Many of my favorite movies have that one scene that I simply have to watch. I’m sure you have them to. When you’re flipping through TV channels and you come across a movie that you love, you’ll sit and watch it until that one scene plays and then you’ll feel free to change the channel to something else. For me and Jurassic Park, it’s the T-Rex attack, or inAliens it’s Ripley in the Power Loader (unless Aliens is showing on AMC, where they split the film’s finale in two so they can air 5 minutes of commercials right smack in the middle), or the Diva’s song in The Fifth Element. This past week I was channel surfing and came across one of my all-time favorite musicals on Turner Classic, West Side Story, and I lucked out because it was right before the start of my favorite scene, the one I just have to watch.
I rarely pay much attention to those around me in a movie theater. We all have experienced a myriad of awful behavior from both adults and children, and it’s driven some people to stay home and simply watch movies on Netflix (or pirate them), but I’ve mostly learned to tune them out. There are exceptions, when I want to see how people react to a particular moment in a film I’ve seen before, but mostly I ignore people rudely talking or checking their cell phones and such. However, I started to notice an interesting trend during Into the Woods that brought a lot of questions to my mind, particularly as it pertains to the state of musical films in today’s pop culture landscape. And it all made me wonder whether movie musicals will ever be popular enough again to have a regular place at the table of major film genres, and why, exactly, people stopped loving musicals.
Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be fascinating.
I’m a big fan of stage musicals, I’ve seen a lot of shows on Broadway and countless others on tour, and I also happen to be a Four Seasons/Frankie Valli fan, yet somehow I’ve never managed to see Jersey Boys. (Though, interestingly, it’s coming to my town in just a couple months.) I was very excited when I heard that they were adapting the Tony Award-winning musical into a film. But when I first watched the trailer I wasn’t nearly as excited as I thought I would be. Take a look below and read on for my thoughts:
The Love Pirate 