Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Recommended Posts

Say what you want but the online trailers (US and international) for Mamma Mia! (the movie) make this look like it will be a lot of fun:

ABBA + singing + dancing + Meryl Streep + Pierce Brosnan + Julie Walters + Colin Firth + Christine Baranski + Stellan Skarsgard + on-location filming in Greece = SUMMER FUN

Link to comment

I enjoyed 'South Pacific' dirac. It was cool to see the first Broadway revival ever of this show!

My friends who see everything were surprised that the show which was nearing the end of previews had not been tightened and shortened since they saw it early in previews.

I was bewildered by how the "Happy Talk" song was directed. Cable was keeling over the whole time and I kept wondering why Bloody Mary and Liat did not stop singing and dancing and get him a stretcher.

I adore Kelli O'Hara so I had a great evening.

I LOVED 'The Little Mermaid'. Even though reviews have not been kind I enjoyed every moment.

Link to comment

I guess I'm the only one who has seen this (or will admit to it, at any rate!)

While I make no claim for Mamma Mia! as art of any kind, it is well-made popular entertainment. Meryl Streep belts her heart out as Donna and Amanda Seyfried is wonderful as her daughter Sophie. The supporting cast members (Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard and Dominick Cooper) are first-rate and the ABBA songs will leave you humming along for hours afterward.

The only negative for me was Pierce Brosnan's "singing" on "S.O.S." This is one of the definitive ABBA songs and Brosnan's off-key warbling just kills it for me. (I don't mind his other vocal efforts so much -- he sounds somewhat like Bruce Springsteen, actually.)

Link to comment

There are others. Most of my Broadway loving friends are off the deep end about it.

We're no longer speaking!

I honestly came out of the theatre thinking that the Mamma Mia movie must have killed the film musical again but I'm wrong. It made TONS of money.

I just don't think it's on the level of the HAIRSPRAY, CHICAGO tranfers.

Link to comment
oh, God...yes..."Prairie"...well, THAT was a disaster...

I'm probably not a reliable source since Robert Altman is my favorite film director of all time, but I loved "Prairie". In particular I thought Meryl Streep was brilliant (but then she nearly always is).

OTOH, I'm not much of a "musicals" fan -- in fact, I've never gone to one.

Link to comment
There are others. Most of my Broadway loving friends are off the deep end about it.

We're no longer speaking!

I honestly came out of the theatre thinking that the Mamma Mia movie must have killed the film musical again but I'm wrong. It made TONS of money.

I just don't think it's on the level of the HAIRSPRAY, CHICAGO tranfers.

I haven't seen it yet but I plan to. If it's good but not great that's fine with me. ABBA has always been a guilty pleasure of mine and Streep is a not-guilty pleasure along with Christine Baranski. Also, I gotta see Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth in this.

I'm hearing very different things - one friend whose opinion I respect loved it, and another acquaintance of reliable good judgment in such matters didn't care for it.

I'm probably not a reliable source since Robert Altman is my favorite film director of all time, but I loved "Prairie". In particular I thought Meryl Streep was brilliant (but then she nearly always is).

I didn't care for 'Prairie' myself but it wasn't the fault of Streep or anyone else in the cast.

Link to comment
I'm probably not a reliable source since Robert Altman is my favorite film director of all time, but I loved "Prairie".

Sandy, I think anyone who likes Keillor's things would like 'Prairie Home Companion'. I saw him recording his radio show at Town Hall in 2002, and there was little difference between that and the film, which I thought had little Altman to it (I like a lot of Altman myself, as well, from 'Thieves Like Us', 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller', to 'Nashville', 'The Player' and some of 'Short Cuts'). In the show at Town Hall, he had Kristen Chenoweth and Odetta, both fine performers, but there were also things that reminded me of the girl who had the dream, or something like that, about how some Keillor joke wasn't funny. My friend that had tickets and I just didn't find this sort of thing funny, that's all, and the movie was the same. In the show, there were skits about skits of New Yorkers, none of which had anything recognizable to do with any I've ever known in over 40 years; I don't think they were especially even trying to be accurate that way. There were the Powder Milk Biscuit ads, etc., and little musical interludes, and Keillor seemed to in both show and movie to just be rattling off something in a mechanical way. I only watched it because I love Lily Tomlin, who was friendly with Altman and I suppose with Streep and Kline. I would be interested to know what you thought Altman brought to it, though. What did seem strange was that the show seemed still to be thriving in 2002, and I wondered if the movie was about the actual end of Keillor's broadcasts, I don't know if they've ended or not. I love Tomlin in 'I Heart Huckabees' as well as old things like 'Nashville' and she and Waits are the best thing in 'Short Cuts', she and Scott Glenn are hilarious in their little 'noir' thing in 'The Player', but if you want to see something really amazing, check out the YouTube clips of Tomlin and Hoffman and David Russell cussing like sailors on the set of 'I Heart Huckabees', they are the most outrageous violent things you'd ever imagined big movie pros getting caught doing. Anyway, NYTimes loved 'Prairie', and plenty of smart people I know personally as well. I think it's according to whether you like Keillor more than anything else, Altman seemed mostly to have left it alone, with some of the usual Altman signifiers in there. He probably just loved Keillor himself, being a Midwesterner, and this was probably a homage.

