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aceofshitposts · 3 years

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I saw that you like CATS the musical. What are your thoughts on the movie?

AAAAH AHHAHA oh man oh boy y'all should BUCKLE IN cuz it's a ride

my simple thoughts? it's entertaining if only because it butchered the stage show so badly in an attempt to idk modernize it? Well, modernization is one part of it I think. The other part I'll go into below lol. I don't necessarily hate some of the more modern renditions of the songs (mostly the ensemble sets like Jellicle Song for Jellicle Cats) but then others are just... so poorly done it's insulting.

I've said this at the end of this whole rant too but I'm gonna put it up here in case people don't (justifiably) wanna see me go on and on about it:

The movie wasn't made for fans of the musical. It was made to make money and I believe they choose, at least partially, to do that through making it the weirdest and worst possible adaptation they could so that people would want to go see the train wreck. Which, really, worked! It was all people could talk about for a good while so like... Goal achieved, I guess.

A MUCH MORE COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS UNDER THE CUT cuz i don't wanna. flood your dash with... this

ALRIGHT SO. Most of my friends know I'm actually a huge fan of new adaptations of things. I love remakes (provided the people making it are coming at it with some form of heart and not just... cash grabbing which is more often the case) I love seeing other peoples interpretations of characters, or changing settings. It's one of the reasons I like American comics so much, getting to see different writers takes is fascinating.

I think musical movies can be wonderful ways to introduce people to a stage show that might have been unavailable to them otherwise! Chicago, for example, is one of the BEST musical to movie adaptations in my opinion. It kept the heart of the show, it's funny and the song numbers are done really well.

There are of course other famous examples, such as Grease or Bye Bye Birdie. Hairspray was also a wonderful take. These are simply off the top of my head, there are of course more.

CATS in particular has a history. If you go through my CATS tag you may see a few posts from @catsnonreplica which posts photos from non broadway productions of CATS! It's a fascinating read and I love, love, love looking at the other interpretations of the characters! CATS is a musical full of fun and wonderful characters if you take the time to see past the ridiculousness haha and the Korean and Japanese runs of CATS especially have some of my favourites.

How does this relate to the movie, I hear you say well. As you might has noticed the movie's interpretations of the characters is........ lackluster at best and downright uncanny valley at best.

CATS is, at its core, a ridiculous thing. I will fully admit that! But it's fun, it's entertaining and if you pay a little attention you can actually get the plot. (Honestly I don't understand when people complain it has no plot but that's a whole other rant for another day)

The movie was... obsessed with this idea of like... semi realism? Like obviously, as a fan, I think they should have leaned into the over the top character designs but instead we got...w ell:

Bombalurina:

Demeter left and Bomba right. Demeter was actually cut! From the movie which is. upsetting lmao.

Macavity is one of the worst offenders for me:

Macavity was... I wish I could know what the hell they were thinking there cuz it's even in his song? Ginger cat??? THAT IS NOT... A GINGER CAT...... but I digress. I would show more examples but I think you get the point.

So. We've butchered the characters appearances. Okay that's fine but what about their personalities?

ALSO BUTCHERED.

There's... there's a lot to unpack here. Just for context: the Jellicle Ball happens once a year and the Jellicle leader chooses a single cat to be reborn into a new life. In the stage play all the cats who are nominated for this honour are on the older side (Jenny-Any-Dots, Bustopher Jones, Skimbleshanks, Gus The Theatre Cat, and eventually Grizzabella) AND are always nominated by another cat. Not themself, unlike the movie where they all seem to nominate themselves.

Jenny-Any-Dots went from a doting grandmother figure who's celebrated for her selfless volunteering and tireless work into a conceited, vain younger cat who is obsessed with fame.

It's an incredibly strange dichotomy. I don't doubt some of it isn't the result of the uh people playing the characters honestly. I do think some of them did the best they could! I don't really blame Jason Derulo, for example, for Tugger. And honestly, Tugger was probably closest to his stage version (while being a trouble maker, he's shown to show Deuteronomy an immense amount of respect)

Speaking of Tugger! This will bring us to one of the biggest grievances with the movie and that is how they handled Mr Mistoffelees.

So... Ugh. So. We have Victoria as the pov character, which imo is like whatever in the grand scheme of things, and then we have Misto who they have decided will be get live interest cuz... Of course. Misto is shown throughout the musical to be awkward, unsure of himself and well. Really, kinda incompetent. Which is Wild cuz in the stage show he might be aloof but he's fairly confident in his powers.

So, Old Deuts gets kidnapped. In the stage show Tugger is the one to bring Misto forward! It's really quite sweet, imo, and I'm showing myself as a Tuggoffelees shipper here, but again Tugger is previously shown to be pretty conceited but then here he is boosting and hyping up Misto to bring Deuteronomy back. My friends and I have lovingly dubbed this the boyfriend hype song.

