What's your favorite movie musical?

[progmom]

Poll question: What's your favorite movie musical?

[realisticphish]

1. Fiddler on the Roof

it's the only musical I actually posess... fantastic movie AND musical

[progmom]

3. oh darn

I meant to include that too. I love it!


on edit - I added it!

[Common Sense Party]

85. I second Tevye. Just watched Fiddler last week.

[Misunderestimator]

2. West Side Story, followed by Sound of Music

[MissMillie]

4. Both of my favs are not on this list

Fiddler on the Roof and Man of la Mancha

[progmom]

6. yeah, and Oliver

10 choices are not enough :)

on edit - added Fiddler!

[IntravenousDemilo]

93. Ooh, Oliver!

Nice music, shoddy lyrics, pretty good screenplay except that it sort of makes Fagin look like someone you'd invite to a Hadassah tea. Great choreography, costumes, sets. Ron Moody and Oliver Reed are marvellous. It's actually one of the few examples where the movie was actually better than the stage show.

[IntravenousDemilo]

94. Leonard Maltin on Man of La Mancha

Man of La Mancha (1972) C-130m.
BOMB D: Arthur Hiller. Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren, James Coco, Harry Andrews, John Castle. Plodding, abysmal adaptation of Dale Wasserman's popular musical based on Cervantes' Don Quixote, with Joe Darion-Mitch Leigh score. Beautiful source material has been raped, murdered, and buried.

I really have to agree with him there. Neither O'Toole nor Loren can sing a note, plus a portion of the score seems to be missing. Have a listen to the original cast Broadway album for an idea of what a great movie this could have been if they'd kept Richard Kiley and Joan Diener.

[tjwmason]

5. You're killing me progmom.

I can't bring myself to decide between "The Sound of Music" and "My Fair Lady" - I just can't bear to put either of them second. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[jpgray]

7. Probably Wizard of Oz

I call it a musical, anyway. And Oliver is pretty awesome.

[IntravenousDemilo]

95. Sure it's a musical

In every way, shape, and form. So you're perfectly correct to think of it as one.

And of course, it's hard to beat Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg as songwriters, innit?

[ghostsofgiants]

8. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

(Otherwise, I'm not a fan of musicals at all.)

[progmom]

9. Blame Canada!

:hi:

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

67. I only got that the title was a dick joke a few weeks ago

Have you seen Cannibal! The Musical? Far from great, but for a very low-budget first feature it's an enjoyable enough 90 minutes.

[IntravenousDemilo]

97. Yeah, a bit of the tune to "Shpidoinkle Day"...

...is also used as the signature music for the Parker/Stone production company and was played near the very end of the episodes from the first couple of seasons of South Park, right before the Comedy Central sig.

Somebody did a stage version of Cannibal here in Toronto a few years ago. It got pretty decent reviews.

[devilgrrl]

10. Grease

Loved it! :7

[progmom]

11. I added it!

Cabaret is off the list!

[LisaM]

27. You removed Cabaret for GREASE?

Do I even know you?

[progmom]

36. i'm very very very bad

:(

[LisaM]

40. Well I blame devilgrrl

she got to you before I did, apparently!

I LOVE Cabaret......

[billyskank]

47. I voted for Grease

Do you still love me? ;)

[LisaM]

58. Sigh. I guess so.

But why couldn't it have bumped off something else?

[progmom]

83. always

:D

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. South Pacific.

Another "other".

[bif]

123. South Pacific=The Best.

And the book it was based on was excellent too. Well worth reading.

[XNASA]

13. Guys and Dolls

Jean Simmons, I repeat.....Jean Simmons.

[Bridget Burke]

17. And Marlon Brando when he was young....

[Katherine Brengle]

61. mmmmm... young Brando...

Yum. And Sinatra wasn't awful to look at himself back in the day...

[Guava Jelly]

88. i agree guys and dolls is da bomb

own it on dvd

[IntravenousDemilo]

98. You know, I read the other day that Frank Loesser couldn't bring himself

to even watch the movie -- ever. The stage version is about as close as you're going to get to a perfect musical, and shouldn't have been monkeyed with. Loesser hated what Sinatra and Brando did with the songs. He hated the changes the studios made. He even hated the new song "Adelaide" he had to write for Sinatra, as well as the other songs "Your Eyes Are the Eyes of a Woman in Love" (replacing "I've Never Been in Love Before") and "Pet Me Poppa" (which replaced the hit "A Bushel and a Peck"). And of course he should know, because he wrote the score.