This also from Corliss: "The great American songbook of Geshwin and Porter and Rodgers standards can sound positively atonal to teen ears, just as hip-hop seems melody-deficient to the folks with hearing aids." This is so totally sloppy in terms of what 'atonal' means and what 'melody' means that I thought, only finding this write-up because someone put me on to it, that it was written by someone 25 or so, phrases like 'trending down' and 'heartache you could disco to'. All this MySpace, FaceBook kind of slangy shtick-lexicon is now learnable by 65-year-olds, it seems, as Corliss is a senior critic, but now often called 'soft-headed' by his colleagues. I sometimes think, when I see this sort of thing, that editing is now reduced to proofreading for spelling mistakes and subject-verb agreement.

Link to comment
While I make no claim for Mamma Mia! as art of any kind, it is well-made popular entertainment. Meryl Streep belts her heart out as Donna and Amanda Seyfried is wonderful as her daughter Sophie.

Everyone seems to agree that Seyfried is perfectly charming, even if they didn't like the movie.

Link to comment
Sandy, I think anyone who likes Keillor's things would like 'Prairie Home Companion'.

Strangely I am not a fan of the radio show "Prairie Home Companion" or even of Keillor :). However, I like him well enough to have greatly enjoyed the look inside his world that Altman gave us.

It's great when people of discerning eye see things very differently. The thing I liked the most about the film was how much Altman was in the film (just the opposite of you :wink:). To me Altman is so great precisely because he gets out of the way and allows the talent of the actors and serendipity to shine. His movies are like distilled real life -- there is more going on at each moment than you can possibly catch (most brilliantly done IMO in "Gosford Park" -- my favorite movie of all time). Patrick, you say "his radio show at Town Hall in 2002, and there was little difference between that and the film".......once again interesting how differently people see things: one of the best things about the film for me is that very sense of inevitability where I felt that what I was seeing was just as it might have been in 2002 at the Town Hall :off topic: (except that I also got to be back stage, to see the personal lives of the performers, to see Keillor 3 seconds before the curtain opened, and on and on).

In the show, there were skits about skits of New Yorkers, none of which had anything recognizable to do with any I've ever known in over 40 years; I don't think they were especially even trying to be accurate that way.

I don't know NYC and its culture well enough to have noticed that, but I think you are 100% correct that Altman likely wasn't trying to be accurate. My take on Altman is that accuracy is well down the list of his priorities. I think he prefers to stress the universality of situations and characters rather than reality -- in fact, his films for me are almost fantasies, but profound ones........not what did happen, or even what could happen, but what might happen given human nature as a foundation.

I'm with you on Tomlin. In addition I was blown away by Kline -- not at first perhaps, but the more I realized the subtly of his humor (in a gariish kind of way) the more I was impressed.

I think it's according to whether you like Keillor more than anything else............,

I wouldn't argue against your thought here, but I'm a living example of just the opposite!!

Link to comment
[i don't know NYC and its culture well enough to have noticed that, but I think you are 100% correct that Altman likely wasn't trying to be accurate. My take on Altman is that accuracy is well down the list of his priorities.

Thanks for your response. I just wanted to be clear that the New York people skits were in the taping of the radio show at Town Hall, not in the movie (at least I don't recall it in the film), so that was Keilor's stuff, and even though they were doing it in New York, they were doing it for their regular audience, obviously, not for us. So it was strange to see their perceptions and takes on us on our own turf--and here we can talk about accuracy, just for the record--a New Yorker wouldn't recognize those parodies, they were pure Midwestern Tall Tales to us. Yes, I like 'Gosford Park' a lot, esp. for Kristin Scott-Thomas. I think maybe 'Nashville' and 'The Player' are my Altman favourites as whole films.

Now back to Mamma Mia.

Link to comment

I doubt I will see Mama Mia, but I might.

P.S. Patrick, I did get that wrong.....I did think you were saying something about NY skits in the movie (skits I don't remember.....now I see why :off topic: ). Further, as for me, add "Shortcuts" to "Gosford Park", and you have my favorites.

Link to comment

I hate to be a hall monitor about this, but I did make a polite request that we return to the topic. A perfunctory reference to "Mamma Mia" while you continue with your posting as you did before does not suffice. The Altman discussion stops here, please. By all means begin a new thread if you like - I'd be happy to join in myself. Thanks very much. :off topic:

Link to comment

Mamma Mia! held very well in its second weekend -- down only 36% from its first weekend. In an era where movies typically decline by 50% or more in their second weekend of release, this tells me that word of mouth must be great for Mamma Mia!

Link to comment
Mamma Mia! held very well in its second weekend -- down only 36% from its first weekend. In an era where movies typically decline by 50% or more in their second weekend of release, this tells me that word of mouth must be great for Mamma Mia!

The word of mouth does seem to be very good. I plan to go this weekend, schedule permitting, and I'll report back. Have you seen it, miliosr?

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...