Soundtracking: Cats

by Chris Feil

One month after its catastrophic arrival and its official: Cats has entered the cult pantheon. But unlike the midnight musical tradition set before it by The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this disaster isn’t simply finding an audience that appreciates its merits. If the ultimate schadenfreude response to the film felt pre-baked by the gleefully unhinged  reactions to its promotional material, we shouldn’t forget that much of its failed vision falls squarely in the lap of director Tom Hooper.

Cats as a musical is supposed to be earnest, its silly concept a vessel for unbridled imagination from the bombastic funhouse of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Of course, it has always had vocal detractors - it’s still a musical about cats. But for better or worse, it’s a more tuneful score than it’s often credited as, even if it grates...

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How do you solve a problem like "Cats"?

by Cláudio Alves

With Cats horrifying audiences around the world, including possibly you, let's all step into a hot-air balloon and travel to the heavenly lands of speculation. You see, a screen adaptation of the silliest mega-musical in Andrew Lloyd Weber's repertoire (give or take Love Never Dies or Starlight Express) was already a dicey proposition, but it needn't be so doomed. But add to that the deranged incompetence of Tom Hooper and digital fur technology,and we have something for the pantheon of all-time bad movies.

What could have been done to avoid catastrophe? Many psychologically scarred movie-goers may be asking this question from the depths of the madness that now consumes them: Could this have been any different? Could it have been better? Could it have been good, even? Maybe…

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Review: "Cats"

by Cláudio Alves

Somewhere along the journey of popular cinema, an unholy change of standards occurred. Once upon a time, the artifice of movies was seen as a delightful feature, but it slowly started to be seen as an enemy of quality. The pursuit of "reality" began to preoccupy serious artists and Hollywood hacks alike. The audience’s taste was thus guided in the direction of pseudo-realism. The look of natural reality isn't the point, but the feel of it is. For instance, Lord of the Rings' fantasy isn't close to our reality in any significant way, but there's a sense of material credulity that satisfies modern audience's limited suspension of disbelief.

To speak of such matters in the context of a flimsily plotted musical populated by cat-human hybrids probably sounds preposterous. That said, I firmly believe the movie of the Broadway smash Cats would be altogether less horrifying if it had embraced the artifice and theatricality of its premise...

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5 Things We Learned from the New CATS Trailer

by Chris Feil

After meow-ny long and empty weeks, we were finally treated to another trailer for Tom Hooper's Andrew Lloyd Webber's T.S. Eliot's CATS. And you might say that it was a little bit of a disappointment after the first look sent the internet into a giant flame of gleeful schadenfreude (or maybe we're all still waking up from the release of its catnap-inducing original song candidate "Beautiful Ghosts"). This quick tease featured no singing and was a bit too fast-paced to glimpse any of the dancing. But the final trailer did give us a few bits of new information to be both earnestly and ironically excited about:

1. It's apparently the "Most Joyous Event of the Holiday Season". Like the previous "You Will Believe" tagline, this also sounds like a threat.
2. LOTS more dialogue than expected highly suggests that the film will try to lean into some semblance of a plot or overexplain its "new life" conceit.
3. The cats have boobs and love to shake them.
4. The trippiest element may be the proportions of the cats to their environment. See: kitty door flap, trash cans, shoe sizes, entire miniature ice cream parlor, etc.
5. Idris Elba might be the slithering, villainous, sexy (?) MVP.

Did you notice anything new that made you more (or less) excited for Cats next month?

Beyoncé's "Spirit" and the Best Original Song Competition

Please welcome new contributor Kyndall Cunningham...

When the soundtrack for this year’s The Lion King remake dropped in July along with the lead single “Spirit,” performed by Beyoncé, fans on Twitter described its long-awaited arrival as the singer “coming to collect her things” - one of those things obviously being an Oscar for Best Original Song. 

The gospel-inspired ballad penned by Beyoncé, the British singer-producer Labrinth and songwriter Ilya Salmanzadeh includes Swahili chants, a choir and, of course, Beyonce’s acrobatic vocals that practically summon thunder by the end of it. The song is noticeably Oscar-baity in its grandeur but also in that a live performance at the ceremony would prompt a long standing O and make for one of the best moments of the night...

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