And Sinatra was cast in the wrong role. If he had played Sky Masterson and not Nathan Detroit, the movie would have been about ten times better, because his songs would have included "Luck Be a Lady", which he was born to sing, and "My Time of Day", which was cut for some reason (you can hear the tune as Brando and Simmons are walking to the Mission after they get back to New York from Havana). Thankfully, they kept Vivian Blaine from the original, because who else could do "Adelaide's Lament"? As for Brando, he's not much of a singer -- kind of nasal, really.

[mdmc]

126. Jene Simmons of KISS?

:kick:

[mdmc]

127. .

[maveric]

14. "Paint Your Wagon".

With "West Side Story" 2nd.

[EstimatedProphet]

72. Me too-Paint Your Wagon

[Pharlo]

117. Yep.........in spite of the poor reviews and singing,

I really enjoyed that one.........
And "Showboat" and "Robin and the Seven Hoods"

[nykiera]

15. Hair. nt.

[MissHoneychurch]

51. Me too n/t

[fight4my3sons]

60. also my favorite

[SteppingRazor]

16. Other: I freakin' hate movie musicals...

or, for that matter, any sort of musical. To each his own! :hi:

[stellanoir]

18. "and suddenly one day

I woke up and my life turned into a musical. . . "

Sung in my best broadway voice. . .

"and I had to take the traaaaaaash out. . . ."

[Tom Kitten]

19. Music Man

Funny movie, love the songs! yessssssssir!

[catmandu57]

20. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

Everybody ought to have a maid
Everybody ought to have a serving girl
and so on.

[Tom Kitten]

22. also one of my faves!

Zero Mostel and Phil Silvers star in a musical!

[IntravenousDemilo]

103. Of course, that's Jack Gilford and Buster Keaton in the pic you posted,

along with Zero. In the Broadway production, Phil Silvers was originally intended for Pseudolus, the Zero Mostel part, but he didn't want to do it. When the show was revived a decade later, it was by then a hit, and Silvers was more than glad to play Pseudolus...

[IntravenousDemilo]

101. Ack!

Half of the wonderful Sondheim score is missing! And Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove disowned the picture after what Richard Lester and the screenplay writer did with their intricate play.

Hollywood shouldn't do Broadway shows. They almost always fuck them up.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

21. Another vote for Paint Your Wagon

:)

[1gobluedem]

23. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!

My all time fave.

Also confess to loving Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella -- the one with Lesley Ann Warren and Dr. Alan Quartermaine (Stuart Damon) from General Hospital.

[IntravenousDemilo]

105. I love "Those women were sobbin' sobbin' sobbin', fit to be tied!"

Fantastic dancing from the men!

As for Cinderella, have you seen the original TV prod with Julie Andrews? It's also wonderful. Avoid the latest one with Brandi, though. Eeew!

[JackBeck]

24. Hedwig and the Angry Inch

[jonnyblitz]

33. yup, hedwig for me ,also.

[Richard Steele]

96. No doubt whatsoever!

And follow that with 2 more not mentioned:
Rocky Horror and Blues Brothers.

[CBHagman]

25. The insanely entertaining and politically incorrect...

...and subversive Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

[LisaM]

42. Bless Your Beautiful Hide!!!!!

You're the one for me......

[tigereye]

87. yes that was my favorite when I was a kid

now it would probably be Rocky Horror.

Oklahoma and Carousel have some great songs too.

[LisaM]

26. Hair, Hairspray, Seven Brides, Camelot, Brigadoon, and Kiss Me Kate!

Where are those on your list already????

[blindpig]

28. 200 Motels. n/t

[Blue Belle]

29. White Christmas

:)

[SouthoftheBorderPaul]

30. Rocky Horror!

:D

....not really. My fav is West Side Story. One of my fav albums too.

[kwassa]

31. Let's do the Time Warp AGAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNN!!!!!!

[catmandu57]

34. Touch me touch me touch me

Creature of the night.

When Eddie said he didn't like his teddy
you knew he was a rotten kid
but when he threaten your life
with a switchblade knife

made you cry
what a guy
und I did.

