Let Me Rest In Peace

I watched the Buffy musical episode, "Once More With Feeling," the other day to write this piece on it for work. A college roommate of mine was a huge fan of the show, so I've seen a few episodes (including this one), but that was easily six or seven years ago. I've never been able to get into the show, even though everyone tells me I'd love it and thinks I'm insane because I don't.

It's hard to evaluate an episode from such a late season when you don't watch the show, but even from a musical theatre standpoint, I didn't like the episode. I found it really boring--there were a LOT of ballads, which made the episode drag for me, and I found most of the lyrics heightened to the point of being ridiculous, especially in Buffy's big number at the end ("Something To Sing About," I think it's called). I don't mind that the vast majority of numbers are about character, rather than plot--especially since the revelations in those songs feature hugely in the storyline overall--but those songs didn't tell me anything about who those characters are, except that Spike and Buffy are angsty. The songwriting in Dr. Horrible, which I'll write about later, is much better in my opinion.

I don't think the episode is bad; I say a lot of good things about it in my article. I just don't see what's so great about it, and I certainly don't think it's the best musical episode ever. A lot of my dislike may simply stem from my dislike of Buffy overall. The show is too precious, takes itself too seriously, and tries too hard to be funny and weird for my taste. I know this is just a personal preference thing; again, I know a ton of people who love Buffy. It's also possible that I just don't like Joss Whedon's TV shows, since I couldn't make it through the Firefly pilot.

(Although I hear the show gets better, and if I judged all shows by pilots, I wouldn't like True Blood or Battlestar Galactica.) I like Dr. Horrible a lot, though, and as I've mentioned before, I LOVE Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, so I'm willing to say that my taste is just weird and leave it at that.

Why I Don't Understand Movie Awards

I didn't grow up watching movies, so I just don't think to see movies the way most people do. I also find it hard to sit through movies when I watch them at home--I get distracted really easily, and it's hard for me to sit still for more than an hour at a time unless I'm writing. It's weird; I have no problem seeing movies in the theatre (although again, I don't that often) or seeing shows, and I can watch a lot of T.V. episodes back to back. I think I'm suited more to T.V. than to movies in general (although I don't watch very many shows), but that's another post.

So because I'm not really into movies, I've never been into the Academy Awards--or any awards, really, other than the Tonys. It seems weird to me; I don't understand how you can compare EVERY SINGLE MOVIE RELEASED IN ONE YEAR to each other when they can have totally different resources, intentions, styles, and techniques. Looking at this year's list of nominees, it really seems like the Oscars are about standard Hollywood films, with a few foreign and indie ones thrown in. It's hard for me to understand what the point is. But that's because I don't really watch movies and that whole world is very foreign to me, I guess.

I think a lot of why I find it kind of confusing is because I'm looking at it from a theatre perspective. The Tonys have their share of problems, but they look at a set number of shows: just the ones that opened on Broadway in that given year, which limits the number of shows enormously. It's definitely possible for everyone on the nominating committee to see every Broadway show, but there's no physical way anyone could see every movie ever released in one year. I mean...maybe you could...but there must be so many!

I also have a hard time understanding how you can compare like, an action film, a romantic comedy, and an animated film. It's true that musicals and plays can be very different from each other, but at least they have the same basic space and tools to work with. The script mattering more in theatre than in movies makes a difference, too. I honestly don't know what criteria people use to evaluate movies objectively. Direction, I guess...but I have a hard time understanding directing in terms of film, so I'm kind of at a loss with that, too.

My boyfriend is a huge movie nerd, and he tried to explain all this to me the other night. It must be so frustrating trying to explain stuff to me when I haven't seen 90% of movies that everyone else has seen...and when I don't understand how a movie can win Best Screenplay and Best Direction and not win Best Picture. It's a strange, fascinating world, and I'd like to understand more of it. Which means I need to watch more movies.

She'd Be Fabulous At The Tonys

YES. Lady Gaga has the kind of in-your-face theatricality that most theatre people find hard to resist--and it's exactly the kind of theatricality that musicals have a long history of embracing. Although I'm a lyricist, it's Lady Gaga's music and arresting images and choreography in her videos that grab me. There's something about her music and her image that makes me feel like it tells some kind of story, or that it can at least be used in a narrative sense. I've long been a proponent of artists in other genres working in musical theatre, and (especially) of musical theatre artists drawing from other art forms. I think everyone working in theatre, particularly writers, can learn a lot from someone like Lady Gaga.

Ultimately, it may just be that Lady Gaga understand spectacle and emotion and how to balance the two. I find the opening notes of "Bad Romance" just as exciting as the opening words of Sunday in the Park with George. They're as different as they could possibly be, but they both have story and emotion at their core. That doesn't always happen in pop music, but it's thrilling when it does. And if Lady Gaga ever wrote a musical, I'd be there every chance I got.

