Okay you guys, my computer was broken for about a week and a half at the beginning of June so I’ve been catching myself up on what I’ve missed out on in that time. Of course I ended up missing out on some of the most exciting news of the year:
Translation by Miss Dream
I mean, do you understand? Do you understand? The Sailor Moon Musical will once again be a thing that exists, not just on YouTube and in crazily expensive memorabilia shipped in from overseas, but as actual live theatre! I just can’t even compose myself right now.
For the second year in a row I was unable to watch the Tony broadcast (grumblegrumble *work* grumblegrumble *adulthood*), so once again I must turn to YouTube to see the performances. Rather than posting all of them like I did last year, I’m just going to post the ones I was most interested in for this year’s ceremony.
Motown: The Musical
I’ve kept a tentative interest open on this musical since I first heard of it a few months ago. The story of black artists in the music industry is rife with drama and can certainly make for great musical theatre but I wasn’t sure to what extent this show would be a jukebox musical so I figured I’d wait and see some more from it. Would it include well-known songs in addition to an original score, or would it be entirely comprised of existing music?
Judging by the performance it seems to be the latter option, which doesn’t exactly thrill me. Just to be sure I checked out the show’s broadway.com page and found this in the description: “an explosive new musical featuring almost 60 of the most beloved hits in the Motown music catalogue.”
Good Lord, 60?? Even sung-through musicals barely reach that high of a song count! I don’t feel this is one I’ll personally try too hard to see, but the cast looks and sounds phenomenal and it’s been selling really well every time I check the Broadway grosses so there’s clearly an audience for it. Maybe it really comes together when seen as a whole so if it tours I might give it a shot.
Cinderella
Though nominated in the Best Revival category, this is technically the first Broadway production of Cinderella, despite it being over 40 years old. This doesn’t really have anything to do with the performance, I just found it shocking and thought it was worth sharing so you could be as dumbfounded as I was when I learned this little fact.
The performance here is lovely; this cast is great, but the biggest stars of the number are those costumes! I mean, did you see that??? Those dresses just morphed in front of your eyes! And they do that live and in person eight times a week! I understand the basic concept behind the design but the flawless execution is beyond my comprehension. It is simply magic. Thank God they took home the award for Costume Design.
Matilda
Beautiful performance. The cast has performed the “Naughty/Revolting Children” combo a few times already to promote the show on various television programs so I’m glad they also included “When I Grow Up” to make it a little more special for the Tonys and just because I love that song (or at least, what I’ve seen of it since I still haven’t seen this show). I love that it calls attention to the fact that “When I grow up” is kind of an ever-moving goal; we continue to grow throughout our lives and probably never really feel like the all-knowing, fearless, confident beings we thought we would become when we became “grown-ups”.
Guh, I just really love everything I’m seeing/hearing of this show and am dying to see it.
Bring it On: The Musical
I pretty much gushed about this show when I reviewed it so of course I was pumped up for their performance! I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually seen a show before it performed on the Tonys, so maybe that’s why I’m feeling like something is lacking from this showcase. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something seems off to me. Maybe it’s that the show closed and the cast hasn’t performed together in almost six months; maybe it’s the cuts made to the song to shorten it; maybe it’s that the lighting cues seem just a teensy bit behind; or maybe it’s just because this number was so phenomenal live and that can’t quite be re-captured when seen on video.
It’s probably that last one, since the experience is so great in my memory it just can’t be matched by anything other than a live, in-person performance. I’m glad this song was performed because it’s one of my favorites from the show and it shows off a decent amount of the cheerleading and most of the cast gets to shine, though it’s a bummer the song doesn’t feature Taylor Louderman’s character since she was more or less the lead and did an excellent job. I’m really glad Ariana DeBose got the spotlight for her section though, because she was one of the standouts for me when I saw the show but hasn’t gotten much mention in reviews I’ve read of the show (including my own, which I rather regret) so it was great seeing her work the stage in her featured part.