SOMEHOW. The movie manages to make this, easily, the MOST BORING number in the whole thing. Which, again, WILD. Misto awkwardly stumbles through his whole song, which again is... Boasting of his supreme magical powers which movie Misto clearly. Does not have or believe to have. The song, to me, feels super awkward and unnecessarily drawn out in the movie which sucks cuz it's one of my favourites in the show.

The declawing (heh) of Mr Mistoffelees actually reminds me strongly of how they changed Gaston in the live action Beauty and the Beast movie. He's gone from a beloved figure in the animated movie to someone so disliked in the town that Le Fou has to pay people off to say nice things about him. It's just. Wild character choices were made!!

Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat is probably my favourite in movie non ensemble number. It feels the most... Genuine? Compared to the other nomination songs.

Other problems include but are not limited to:

The inconsistent size scale of the CATS which throws me off constantly.

The weirdly overt sexual overtones added to MANY of the songs (Jenny and Bustopher being the worst)

This is just a personal gripe and opinion but I don't like that they used the UK version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. The American version is both better known and tbh way more fun. Teazer's giggle? Adds ten years to my life every time.

Victoria's added solo song, Beautiful Ghosts, while I like the song as a song it doesn't fit the style of message of the musical. In the movie she's singing directly to Grizzabella who's being an outcast for years that she should be grateful she even has memories of being part of the tribe?? What?? But I know they had to add an original song to be able to be nominated for awards in like the Grammys n shit (which is why all musical movies will have an original song, fun fact!!) kinda funny they went to the effort though considering........... I don't think anyone could have genuinely believed CATS 2019 was gonna win anything but golden rhaspberries.

Movie Mr Mistoffelees has made repeated appearances as my sleep paralysis demon

The various cut characters, shout outs to Jemima, Demeter and Jellylorum especially

Bombalurina being a henchman to Macavity rubs me the wrong way

God I've written... So much. You probably get it by now haha. Like I said at the beginning, I try to go into any adaptation with an open mind but... Let's be honest, this movie wasn't marketed to people who are fans of the musical.

It was marketed, and made, to make money. And they choose to do that through, I think, intentionally making the worst possible version ever. Bad press is still press and the more outrageous people said the movie was the more people wanted to go see exactly what kind of train wreck it was.

Which is a disservice to the stage show, honestly, and all the people who've worked on it over the years.

But what can we do, right?

And besides all that, I do... Still own the movie version and I do still rewatch it on occasion. It is entertaining even if it's in a train wreck kind of way. I usually end up watching the 1998 version, then 2019 and then various tour runs that are on YouTube. (I highly recommend the 2016 tour, it's very good)

So in conclusion. It's fun (?) to watch. I enjoy picking things apart and doing analysis (if you couldn't tell!) so like... I don't hate it?

It did what it set out to do, I guess, and I can't fault it for that but. It's not a fair metre with which to judge the stage show imo. But I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, haha.

Jazz hands. I'm more than happy to elaborate or just chat about CATS if anyone wants! I grew up listening to the Broadway CD since I was a toddler so it's been! A very long standing obsession haha. Probably the only other thing on par with CATS is my obsession with Jurassic Park which I've also been a fan of since I was 3 (but that's a whole story in and of itself)

#astrix thoughts #cats the musical #Thanks for the opportunity to talk about one of my hyperfixations anon!#And to anyone who reads this whole mess lmao

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crisprandcas-blog · 7 years

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Let's Go Exploring! #4

Note to readers: Let's Go Exploring is now a newsletter! Want to get our link collections and semi-coherent ramblings straight to your inbox? You're in luck! SIGN UP today!

Hello readers! It has been an eerily beautiful March week (thanks climate change, I guess), our respective science projects have been full of ups and downs lately, and we are ready to sit down and scream into the internet for a while.

This week, we have been re-reading the Two Bossy Dames back-catalogues to Improve Ourselves, and came across this ask:

I used to think of myself as a creative person. Then I ended up in a field where I consume other people's awesome creative output all day, and in a city whose main industry is Big Smart Ideas. Now I'm stuck feeling like I need Big Smart Ideas and Awesome Creativity to be worthwhile, but at the same time I'm paralyzed by the fact that my crappy little initial efforts aren't going to be as great as the work I see around me every day. What's the point of putting a lot of work into something crummy? As ladies who also consume culture professionally, how do you keep that from paralyzing your own creativity?

Which had this answer:

We are not competition for these people. We are their colleagues. Their work informs ours, and (we flatter ourselves slightly), one day ours will inform theirs. There’s room for all of this and way more besides! Whatever your field of endeavor is, you’re practicing it right alongside of a bunch of other people, and yeah, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we bet you could do a bang-up job refining its design and rebalancing it.

Read the whole thing OBVS but basically we want to share this advice because it helped us so SO much in even contemplating starting a science link roundup/newsletter/writing team. We aspire to Dame Sophie and Dame Margaret levels of excellence and insight! In particular, the message offered by this answer is that you have a new perspective to offer just by being your unique self. Sure, other people may be making a similar thing as whatever it is you want to be producing, but you can add to the collection of amazing work by DOING amazing work.