[kwassa]

32. The Mikado

Gilbert and Sullivan, the early apotheosis of silly absurdist English humor, forerunners of Spike Mulligan and Monty Python.

[yellowdogintexas]

73. How very true. I so love this musical/operetta/comedy

sendup.

I swear I would go to a production of Mikado if a Day Care Center performed it.

I have seen it live 3 times, and own a tape with Eric Idle playing KoKo

[IntravenousDemilo]

106. Movie musical? n/m

[Ravenseye]

35. Jesus Christ Superstar

[0007]

75. My favorite!

[Orrex]

37. Dancer in the Dark

Bjork and Joel Grey? How can you lose?

[XemaSab]

38. My Fair Nipples

[GoddessOfGuinness]

52. ...

:spray:

[billyskank]

39. Oh man progmom

Like, West Side Story is so good. But I have to vote for Grease for its sheer glorious cheesiness! It's just fun from start to finish. :bounce:


:hide:

[terrya]

41. "The Bandwagon"

Fred Astaire at his best, Cyd Charisse looking gorgeous, Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant co-stars and some terrific songs (including "That's Entertainment!")

What's not to love. :-)

[Jade Fox]

91. That one's great!

One of the best of the classic musicals. I think it's unfortunate title contributed to it getting less attention than it deserved.

[swag]

43. "Happiness of the Katakuris"

[Call Me Wesley]

44. Rocky Horror Picture Show,

Irma La Douce (although they decided not to sing at all), and everything by the Marx Brothers, of course. Monty Python, too.

[bridgit]

45. Other, i like quite a few, but i like Showboat allot...

:thumbsup:

[arwalden]

46. Sound Of Music, Seven Brides..., My Fair Lady

[edbermac]

48. A Hard Day's Night

[mac56]

59. Mine too!

Must be the "mac" thing, d'ya think?

[goreo8]

49. The Hills Are Alive

With The Sound Of Music

[Left_Winger]

50. The Blues Brothers

[Bunny]

53. Oklahoma

[Ptah]

66. My thought as well.

I got to Kansas City on a Frid'y
By Sattidy I larned a thing or two
For up to then I didn't have an idy
Of whut the modren world was comin' to!
I counted twenty gas buggies goin' by theirsel's
Almost ev'ry time I tuk a walk.
'Nen I put my ear to a Bell Telephone and a strange womern started in to talk!
(Whut next! Yeak whut!)
Whut next?

<snip>

One of the gals was fat and pink and pretty,
As round above as she was round below.
I could swear that she was padded from her shoulder to her heel,
But latter in the second act when she began to peel
She proved that ev'rythin' she had was absolutely real!
She went about as fur as she could go,
(Yes sir!)
She went about as fur as she could go!

[Whoa_Nelly]

119. I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No

Oklahoma!

All the Oklahoma lyrics here :D

http://www.stlyrics.com/o/oklahoma.htm

[mikeytherat]

54. "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off"

"I hate every ape I see, from Chimpan A to Chimpan Z; oh, they'll never make a monkey out of me!"

mikey_the_rat

[Magrittes Pipe]

55. Guys and Dolls

Cheap summer-stock sets, the Chairman of the Board, (yes, XNASA) Jean Simmons, and Marlon Brando trying to sing and dance.

[Dangerously Amused]

56. Pippin. Hands down.

The storyline is timeless, and a Fosse/Schwartz combination is unbeatable.

Then Grease. For the sheer exuberance.


All with the caveat that Gene Kelly is and will always be my greatest, truest love.

[TheBaldyMan]

57. Cry Baby

OK it's not strictly a musical but it's the only one I can sit through.

[redwitch]

62. put Cabaret back!

And add "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg".

[In_The_Wind]

63. Porgy and Bess.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

64. The Muppets Take Manhattan

[Fredda Weinberg]

65. Hair n/t

[DawgHouse]

68. Oklahoma!

[RevolutionaryActs]

69. Other: Moulin Rouge.

I've seen it way too many times. :o


I :loveya: Ewan McGregor.

Especially in that.
:drool:

[wildhorses]

89. mine too!!!