Kinky Boots
I think this show looks pretty great. Cyndi Lauper did the music; Jerry Mitchell the choreography; and it’s about the creation of the perfect drag boot so everything about it says it’s gonna be a fun night at the theater. This performance is exciting and though it doesn’t really revolutionize my view of the show, it reinforces my desire to see it.
Pippin
Still just in awe of this production’s seamless incorporation of the circus performance into the show. It works so well with the music and the Fosse-style choreography and I don’t have much to say about this that I haven’t said before: Patina is still flawless; the production is still gorgeous; and I still want to see it. Thankfully, it’s touring.
Well, despite my intentions I think I ended up talking about almost every performance. Whoops. Well, it was a night of great performances, what could I do? The ceremonies seemed pretty nice this year. I’m glad they were once again held in Radio City Music Hall because I love the grandeur of that huge performance space and i really liked that the casts of other shows introduced the performances. Even if the connection between the two shows was pretty forced at times, it was good to see them there to remind people that so many great shows are still running and gave a good sense of the community of Broadway. Hopefully something similar will be done at next year’s ceremonies.
And hopefully I’ll be able to watch them live, because I’m sick of having to rely on YouTube!
Today we are going to address a little pet peeve (or I should say I big pet peeve) of mine and how awesome people like Laci Green are trying fix this problem. So this week’s Web Crush is Sex Positive with Laci Green!
I can’t say I ever felt the need for another Monsters, Inc. movie. Oh, don’t misunderstand; I loved the original, but it was a movie that I felt told its story very well and didn’t seem at all incomplete. (Of course, I wanted to know how the Boo/Sully reunion turned out at the end of the movie. I mean, I’m not made of stone! Still, I couldn’t see a movie made out of that alone). Then the decade which passed after the original’s release pretty much solidified in my mind that Monsters, Inc. was a standalone film. As such, when news of Monsters University reached my ears I was certainly interested, as any “True 90′s Kid” is required to be, but perhaps not as ecstatic as I was when, say, Toy Story 3 was announced.
The movie had some convincing to do, in order to get me excited, and to put it simply: it has.
The fact that this movie is a prequel rather than a sequel is a large part of what has me interested. Even though it’s going in the opposite direction of where my interest lies after the first movie (Are Sully and Boo still friends? Did she outgrow, or stop believing in, her monsters? These are the things I need to know!) it has me interested mainly because of what’s being revealed about Mike Wazowski. Mike, as Monsters, Inc. fans know from the original, is employed as a Scare Assistant: the less glamorous employee who helps out the much-admired Scarers in their job of collecting children’s screams to be converted into energy. What’s interesting is that Mike appears to be very proud of his job in the original movie, if a little jealous of the recognition Sully and the other Scarers get. In Monsters University, however, it is revealed that Mike’s dream was to be a Scarer.
I think this makes the movie more interesting, because it throws a wrench in the workings of this character. One of the toughest things to get right about a prequel is to make it interesting when the intended audience essentially knows the “ending” thanks to the already released original movie. This character revelation about Mike presents an unexpected development, because even though we know where he ends up, we now know that it was not at all where he had planned to be. Because of this, the movie has the potential to make commentary on how dreams change and some of the harsh realities of setting yourself up for one goal and realizing that it wasn’t the right one after all; stories that aren’t often told in children’s movies but probably should.
While following your dreams is important and I don’t think we should ever teach our children to limit themselves, it’s also important to teach them that dreams can change and sometimes you can work for an ideal and find out down the road that it’s not quite the right fit. It’s good to teach them to be open to adjusting their goals, rather than doggedly pursuing one dream and ignoring other possibilities.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this and/or putting too much weight on an animated movie, but I do take entertainment directed at kids pretty seriously, both for my own entertainment and for what message it sends to young people. From what I can see, Monsters University is poised to pay off well in both respects.
