. so pleased that he marches onshore to HELP a very irate porky, furiously clicking his gun to no avail. i love how porky looks in this scene. very cute. daffy shakes his head and tuts in disapproval. in a great moment of half baked camaraderie, daffy haughtily reaches his hands out, signaling for porky to give him the gun. porky obliges hesitantly, observing as daffy clicks the gun once and fires. a success. daffy’s expression of disapproving indifference is the cherry on top of the entire gag.

with the duty done, daffy returns the gun to porky, who scratches his head in befuddlement. and, as if we could possibly forget, daffy guffaws his short lived catchphrase: “huh-huh, it’s me again.” the timing is lovely: avery could have opted to make daffy preface the interaction by saying “it’s me again”, but waited until the last possible moment to let the absurdity sit on. the line serves as a segue for daffy to make his heel clicking exit in a chorus of HOOHOO!s, once more bounding away from porky.

porky’s determined to get that damn duck if it’s the last thing he does. while daffy flies off, porky fires rapidly. in a homage to the previous airplane gag where the pilots were shot down, porky fires so quickly that he ends up decimating the ground beneath him, digging himself into a physical (and metaphorical) hole with each shot. a few overhead quacks, and porky pulls himself up from his homemade trench.

the V of ducks (or geese?) floating so tantalizingly above porky is like pure gold. figuring his gun wouldn’t be much use as of right now, porky opts to use a duck call instead. he gives it a hearty blow. the duck call is certainly convincing, but hardly in the way porky wanted it to be. the reeds and marshland around him is shot to pieces, the crowd of hunters from earlier mistaking porky for a duck instead. porky shields himself as the fire eventually stops. his happy-go-lucky attitude from the exposition is completely gone now as we spot a rare (for this time, anyway) display of over-boiling emotions. beyond frustrated, porky slams the duck call to the ground in defiance. physics defies his defying, and the duck call bounces right into his dog’s throat.

rin-chin-chin hiccups, and a duck call is emitted instead. porky and his dog ogle at each other, fearing what this could possibly mean. without any more hesitation, they both flop to the ground, taking cover. surprisingly, gunshots are sparse. that doesn’t stop porky from fashioning his own white flag to indicate his surrender. and, in an act of averyism, the gunshots pour in once porky raises his white flag. the animation of porky flopping around helplessly is very nice and rubbery—he’s like a rag doll.

duck season is completely out of the question: it’s pig season now. porky and rin-chin-chin run for the (beautifully painted) rural hills, both trying to dodge the flurry of bullets that follow. it’s like a war zone! finally, they both make it out alive... but miserable in the process. they both sulk as the woefully trudge back home, porky shooting furious glares at his hiccuping/quacking dog, who stares back at him in remorse. the mood is drastically different from the one we saw at the beginning.

finally, porky is in the comfort of his own home, free to mope and sulk as much as he pleases. just as he’s about to get his wallowing on, a cruelly familiar noise sounds out the window. seeing as it was the last cartoon released, it’s only fitting for “she was an acrobat’s daughter” to underscore the gang of ducks outside porky’s house, mockingly frolicking and playing, just waiting to be pierced full of holes.

we get our first porky stutter switch gag as he repeatedly attempts to fire, but to no avail. he’s pissed now. “d-duh-d-d-duh-du-duh-doggone it! nuh-nuh-nn-n-no more bu-buh-buh-b-bu-bu-bul-bull-bulle-buh—eh-shells!” but, as they say, luck favors the prepared, and porky was certainly prepared in the beginning. bad luck strikes porky once more as he tosses his gun away in a huff. in fact, there WAS at least one more bu-buh-b-buh-bul-bulle—shell in the gun. the gun fires, creating a giant hole in porky’s ceiling, parallel to the beginning.

a continuity error all in the name of a gag as we hear angry pounding on the door. porky opens the door and gets another punch to the snout from the same guy before, now marching upstairs with TWO holes in the back of his pants. a funny gag for sure, but the fact that he’s marching upstairs when just previously we saw the outside of porky’s house, ducks flying in his yard, raises a bit of a question. iris out.

but that’s not all, folks! the end of this cartoon has a special visitor: instead of the script writing “that’s all, folks!”, we instead have daffy zooming and zipping around on the lettering, HOOHOO!ing all the way, waving goodbye at his audience.

if you somehow managed to get to the end of this, congrats! what a monumental cartoon. this is not, by any means, the best daffy cartoon ever to exist. it’s a bit rough in some spots, and after the novelty wears off it isn’t as extraordinarily hilarious as it would have been in 1937. but that’s not to say this isn’t one of my favorite cartoons of all time: it absolutely is, despite its flaws. i love this cartoon to death. there’s so much happening! daffy’s first appearance, mel’s first time as porky. so anti-disney of an approach that it would truly shape the rest of the cartoons we’ll be seeing. without this cartoon, who knows if we’d have porky’s hare hunt? and without porky’s hare hunt, who knows if we’d have a wild hare? bugs owes daffy a thank you for his existence. i think this really is one of the most important cartoons in the entirety of looney tunes, moreso than a wild hare. the chances of a wild hare existing without porky’s duck hunt is pretty slim. tex would have no wabbit to rechristen and shape into the bugs we know and love today, because chances are there wouldn’t be a prototype bugs. not that porky hunting cartoons are the end all be all of animation, but they did play a part in spawning some of the most iconic characters in animation history.

as wild as this cartoon is, it’s strangely comforting at the same time. carl stalling’s musical score is out of this world on this one. the wild, zany moments are much more exciting than the exposition, but the exposition is very endearing and perhaps even a little sentimental, at least in my eyes. and, fun fact, there was actually a picture book adaptation made from this cartoon, so i suppose that adds to my view of its sentimentality. it feels like one, big, twisted norman rockwell painting to me. i’m always put in a good mood when watching this cartoon, because i don’t care about the continuity errors or animation errors or what have you. it’s just plain FUN. and again, you have to put yourself in the mindset of a 1937 moviegoer. this cartoon may seem like nothing in comparison to the mayhem we’ve seen in future cartoons, but as of april 17th, 1937, it was an absolute game changer. people had never seen this before. so, thanks to the direction of tex, this cartoon has shaped what looney tunes is today. i love this cartoon, and i’d urge you to watch it anytime, but its historical significance is another pivotal reason why you should watch it, at least once. GO WATCH IT!!!! watch history unfold before your very eyes! you have no reason not to. go do it!!

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#lt #porky’s duck hunt #reviews #looney tunes #long post #avery #whew... we did it fellas

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bwayfanficblog · 6 years ago

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Opinions on the BMC OBCR!

(Friendly reminder this is just my opinion! I think this cast recording is over all insanely good, I’m just being a little nit picky because I’ve loved BMC for a while. I had the privilege of seeing BMC in NYC in March, which was amazing and the live performance did influence my opinions a bit. If you have doubts about Will Roland as Jeremy, seeing it live will flip your opinions. Trust me. ❤️)

(edit: my overall opinion of this is that it’s great, but it’s trying WAY too hard. Am I the only one who thinks that the try hard sound completely erases the actual message of BMC? that you don’t have to be someone or soemthing you’re not to impress someone? I feel like the old score was just as amazing and the new actors could’ve done it justice without all of these wild changes. They basically took the creepy retro vibes out of BMC to keep up with modern broadway. I don’t have a problem with it, I just think that it erases the actual message of the show to an extent. I am so in love with Will Roland! He was wonderful live. Feel free to message me and discuss this!)

More Than Survive

- Inclusion of more dialogue is good but I kinda think it breaks up the flow a little

- Will Roland yesss, this song is actually how he sounded live, I wish you could see how incredible he looked and acted during this song

- Inclusion of the “Boyf” dialogue is cute and definitely should’ve been added to begin with

- The new harmonies on “Christineeee” where Jeremy goes up a step is so nice

- Michael’s new part is just as adorable as before, kinda sad they took out the “so own it!” line tho

- Buttt more sweet giggles from Michael makes up for it!

- I don’t like how they cut off the last Canigula so quickly to make room for the chorus singing though idk

- The louder beat slaps tho

- I don’t like how Chloe’s last “I like gay people” is isolated unlike the original cast recording

- Will gives a heartbreaking “I’m never gonna be the cool guy” performance though like damn I almost cried

- The “na na na” is now “na ahh ahh ahh” if that makes sense and it doesn’t give as much impact which makes me wanna die bc that part was so pretty

- Will’s riffs at the end make up for it

I love play rehearsal

- There’s more instruments at the start and I think a flute which is so pretty!!