:pals:

[RevolutionaryActs]

100. Excellent!

:D

:pals:

[ronnykmarshall]

70. Evita!

[ncrainbowgrrl]

71. either 1776 or the South Park movie.

Either way- pretty topical!

[yellowdogintexas]

74. From this List I chose "Singing in the Rain", as it is a nearly

perfect work,

however my true favorite movie musical is:

Victor,Victoria

[Telly Savalas]

76. Jesus Christ Superstar

Normally I can't stand Andrew Lloyd Webber, but seeing a bunch of hippies dancing around Jesus to goofy 60's rock never fails to put a smile on my face.

[Swamp Rat]

82. ditto

:D

[IntravenousDemilo]

109. Then you'd like Godspell, yes?

They cast is even MORE hippie-like. And the pop music is way more satisfying, even containing moments of heartbreaking beauty, which JCS never manages to do. And it's a more positive show, too. Check it out.

BTW, I'm going to be singing a piece from Godspell for the offertory tomorrow.

[shanti]

77. TOMMY!

i loved that musical.

[realisticphish]

78. Could I put in a vote for most despised?

Carousel. Fucking hate that one. One of the last lines... "yes, a punch can feel like a kiss" (or something to that effect). Yay for domestic abuse!

[IntravenousDemilo]

110. Yes, a bit dated, that.

But it was written sixty-some years ago, and its score, along with that of The King and I constitutes Rodgers & Hammerstein's best work.

[cmkramer]

115. Also, it was based on a play called "Liliom"

The play was quite a bit darker than the musical and didn't have its "happy ending".

My favorite movie musical is "Showboat". I have a copy of the 1936 one with Allan Jones and Irene Dunne which also features the legendary Paul Robeson's "Ol' Man River" and Helen Morgan as Julie. But I don't think you can beat Howard Keel as the greatest leading man in movie musicals so I still have to give a shout-out to the 1951 remake.

I also love "Cabaret" and "Singin' In The Rain."

Actually, I love musicals as a genre.

[IntravenousDemilo]

116. When I was in the drama dept at the U, we did Molnar's Lilliom.

Yes, it's really dark. But I like that. If Sondheim had written Carousel, it wouldn't have had the uplifting ending. But I gotta tell you, when everyone is singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" and Billy's ghost says, "I loved you Julie. Know that I loved you," I could bust out crying just about every time.

The 1936 Show Boat is fabulous, and it's just too bad that it didn't come a couple of years later, or it might have been made in colour, which would make it super-fabulous.

Cabaret is interesting in that they jettisoned all the book songs and just kept the Kit-Kat Klub numbers. I happen to really like some of the book numbers ("So What", "Meeskite", "Why Should I Wake Up", "What Would You Do?", etc), and I was disappointed that they got rid of them. But the movie is still great on its own terms, just not in comparison with the play.

And as you could gather from my 12, and with this one, 13 posts in this one thread, I love musicals as a genre, too. But I'd rather see them live on stage, with an audience.

[Jamastiene]

79. Hairspray

I love the theme song to the movie, not to mention the other music in the movie. John Waters rules. I love Deborah Harry too. She played this racist biatch in that movie too. It was a good movie with a good message about integration. More proof the kids are alright sometimes. I vote other - Hairspray.

[Bullwinkle925]

80. I think now I would have to say "Chicago".....

with Richard Gere and Rene Zellwiger.

[benny05]

81. Sound of Music

Followed by Mary Poppins..

:=)

[tjdee]

84. The Wizard of Oz. Then, Chicago, then...King and I/Sound of Music. 1776

too gets an honorable mention.

And this is strictly, strictly the film versions. Stage versions would include Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, etc.

I've never seen Pippin but I want to. :(

[bikebloke]

86. Hair

I like the music and the dance. It was one of the first DVD's I bought. A pity they couldn't have given it a beter transfer.

[Jade Fox]

90. On A Clear Day You Can See Forever......

There. I admitted it!

[WCGreen]

92. West Side Story....

Paint Your Wagon...

Fiddler on the Roof....

[Gatchaman]

99. The South Park movie

or Rocky Horror.

[Mnemosyne]

102. The Unsinkable Molly Brown and almost every

musical I've ever seen! I did wardrobe for Rocky Horror in the 1994 Montgomery,Al version so I am partial to fishnets also. :evilgrin:

I love musicals! :loveya:

[jschurchin]

104. Paint Your Wagon

Lee Marvin and a really young Clint Eastwood, who even sing's, although not well IMHO.

