The past Sondheim film adaptations have been one sort of dog or another (with the occasional glimmer of greatness, like Diana Rigg and Alan Rickman).
Now it looks like INTO THE WOODS is being given a go, by Rob Marshall (who thankfully will have very little real dancing to mangle this time).
And why is Johnny Depp in everything now? If he's playing the old man character, he thankfully won't have much to sing (he sounded too much like Davy Jones in SWEENEY TODD for my taste).
Depp is playing the Big Bad Wolf. And why oh why is Hollywood still doing the "hide the fact that it's a musical" thing?
Exactly !
The other thing Hollywood seems to be scared to death of at present is COLOUR !
I see that “Into the Woods” has been shot in the now ubiquitous “Sludge-O-Vision” !
They could save themselves a lot of money by just shooting in black & white. Then we wouldn’t have to see ANY of those nasty colours, would we ?
Ha, I've been moaning about that for years. It seems for the past 10-14 years the first thing they do when starting the DI colour grade is to wind out 30%-50% of the colour! Not quite everyone, Quintin Tarantino, whatever you think of his movies, at least they look great.
It does look pretty (helped by the fact Anna Kendrick is there). I'm looking forward to seeing this, however with all musical films nowadays it's the vocals that always concern me. I pretty much found 'Les Miserables' unwatchable due to awful singing from the lead characters. I can always go back to the DVD of the OBC if I don't like this.
They seem to be soft pedalling the fact that this is a...musical! You'd never know it from the first trailer, & just a tiny bit of singing in the second.
Well, FROZEN has no songs for about the last third of its running time, and no sung finale, either.
So, Disney really is soft pedaling musicals.
(Apparently, way back when, FROZEN began as a project called THE SNOW QUEEN, based on the Hans Andersen tale, with a score by Alan Menken. Though how much Menken actually composed is unknown; there's a recording of at least one of his songs for it on YouTube.)
the musical genre belongs, much like the western, very much in the past.
Disney wants a word with you when they're finished rolling in all the money Frozen's brought in. As for the latter, sooner or later there'll be another sagebrush success.
Much as Joe says. 'Into The Woods' will do good business at the box office. Jason Robert Brown's 'The Last Five Years ' will open in February as well. Hardly belong to the past if they are still being made and find an audience. We don't all want endless scifi and fantasy films.