- Stephanie yessss with those improved vocals

- I think the extra instruments overpower her soft sweet sound at some points in the song tho

- YESS the dialogue that’s now included yesss

- The extra instruments at the end actually add more tho I love it

- A little more dramatic

More than survive (reprise)

- ICONIC

- IM SO HAPPY THEY INCLUDED THIS

- nothing bad to say other than I’m not a fan of the weird pop-y instrumental at the end, when I saw it I think it was a little more spread out instead of included in the song but I could be wrong

The Squip Song

- Gerard’s vocals have gotten even better like yes

- The instrumental sounds about the same as the old recording which makes me glad they didn’t change it too much

- Jeremy sounds scared when he says “you got quick” and I don’t know why ? That’s kinda odd like buddy are you good

- Is rich ok like at all in this song

- The song isn’t as like soft if that makes sense

Two Player Game

- Michael sounds like wants to die when he says “apocalypse of the damned” at the start shaksksks

- BUT THIS SONG IS SO GOOD it’s another one they didn’t change very much

- The instrumental is a little more pop-y but otherwise it’s still got that retro vibe

- George was keeping it real and not changing his vocals in the song for us thank u

- Will Roland come thru with those harmonies once again

- Jeremy’s verse is really soft and sweet and I love it he just sounds done

- The extra lil video game sounds are spot on

- The “You know that you are my favorite person” lines are done so perfect but I’m sad Michael’s little giggle isn’t as prominent

The Squip Enters

- Jake’s “that freak is freaking out” isn’t that funny in this recording sjsksksksk I’m sad

- The Squip’s surfer voice was less prominent live and more realistic and I’m not sure I like it that much in the recording

Be More Chill PT 1

- The Squip has a solo part at the start!! It’s adorable

- Jason Tam yessss

- The Squip calling Jeremy Bae and Boo makes me wanna die tho

- The first part isn’t sung anymore which makes me wanna die too bc he has such a nice voice

- The Squip’s vocals in the chorus tho yes ma’am

- Instead of Jeremy saying “Jesus” he just has a lil panic attack that poor boy

- The Squip kinda sounds British in some parts of it

- You can hear George doing a funny voice for his mall character which makes me laff

- “Jerry?” —“jerry-ME” I love Will

- Chloe is a lot more pissed in this song

Do you wanna ride

- The instruments overpower Brooke in some parts

- They didn’t change the vocal lines too much but they did slow the song a bit ?

- The harmonies are really nice though come through Brooke and Chloe

- The end is also sped up a little

- Brooke’s giggle and the little French at the end was so cute

Be More Chill PT II

- “Everything about me makes me wanna die” LINE WAS SO SAD

- the instrumental build up was so incredible !!

- This is probably my favorite song for the Squip he just brings it vocally

- JEREMY’S LITTLE GIGGLE AFTER “be mORe CHILL” I CRIED

Sync Up

- This replaces the original More than survive reprise

- I don’t like how it takes Michael’s little part out of it because I think it was necessary plus the instrumental part of that slapped

- Also I think it gives us a good insight into the characters but it could’ve been placed somewhere else maybe?

- I also think the beat isn’t very uniform and is kinda messy and the dialogue is more interesting than the actual song

- It shows how nice Jeremy is tho

- I liked this song live better because the actual song just isn’t interesting enough to be a song on its own

- Jeremy and Brooke’s interactions in the song is really nice

- I love the distorted little “na na na” from more than survive though you can tell it’s slightly off

- I don’t like “head to play rehearsal” instead of “drama practice” though I don’t think it flows well

- I’m sad they changed one of my favorite songs !!

A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into

- Once again stronger instrumental, especially guitar

- The vocal track doesn’t seem to be changed very much again thank u god

- Weird clappy sounds ??

- The harmony on “absolutely” YES

- Christine’s little breathy laugh after “I guess there’s a part of me that wants to” yes sir

Upgrade

- Brooke speaking French at the start SNSKSKSKSOSK

- I think the dialogue gives more insight into Brooke and Jeremy’s relationship

- “Jere-Bear” NAJAKAKA

- THEY TOOK THE LITTLE “damn” OUT NO

- Jake and Christine’s part is cute but it felt a little out of place for some reason and I don’t know why, like the little sad dialogue they have about Jake’s parents feels weird but it’s really

- “I’m tired of being the person everyone thinks that I am” feels like it should’ve been a part of sync up instead of upgrade

- Brooke saying she was happy Jeremy looking at her instead of Chloe first made me wanna bawl

- Also it makes me wanna punch Jeremy

- Poor Jenna got like 1 like in this song

- I feel like it wasn’t smooth transition into Loser Geek Whatever at the end I don’t like the whole weird chorus thing leading into it at all

- Feels out of place without Michael’s little part at the end, I’m sad they’re cutting significant Michael parts, I know they kept it in LGW but it felt more in place in upgrade

Loser Geek Whatever

- It’s great and Will re recorded it for the album because it seems to have more emotion and be more genuine

- He sounds super excited at the start and it makes happy

- One of the few songs that managed to keep BMC’s kinda creepy computer tech vibe which is weird because it wasn’t even in the original album I wonder if it was written newly or was a draft from the first run back in 2013-2015

- A little more upbeat but in a good way

- Will’s vocals sound a lot better than the first recording

- Extra beeping at “my one real friend” was nice

Halloween

- Brooke does a little bark at the start awe

- The beat doesn’t go as hard as the OG cast recording which sucks bc it went hard

- Everyone kinda sounds like they wanna die at the start again which seems like common theme??

- The chorus doesn’t slap either what

- The song also got cut a little short I think unless I’m crazy but I feel like it was longer than this?

- Extra verse at the end and I don’t really like it

- Kinda boring now and doesn’t give you a panic attack vibe like the OG one did

Do You Wanna Hang

- Only song where they changed a lot that made it better

- Included the dialogue at the start which makes the song make more sense

- The Squip’s Voice is so smooth ssnskskskw

- Chloe’s losing her mind a little but I love it

Michael in the Bathroom

- Jesus George’s vocals OWN MY WHOLE ASS

- He’s only gotten better somehow

- No to the new pop-y sounds in it it takes sad creepy feel out of it

- Too much instrumental added bc it doesn’t sound like ballad anymore

- I dunno how I feel about it because George’s vocals are perfect but the instrumental is doing him dirty and not making it sad enough

- This song gives me anxiety now wjsjsksks and I don’t know if that’s good or bad?

- The few lines and instrumental lines are the same as the OG which is good

A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into (reprise)

- SO HAPPY THEY INCLUDED THIS TOO

- Whoever’s playing that flute was told to play that shit LOUD

- Jeremy’s “Christineee” omg he’s so in love

The Smartphone Hour

- The new instrumental sounds at the start sound bonk

- The phone sound effects make me wanna die dndkjssk

- Tiffany Mann’s voice COME THROUGH

- The “whoaaaa” was changed which makes me sad

- I’m glad they specified it was Jake’s house because when I listened to the OG one at first I was like did he just burn down a random house ??

