MUSICAL MANIA!

So being the theatre nerd that I am I'm getting all up in a tizzy for the musicals coming out, im glad to see the genre was revived by, dare i say it, moulin rouge. Let us take a retrospective look at movie musicals.

The year is 2001, the director is Baz Luhrmann, creator of the reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom. The film is Moulin Rouge. This is crazy, fun, fresh look at the movie musical through reviving popular songs and making them broadway-esque. Moulin Rouge was so successful that it garnered 8 academy award nominations including Best Picture. To understand why we celebrate Moulin Rouge as the revival of movie musicals we must look to the last few movie musicals. Before Moulin Rouge was Evita and Everyone Says I Love You in 1996, both were only mildly well received and neither garnered tremendous Oscar or critical attention, before them we have to look as far back as 80s movies such as Annie, A Chorus Line, Flashdance, and Footloose. While some of these movies were received warmly they were few and far between. Lets come back to Moulin Rouge. Suddenly people were realizing that there was a market for the movie musical, skip to 2002 and we see the release of Chicago. Chicago was nominated for a thrilling 13 oscars, winning 6 of them including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Zeta-Jones' performance of Velma Kelly. 2003 was a little empty with only a TV remake of The Music Man to hold us over until 2004 with the releases of De-Lovely a quiet musical about Cole Porter, and the warmly welcomed envisioning of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera which was nominated for 3 oscars. The following year we got 4 musicals with only one of them receiving any kind of acclaim, the four were Southland Tales, a weird, ridiculous futuristic musical from Richard Kelly, the creator of Donnie Darko, Rent, The Producers, and Reefer Madness: The Musical which has earned a cult following. This brings us to this year where we saw the release of the runaway TV hit High School Musical(gag me), the hip-hop musical Idlewild, and what is being buzzed as this year best picture contender, Dreamgirls.

And now this all brings me to the thrilling announcements of the film versions of Sweeney Todd, directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp, and Hairspray(in musical form this time around) starring John Travolta, Amanda Bynes, and Christopher Walken. While it is a hit-or-miss genre it has been reawakened. Let us celebrate.




And now a plug: come see Grease at Bolingbrook High School this spring, dates and times coming soon!!!