In the spirit of the titling of most episodes of Friends, please consider this post to be 'The One Where QB Bangs On at Great Length about The Greatest Showman versus Moulin Rouge'.
You may want to forego such waffle but maybe not because sometimes I make a good point.
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Dear FOQ
How are we all? Hunkered up, wrapped in all the onesies and awaiting what the cynics (aka the forecasters) are calling the Beast from the East, or, as we like to refer to it, Late Winter.
This fortnight, I have mostly been ...
Writing ✍📖
Brace yourselves for a confession here but, I feel like such a fraud including a reading portion when technically I've read nothing properly lately, other than a backlist Guardian Weekend, my authors' text for their books (at work), and my own writing.
So until I get my reading groove back, I'm parking the portion until I can rightfully say I've picked up a book and read a few good pages.
Considering I think of myself as a bookworm, I'm such a
#alltheshame
I have, however, been invested considerably in my own writing, so when I profess to be a writer, I'm actually not kidding myself.
Which is nice.
Watching 📺
Friends
Which throws up all the great gifs, all the time.
Mind you, having reached Season 5, please tell me I'm not the only person who thinks it's cruel of Joey's friends to joke about his tiny girlfriend punching him, right up until the point where Rachel realises this girl is actually causing him physical pain.
Very uncomfortable for a myriad reasons.
Anyway.
Chan + Mon 4eva.
The Greatest Showman 🎪
(aka The Greatest Jackman)
WARNING
If you're not into this sort of thing, I'd advise you scroll right on down until you see a picture of my Voicerox Lovelies...!
Ma QB and I paid a rare visit to the Movies – or, as we like to call it, the cinema – last weekend (and sneaked in our own popcorn because we could) to take in TGS.
It's a spectacle!
Here are some good things about the film:
• Hugh Jackman is a beautiful, beautiful man and I love his singing voice. (Also, he seems like a genuinely nice, good chap in real life and that's always reassuring.)
• Zac Efron seems to have grown up and far, far away from his geeky pretty-boy High School Musical manifestation with considerable aplomb.
• And from a visual point of view, TGS is a slick piece of work with some amazing effects (although someone needs to reassure me that the elephants were a CGI creation and no animals were harmed for the purposes of this film).
• Also, the music is insanely catchy and has been trapped, earworm-like, in my head all week.
However.
(I should mention, people, that I studied Film and TV at university about sixty years ago, and sometimes this makes me more critiquey, smug and judgmental than usual ...)
This is a big however, pre-empted with a great:
I really, really wanted to love it.
On the first viewing, I didn't love it.
Not in the way I loved Moulin Rouge from the get-go so much I redecorated my whole bedroom in sari fabrics, wept like a complete sopster every time I heard Come What May, wanted to get married in an elephant, or failing that, a theatre whilst wearing this dress:
and for a brief spell in about 2001, became a Victorian courtesan with tuberculosis for funsies.
(OK, one of those facts is untrue.)
That's not to say I didn't enjoy TGS; I did. There were some really wonderful moments (notably every scene featuring Le Jackman) and I've had the soundtrack in my head almost constantly for a week (not to mention on the iPod!).
Especially this absolute belter of a song, which – whilst being cheesier than an 'exotic' Swiss fondue – is the sort of song that everybody needs as their empowerment anthem:
(with thanks to Emma J for bringing this video – from the studio greenlighting meeting – to my attention before I'd even seen the film: This is Me was already rocking my self-righteous little world).
Keala Settle has pipes. All the pipes.
But!
(and this is a big but)
There were flaws.
Many flaws.
• One of which was the way in which the music, and the dance moves, fitted uncomfortably within the supposedly Victorian setting.
Now, referring back to Moulin Rouge, I'm fully aware that nobody in a music hall circa 1899 would have been rocking out to Nirvana.
A lowly British poet would not have serenaded his fated love with a mashup of Bowie, Beatles and U2 songs (to name just a couple).
What Baz Luhrmann did for Moulin Rouge with such skill was to allow the music, and the dance, to convey the energy of the time and the emotions of his characters, and for the songs to work as their dialogue.
The Greatest Showman didn't quite make that magic happen.
There felt like a huge disconnect between the energy of the setting, and the energy of the musical numbers.
And the characters all fell in love a little too quickly. Poor boy sees rich girl and makes her laugh. They get told off. They run off together, start singing.
... Next thing you know, they're still singing, they're adults, and she's pregnant.
Ah, yes, I know, it's a cinematic device to convey the passage of time but still.
Good job Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams had enough chemistry to transcend a) the twelve-year age gap* between the two actors, and b) audience cynicism.
Similarly, there were enough adoring looks between Zac Efron's and Zendaya's characters to mean that their inevitable romance was ... well, fairly inevitable even if it was largely depicted in one poignant moment of hand-holding and an ill-fated date at the theatre. Followed by a rather wonderful duet and a whole acrobatic routine.