We are trying to add to the collection of science-themed commentary already made excellent by the likes of Ed Yong, Erin Barker, Liz Neeley, Carl Zimmer, Peter Aldhous, and many others, and trying to inject our own background, experience, and humor into it. We started this for ourselves and for a few close friends, so we don't have to continually remind ourselves that this isn't a competition, but it does occasionally bubble to the surface of our self-conscience brains. "How many twitter followers do we have today?" is a question Cas finds herself asking far too often, for example.

When that question rises up of its own accord, what she tries to ask herself instead is "What have I written today that I'm proud of?" In fact we both think this is a question that everybody should ask themselves (possibly in a form more tailored to your particular choice of extracurricular content creation) instead of focusing on how many people have thumbs-up'd or hearted their stuff lately.

The above was written entirely for our own benefit, but we hope it helps you in your own endeavor to greatness, whatever form that takes!

The Links

Crispr reads:

This week, WIRED excerpted a book called Deadliest Enemy: A War Against Killer Germs. I haven't read the book, but the WIRED article is a quick read about what we can expect from a post-antibiotic world, and a reminder about why it's hard to regulate antibiotic use. (One problem: it's difficult for doctors to refuse anxious parents a prescription they don't think is necessary, especially when it seems basically harmless and might even help.) The article opens with a story about the bacteria found in the 4-million-year-old Lechuguilla Caves, which have genes that make them resistant to common antibiotics. This is cool but scary: cool because biology, wow! Scary because it's a reminder that a lot of bacteria already have all the tools they need to escape our attempts to get rid of them. Antibiotics were a miracle, no doubt, and they changed the world, but fighting bacterial infections will continue to be a war waged in every generation. Hopefully we'll be waging that war with effective antibiotics, but you never know.

On that note: the graphic novel Surgeon X is a cool comic about post-antibiotic London. It's not perfect, and I'm going to let it play out for a few more issues before I decide whether I'm totally sucked in, but I love the timely concept and the social commentary. Read it and have Thoughts? Let me know!

Very related to antibiotics: yesterday was World Tuberculosis Day. Many of us, me included, think of TB as a disease of the past. Only Victorian ladies in novels get consumption! (Side note - did you guys know that tuberculosis shaped Victorian fashion for decades? Looking ill was totally in!) But it's definitely still a very present disease -- 1.8 MILLION people died of TB in 2015, and drug-resistance is really f***ing us over in this case. Luckily we're a lot more knowledgable about what TB is caused by and how to treat it nowadays... no more eating the liver of a wolf boiled in wine! A common treatment of the past was shipping people off to the "fresh air" -- which probably did actually help a lot in some cases. They would travel to places like Colorado (mountain air, fewer people) and live in sanatoriums, where patients lived in semi-isolated huts. This week I learned that many of those huts that were used to house TB patients in Colorado have been turned into tool sheds and art studios! So cool.

And finally: Why surgeons make good artists. George Butler draws surgeons at work and talks about the similarities between art and surgery. Great artists make me jelly.

Cas reads:

Oh hey y'all. Did you need a reminder that coding is the most useful skill you can learn today or tomorrow, but preferably yesterday? Well, let WIRED give you one anyway. Why yes, WIRED, I should be learning to code in my "spare time". Many, many people have told me that programming is the path to the future. Let me complain about this for a hot second: I actually like to code. I've taken a few intro programming classes and I find it fun, satisfying, and completely unapplicable to my day-to-day work. I could 100 percent design a project in my field around messing with with the mass amounts of data available to scientists. I could 200 percent improve my job prospects by doing so. But I work and read all day in order to make sure my project is moving forward and I'll have a satisfying story by the time I'm thinking about graduating... and this doesn't require any computer skills beyond basic command of word-processing and access to the right computer tools. The thought of learning to competently code simultaneously makes me prematurely tired. To be honest, in my free time I'd rather be doing what I am right now: reading random things on the internet and writing about them.

But yes, coding is the way of the future. So: people who HAVE learned to code when they didn't need to- how did you do it? What motivated you? Was it fun? Tell me your inspiring stories! Somebody give me a good kick in the butt! (I promise I'll thank you later.)

ANYhoo, moving on: National Geographic did an article about how weird small things look. Look, phage!

And speaking of phage, this is an AWESOME book about them. It's hand illustrated AND free. Download it today! Or buy it for a lot of money... I'm seriously considering it as coffee-table-topping material.

More small things: Ernst Haeckel drew a lot of microscopic animals in the 1800s/early 1900s and MAN are the prints beautiful. He also drew bigger stuff but I like his depictions of the crazy diversity of protozoa best.

Something not so small: the gender bias in academic peer review. Especially in men against women... duh.

Randomness from the week: flat-faced bunnies! Really cold leaves! Lego tape!

And we're done! Thanks for reading, and keep exploring!

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