Peter Pan + links
Dec. 6th, 2014 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalSo, who watched Peter Pan Live! on Thursday night?
I thought it was technically better than The Sound of Music - for one thing, Allison Williams can sing AND act, and she gave 110% enthusiasm-wise (meanwhile Christopher Walken was kind of just doing whatever the fuck he wanted, lol, which I'm not entirely sure was "acting," per se, but was definitely entertaining). The sets were fantastic (no cardboard Alps here!), and psychedelic crocodile notwithstanding, in general the production values were clearly higher, like they'd actually put some thought into the filming of it.
But overall it kind of left me cold? Mostly because I have zero attachment to the musical (this was actually the first time I'd ever seen it), whereas The Sound of Music has the nostalgia factor, and because you could probably write a whole doctoral dissertation on the creepy and occasionally bizarre gender narratives. (It didn't help that Williams as Peter came across very much as a grown woman pretending to be a prepubescent boy rather than actually capturing the childishness of Peter, which made the flirty scenes with Wendy seem like more of a story of lesbian awakening than anything else. Which, to be fair, is a much better story than "flying asshole kidnaps girl to clean up after his pack of bratty overgrown man-boys.") Oh well. At least they tried to make it less racist?
IDK, I think it was probably not the best choice of musical, so no matter how well done it was, it was never going to have the kind of impact The Sound of Music did. (In case you'd forgotten - like I did - NBC has already locked in The Music Man for next year.)
Anyway, links!
* Marvel casting announcements: Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange (which we all kind of assumed) and Krysten Ritter is Jessica Jones.
* Jed and Maurissa talk about Agents of SHIELD and the upcoming mid-season finale.
* A piece on the sad state of network sitcoms.
* Newly-bearded Aaron Tveit talks about playing John Wilkes Booth in Assassins.
* Interesting profile of Robert Downey Sr.
* The secret history of chocolate chip cookies! I had no idea it was so scandalous.
* Full audio of Anna Kendrick singing "On the Steps of the Palace." This is the one where Sondheim tweaked the lyrics because she was actually singing it on the palace steps rather than afterward.
* On Reese Witherspoon and our tendency to box movie stars into a particular image, and then be surprised when it turns out they are multi-faceted people, just like the rest of us.
I thought it was technically better than The Sound of Music - for one thing, Allison Williams can sing AND act, and she gave 110% enthusiasm-wise (meanwhile Christopher Walken was kind of just doing whatever the fuck he wanted, lol, which I'm not entirely sure was "acting," per se, but was definitely entertaining). The sets were fantastic (no cardboard Alps here!), and psychedelic crocodile notwithstanding, in general the production values were clearly higher, like they'd actually put some thought into the filming of it.
But overall it kind of left me cold? Mostly because I have zero attachment to the musical (this was actually the first time I'd ever seen it), whereas The Sound of Music has the nostalgia factor, and because you could probably write a whole doctoral dissertation on the creepy and occasionally bizarre gender narratives. (It didn't help that Williams as Peter came across very much as a grown woman pretending to be a prepubescent boy rather than actually capturing the childishness of Peter, which made the flirty scenes with Wendy seem like more of a story of lesbian awakening than anything else. Which, to be fair, is a much better story than "flying asshole kidnaps girl to clean up after his pack of bratty overgrown man-boys.") Oh well. At least they tried to make it less racist?
IDK, I think it was probably not the best choice of musical, so no matter how well done it was, it was never going to have the kind of impact The Sound of Music did. (In case you'd forgotten - like I did - NBC has already locked in The Music Man for next year.)
Anyway, links!
* Marvel casting announcements: Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange (which we all kind of assumed) and Krysten Ritter is Jessica Jones.
* Jed and Maurissa talk about Agents of SHIELD and the upcoming mid-season finale.
* A piece on the sad state of network sitcoms.
* Newly-bearded Aaron Tveit talks about playing John Wilkes Booth in Assassins.
* Interesting profile of Robert Downey Sr.
* The secret history of chocolate chip cookies! I had no idea it was so scandalous.
* Full audio of Anna Kendrick singing "On the Steps of the Palace." This is the one where Sondheim tweaked the lyrics because she was actually singing it on the palace steps rather than afterward.
* On Reese Witherspoon and our tendency to box movie stars into a particular image, and then be surprised when it turns out they are multi-faceted people, just like the rest of us.