Yes, I know this movie just came out recently, but I haven’t seen it yet, and it only came out a couple days so I think I’m still within my blogger rights to review the trailer.
It’s summer time and Will Smith is in an action movie. That seemed to be the norm for a long time, but now that I think about it, I haven’t seen Will Smith in many movies lately, or at least many action ones. But this time it seems like the burden of providing most of the action actually is on Will Smith’s son, Jaden Smith. In After Earth, Will and Jaden play a father and son team that crash lands on… Earth? So apparently one thousand years ago humanity left Earth for… reasons, but now Will Smith and his son have crash landed there, and they need to retrieve some sort of beacon in order to get home. But there’s a twist: everything on Earth has evolved to kill humans now. Again because of reasons… reasons that I assume will be connected with some surprise twist ending about why humans left the planet in the first place. Maybe the plants killed people? No, wait, it’s all actually Jaden Smith’s dream, or it’s faeries, or normal people dressing in yellow robes to scare everyone and hide the fact they live in modern times. Or maybe the twist is that it’s set in a world where Avatar: The Last Airbender didn’t suck.
As you may have guessed from my thinly veiled sarcasm, this movie is directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Which leaves me in something of a conundrum when it comes to whether or not I should see this movie. You see, almost all Will Smith movies are good. That is just fact. Even if it’s not good in the sense that it has a good plot, it’s always at least entertaining and enjoyable to watch. But M. Night Shyamalan has, in recent years, been a terrible director, but his early movies were so good I think I just want to always given him a chance to redeem himself. The movie looks exciting. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the movie stars two characters of color, which is something movies don’t often do, especially sci-fi movies. That alone might be the reason I see this movie, even if the plot seems to set itself up with one too many twist endings.
We’ll have to wait and see if this will be an exciting movie or another M. Night Shyamalan failure at making a comeback.
I know this slot is usually used for upcoming movies and new seasons of popular television shows, but this week I’ve decided to use it for my own devious plans. Well, okay, it’s more like to pimp out the game that I’m super excited for.
After getting completely shafted at last year’s E3—don’t think we’ve forgotten or forgiven, Nintendo—the Animal Crossing fandom was sitting on the edge of their seats, foaming at the mouth for any mention of the long-awaited title. Or at least a goddamned release date. Many months we waited patiently (which is a relative term, I realize) and as the days passed, more and more information finally came to the surface. With the release date finally nearing—June ninth: two more weeks, only two more weeks—I feel that I can take a little time on this blog to gush about this game that I feel like I’ve been waiting for my entire life.
I love Animal Crossing. Seriously, it’s about my favorite game series (right under Dragon Age and Mass Effect) and why not? It combines the decorating/hoarding of The Sims and combines it with cutesy graphics and an easy-to-use interface. Its mechanics are simple to understand, so much so that my eighty-six year old grandmother, who is convinced that all video games everywhere are too high-tech for her, adores this particular game and plays it whenever she gets the chance. For a group of animals that follow the same six-ish base personalities, it’s strangely easy to get attached to them. (Some, instead, may be easy to hate and thus drive you to force them out of your town.)
Even though so much information has already been released, this trailer in particular does a rather good job at giving a brief synopsis of what a newcomer to the series can expect. Fishing, bug catching, swimming (a feature new to this game!), shopping, clubbing: truly you can spend hours, days meandering through your town and still find something entertaining to do.
I have to admit that I really hate the voiceover, though. Could you find someone to sound any more bored? I don’t think so. But, that’s just me being picky.
If this sort of game seems interesting to you, check out some of the sites talking about it! If you already have a 3DS, I’d highly recommend picking it up, even if you wait until the price drops. Or, you can be like me and just give Nintendo all your money for the 3DS bundle pack. Needless to say, when that glorious day arrives I’ll be glad to finally get my hands on the next game in this series I love.