- The dialogue between Chloe and Brooke is kinda dramatic now but it’s not a bad thing

- KATHYLN CARLSON’S VOICE IN HER SOLO CHORUS YES SIS

- the whistle noise has gotta go that’s what my track coaches whistle sounded like when I wasn’t running fast enough

- I’m scared now the dance break sounds like salsa music

- “Matches, ashes” was changed to “drama, drama” girl what

- Brooke’s screams yes

- The random auto tune voices in the back are trying to capture the creepy vibe that this song originally has but isn’t doing it

- This song isn’t changed much though and still has the OG vibes which is good

The Pants Song

- The weird piano at the start scares me

- The lyrics have changed a bit too

- I’m not too familiar with this song because I don’t listen to it so often but it doesn’t sound too different from the OG cast recording which is good instrumental wise

- The chorus sounds different though I don’t know how I feel about it

- The “Michael in the bathroom” melody playing in the back during the dialogue YES

- Omg the dialogue where Jeremy’s dad tells him to say it like he’s in the army omg I’m weak

- YES THE HARMONY RIGHT AFTER RHAY DIALOGUE

The Pitiful Children

- My fav song

- Not this version I don’t think but

- I don’t mind the lyric changes but I think it takes the dark creepy techno vibe out of the song

- If it was anyone other than Jason Tam singing this version I wouldn’t like it

- The chorus lost its punch with this new pop sound

- I’m really confused as to why the lyrics had to change tho these make less on an impact, I think a solo song with Jeremy and the Squip about Christine would’ve cooler

- The Squip and Jeremy’s harmonies tho like fuck me up

- The techno voice singing “lets save the pitiful children” is eh like it makes it cheesy

- I’m scared of the Squip singing “Squip Squip Squip”

- “Everything about us” run is still amazing as always

- I just realized the Squip is using Christine to manipulate Jeremy into squipping everyone that makes sense that’s why the lyrics are changing

The Play

- The dialogue at the start is different but it makes sense, it’s Jeremy realizing the Squip made him Squip the whole cast

- The instrumental sound is the same thankfully

- “Michael makes an entrance” sounds like Michael wants to die is he good

- It adds Michael and Jeremy’s fighting dialogue in it which I like and adds the two player game melody in the back

- Jake’s “living the upgrade” line was cut short :((( I love his voice

- They changed the “having sex” convo between Brooke and Chloe which doesn’t make it relevant to that scene anymore ?? But they also validate each other so idc

- The “I love play rehearsal” melody playing when Christine talks yes ma’am

- “I’m stronger than you think I am” I LOVE JEREMY

- The LGW melody playing when Jeremy is telling the Squip to fuck off

- Jeremy and Michael saying “oh god” back and fourth to each other in different tones of voice is an accurate representation of having a best friend conversation

Voices in my head

- The start sounds like pac-man and I’m so here for it

- RICH HAS HIS LISP YES QUEEN also his harmonies !!

- This instrumental is kept pretty much the same too which I’m happy about

- “Don’t dump her on Halloween” BYE I love u Brooke

- “We are your squad” AWE

- It’s so pure

- The second verse has some lyric changes but I like them more

- LGW melody is playing when he and Christine talk which is so soft bc he’s like owning being a loser?

- The “bowling alley performance art” line wouldn’t make sense if you haven’t watched the show but it’s cute

- The loud flute is present again shsksksksks

- Awe the ending harmonies are soft

- The Squip was tripping balls in the end of that wtf

- The “na na na” runs at the end don’t sound like the more than survive ones sjsksksk

- “You ready?” I LOVE

- Jeremy is such a dork and I love that so much in this song

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holocron-inthe-restrictedsection · 5 years ago

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Okay it's a lot but: 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, and 19 for Lethaa and Naras? (Feel free to substitute/add any questions you'd like to answer!) 🌺💕

Yesssssss I was so excited to get this! Thanks, Mercedes! 💛

So, this got reeaaaally long and rambly. My bad. I just have a lot of thoughts about these two, and I’m excited to share. Click “keep reading” to see my response!

(also, sorry if it formats weirdly - I copy-pasted from a word doc, and tumblr mobile doesn’t like that for some reason)

Ask me questions about creating my OCs!

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)?

For Lethaa, it was her name and position. For Naras, it was the descriptor “the Togruta senator’s wife”

They popped into my head at about the same time. I created them to be throwaway characters in a short story I wrote called “Shall We Dance” (I may someday go back to it and add a few chapters. No promises). There was some dialogue between Anakin and Obi-Wan about different controversial viewpoints in the Senate, and I just needed a senator or two to mention in passing. –

“But these are some of the most outspoken public figures in the Republic. Take Senator Lethaa Daal.” [Obi-Wan] flashed a smile in the direction of the Togruta senator and her wife as they passed. The women returned the smile and made their way arm-in-arm into the grand hall. “She has been very scornful regarding the Senate’s tendency to dedicate resources to systems that are strategic to military movements, as opposed to who needs it most.”

It might have ended there, but I received feedback from a few different readers saying how they appreciated the mention of Senator Daal’s wife. There seemed to be an interest, so I sat on the idea of them for a while.

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?

Since Lethaa was fully fleshed out first, I made Naras with Lethaa in mind. I knew I wanted her to have her own objectives and life – she couldn’t continue to just be “Lethaa’s wife”. So I tried to give her a profession that was critical in its own way, which is why I went with healing, so that their “importance” (for lack of a better word) was equal to each other.

I guess Lethaa was partially created in response the frustrating politics of the galactic senators. They all make their alliances, play the game to get the upper hand, all while gaining very little ground. I wanted to make a character that found the subtly of politics maddening, and wasn’t afraid to get in someone’s face and tell them exactly why their policies or views were dumb or harmful. I wanted to make someone who could be aggressive without calling into question their moral alignment.

And while it’s not a character, I really really wanted to design or add to a culture that doesn’t get explored much in the Star Wars universe. I took what elements I could find about Togruta culture from Wookipedia, but it was rather lacking, so I made up the rest. I already loved Togruta designs, and wanted characters that could interact within their own culture.

3. How did you choose their name? (Added this because it was Relevant)

If my memory is right, Lethaa Daal’s name came from combining a few names I found on the Togruta name generator (which I HIGHLY recommend btw). I decided to keep it after I finished her design because the first name reminded me of “lethal”, and by that point I knew that was a good descriptor of her. ‘Daal’ came about because I tend to put way too many A’s in my togruta names, and I was for some reason thinking about Roald Dahl at that time, but I also found that I liked how it could be mispronounced as “doll”. I was highly amused by the idea of a “lethal doll” – woe unto anyone who looked at Lethaa and only acknowledged her for her beauty.

Naras Tyn came about because lots of my female ocs tend to have names that end in A or E (IE/I/Y, etc), and I didn’t want to do it again. I wanted a short last name, and I just liked how “Tyn” sounded – it was concise and melodic. ‘Naras’ I think also came from the name generator. I remember being bummed when I realized it sounded so similar to Barriss and Maris (already existing characters), but by that time I was attached. Her first name just sounds calming, and it just sounded right imagining Lethaa calling for her.

11. Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?

Heck yes I did. There really wasn’t any hesitation. The thought process went: Senator –> Togruta Senator –> female Togruta Senator –> has a spouse –> a wife, cuz why not. And that was that.

12. What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: writing, drawing, edits, etc.)?

Everything.

Lol, jk. I mean, as much fun as I have with all the colors and markings of the two, my own drawing ability is kinda limited in terms of body positions. So some things I’d love to draw (Lethaa vs. the rancor, Naras on a medical mercy mission during the Clone Wars, etc.) are taking a long time for me to sketch out. It can be frustrating, but it’s a work in progress.

And writing is hard too. The story ideas in my head play out as nice little movies. Getting it all down on paper while conveying emotion without overloading, describing setting, and making it engaging – that’s all trickier.

But overall, the most difficult thing is trying to figure out what exactly I’m going to do! I have other OCs I want content for, and canon characters I want to explore – and then I have to decide between drawing and writing. There’s not enough hours in the day for me to draw and write everything I want, so I have to pick and choose.

13. How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all?

Still a work in progress. I jump from one event to the next without writing it in chronological order. I’ve started their story before the start of the Clone Wars, sometime between episodes I and II. Might write some earlier snippets about their childhoods (though they didn’t meet until they were adults).

I’ve got some ideas for what they do during the Empire era (some of which was influenced by one of the Star Wars D&D games I play), but I haven’t written any of that out yet. I do know they live to see the fall of the Empire, and the emergence of the New Republic. They pass away peacefully of old age on Shili.

19. What is your favorite fact a fun fact about your OC?

I had to change this from “favorite” to “fun” because I like everything about them and I’m still developing them. So I thought I might drop a little trivia that I haven’t managed to work into any stories or art yet.

Lethaa was on a hunting trip with her father – Barin – and a few others in her twenties. After her cousin killed their prey, Barin asked her to prepare the meat for dinner. She did her best with it but waaaaaaay overcooked it, and when Barin asked about it, she said, “I… never actually learned how to cook meat.”

Bewildered, Barin said, “But we’ve been on dozens of hunting trips! How could I have never taught you??”

And Lethaa’s just like, “I was the one to kill the prey on most of those trips.”

And Barin and the others can’t help but laugh, because according to tradition, the one who kills the prey while hunting in a group is served the first piece, but never is the one to prepare it. So it makes complete sense that she never had to cook it, because she was always served the first dish. Her cousin actually liked his meat overdone, though, so he was perfectly fine with his meal.

