Film Score Monthly
FSM HOME MESSAGE BOARD FSM CDs FSM ONLINE RESOURCES FUN STUFF ABOUT US  SEARCH FSM   
Search Terms: 
Search Within:   search tips 
You must log in or register to post.
  Go to page:    
 Posted:   Oct 11, 2024 - 5:26 PM   
 By:   losher22   (Member)

Always interesting to hear contrasting thoughts. You’re wrong on one thing though, TG: I *am* an idiot. Haha!

 
 Posted:   Oct 11, 2024 - 5:54 PM   
 By:   Advise & Consent   (Member)

We saw the film this evening and I’m struggling to think of anything that stops it from being a 10/10 film. It was, simply put, stunning. I’m still collecting my thoughts and will probably expand on this in the “rate the movie” thread, but the score was note-perfect. The songs were thoroughly justified even though I wouldn’t personally buy the song-related CD (out of context they’re not my cup of tea).

Anyone who’s seen it and tries to tell you it’s a musical, you can tell them from me they’re an idiot smile. It’s like saying that Kill Bill or Natural Born Killers are musicals. Iosher22 only said “elements of musicals” so that doesn’t count.

Best new film, and best use of score, I’ve seen in ages.


Thankfully, the people have spoken and they hate all the fruity Lady Ga!Ga! - quote, unquote - singing, among other tripe.

 
 Posted:   Oct 11, 2024 - 6:32 PM   
 By:   Josh   (Member)

I refuse to watch or listen to anything featuring Lady Gag-me-with-a-spoon.

 
 
 Posted:   Oct 11, 2024 - 11:02 PM   
 By:   Tall Guy   (Member)

Always interesting to hear contrasting thoughts. You’re wrong on one thing though, TG: I *am* an idiot. Haha!

big grin - brilliant, love that!

 
 
 Posted:   Oct 12, 2024 - 1:14 AM   
 By:   Willgoldnewtonbarrygrusin   (Member)

We saw the film this evening and I’m struggling to think of anything that stops it from being a 10/10 film. It was, simply put, stunning. I’m still collecting my thoughts and will probably expand on this in the “rate the movie” thread, but the score was note-perfect. The songs were thoroughly justified even though I wouldn’t personally buy the song-related CD (out of context they’re not my cup of tea).

Anyone who’s seen it and tries to tell you it’s a musical, you can tell them from me they’re an idiot smile. It’s like saying that Kill Bill or Natural Born Killers are musicals. Iosher22 only said “elements of musicals” so that doesn’t count.

Best new film, and best use of score, I’ve seen in ages.


Those who expected and wanted a film about Joker and Harley Quinn going on a „fun“ crime spree hate this one for deconstructing the Joker even more.

I think this is the film that was needed after the first one opened up so many misinterpretations. And it is the most courageous sequel in ages.

 
 Posted:   Oct 12, 2024 - 9:28 PM   
 By:   nuts_score   (Member)

Curious inquiry to those raising this flag, but what makes this movie not a musical? Is it just just a personal preference or opinion? Everything I have been aware about this film is that it does indeed feature multiple "songs by the characters [which] are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate production numbers. (Taken from Wikipedia's description of "musical film.")

 
 
 Posted:   Oct 13, 2024 - 1:02 AM   
 By:   Tall Guy   (Member)

Curious inquiry to those raising this flag, but what makes this movie not a musical? Is it just just a personal preference or opinion? Everything I have been aware about this film is that it does indeed feature multiple "songs by the characters [which] are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate production numbers. (Taken from Wikipedia's description of "musical film.")


Fair question. The answer is that a thing can share the characteristics of another thing, but not have the same DNA.

I think the people raising the flag are those who describe the film as a musical. In this case, a character’s mental illness presents as a series of tableaux of songs, dances, tv shows or other entertainments, because that character wanted to have those things as a career, a way of life.

If, in a hypothetical film, the main character works in a bank but has paranoid nightmares about being in WW1 trenches, or on Omaha beach on D-Day, or flying F-15s over the desert in 1991, would that be a war film?

If a film about an alcoholic social worker saw her having delusions about being Marie Antoinette, would that be a period drama?

Sometimes it can be hard to fix a film into a genre. God knows I struggle sometimes to file some Italian films from the 1970s into either the giallo or the polizio shelves.

If you go to see Folie à Deux, and decide that it’s more akin to Paint Your Wagon or Oklahoma than to Taxi Driver or Fight Club, I’d be more than a little surprised smile

 
 Posted:   Oct 13, 2024 - 10:00 AM   
 By:   nuts_score   (Member)

So the argument is that this film about a schizophrenic madman imagining himself to be in a musical film, is not a musical film? Simply be the lead character is a mentally unstable individual first, but a dreamer second?

Have you seen the Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark? This movie sounds a lot like that. No one who truly loves the film Dancer in the Dark would argue against it being a musical simply because the lead character is a working class woman with advancing blindness trying to survive her gruelling conditions and putting money aside to save her son from having the disease as well.

On your last point, there are a lot of darker and more psychologically complex musicals out there. I already mentioned Dancer in the Dark. Oklahoma and Paint Your Wagon are just two specific examples in the genre that don't make great accomplices in the argument against Joker 2 not to be a musical. In the battle for the Joker 2 cult to claim this movie on the merits they see, I'm sure we'll see plenty of elevated descriptors to offset the equally deserving merits of "boring" or "antagonistic." If you liked Joker 2, I would urge you to see musicals like the aforementioned Von Trier film; or Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise; or Bob Fosse's Cabaret or All That Jazz. For similar jukebox musicals, like Joker 2, there is also films with darker subject matter like Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge or Idlewild by the great hip hop duo Outlast.

 
 Posted:   Oct 13, 2024 - 12:07 PM   
 By:   SchiffyM   (Member)

If you go to see Folie à Deux, and decide that it’s more akin to Paint Your Wagon or Oklahoma than to Taxi Driver or Fight Club, I’d be more than a little surprised smile

I'm with nuts_score. (And no, I haven't seen the movie, but I'm not arguing the merits of the film here.) I feel like you consider "musical" to be a pejorative, suggesting musicals are all sunny and dancing and good times. But there could absolutely be a musical made of Taxi Driver or Fight Club, just as there in fact was a musical made of American Psycho.

I think one of the greatest musicals ever made is a revenge tale of a wronged barber who has a psychotic break and murders over and over on-stage, with no shortage of blood. (There's also an implied rape.) The film version of Chicago (also full of murder) presents the songs as representations of the characters' inner thoughts, prominently lead Roxie, for whom the songs are framed as a sort of mental escape from her situation. There are many more examples ("Cabaret" takes place in Nazi Germany, "Parade" presents an anti-semitic lynching) but they are all musicals. Because the characters sing songs in them. And that's what makes something a musical, whether those songs are presented as "reality" or not.

 
 
 Posted:   Oct 13, 2024 - 1:08 PM   
 By:   Tall Guy   (Member)

I haven’t seen all the films you both mention, but I’m aware there are dark musicals. I’ve seen South Park the Movie.

I don’t think either of you have seen Folie à Deux. I’ve set out my view from watching it, and I’m terribly glad I gave it a shot rather than taking other people’s views as gospel.

(Not a musical smile )

 
 
 Posted:   Oct 13, 2024 - 1:27 PM   
 By:   Tall Guy   (Member)

And in case I glossed over it a little, Hildur’s score works sensationally well.

I can’t say how well it’d play away from the film because I haven’t heard it away from the film.

 
You must log in or register to post.
  Go to page:    
© 2024 Film Score Monthly. All Rights Reserved.
Website maintained and powered by Veraprise and Matrimont.