I was browsing through some Nightmare on Elm Street videos to include in my final “Women of Elm Street” post about Nancy and came across some promos for this fanfilm that looks pretty great and worth sharing. The post on Nancy will be coming later; I just want to make sure I take time and do justice to my heroine.
The movie appears to be focusing on Fred Krueger prior to his death and eventual reincarnation as the dream killer of the official movie series. Judging by the contemporary look of the trailer, I think this may not be a timeline-accurate sequel, which I think would have to be set no later than the late 70′s in order to pre-date the original 1984 film. As such, I’m not sure whether this will be the backstory for the Freddy we know from the original film series or a brand new vision of the character. In either case, the production looks exceedingly professional for a fanfilm and I look forward to learning more about it.
The creators have designed a new glove for Freddy which leads me to believe that they are revamping the story rather than making a direct prequel to the original films.
I really like the look of this glove. In the preview for the film, the actor is wearing a faithful replica of the original glove, so I’m not sure where or how this re-design will fit in to the movie, but it looks pretty incredible to me. One of the most noticeable differences I can see between this and the original design is the way the finger supports connect to the back plate. Rather than being bolted flat into their support as in the original, they have what appears to be some type of floating hinge which gives them more movement and I think will be really visually effective when in action, giving the glove more life than previous versions.
My only reservation about this film is the fact that Freddy was specifically known as amurderer of children in his lifetime and the only reason he killed teenagers in the movies was because they had grown older in the time between his death and eventual resurrection in the dream world. Now, it’s one thing to hint at or talk about the awful things he did while he was alive; it’s quite another to actually portray them. The official movies were, if not always exactly tasteful, at least restrained by what the Motion Picture Association of America would allow to be seen in theaters and the specifics of what he did to young children were always left in the dark.
Making independent online movies such as this gives filmmakers a blessed freedom from those bureaucratic standards, but with that freedom comes the possibility of going too far for some people’s comfort levels. I’m not saying that these creators don’t have the right to push the envelope, just that I personally may not be able to handle the outcome.
Despite my unease at the possible content of this film, I am very interested to see more. According to the writer/director the project is in post-production, so hopefully it will be available soon. In the meantime, we can keep an eye on their Facebook page for updates!
So, I guess Game of Thrones is pretty cool or whatever.
Okay, okay, fine. I love Game of Thrones. I love all the drama, all the dismemberments, all the scenery, and of course, all the fantastic characters. What I love most about it though, is the richness of its universe. It’s clear that there are hundreds of houses the audience may never know about or lands that may never be visited within the story that the audience is allowed to view, but it’s clear that they all play a role in things like how a character may strategize their tactics for battle or how they may choose their allies. While the show does a rather good job at giving the audience information on Houses, lands, and other such things that directly affect the main players, sadly there are many things that areresigned to staying questions in the viewer’s mind.
A good example of this: the other day I was talking to my girlfriend about the late King Robert’s rebellion and his relations to the Starks. Now, as someone who hasn’t read the books and doesn’t really have any plans to in the future, I know that Robert was in love with Ned Stark’s sister and eventually took the throne from the mad king, Aerys Targaryen. Little did I know all the extra delicious tidbits that had been left out of the show—no doubt due to time constraints—that she had only been too glad to tell me. Such as there being certain other, juicer elements at play during Robert’s rebellion (of course, when playing the game of thrones, nothing is ever as it seems). So while the show is wonderful, those of us who aren’t taking the literary pilgrimage presented by George R.R. Martin are dreadfully out of the loop on some things.
Though today’s webcrush may not fill this information gap entirely, it certainly is a great start. Today, I bring you youtuber gameofthronesfan94 and their stash of videos on the mythos of Westeros.
