How do you solve a problem like "Cats"?

by Cláudio Alves

With Cats horrifying audiences around the world, including possibly you, let's all step into a hot-air balloon and travel to the heavenly lands of speculation. You see, a screen adaptation of the silliest mega-musical in Andrew Lloyd Weber's repertoire (give or take Love Never Dies or Starlight Express) was already a dicey proposition, but it needn't be so doomed. But add to that the deranged incompetence of Tom Hooper and digital fur technology,and we have something for the pantheon of all-time bad movies.

What could have been done to avoid catastrophe? Many psychologically scarred movie-goers may be asking this question from the depths of the madness that now consumes them: Could this have been any different? Could it have been better? Could it have been good, even? Maybe…

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Review: "Cats"

by Cláudio Alves

Somewhere along the journey of popular cinema, an unholy change of standards occurred. Once upon a time, the artifice of movies was seen as a delightful feature, but it slowly started to be seen as an enemy of quality. The pursuit of "reality" began to preoccupy serious artists and Hollywood hacks alike. The audience’s taste was thus guided in the direction of pseudo-realism. The look of natural reality isn't the point, but the feel of it is. For instance, Lord of the Rings' fantasy isn't close to our reality in any significant way, but there's a sense of material credulity that satisfies modern audience's limited suspension of disbelief.

To speak of such matters in the context of a flimsily plotted musical populated by cat-human hybrids probably sounds preposterous. That said, I firmly believe the movie of the Broadway smash Cats would be altogether less horrifying if it had embraced the artifice and theatricality of its premise...

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5 Things We Learned from the New CATS Trailer

by Chris Feil

After meow-ny long and empty weeks, we were finally treated to another trailer for Tom Hooper's Andrew Lloyd Webber's T.S. Eliot's CATS. And you might say that it was a little bit of a disappointment after the first look sent the internet into a giant flame of gleeful schadenfreude (or maybe we're all still waking up from the release of its catnap-inducing original song candidate "Beautiful Ghosts"). This quick tease featured no singing and was a bit too fast-paced to glimpse any of the dancing. But the final trailer did give us a few bits of new information to be both earnestly and ironically excited about:

1. It's apparently the "Most Joyous Event of the Holiday Season". Like the previous "You Will Believe" tagline, this also sounds like a threat.
2. LOTS more dialogue than expected highly suggests that the film will try to lean into some semblance of a plot or overexplain its "new life" conceit.
3. The cats have boobs and love to shake them.
4. The trippiest element may be the proportions of the cats to their environment. See: kitty door flap, trash cans, shoe sizes, entire miniature ice cream parlor, etc.
5. Idris Elba might be the slithering, villainous, sexy (?) MVP.

Did you notice anything new that made you more (or less) excited for Cats next month?

Best "Cats" Tweets

We haven't shared a Twitter roundup in months so herewith, our favourite tweets on Cats.

It was so hard to choose y'all since the timeline has been Cats for like 24 hours. The trailer has already really inspired the silly. Hopefully the movie itself will prove just as worthwhile from a social media perspective...

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Sir Ian prepares for "Cats"

Sir Ian McKellen was just on Graham Norton discussing his preparation for his role in Cats. As usual just when you think you couldn't love this man any more than you already do, he proves you wrong yet again.

P.S. Tom Hooper is still casting his adaptation of the phenomenally successful 80s stage musical. The household name stars have been announced for some times but they've been adding new-to-the-big-screen talents including two principal dancers from the Royal Ballet.