Also, I just came up with this so I have no idea of the context, but there is a 100% chance that there was an instance or two where Lethaa – tall Amazonian though she is – couldn’t reach something. Unable to climb to retrieve it and without a stepstool, muttering darkly, she would disconnected her prosthetic arm and used it as an extender to pull it towards her.

Naras can fall asleep anywhere. Even before she became a physician/healer, she had the uncanny ability to close her eyes and be asleep within minutes. Lying down, standing while braced against something, sitting, lounging between skyfaring silks (she’d gotten bored waiting for her Gatalentian friend to come back from the holocall he’d had to take). No nap is too short – she wakes feeling rested even if it’s only been five minutes. She wakes easily, fully alert.

Naras sings and hums to her plants and patients. It’s not uncommon to walk into her clinic and hear her singing a folk song or a current hit. She definitely encourages sing-alongs anytime nervous children are brought in, and at night broadcasts spiritual songs important to Togruta culture over the PA system – at a very quiet volume, of course. Naras has a garden at home – a singfruit tree surrounded by flowers and bushes, some of which are not native to Shili – and the plants routinely get hummed and sung at as she tends to them. Lethaa loves waking up in the morning to hear her wife’s singing voice drifting in from an open window.

Thank you again so much for the ask!! This was a lot of fun!Also, I really do appreciate your interest in my OCs (especially these two). It means a lot to me 🌺🌷

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theresas-sound-world-blog · 4 years ago

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Theresa’s Sound World Interview

Person: Nicolás Castello

Bands: Nax

Genre/s: Shoegaze/Indie/Dreampop/Ambient/ Post-Punk

Based in: Buenos Aires, Argentina

In my interview, I talk to Nicolás Castello of Argentinian band, Nax about music, inspirations, guitars, pedals and Shoegaze⭐️

1. When did you first feel the impulse to create music ‘’and why?

I started doing music at 17 years old. in that year, something very important to me happened and I felt completely alone. My life changed forever. That was one of the main reasons for me trying to starting to learn something new such as learning to play an instrument and make music. ( I felt old at that moment because of I started from scratch).

2. Can you name the top ten inspirations for your music? It can be anything, bands, songs, albums, books, poems, art, films, people, your own life experiences…

A broken heart

The moon

The sky

My cats

The clouds

Edward Munch

To dissapear

Van Gogh

3. Before Nax, what were you doing musically? Were you in any different bands and/or solo music projects?

In the very beggining I played in a group called "Dorian" with whom I rehearsed and played live for the first times. That was the first group in wich I played and sung.

Before Nax I formed a group with other people called “ (plástico) “ around the 2000’s. In 2008 we broke up and I finished our only LP called "Inercia". In 2010’s I released a solo album called “Infinito”. Also: In all that time I played in a lot of local groups. From time to time there was need for a bassist, or for a guitarrist and I played a lot, rehearsing and playing live.

4. Can you tell me a bit about how Nax got started?

After releasing "Infinito" on my own I wanted to play those songs live and I started to rehearse with other musicians From all that people that I played back then, there were two very special ones, with whom I still kept playing in Nax a lot of years later. Those two human beings are Jonathan Sansone and Juan Marcos Hernandez; the very first formation of Nax in 2013.

5.In listening to Nax’s music, I’ve always thought that your Argentinian accent and your use of Spanish as vocals really complement the music. I’ve found that certain music genres seem to suit certain languages. For instance, there’s several modern Dreampop bands who are and sing in French, reminding me of French pop-chanteuses of the 1960s, so is something that may be rooted in the musical consciousness. Have you any thoughts as to why Spanish might suit Shoegaze?

That’s a nice question. I never thought in this but it may not suprise me that there is some kind of "logic" between genres and languages. I sing in spanish mainly because that’s how I feel it, and I feel it natural in my song-writing as well as how my feelings are expressed. I have no clue if (and why) spanish may suit Shoegaze; but after been awfully bored with Argentinian groups singing in english, I´m very proud of Nax’s spanish songs, because they are very real, very sincere.

6. One of the key trademarks of Shoegaze is its use of guitar pedals to create weird and wonderful soundscapes. With your own music, do you add guitars pedals to an existing song in the same way an artist might use paints to a pencil sketch to flesh it out? Or, do pedals help create, inform, or guide a song? Or is a mixture of both existing songs exhanced by pedals and some songs existing as a result of pedals?

I would say that for me, at least, it´s the last option. Both things. I like to trick myself, so if I discovered something that works very good, I will go and search other ways to make things sound, and play with that I know that works and some, new things waiting to be made.

7. To follow up on the last question, do you take an ordered approach with the settings on your guitar pedals which you know will create certain effects or do you just twist knobs and press buttons and discover interesting sounds by accident?

Thanks to knowing the tools that I use: I can imagine the sounds that the guitar pedals (for example) con provide before playing. So I usually imagine the sounds before playing and recording. Anyways there are other moments (and songs) for experiment, and see what you can do with a unknown chain of effects, or an unknown -twisting knobs-.

8. Have you got an absolute favourite guitar you own and why is it your favourite ? Also have you got a preferred guitar pedal?

The most special one for me it´s Jagmaster Squier that I had modified (and upgraded) almost every part on it. With that guitar I played like a million gigs and composed like a million songs. So: she and I have a special history.

I love all the guitar pedals, but the Reverbs and the Delays by Boss are old-friends of Nax.

9. As a fan of Shoegaze, I’ve noticed there has been a renaissance of the genre in recent years, with it’s popularity and the volume of new and interesting bands always on the rise. As a Alternative music listener back in the 1990s, I saw how the original wave of Shoegaze bands started to disappear, often dismissed and ridiculed by the music press and in the popular culture of the time. Can you think why Shoegaze has perhaps in the 21st century been, in some ways, reborn?

Great question. Probably with music (as with other things in life in general) the movement of everything can be explained with the " Kondratieff waves ".

10. I really enjoyed your recent collaboration with singer Jackie Kasbohm of Echodrone fame. How did that come about?

I´m happy to know that! Jackie heard some of the "Congelado" songs and she approach to me in the 2020. We become good-internet-friends, she is a really nice human being,a caring and supportive musician and a great artist. Around September of 2020, I think, we started to talk about doing a song together and she sent me a little Casiotone-loop. I change the pitch of the loop to a "C" (I had to move it only a couple of cents) and I picked four chords for the first part. I recorded a demo for her and she starting to work on her vocals. A couple of months and work later we already had "En la Mañana".

11.Have you any plans for Nax, post-pandemic? Gigs, new recordings, collaborations, side projects?...

The future is uncertain. I would love to keep composing new songs, and new albums. And maybe at some point I would love to play live again, but not for now or in the near future.

And finally, for fun...

12. A line of dialogue written by film director Quentin Tarantino ...‘There’s only two types of people in the world, Beatles people and Elvis people’ Perhaps a little limited in scope, but do you sway more towards the Fab Four or The King or, perhaps both and why?

Good phrase. I choose The Beatles. I don’t consider myself as a fan or anything similar, but in the late years I started to take them as an" educative " group. I try to learn from their songs, I like to analyze them, at least for fun.

🎼Listen to Nax on Bandcamp: https://naxmusic.bandcamp.com

🎼Listen to Nax on ITunes: https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/nax/1140322367

🎼Listen to Nax on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1DOiimsENflMV8AukuEx7u?si=DSKjTKQtTCqz_ifoI86xqw

🎬Nax on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/user/naxargentina/videos?fbclid=IwAR25vxyHXz3ucCGe_FSeqct-oJOIA6P4wj-D5dEwozz6VzgkQii_gDdv01U

#TheresasSoundWorld #MusicBlog #TSW #Blog #MusicWriter #MusicBlogger #MusicReviews #UndergroundMusic #AlternativeMusicBlog #MusicChat #Shoegaze #Bandcamp #Shoegazers #Shoegazing #Dreampop #Indie #AlternativeRock #IndieGuitarSwing #Nax #DreamGaze #Gaze #Gazer #EssentialMusic

#alternative music #underground music #theresa’s sound world #music blogger #punk #music blog #music writer #shoegaze #uk #tsw #Nax #Argentinian #argentina #buenos aires #post punk

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queen-erika-the-songful · 8 years ago

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Beauty and the Beast 2017 Soundtrack - My Thoughts

This is gonna be a SUPER LONG one, so check it out below the break if you’re interested.