I enjoyed that.
That was clever.
(I was slightly less sold on how little risk there actually was in their relationship.)
* Mind you, ageing gracefully is clearly in the genes for the faux-Barnums as neither of their children aged in the whole time span of the film as Ma QB pointed out.
• One of the other huge flaws was to tear apart and reconstruct the characters of real, historical people for the purposes of the storyline.
Barnum himself for one, although apparently the film does not purport to be historically sound and is inspired more by the 'imagination' of Barnum than by his actual historical documented life.
So that's OK then.
But ... forgive me for harking back to my university education (in case you thought for one moment I had no basis on which to found my ramblings) ... I wrote my dissertation on the perks and perils of depicting historical figures in fiction.
Conclusion: it's a minefield.
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| {Sorry to break it to ya, Fake Barnum} |
Of course, Moulin Rouge (yeah, that again) took that risk by popping Toulouse-Lautrec into the mix:
but with a certain amount of historical research to back up the way he was depicted.
Not so much for TGS by all accounts but I am happy to be proven wrong with a bit of wider reading (for instance ... did Barnum really leave his family to take Jenny Lind on tour? Oh, well, apparently they definitely went on tour so, sort of yes.
Did he really give up his circus to watch his girls grow up? Did he really trade in the bonds of sunken ships to finance his first show? Did he really steal a loaf of bread to save his sister and her child, and then spend years on the run from the law and Russell Crowe's monotone? ... Hmm.)
Which brings me onto my last Flaw of the Film.
• The portrayal of Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale.
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| {Actual Jenny Lind | via WikiCommons} |
And, I'm rather stunned to say, that was a dubbed alto. (Dubbed, ironically by a finalist on the US version of The Voice. That'd explain that, then.)
Oh, Hollywood, you can do better than that.
What was your thought process here, people?
With absolutely no discredit to Rebecca "Not the X-Factor Finalist" Ferguson, whose Jenny Lind ruthlessly allured Barnum with all the alluring allure of someone alluring (and who has a musical background according to the Interwebs so I'd be interested to know why the heck she was dubbed over) ... the whole inclusion of Jenny Lind, the actual historical figure, in a musical without any allusion in the music to her being an opera singer even though it was mentioned in the dialogue made absolutely no chortling sense.
(Bit like this whole diatribe, really.)
All that aside, I am rather enraptured by Never Enough on its own merits, aside from the wrongity-wrongness of its whole context.
... Eh.
Perhaps I just need to see the film again and compartmentalise all attempts at historical accuracy and credibility. It's clearly got its claws into me to warrant this much overthinking and what my dear workmates refer to as 'Beffling'.
I have also been ...
Meeting and eating with ... 💜😋🍲🍷
... My Voicerox Lovelies (and honorary Lovelies)
Why yes; at the very end of a Voicerox-less week, I met with Charlie, Jenny, Jess, Al and Mimi, for a rare Sunday-night dinner treat and Social Fix Because We Missed Each Other, at the Air Balloon carvery in Horley (accessible by bus for those of us classy enough to require such transportation).
Sunday nights are the new Friday nights, people, you heard it here first.
(Actually, no, if you follow my fluffy Facebook feed you probably read it there first.)
... Natalie
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| {Photo by Nats} |
This consisted of me hotfooting to Tunbridge Wells after work, holing up in The Barn (yay, the Barn) to wait for the Bestie and write for a while with a glass of Merlot (accent on the 'lot' for maximum pretentiousness).
Witness this missive exchange between she and I:
Reader, I did in fact have to chug a sizeable quantity of said Merlot (which apparently made me very tipsy and very effusive in a dangerously short period of time).
Result: the inability to a) read the word 'fontal' correctly; or b) cut my own pizza, when we got to ASK.
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| {Disclaimer: the Salsiccia is a very tasty pizza} |
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| {My poor liver | photo by Nats} |
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| {Waiting for Natalie to wield the pizza wheel | photo by Nats} |
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| {Sober sister | photo by Nats} |
Still. We had a jolly good catch-up in spite of my rather unnecessary pickledness.
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Other events of the fortnight, not depicted pictorially, have included
Singing 🎶
... a cappella with the Voicerox crew.
I shan't give away what this year's a cappella song choice is, but come along to our concert in June and see us perform it live. And bring tissues. It's all a bit emosh.
Getting a long-needed massage 💆
... at Serenity, at a very reasonable £45 for an hour, having my every twinge ironed out (and sleeping like a well-massaged log as a result).
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No Web Finds this Fortnight but heeeeere's my ...
Pinterest Pins of the Fortnight 📌
See you again in a fortnight, you righteous beauties.
qb xx
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