Be Italian

I know I'm very much a minority on this, but I really enjoyed the Nine movie. I thought the cast overall was incredibly strong, and I liked how they rearranged the song order, even though I really missed "The Bells of Saint Sebastian" and "Be On Your Own." There were things that weren't perfect--and maybe I'd feel differently if the musical were a favorite of mine--but on the whole I think it's worth seeing.

My biggest complaint is with the use of musical numbers being Guido fantasy sequences, like in the Chicago film. That worked well there because Roxie wants desperately to be a vaudeville star, and those songs are very vaudevillian anyway. That doesn't make as much sense for film director Guido, which makes the songs come off seeming kind of gimmicky. I would have preferred a lot more singing and for the songs to be really integrated book songs, the way they are in the show--I totally buy the world of Italian cinema being heightened and intense in that way.

But if the songs had to be more an expression of Guido's psyche, I would have liked to see them occur within the real world, not in their own limbo musical number space. During a naturalistic scene, we could suddenly go into Guido's head, seeing real life the way he sees a movie set. Maybe then the fantasy sequence could be Guido "directing" the character in question, and her song would be what Guido wants her to sing (the way it actually is in the movie), while it's clear that she feels otherwise. That would be a slightly different movie, but I think that structure would get at Guido's particular issues more than using Chicago's structure did.

Nine Lives

She's back!



I knew Joss Whedon hadn't gotten rid of her for good, but damn am I relieved to hear Kitty Pryde's coming back. I haven't been really into comics for that long, and the only X-Men series I've read is Astonishing X-Men, but I absolutely adore Kitty in that and was upset over what happened to her. I'm still really enjoying Astonishing--with Warren Ellis writing it, how could I not?--and I like the current team a lot (especially Hisako and her interactions with Wolverine), but I miss Kitty. I'm definitely picking up that issue of Uncanny.

Fantasty Casting, Marvel Style

Because I'm impatient for the new season of Chuck to start next month, I was watching some early episodes last night and I realized that Yvonne Strahovski would be an amazing Black Widow. I don't know why I didn't think of that before. Her character on Chuck (his CIA handler) is not that dissimilar from the Black Widow (originally a Soviet spy who defected to the U.S.), and she certainly can portray someone that complicated. And she already kicks ass on Chuck, so she's got that covered.

Watching the show again after a few months has reminded me how well-written character of Sarah Walker is--she's incredibly strong and focused on her work without being bitchy or cold, and her vulnerable moments are subtle and genuine. Yvonne Strahovski deserves a lot of credit for that, too. As much as I wish I could see her in Iron Man 2 (or, while I'm dreaming, a Black Widow movie), I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where she takes her character in the upcoming season of Chuck (which, by the way, is a really smart, funny, and emotionally honest show that you should watch, especially since it has undercover government agents and a socially awkward protagonist).

This Is The Dream I Never Knew I Had

Lin-Manuel Miranda's latest project: The Hamilton Mixtape:



For some reason, Alexander Hamilton fans don't appear to be all that common. I know a lot of history geeks (and I'm one myself, albeit a more casual one), but only three of them are passionate about Alexander Hamilton, and I'm including myself in that count. I find that surprising. Growing up in a suburb of Boston meant an overexposure to all things Revolutionary War--I dressed up as a colonial girl more than once in elementary school, I could see a tavern from my house, and on Patriot's Day (you Massholes know what I'm talking about), gunshots from the early morning reenactment would wake me up. Living in all that history got old by sixth grade.

But Alexander Hamilton was different. His background, his determination, and his wholehearted commitment to pretty much everything has always made him stand out to me. There were plenty of strong-willed, brilliant, and passionate men working for independence, but there weren't any quite like Alexander Hamilton. He was badass.

Hamilton's life seems perfect for musical theatre--the man died in a duel!--so it's about time somebody tried making Hamilton sing. Lin-Manuel Miranda seems counter-intuitive; hip hop in the 1770s, really? But after listening to that opening number, I can't think of anyone better. I love the quiet tension underlying the song; it makes me think of a coiled spring that could snap at any moment, and it gives the number--and potentially the whole piece--a momentum and energy that suits Hamilton completely. Having Aaron Burr open the show, introducing the audience to Hamilton and the world of the musical, is a fascinating choice. I'm curious to see how that'll play out--does he narrate the whole show? I love that the music isn't period at all, as well.

In addition to capturing Hamilton's intense and independent personality, the music makes it very clear that this is not going to be a straightfoward look at a man's life. I know nothing of this project other than this song, but the music alone makes me expect a non-realistic world with its own set of rules. The music automatically causes audiences to see the story in modern terms, which I think is really cool. I feel early American history is often preserved behind museum glass. This music and these words shatter that glass and forces our history to live right alongside us, where it belongs.