Also, this is just my own personal opinion. If you like some of the songs I don’t or vice versa, that’s perfectly fine. It’s just my own thoughts, and feel free to share your own.

1. Overture – Alan Menken

Wow, this was actually really good! You don’t really hear overtures for films anymore, so that was kind of refreshing. I also really like how well the medley flowed. It sounds like it could’ve been the overture for the musical. Surprisingly great first track.

2. Main Title: Prologue Pt. I – Alan Menken; Hattie Morahan

Oh, I really tried to make sure my nostalgia didn’t cloud this one. Hattie Morahan is narrating as the Enchantress, which is an interesting choice, I think. A few lines are changed and added, which is alright. Nothing can live up to how iconic the original was, though.

3. Aria – Audra McDonald

This song feels kind of random to me, but to give credit Audra McDonald’s voice is nice. She sounds like she is having fun, which is always a good thing to me.

4. Main Title: Prologue Pt. 2 – Alan Menken

Back to the Prologue. It’s not bad, but like I said, nothing can match the original. It sounds like it’s really trying to be epic and grand, kind of in the vein of the original and the musical. I didn’t really like how she said the last line.

5. Belle – Emma Watson, Luke Evans, Ensemble

Emma Watson does not have a strong singing voice. She sounds very auto-tuned and polished, and you can really hear it in her lower notes. She uses her chest voice too much, if she had a more light tone it would be more fitting. The ensemble is alright; I do like that they didn’t try to completely mimic the original, and even chance up the parts for some of the lines. There is something I do genuinely think is a cool change, which is Belle saying “do you have any new places to go” instead of “any new books”. That was interesting. Lots of other dialogue changes from the original. Wait, Gaston is a war hero? Luke Evans has a better voice than Watson, but it’s still lacking that “overly macho” quality that Richard White and Burke Moses had. Ooh, they cut out the “Bojours” at the end. I don’t like that.

6. How Does a Moment Last Forever (Music Box) – Kevin Kline

This is the first of the three new songs Alan Menken and Tim Rice wrote for this film. I do really like Kevin Kline’s voice. It’s very soft and comforting. The song itself is alright, but it doesn’t really match any of the other songs. I think “No Matter What” is better, but I guess since Maurice is a music box maker and Belle is the inventor now, it might not have made as much since in the story. Overall, it’s still sweet and nice.

7. Belle (Reprise) – Emma Watson

Emma sounds a bit better here, since the song has a bit of a higher key. Her vocals still aren’t very powerful, but honestly I don’t think it’s that bad of a version. There’s still some noticeable auto-tune in a couple places, but it does not sound nearly as bad as it did in the trailers. Some of it actually sounds pretty raw.

8. Gaston – Josh Gad, Luke Evans, Ensemble

Josh Gad is…just okay. I like that he’s bringing his own style to the song, but sometimes it sounds like he’s trying too hard to be a “funnier” LeFou. The new lyrics are surprising, though they still fit. Sometimes they slow drag out the song, though. Luke Evans sounds much better here than he did in “Belle”, giving more of a big performance. There is a weird breakdown that seemingly comes out of nowhere, but the song was stretched out for the Broadway musical too so I suppose it isn’t bad. The “illiterate” joke at the end with LeFou would’ve just been an unnecessary add-on, but knowing that is also supposed to be gay makes it kind of uncomfortable.

9. Be Our Guest – Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen

Here it is, the big one. I think Ewan McGregor actually did a good job as Lumiere. I mean, he had to follow after Jerry Orbach and Gary Beach, both of which were pretty iconic in their portrayls. He sounds like he’s having the time of his life, which, as I’ve said, is always a good thing to me. Emma Thompson is a fine Mrs. Potts. The others were fine too, they really channeled the original while still trying to be their own version. Ian McKellen’s vocals were a surprise; I liked his singing.

10. Days In The Sun – Adam Mitchell, Stanley Tucci, Ewan McGregor, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Emma Watson, Audra McDonald, Clive Rowe

Here’s the second of the three new songs. Still some audio-tune here and there, but overall the vocals were good. It’s no “Human Again”, but I think it actually does fit for the supporting cast and Belle.

11. Something There – Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I was really hoping they’d expand this one the same way they did for the musical, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. Emma sounds best here, there was a lot less auto-tune on her, allowing her to actually sound sweet and light. I actually really like Dan Stevens singing as the Beast. He sounds a lot like Terrance Mann in the musical.

12. How Does a Moment Last Forever (Montmartre) – Emma Watson

Emma sounds pretty good here too. Her voice, again, isn’t strong, but it’s actually pretty fitting for this one. It’s a very quiet and soft song, so she sounds just fine.

13. Beauty and the Beast – Emma Thompson

Oh, here it is: the other big one. I think we can all agree that Angela Lansbury’s version cannot be topped, so it may be unfair of me to compare it to the original. But honestly, I think Emma Thompson did a wonderful job! I mean I don’t like how she kept changing the rhythm of the lines, but her voice is good. Not to mention the orchestration here is downright beautiful. I think I’d put this version as equal with the Broadway version with Bette Fowler. Not the original, but still an honestly good version of it.

14. Evermore – Dan Stevens

This is the last of the new songs. This is a solo written for the Beast. So, this is basically our replacement for “If I Can’t Love Her”, a song that is absolute perfection. To its credit, however, Dan Stevens does a good job as the Beast. He has a very nice tone and a good somber timbre. I really don’t think it’s anywhere as good as “If I Can’t Love Her”, but that one takes place at an earlier part of the story, when Belle runs away from the castle. This song is clearly taking place after he lets her go, so it does fit the moment much more. So it’s probably just my disappointment that is blinding me. It is a good song, I just think that I need to listen to it a couple more times to see if I personally like it or not.

15. The Mob Song – Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Ensemble

Okay, who gave them permission to make this actually AS GOOD as the original?? Luke Evans is at his very best here. His voice isn’t big and macho, but he’s really scary. He plays up the manipulation here and honestly it REALLY works. The new lines are also fitting too. LeFou sounds almost reluctant to do this; I wonder if he’s going to turn against Gaston in the end (oh please let that happen). This version is honestly really good and I think it’s the best remake of the songs. It’s on par with the original.

16. Beauty and the Beast (Finale) – Audra McDonald, Emma Thompson, Ensemble

Wow, I think Audra McDonald singing this a bit more than Emma Thompson. Her voice really is beautiful. I also like the new lyrics that were added. This is a good one.

17. How Does a Moment Last Forever – Celine Dion

Now we move into the covers/pop remixes. Celine Dion sounds – well, like Celine Dion. Her voice is good, and though her accent can be thick, I don’t think it’s fair to say it “clouds” the words like some people in the comments are saying. Overall, though, this track isn’t much of a stand out. I think this one is just okay.

18. Beauty and the Beast – Ariana Grande, John Legend

I know a lot of people aren’t really fans of the Celine Dion/Peabo Bryson version of this song, but I can say it’s way better than this one. The vocals are good, but it always sounds like Grande is trying to sing over Legend, who honestly has the better voice for this song. I also think there is way too much orchestration here. I know Celiene Dion did the same thing, but it wasn’t every two seconds like here. The backing music is also trying way too hard. The original pop version kept it simple, just a soft rock organ and some strings. This is honestly a skip for me. I think it should’ve just been John Legend and his piano. It would be a much better version than what we got. This is the worst one of the remakes.

19. Evermore – Josh Groban

Josh Groban does a very good cover for this song. His vocals are really great. I think the orchestration is the same as the movie version, so there isn’t really anything to compare here. I think I like this version slightly more because Groban’s voice is just so raw and emotional, he really bring out the feelings in this song. (I’d also recommend listening to his version of “If I Can’t Love Her”, it almost made me cry.). I think this is one of the best ones on the album.

Tracks 20-24 are just demos sung by Alan Menken.

I haven’t heard the rest of the score yet (that’s in the 2-Disc Version) and I probably won’t give my thoughts on them unless something really stands out.

