Mamma Mia

[trinityvixen]

Just came back from Mamma Mia. This is the second time I've seen it, so the rather thin plot was a tad grating. I still love the music to pieces, and you have to physically restrain my sisters and I (all of whom were in attendance) from singing along, but I dunno. It felt a tad flat until the end where they bust out the shiny outfits and sing for real.

One thing I noticed? Musical theater conventions really grate on me. Number One offender with a bullet: the seranade made as an aside. You know what I mean, even if I can't dredge up the technical term. Basically, where two people are prominent onstage, and one freezes out of the spotlight while the other sings about them and twirls around them as they don't react to it. That's getting really old. I think it would be more character dynamic if the other person, you know, reacted. But I suppose it would muck up the last-act turnaround if feelings were out in the open from the outset, wot?

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, and you watched Dancer in the Dark because...? Unrequited Bjork love?

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I watched it because... I took a class on musicals and it was required (not that that made most of the class watch it: I was the only person in my precept who had). It's the perfect anti-musical. It manipulates and subverts everything the musical genre normally does. It's actually where my Bjork love came from.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I still think of Space Ghost whenever I think of Bjork. They clearly splice together the interviews, but hers was weird beyond simple tampering (for instance, I can't imagine what prompt she got to ask the question "Do you like sulfur?").

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I will not argue that Bjork is weird. That woman wore a swan. To the Oscars. She's bizarre. But out of that oddity comes great music.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Her music sounds screechy or atunal to me most of the time. I guess somewhere in there is something people like. I just don't understand her.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Neither do I, if it makes you feel any better.

I also took that class, two years later. I also watched Dancer in the Dark. I watched it in the student center on a computer - I had to keep looking out the window or checking my mail because if I actually got involved in the story it made me so upset I felt physically ill. I don't think I've ever seen anything so relentlessly depressing and upsetting.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I watched it in McCosh 10, so no chance of distracting myself. It upset me so much I could barely think when I left. I don't think I slept for a few nights afterwards. I had this irrational fear that Tamsen would show a clip of it in class.

And then I decided to write my final paper on it. Glutton for punishment, you say? Yes, but I was far more passionate about that than anything else. So I rewatched parts of it, and the second time through I was just in awe of the pure genius of the film. It's amazingly carefully constructed; there are so many themes and ideas, it was heaven for an English major.

When I bought the album "Selmasongs," I think the reason I love the music so much is because it is attached to this incredibly emotional experience for me.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I couldn't have done it.

I will freely admit that it's a brilliantly constructed movie, but I could not make myself watch that again.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I know quite a few movies like that. They were good but so relentlessly depressing or depraved or whatever, that a second viewing might have made me jump off a roof or lose my lunch (or both). It's easy to say they're good, not so easy to sit through them twice.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I heard it was hard to watch physically because of the camera shooting style, but not that it was depressing. Sheesh. Sounds like a real winner...

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Both. It's grainy and jumpy and nearly colorless in most shots. And it's depressing and horrifying and nauseating. Everytime you think things couldn't possibly get worse, they do. Everytime you think there might be hope - things get worse. All the way to the end. Relentlessly.

And the only breaks in tension are the songs, which are the typical strange, breathy, pitchy, oddly-accented Bjork stuff, and only underscore the relentless misery of the rest of movie.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Wow. Let's rent that for our next get together then. I'm bringing the plastic bags with ties for suffocating with!

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We can serve Jonestown punch, too. And for those who manage to survive? Uh, I dunno, is a Rancor too much?