As much as some of us fans want to read the novels, we just don’t have enough time or the will to sit through those bricks (I proudly place myself in the latter category), especially not with all the ‘glowing’ reviews of Martin’s writing style. So, stumbling upon a channel with lore that I can watch, or at least listen to while I’m doing other things—guess what I’m doing right now?—is a godsend for me. Not only is the lore interesting, but I love the fact that these history lessons are given by the characters that know them best. A study on the Targaryens is given by the little shit Viserys and likewise the history of House Greyjoy is presented by the Greyjoy children. (And since I love House Tyrell, I’ll give you a snippet from them. Biases, ho!)
So, if you find your knowledge of the kingdoms of Westeros a little lacking but simply don’t have the energy to get into the books, I’d highly recommend taking a look at these videos. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to get back to my regularly scheduled sobbing over Theon.
Y’all know I love me some Carrie, so of course I need to talk about this remake.
First off, the trailer is pretty good. It’s difficult for me to watch anything related to this story with fresh eyes, but I think the trailer does a good job of covering what’s important about the story without giving away too much, so anyone who doesn’t know the previous versions should find it both informative and entertaining. For those of us who are familiar with the story already, it shows us some of the most memorable moments and how they’ll be handled in the remake.
I think I see some more adherence to the original novel in some areas, and less in others. For instance, Carrie practicing her power and taking joy in it is more in line with Stephen King’s characterization than that of the 1976 Brian DePalma film where Carrie usually seemed to have some disconnect with her telekinesis, i.e., it only tended to show up in moments of heightened emotion and was kind of out of her control.
On the other hand, the depiction of Margaret seems more like the 2012 version of the musical than either the original film or the novel, though, which gives me pause. It didn’t work out perfectly in the musical, and I think the less over-the-top portrayal of Carrie’s mother takes away some of the story’s power. I think their relationship is much more interesting and twisted when Carrie loves Margaret even though she is completely immersed in her world of religiosity and has a bizarre and warped way of loving her daughter. To me, taking away her fire takes away some of the drama and intrigue of her relationship with Carrie and the story itself.
This desire to make things more realistic can sometimes take away the cinematic power of a movie. Take, for instance, the dark thick sludge that pours down on Carrie in this preview. This is much more realistic than any previous version of the story, as blood oxidizing in a bucket overnight would darken and congeal, but it has nowhere near the visual impact of the bright red blood streaming down Carrie’s face that the original film, musical, and 2002 TV remake opted for. Most of the time, reality doesn’t make for great entertainment (just ask the writers and editors who make “reality” TV) and sometimes it’s better to go for style rather than honesty to be effective.
All things considered, I am looking forward to the remake. Both Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore are great actresses and I have no doubts in their abilities to make these characters interesting on screen. While I think that by making the story more realistic, it loses some of the drama that made the original movie so iconic, I still think the new interpretation holds promise as an enjoyable film.
Amy Poehler is an American actress, comedian, producer, writer, and feminist. She is the current star of the excellent show Parks and Recreation, and is close friends with Tina Fey.
Amy Poehler has always been one of my heroes, but recently APerigren introduced me to her YouTube show Smart Girls, a show that interviews women who accomplish amazing things and who have a wide array of interests. Smart Girls truly shows how diverse and talented women and girls are.
The motto of Smart Girls is: Change the World by Being Yourself.
Smart Girls teaches girls to be themselves but still provides guidance to them by showing them fun, creative, strong women for them to emulate. Their mission statement explains:
Here at Smart Girls, we believe that the cultivation of the authentic self is very important. We also believe that guidance is helpful as we try to find our way to ourselves. We hope to be of help in the exploration and discovery process.
This is where you might learn about something you would like to experience. You might learn about a woman you’d like to emulate. You might learn a new perspective or an unfamiliar custom or a new way to talk to yourself about something.
It is our hope that you will learn more about your truest self. (source)
The result is an awesome web series that truly exemplifies how intelligent girls are and how many great female role models there are out there.
One of my favorite videos is an interview with a seven year old feminist, which is just beautiful and ridiculously cute.
There are so many other amazing videos and stories from Smart Girls that are just amazing. Please check them out.