Further thoughts – Overall, I do like the new arrangements and orchestration of the songs. They have enough of the original in them to make them recognizable, but they also don’t try to be a straight up carbon copy of the original. Even the Broadway musical didn’t try to do that, so I think it’s actually a good thing. Some of the singers needed more training, in my opinion, but a lot of them were really good too. I still stand by that there should have been some of the Broadway songs in here, but considering Emma’s voice, I don’t think she could’ve pulled off “Home”, and perhaps they would’ve slowed down the film. All in all, I think the soundtrack is alright. Not egregiously bad, but also not on the level of the original or the Broadway version.

#batb 2017 #beauty and the beast #long post

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plotlinehotline · 8 years ago

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Hey! I'm planning a story where both "real life" and sci-fi are included in the meaning that androids with AI exist in the world but most people aren't aware of it. Now I have planned almost the whole "reality" part and I found out that I don't know what to do about the sci-fi part which is not the main part of the plot. I want both parts be harmonic with each other so sci-fi wouldn't look out of place . Do you have an advice on this theme? I hope, It's clear what I mean. Thank you!

Hey there!

Let me ask you this: If the science fiction side of this isn’t the main part of the plot, and the characters that are part of the reality side of the plot don’t know the sci-fi side exists, how do the stories interconnect? Before you can establish harmony, you need to establish unison.

And now let me thank you very much for the use of the word “harmonic” because now I’m going to go off on a musical metaphor which I’m hoping will be fun!

If you’ve got two plots that exist somewhat independently of each other, that rarely interact, then you’ve got two people singing two different songs at the same time. It can be confusing and overwhelming to listen to, and while they might occasionally hit the same note at the same time, or even sing the same word at the same time, it’s hard to appreciate the symmetry when the rest of it is all over the place. If the two people coordinate ahead of time and sing the same song, then it becomes pleasant to listen to. And if they put in the work, they might end up harmonizing, which will make it even more beautiful.

So, if you didn’t understand all that metaphorical nonsense (kudos to you if you did), let me explain it in actual writing terms now.

Two storylines that rarely intersect, where one storyline might be supporting, or backing up the other, or maybe even just adding interest…it doesn’t necessarily mean they go together. Two great songs become unlistenable when you play them at the same time. So anon, look at the reality side. Why do you need the sci-fi elements to tell a complete story? What is the sci-fi adding to it? One of my favorite tools of solving writing problems is good old cause and effect. When something happens on your reality side, does that event become the cause of some conflict (the effect) on the sci-fi side? And vice versa: does something happen on the sci-fi side that causes a conflict on the reality side? Is that the connection?

If this kind of connection doesn’t fit yet, see if you can make it fit. Look at the events you have plotted out on both sides of your plot and see if you can apply cause and effect to any of these events. Once you’ve done that, you at least have them singing in unison. They’re meant to be sung together. Now, you have to figure out how to get them to sing well together, to harmonize.

One big way to accomplish this is to bring two divergent storylines together. You’ve already established cause and effect between the two sides, which immediately suggests that the two should converge at some point, even if it’s not until the climax of the story. If you find that the two sides of your plot can’t ever converge, then you might need to revisit the possibility that the stories don’t belong together. If the science fiction element of the story is merely a subplot, then it really would serve you better to put it in a drawer for later, when you might be able to develop it into a story by itself.

If you are able to converge the two plots, you can do even more to harmonize the two by adding things like parallels and foreshadowing.

I’m sure you all are tired of my Harry Potter examples, but I like using it since it’s something I know many people have read.

“Parallelism is my personal favorite story element. Why? Because parallelism makes light bulbs go off. Here’s a prime example: in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we’re told the Tale of the Three Brothers. The first brother died for power, the second died for lost love, and the third greeted death like an old friend. Well, look at the Second War. Voldemort sought ultimate power and died as a result. Snape died for lost love (Lily Potter died at Voldemort’s hand). Harry walked into the forest, ready to die, ready to greet death for the benefit of all.

“Parallelism can also be between events, characters, settings, and dialogue. There is no limit. You can easily foreshadow something using parallelism if you an event early on that leads to a similar point later in the story. Readers will be able to analyze events and make connections to other parts of the story. Because parallelism allows for so much flexibility in the plot, you can weave multiple events together.”

from 5 Basic Literary Devices That Will Deepen Your Fiction

An example of foreshadowing comes in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The time turner became a key component in the climax of the book. It would have been completely out of the blue if Hermione had suddenly announced that she had this device that could take them back in time. To compensate for that, JK Rowling added hints of it earlier in the novel, with Hermione constantly popping up unexpectedly, or taking classes that overlap. Foreshadowing is one of those things that you rarely pay much attention to during a first read, but when you read it a second time, with the knowledge of what happens later, you notice those small hints of what’s to come, and it adds depth to the novel.

The reason I suggest these two techniques is because they’re great at making connections between seemingly disconnected plot points.

The last thing I’ll say is that it’s difficult to say if any of this will apply to my anon’s story since I don’t have specifics, but hopefully all this will give you some things to think about.

-Rebekah

#ask r #foreshadowing #parallelism

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

TAYLOR SWIFT - BEAUTIFUL GHOSTS

[3.50]

Taylor takes a chonce...

Thomas Inskeep: Where we learn that Swift has ambitions of writing relentlessly overblown, ridiculously florid Broadway songs just like her co-writer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. And god, her keening vocal on this makes me want to punch someone. [0]

Alfred Soto: Her voice is not her strongest element, a fact this farrago overlooks. By comparison her accent on "London Boys" is a Meryl Streep Oscar stroke. [2]

Katherine St Asaph: I don't mind Taylor Swift being on this, in theory (in voice is a somewhat different proposition); Sarah Brightman was a dancer in Hot Gossip. Nor do I want to reassign this piece to Andrew Lloyd Webber's cat. I could even, begrudgingly, stop minding that Nile Rodgers worked on this, or that there's a gratuitous Phantom reference, or that the whole thing is a worse version of Jekyll and Hyde's "A New Life," when Cats already had the blueprint for "A New Life." But I do mind there being no structure, melodic, emotional, or otherwise. [3]

Katie Gill: The idea of adding in a song to CATS kind of misunderstands the structure of the musical. You see, CATS already has a big awards bait song, "Memory," which is musically is integrated into the show via a prelude at the end of act 1, other cats singing the tune at various point, and the prelude ending with a leitmotif often heard throughout the show. HOWEVER, now "Beautiful Ghosts" exists. It's positioned as a direct response to "Memory" and ALW loves his goddamn leitmotifs so logically it should sound like a response to "Memory", but it doesn't! It just sounds like a Taylor Swift song! Likewise, if this song is a direct response to "Memory" then one would think it would come AFTER "Memory" or the "Memory" prelude. However, "Memory" is the emotional climax of the show and the prelude is the Act 1 finisher, neither of which are a good time to add in a pop song to kill the plot. "Beautiful Ghosts" should really be positioned as a response to "Grizabella the Glamour Cat" because the transition between that song and the next one is an awkward spot in the musical that the pop song + a bit of dialogue could help smooth over. HOWEVER, if you position "Ghosts" as a response to "Grizabella" then it'll occur way too early in the film and also rob "Memory" of its lyrical impact. Part of the big impact of "Memory" is that you've had two goddamn hours of fiddle-dee-dee Jennyanydots whimsical nonsense and then WHAM, we go right into "touch me / it's so easy to leave me" which gives us the big, giant, emotional impact that "Memory" deserves and dammit, I don't have anywhere else to write about how this addition means that ALW fundamentally misunderstands his own musical so y'all are going to have to put up with me here. [4]

Jackie Powell: What makes this recording so charming is how practically imperfect it is. And I mean that as a compliment. The attempt at a British accent aside, Taylor Swift did her homework. And I'm not talking about T.S. Elliot, which I'll return to. This performance reminded me of Roland Barthes' "The Grain of the Voice," an essay that discusses how perfect vocals aren't what always sell a performance. The French philosopher and critic pontificates that a singer who is compelling has what he refers to as a "grain" or the "body in the voice." In other words, when Swift embraces her weaker while spectral head voice on the verses, cracks on the last line of the bridge and forces her belt on the last note of the entire song, she embraces Barthes' "Grain of the Voice" almost to a tee. Her belting is far from bodacious and like Jackson McHenry of Vulture, I question if this Andrew Lloyd Webber penned melody was really meant for Swift. But ALW did, in fact, need her. "If you can't get T.S. Eliot, get TS," she said while in the studio with Webber. "I'm here for you." And TS does study up on T.S. In "Beautiful Ghosts," Swift penned a lot of gerunds and descriptive nouns that have shapeshifted into gerunds. Or sometimes she just uses the suffix -ing more than twice the amount that Elliot employed it in his 1915 poem "Hysteria." In between all the "Chonces" being "Bawn into Noothing" and being "let intou," it's endearing to get a sense of Swift's acting chops via listening to her inflection, diction and even her ability to weld some dynamics that we don't often hear in her own catalog. But Swift was in between too many decisions. Was this supposed to be a pop version of a Broadway-style song? Was this supposed to be akin to Demi Lovato on "Let It Go?" (Maybe not, as we all know which version of the song is sung at karaoke.) But with all else being equal, Swift shalt have made a commitment to one of these two worlds: she's now clinging to pop but Broadway is now calling? She's straddling between these two islands and it doesn't work as well as she might have "waaanteed." [7]

