Sunday!
MGK Hockey 1234 had an interesting point on the twitters:
“I’m so tired of superhero movies”
listen: in 1950 Hollywood literally released 158 Westerns, that’s more than thirteen a month
20 of those Westerns were specifically of the “singing cowboy” subgenre
stop acting like you’re uniquely affronted by superhero movies’ existence
Twitter responded to this point, as twitter does, with various levels of amusement and offense but my favorite point in response was some variant of “So where are the singing superhero movies?”
I can remember only two superhero stage musicals. The first one being It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman was one that I saw waaaay back in the 80’s in a little community-level play (they had identical twins who could act and sing… why, it’d be a crime if they *DIDN’T* do a play that relied on one of them in one costume and the other in another). This play was cute. I guess. I don’t remember much from it beyond the “You’ve Got Possibilities” song and that’s mostly because of the commercial:
The other superhero stage musical is, of course, the much more recent Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. This is a play that I have *NOT* seen, but notice that none of the songs seem to have leaked out into the wild… not yet anyway. When watching the trailer for the play, I’m struck by what a spectacle it must have been and completely unsurprised to hear that there were numerous injuries as the play went on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9LK2SBGeYg
And I’m expecting to see some of those songs show up in commercials in a decade or so.
And hoping that, perhaps, 40 years hence, we’ll finally get “The Infinity Gauntlet: The Musical”.
(If you want to discuss spoilers for The Infinity Gauntlet in comments, please consider using Rot13, a simple back-and-forth encryption protocol. It turns “The butler did it” into “Gur ohgyre qvq vg” and vice-versa.)
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
I finally read Shattered Won’t say anymore here because politics. (But I also don’t have much to add from the conversation a year ago, maybe just one more observation about money that didn’t seem to be commented on then)
Also just finished John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. A podcast recomended (I think) by Don Zeko about A Song of Ice and Fire (i.e. book series game of thrones). One thing the podcasters comment on is how good Martin is at introducing world building elements without just blocks of chunky exposition, a usual weakness found in these sort of works.
Well, now that those guys got my radar up for that sort of thing in genre fiction, I got to say Scalzi is definitely Mister Captain Exposition in this, his freshman book.
I liked it, and it was a quick read, but there’s certainly stuff that an experienced writer (or a team like James S A Corey) would have probably held back on. Dropping hints, certainly, but cutting the bulk of some explanations and leaving them for another book.Report
I hate to do this, but there is a Bollywood singing superhero movie with Superman and Spiderwoman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1m9tWfZR5s
Warning: It cannot be unseen.Report
I’ve been lucky enough to see that before.
I still think that Infinity Gauntlet The Musical could work.Report
To be honest we are only about 2 more Mamma Mia sequels from having that by default.Report
I’ve been thinking about it.
The first half of Mama Mia (with a handful of tweaks) could work as a prequel to Cable: The Musical.Report
I wasn’t a huge comic book kid, wasn’t my thing, but one of the few characters I actually got into was Cable. So despite my general dislike of the Marvel movies I am interested to see what Brolin can do with it. Seems like the perfect fit of actor/subject so see where it goes.Report
How many of the 158 Westerns were the most expensive, high-profile films made that year, and how many were the B parts of double features? Asking for a friend.
Anyway, I highly recommend The Death of Stalin. (No politics). Steve Buscemi (Khrushchev) , Jeffrey Tambor (Malenkov), and Jason Isaacs* (Zhukov) were all amazing.
* Best known as Lucius Malfoy.Report
@mike-schilling
A good point, the percentage of movies that were westerns then vs superheroes now would be a better comparison.Report
Also the fraction of total filmmaking budget spent on them.Report
@mike-schilling Yes, that would be a good test. I think the real issue here is that Hollywood is putting their geeks into fewer and fewer baskets. Its not that there are too many superhero movies, its that there’s too few of anything else.Report
And by geeks I mean eggs, I have no idea how autocorrect managed that.Report
It’s becoming self-aware and contemptuous of its makers.Report
I’ll second The Death of Stalin. Isaacs as Zhukov stole the show.
If there was ever a musical comic book movie made it would signal the complete collapse of Hollywood’s imagination.Report
At least with Westerns you didn’t have to suspend your knowledge of how physical reality works.Report
Other than handguns, which have an infinite capacity unless there’s a plot point that requires a character to be reloading. And horses that can gallop flat out for 15 or 20 minutes at a time.Report
Did you see Hail Caesar? It has one of the most over-the-top, flat-out ridiculous, and incredibly fun Western chase scenes I’ve ever seen. The cowboy was Alden Ehrenreich, who’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to Solo.Report
This is the only super hero musical you need.
https://youtu.be/ptKgRecPi1IReport
I’d not seen that before now.
I still think that Infinity Gauntlet The Musical could work.Report
I am reading a history of daily life in Ancient Rome and novels by Ceasare Pavese.
I saw the Avengers: Infinity War. If you know anything about Marvel’s release schedule and/or corporate plans, you know the “shock” ending will be reversed. Also if you know anything about the comics from 1991.Report
@saul-degraw
True, all the same I’m impressed they were prepared to go there on screen.Report
My two book items today were old paths for my reading habits: background material for my beloved Aubrey/Maturin series with Patrick O’brain: Making of a Novelist bt Nikolai Tolstoy and Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels by Dean King.Report
I finally finished a quite charming book I’ve been grazing on since late February, All the Time in the World: A Book of Hours, by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins. It satisfied a niche that I’d hoped her previous book would. I was disappointed by the first one, as it turned out, so it was extra-pleasing how much I enjoyed this one. A fun and elegantly-designed miscellany.
Watched a couple episodes of Jessica Jones, I haven’t had the intestinal fortitude to binge watch it as yet.
Mostly I’ve been checking out new podcasts, and listening to old ones. NYPL’s The Librarian is In is still my most favorite. A lot of the new ones I’ve been listening to are coming from one or another of the Upright Citizen’s Brigades’ members… of those, I hate about half and adore about half. Which puzzles me although it probably shouldn’t.
Stephen Fry has a new podcast! Stephen Fry’s Great Leap Forward. I have yet to listen to it but suspect I will enjoy it very much. Also not listened to yet, but much looking forward to, is The Habitat – multi-episode documentary about volunteers living on fake-Mars in Hawaii so NASA can better speculate about how to make it possible for future astronauts to live on real Mars on day….Report