First I overslept - I set my alarm to PM instead of AM. Lovely.
Today was the retreat and first meeting of the Greek Life Task Force. I'm on the Membership Development committee. We'll see how this goes.
After this I hung out at the house and then went out w/ Pace, Colin and Kristin to Rent. It was incredible. The sequences for "Tango: Maureen" and "Take me or Leave" were fantastic. Ok, gushing done.
Ok, first off they cut several songs formost of them being "Contact". Given that sex was kinda one of the defining parts of the people's lives I'm a bit upset this was taken out, on the other hand out of all of the songs it was the least character based and was easily removed for ratings without killing the story. Of course it simply makes me appreciate the stage all the more given they can do things that just don't have mass market appeal since people come to the stage instead of needing to sell out thousands of movie theatres.
Other songs removed were:
"We're Okay" - not too important and not missed much - it also conflicted with the altered storyline that lead to "Take Me or Leave Me".
"Christmas Bells" - Again not a huge loss and didn't work with some of the new pacing of the show. They were able to take any necessary plot points and put it back it into the story in spoken word.
"Happy New Year" - Converted to spoken word and edited somewhat to work with some of the altered plot points.
Any and all "Voice Mail" segments are gone and partially converted to spoken word. Some are gone entirely.
"Halloween" - I think entirely gone. Can't remember.
"Goodbye Love" - They actually did have this but stopped after 2 minutes. I think of all the songs removed this one has the most that I missed. It had a bit of an argument between Mark and Roger that really showed a bit more of the flaws in Mark's character, as his weaknesses were less obvious than the rest. Also removed is the title section with Mimi singing "Goodbye Love". For that part I can take it or leave it, although it explicitly puts Mimi into a rehab before "What You Own".
I also missed specifically "Voice Mail #5" which was the round-style voice-mail with all the parents leaving messages looking for their children.
"Finale" - They pulled most of the beginning of this and converted the ATM comment and most of the end of thet song to dialogue with the except of the "I should tell you" reprise.
Damn I didn't realize until now how many songs they pulled or converted to dialogue. 7 major songs, 2 "Tune up" segments plus all 5 voice mails. Of course there's still 29 songs left in the show with those gone.
I think the main problem that can be said of this movie was that it didn't pick a direction. Either it was going to be a fully faithful adaptation of the stage production and make this essentially a filmed broadway show with slightly more realistic sets or it should have just accepted that it was going to be different and really work at that. "Tango: Maureen", "Take me or leave me", and "Take me out tonight" all were wonderful interpretations of the songs and the scenes.
Wow that was a longer rant than I had expected. Well I'm off to bed. I have one more item but I don't to steal any thunder so I'll mention it later this week. ;)
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2 comments:
I'm curious, since I can't see the movie until I'm stateside again, is the movie a musical like Chicago the movie or is it an opera like the play was? This is very important to the movie and the conversion to the screen. You of all people should know the difference but in case it's unclear at all: a musical is a play or movie that has songs and dance numbers. An opera is sung almost exclusivly. Rent the play didn't have any scenes that were "stop the music and talk" then start singing again. I take it from you rant that the movie was a musical though.
Pretty much you hit the main point. Rent was all sung and they added talking areas. Some of it was done well and some was just painful because you just wanted it to be sung like it was in the broadway show.
Mostly they kept it sung, though. I'd say it was about 95/5.
So in closing:
Stage - Opera
Movie - Musical
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