Isabel Cole: Is it weird that I think I would like this better if it were more awful? Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber are not similar artists, but they are two people who have between them made [checks spreadsheet] a million bajillion dollars by being wildly extra and unafraid of leaning the fuck in. Many of my favorite Taylorisms are fun because of their hyper-earnest theater kid melodrama (just think of the tremor with which she sings another girl in "Style"); many of my childhood memories involve belting "Memory" in my bedroom. But this is just so... dull. TS + ALW 4 CATS sounds like a nightmare of unhinged excess, but this could be any generic Best Song Oscar also-ran; the most interesting part is that she reuses the best line from "Fifteen." Worse, these artists who can write a hook that will be stuck in your head until the end of time somehow came together to write a melody so sprawlingly uninspiring I cannot hum it after several listens. There's nothing here even to make fun of beyond (objectively funny) Taylor's sporadic British affectations. Like, come on, guys: I'm not sure you can do better than this, but I know you have it in you to do worse. [2]

Alex Clifton: Cats didn't really need a new song (nor, frankly, did we need the new nightmare adaptation) and I'm mixed on Andrew Lloyd Webber at best, but this still hits my heart somewhere, especially with Swift's breathy delivery for the first half of the track. I am both surprised and annoyed to relate to a song sung by a cat. Points deducted for chooooooooooonces. [6]

Natasha Genet Avery: Let's dispense with the obvious: 1. That newfangled British accent is...something. 2. Playing into her favorite victimhood narrative, Swift's contribution to Cats *had* to one-up Grizabella ("At least you have something!". 3. This is blatant Oscar bait. Now onto the meat: Cats is a corny and embarrassing head-scratcher. Cats is why people don't trust musicals. I love Cats. To me, to anyone who has been in a musical, musicals are about unreasonable, outsized commitment--you peel off your self-protective shield of irony and spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours donning clown-school makeup and spandex, somersaulting across the stage and belting the praises of storybook animals. If you're entrusted with a big number, you practice and practice until your delivery is technically masterful, if not heavy-handed. Beat me to death with that vibrato. Fuck me up with those dynamics. Leave it allll on the stage. And so, when Taylor set out to out-emote "Memory", she agreed to take on 30 years of mockery, three key changes, Elaine Paige, 600+ professionally recorded covers, and countless school productions and karaoke renditions. A lot of people fault Taylor for being a try-hard (I've always found it sort of endearing), but here, she simply didn't try hard enough. Swift admitted that she wrote most of "Beautiful Ghosts" "immediately after hearing the song for the first time." Without T.S. Eliot's hand, Beautiful Ghosts" is empty, untouched by whimsy. Oh, and the singing: Swift is sorely out of her depth, and mostly opts for limp falsetto, culminating in a strained, awkward belt. We'll see what Francesca Hayward does with it, but for now "Beautiful Ghosts" should get booted from the clowder. [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I consume music of all genres voraciously -- with the exception of musical soundtracks. This is for a number of reasons: 1) I haven't seen a lot of musicals, 2) for the ones I have seen, I tend to find the music and lyricism overwrought and boring, and 3) I would prefer to just listen to artists' original music outside the parameters set by some make believe world. I was worried that I would have a tough time trying to check my own bias in reviewing this song, but am now relieved and confident in asserting that "Beautiful Ghosts" is objectively bad. In an alternate reality, this could be a compelling country-lite track on Fearless or Red, or even a synth heavy ballad on 1989, but here, Taylor just sounds drowsy with a weird British accent, selling a metaphor that makes about as much sense as the utterly bizarre Cats movie trailer. [3]

Andy Hutchins: One tweet that has stuck with me is the one that correctly called Reputation — before its release, even! — the final boss of 2017. I think Cats might play a similar role for the final days of 2019 and the first month or so of 2020, even if its pitch is obviously to a smaller segment of the population than pre-Crisis Taylor reached. So how convenient it is that we have Taylor here, indulging her theater kid impulses with none other than Andrew fucking Lloyd fucking Webber co-writing, singing her heart out in the ingenue role she's clung to throughout her 20s for better and worse (which is, hilariously, not her role in the film itself!), pining for something wild for what feels like the 20th time. "Beautiful Ghosts" is as subtle as a hurricane, and churns powerfully, and Taylor almost hits that note at the end — the strings wouldn't swell if she'd hit it perfect, of course. It's good. Fine. Whatever. This sort of hopeful schmaltz is so safe, though, that it mostly makes me wish that Taylor were still willing to take excursions from beaten paths: That way lies "Style," even if you might have to double back from the doorsteps of "Look What You Made Me Do" or "End Game" on occasion. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Taylor Swift #Cats #pop #music #music review #writing #musical

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pullsarah · 8 years ago

Text

10 Reasons Why I Disliked The New “Beauty and the Beast”

Ok, let’s start with warnings. This may include spoilers. This may also include a lot of opinion, which you are welcome to disagree with. Here we go!

1. I did not like Emma Watson as Belle *gasp* *faint* *cling madly to collection of Harry Potter DVDs* She has a good voice for a pop artist or in a more modern type of production, with a straight, clear tone and easy control; however, I did not think this suited the character of Belle and it was weirdly juxtaposed with a cast of actors who all had very different vocal abilities. Some seemed to have operatic, chorally-trained voices while others had more lazy, jazzy voices...it just didn’t mesh well for me. Mainly, though, I did not think that Emma Watson had the vocal power needed to really capture Belle’s character, especially when she runs onto the hillside, arms open, and (in an only slightly louder voice) sings, “I want adventure in the great, wide somewhere/I want it more than I can stand!” That moment is a great example of what sets Belle apart from all the other sweet, cute girls in her town and should be a verse that gives an audience the chills. I did not get the chills. I wanted loud vibrato, or Broadway-style belting, or something really bold for that moment, but instead it fell flat. In addition, Emma Watson looks really, really young, like 12-14 young, which threw me because Gaston (who is played by a 38-year-old man and looks like it) tries to convince Belle to marry him based on the argument that Belle will become a spinster. Perhaps if she were older that argument would make more sense, but instead it just comes off as very child-molester-y...but I suppose that fits in with the whole theme of 18th-century France (when middle-aged men were still legally marrying children).

2. I did not see the movie in 3-D and it was obvious. What I mean by that is that there were scenes which were obviously designed for the 3-D effects, so when they were shown in 2-D they ended up looking blurry and confusing. The best example would be when Belle is first brought to her bedroom suite. Based on the music and the characters’ dialogue, I could tell that the room was supposed to appear breathtaking, with painted ceilings and pure gold details. Instead, it was mostly a blue blur with weird golden tentacles. In addition, most of the CGI seemed oddly...flat. The Beast’s face seemed very strange throughout the entire movie, perhaps because the details were better presented in the 3-D version, and the wolves looked all but realistic (and definitely not scary). Speaking of the CGI...

3. What is the point of remaking an animated movie as a live-action movie if Disney still just used animation for most of the characters during most of the movie? Ok, ok, I get it, CGI is much different than the old outline-and-color-in animation used in 1991...which is why I was horribly disappointed with the quality of the 2017 version. In my opinion (which, remember, is what this all is) the CGI was TERRIBLE. I could barely make out Lumiere’s face most of the time, which probably wouldn’t have mattered because Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts could be seen quite well and had little to no expression compared to...well anything other than a slightly-more-than-inanimate object! The excellent voice acting done by the big name actors lassoed into this project (Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Ewan McGregor) was deflated because the characters appeared with flat affectations except for some eye movements. But, wait, isn’t that because they were all slowly turning more and more into objects, therefore becoming less like people with each fallen petal? Even if that were a good enough reason to have main characters devoid of facial expression (it is not) I’d still like to talk about that, too...

