La La Land

[Drunk Monk]

Well, discounting the recent trend of live broadcast musicals like Rocky Horror, Sound of Music, Hairspray, The Wiz and Grease (all of which were mediocre but credit for trying it live), there were the Pitch Perfect flicks, which to me were derivative of Glee.  There was Into the Woods, which had it's moments (Emily Blunt ftw!) but that was another Broadway-to-film musical, and the Annie redux (which I didn't see).  There were the non-Disney's like Book of Life and Rio, etc. ad nauseum, but I'm discounting those too.  There was the Footloose redux which also sucked.  True, there haven't been many Hollywood film-only musicals lately that weren't animated or based on Broadway.  Burlesque maybe?  Colma: The Musical? That was amusing because it was so Castle Highland.  Might have to go all the way back to Moulin Rouge (Nicole Kidman ftwx2).  Of course, as a musical fan, you tuned into the Supergirl/Flash musical ep, where they went into the Glee alternate universe, right?

Paint your Wagon.  Oh man.  

I haven't given up nachos yet.  Still retain some vices, no matter what the blood sugar...

[King Bob]

Commenting on some of the above comments-

I heard "City of Stars" during the Oscars and wasn't impressed. The opening line got me curious, but it was the only good melodic bit in the song. 

The only good halfway recent (and not that recent really) musical I can think of is Everyone Says I Love You. And that's also the only non-Disney recent one I can think of. Before that maybe Pennies From Heaven. And there was that musical episode of Buffy.

I am very fond of musicals from the 1930s, where there is almost always one really good song, and I often hear good ones I don't know. Busby Berkeley in particular does some great productions. Yes they are silly, but when they moved to a style where the songs are more integrated into the plot (as in Oklahoma etc.), it meant that fewer of the songs could be standards, since they are specific to the show, and the Rodgers/Hammerstein style is less exciting to me than Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin etc. because it's not as swinging.

Yes, Astaire is a weak singer, but he had a fantastic sense of rhythm, so he could put the song across. Same thing with Gene Kelly. And now most performers are weak singers, which is why the backup singers always double the lines in live performance when they can't use studio tricks to improve it. 

And the "white guy explaining jazz" thing- it is foolish to say that jazz is/was a purely black art form, just as it's foolish to say that Country is purely white. Both were born from miscegenation and borrowing. And the vast majority of standards were written by white people, and that's a big chunk of the repertoire. Plus West Coast Jazz was pretty white, with big names like Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan.

[Greg]

Yeah, I can't escape Moulin Rouge when I catch it on TV. Probably the only work of Nicole Kidman that I really like.

Way up here they got a name for Rain and wind and Fire. The rain is Tess. The fire is Jo. And they call the wind Mariah. How often do you get a musical written by the same guy who wrote Network? That line makes no sense but it shows impressive range. Please, don't let Clint sing.

But my point stands. You don't like musicals. La La Land wasn't very good. And how do you get Nachos after the MQ6 closed?

To quote Sullivan's Travels:

It bombed in Pittsburgh.

Well, they know what they like.

If they knew what they liked, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh

(The Palm Beach story was on yesterday and I got Preston Sturges running round my brain)

[King Bob]

Love The Palm Beach Story!

And I'm an idiot to forget about Moulin Rouge. Loved that one. The mash-ups are brilliant, and of course some great visuals, like the curtain flipping down during "The Show Must Go On." And the arrangement of "Roxanne!" It helped that Ewan McGregor can belt it out.