[khashka]

107. Cabaret, All That Jazz

Bob Fosse was GOD!

Fiddler on the Roof - great music and Topov (who I have a major crush on)

Hair.

Does Yellow Submarine count as a movie musical? :shrug:


Khash.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

108. Jesus Christ Superstar

The 2000 remake starring Glenn Carter

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=239659

[hippiechick]

111. A Star Is Born (Streisand's version) ...

... may not actually qualify, depending on the definition of 'musical'. DAmn, I wanted to be her when I was 12.

Otherwise ... Rocky Horror or Chicago.

[Ronnie]

112. "Love Me or Leave Me"

James Cagney. Wow! Also "Yankee Doodle Dandy". He was amazing.

[IntravenousDemilo]

113. Singin' in the Rain! and where's An American in Paris?

It's not all fun and games. There's some darkness underneath that doesn't register with most people, a lot of the same darkness that's in the movie Sunset Boulevard. Not the grotesquerie or anything like that, more like the desperation.

Also, it was written directly for the screen, not adapted from a stage musical. Hollywood almost always manages to fuck up perfectly wonderful Broadway shows, by casting Hollywood stars for the sake of their box-office appeal, instead of the people who originated the parts, or by adding or removing songs, changing their order, taking the songs out altogether, unnecessarily expanding scenes, changing the period, and other general tweaking -- usually instituted by the money people rather than the creative people. Camelot was ruined (what a god-awful piece of shite that turned into, with three non-singing leads), and so were Man of La Mancha, South Pacific (what were they thinking with all that orange and blue tinting?), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Paint Your Wagon (the story is completely changed, and Lee and Clint can't sing), On the Town (if they were going to get someone to write more songs to augment Leonard Bernstein's score, why couldn't they have got Bernstein, and why did they cut a bunch of original songs?), and a host of others.

There's one important sound you find in a theatre that's missing at the movies, a sound that's vital to the sonic texture of the piece -- applause. Take a big production number like "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" from Guys and Dolls. On stage, if it's done right, it will be followed by about 20 seconds of rapturous ovation. The authors knew this would be the case, being savvy showpeople, so they actually wrote it with a pause for applause in mind. In the movie, which I'm watching right now, I notice that the song is followed by a big, anticlimactic dead-space. The applause is missing, along with the attendant excitement. It's like a sentence without a period

Movie musicals that are written expressly for that medium don't structure their production numbers the same way. As a rule, there's not the big finish, and production numbers are designed to flow into the rest of the movie naturally.

There are some musicals that have survived the trip from stage to screen better than others: 1776, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, My Fair Lady (even without Julie Andrews), Gypsy (even without Ethel Merman), West Side Story, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rocky Horror (though I don't particularly care for it), Rent (ditto), and all the R & H musicals other than South Pacific. Even Brigadoon turned out OK because Alan Jay Lerner paid attention to his original source material and translated, rather than adapted, the stage show into cinematic terms, without completely changing the story as he did later in Paint Your Wagon.

Lerner also wrote the screenplay for An American in Paris, which is maybe the second-best movie musical ever made, well deserving of its Oscar. And like Singin' in the Rain, it was conceived directly for the screen.

You know what's actually a pretty cool movie, with decent songs, although I'm not sure its writers intended us to think of it as a musical? Coyote Ugly -- it was just on TV last night. I'd never seen it before, but I thought it really worked. I liked Dick Tracy, too, partly because it got my mentor an Oscar for best song, and because Warren Beatty is a big ol' leftie.

[MiniMandaRuth]

114. what no votes for 1776?

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :bounce: :hi:

[1monster]

118. Hey! Where's SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS or Daisy Clover?

Or Camelot?
Give me a little time and I can come up with a whole lotta really good musicals that are rarely heard of anymore.

[PittPoliSci]

120. Spamalot! or perhaps ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL

[deadparrot]

121. 1776. nt

[MrSlayer]

122. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

I generally hate musicals but this was absolutely hilarious.

[lpbk2713]

124. Help!

[mdmc]

125. All that shit and no Caberet?

Is this freep or DU for fucks sake?