4. For those who have seen the stage production of Beauty and the Beast, there were clearly some ideas taken from it for the 2017 movie which were mashed together with the overall concept of the original animated movie. In the stage production, the enchanted castle characters start off as real people and then s-l-o-w-l-y transform into objects, rather than just living as talking objects until the last petal falls. This new movie makes a big deal about each petal falling - parts of the castle come crumbling down, the whole property rumbles, and one of those times Lumiere comments that “another petal has fallen.” So why didn’t the characters start off with more human features, with an obvious transformation during each dramatic, petal-withering moment? Why is the only reference that is made to this transformation a moment in which Lumiere comments that his “leg” is getting stiffer, rather than using the incredible technology of CGI to visually demonstrate to the audience the changes? One of my writing teachers once gave some great advice, saying, “Show the reader what is happening with description rather than using narration or a character to just tell them.” I wish I could have seen the human characters actually transforming into objects, rather than just hearing one of them mention it off-handedly one time. It felt like a cop-out - a missed opportunity - and I was disappointed.

5. Aaaaaaaand back to that music, because I have more to say about musical choices than just the people who were chosen to sing. Did anybody else notice that some...well actually all...of the songs were just a bit different than you remembered? Plus, there were all those new ones that got added. Looks like this part of my critique is going to be two-fer. First of all, the original songs from the 1991 animated movie were altered in some not-so-subtle ways. The lyrics were changed (particularly in the song “Gaston,” sung by LeFou and Gaston) and even the phrasing - the actual measures and beats within the songs - were changed. This meant that while I was tapping my toes and humming along to familiar songs that I have known for over 25 years, I would suddenly find myself lost or stumbling over lyrics. It was jarring and confusing, and I honestly did not think the changes made the songs any better. They were already wonderful before, plus they had the added nostalgic value for people like me who have known them since early childhood, so why change them? Secondly, several songs - if you could call the partial, singing segues “songs” - were added, but for what reason? It seemed like the goal was to add depth to the characters and perhaps lengthen the movie, but the result was a smattering of yawn-worthy add-ins that left me wanting either more...or less. Maurice’s little tune that he sings during his character introduction is sweet, so why did it not continue further? If it was never meant to be more than just a simple verse, why have it at all? It did not add enough to his character to be worthy of time in the movie, much like the Beast’s weird singing childhood memory of his mother dying. Oh, that reminds me of another thing I did not like...

6. Why all the new backstory? As with the added half-songs, I found myself yawning through most of the flashbacks. Actually, I found myself yawning through a great deal of the movie (and it wasn’t even my bedtime). First, there is Belle’s backstory about how her mother died. I realized while watching these new scenes that never, not once, did I ever wonder what happened to Belle’s mother in the original movie. She isn’t in the picture, it’s 18th-century France...she’s dead, right? At least that’s what I always assumed. And, I was right. So, no need for a backstory, right? I mean, maybe if Belle’s mother had abandoned the family, or ended up in a mental institution, or some other scenario that would have added more than what most of us already assumed, it would have created depth for Belle and Maurice. But, I already assumed that Belle’s mother died, so it came as no surprise and made the movie longer than it needed to be. Perhaps the only backstory I found remotely interesting were LeFou’s references to Gaston being a war-torn veteran, but those were presented as jokes and never developed much beyond that. Belle’s dead mother was a very serious affair, the Beast’s dead mother was a very serious affair...but Gaston having witnessed death and destruction and then suffering from PTSD as a result was joke-worthy. Hmm.

7. Moms keep dying, dads never die and make horrible parents, and servants who have been turned into teapots need to explain why they never chose to leave an enchanted castle. Ok, Maurice isn’t a horrible parent (and his character was probably the only one I enjoyed and had nothing bad to say about). But, why does Mrs. Potts need to explain why she and all the other servants stayed at the castle, caring for the Beast? First of all, they were SERVANTS. They never left before, during all the years when the Prince was a twat, because they were SERVANTS. This wasn’t modern-day America, where Mrs. Potts could have used her skills to open a bed and breakfast and Lumiere could have applied at Taco Bell as a manager. This was, again, 18th-century France, and they were SERVANTS who received food, housing, clothing, and employment working for a PRINCE in a CASTLE. As if that weren’t enough, they got turned into coatracks, candlesticks, clocks, wardrobes...where is a talking feather duster going to find a place to live and work in the French countryside in 1720? But, the explanation offered for why the servants never left is, instead, guilt. That’s it. The servants felt guilty that the Prince turned out to be a horrible person, so they stuck around to feed his grumpy ass and make him tea. If Belle is going to be 12, and Gaston is 38, then let’s keep things historically accurate and just assume that the butlers and maids had no responsibility in raising the Prince into a decent human being and had little to no choice in life but to serve him until he, or they, died. No other explanation necessary.

8. LeFou is awkwardly gay (and do I need to mention that, in addition to being the only gay character, he is also the only human character whose name has a literal translation instead of being a real name, and it means “the fool,” so, in essence, the only gay character is also the only fool). It’s great that Disney was like “Hey, let’s include a gay character!” I like gay people. I have no problem with the gayness. For me, it was the weird way it was portrayed. LeFou oscillates between being in love with Gaston and actually wanting to be like Gaston, so it was confusing because I had a hard time understanding where his affection for Gaston actually comes from. I am not saying that someone couldn’t be in love with a person and, at the same time, want to be like them. I am saying that the way it was presented, in little snippets, was actually more confusing than clarifying. LeFou also bounces between seeming to try to win Gaston’s affection and diverting Gaston’s affection onto Belle and other women. There weren’t enough scenes involving LeFou and Gaston for his character to be this complicated. Then, at the end, he just suddenly decides (in the MIDDLE of a battle) that he no longer gives a flying fuck about Gaston. So, LeFou has been Gaston’s best friend, has battled alongside him in war, and has had Gaston’s back for years, but then all of a sudden decides that he has had enough because Gaston is a jerk to him for, like, the 1,000th time? It’s possible, but a long shot. Again, if I had seen more of LeFou struggling to win Gaston’s affection and getting shut down over and over again, I might have believed it more.

9. The gay guy and the transvestite end up dancing together (for two seconds) at the end. How stereotypical! It goes like this: an unnamed character that is given only two scenes beforehand makes his debut during the final battle when the wardrobe dresses him as a woman and *gasp* he’s happy about it! Because mid-battle is a great time to realize life-long gender identity goals. Then, the unnamed now-transvestite or possibly trans-gendered person ends up as a dancing partner with...the only other character who is revealed to have a sexuality that differs from the entire rest of the cast. I am getting reeeeeeeally nit-picky here, but wouldn’t it be more realistic if LeFou and, say, Cogsworth (who is not at all pleased about being reunited with his wife) ended up together while the transvestite or possibly trans-gendered person joins the opera singer on stage? Or, better yet, LeFou could have danced with anyone and the transvestite or possibly trans-gendered person could have danced with anyone because, if Disney really wants to tackle the gay AND transgender issue all in one movie, they could realize that being gay and/or trans-gendered doesn’t mean that you always end up hanging out with only other gays and/or trans-gendered folks during parties...

10. When the Beast transforms back into a man, he’s actually old and ugly. Ok, that’s a harsh exaggeration! But, seriously, he looks to be about 15-20 years older than Belle and I wasn’t seeing much chemistry during that first kiss. This is just personal preference, but when the big reveal happened and the Beast’s human form was finally unveiled, my husband and I both went “oh, yikes!” Don’t get me wrong, Dan Stevens is a handsome fella (and that voice...oh that rich, baritone, rumbling, sexy voice) but he just looked weird and wrong for the part. They never confirm his age in the 2017 movie (and perhaps that is on purpose) but I cannot forget the line from the 1991 animated version when the narrator explains that the last petal will fall on the Prince’s 21st birthday. Dan Stevens is in his mid-30′s and looks it. And, again, Emma Watson looks 12. It was weird, seeing them kiss was weird, and thinking about them getting married later was weird.

There you have it, my scathing, overly-critical review of the 2017 version of “Beauty and the Beast.” May your viewing experience of it forever be tainted.

#moviereview #beautyandthebeast #justmyopinion

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