Stage Door: "The Cher Show" and "Aint too Proud"

by Nathaniel R

Musical theater has its own version of limited and wide release / indie and blockbuster if you will. The analogy is far from perfect but those movie groupings are sort of comparable to Off Broadway and Broadway. Every Broadway show is trying to be a four-quadrant blockbuster.  

One of the safest routes to a quick buck (if not necessarily continuous sales) is the jukebox musical. Not all of them try to double as biographies of whoever's songbook it is but many do. That way they're easily marketable, excessively familiar, and can rely on nostalgia and sight-unseen goodwill to fill the house...

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Learning iMovie and Making Lists with Chris

Chris here with some more listy goodness that Nathaniel wanted me to pass along: my own! This year rather than going the normal listicle route for my Best Of, I tought myself iMovie to make a video montage as both a love letter to the cinematic year and present my Top 20. Consider this a Soundtracking side quest, because I lean hard into my song choices. One thing I learned from teaching myself something new (aside from the technological mishaps - but hey, staring at films you love sure does ease all frustrations), is how to find similar narrative threads in the movies that move us, which I was able to do through song choices shared over multiple films.

Consider this a small peek into my ballot (which is in full here) for next month's Team Experience Awards, or hopefully just a quick way to bask in the past movie year as it comes to a close. We all love a montage, but I hope you love this one too! (NSFW for language)

2018 Film Year in Review from Chris Feil on Vimeo.

Linking With Yourself

Vulture A fine appreciation of Jonathan Demme's stellar crime comedy Married to the Mob
Deadline Hilary Swank to play a "seductive female police detective" in a new film called Fatale.  Hmmm, not sure this is in her range. Remember Black Dahlia?
Slate What's fact and what's fiction in BlacKkKlansman?
AV Club Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth are playing hardball with Paramount over their Star Trek paychecks

Awards Daily Sasha has quite a different take on the Oscar's new decision to include some kind of "popular achievement" award. (One thing I think we can all agree on: since we actually know nothing about the Academy's plans with their extremely vague announcement, it's really hard to say anything about what it might be or look like or mean.
Salon Casey Affleck breaks his silence on his behavior on the set of I'm Still Here
Boy Culture Cher's ABBA album now available for pre-orders
/Film Japanese film Mirai getting a US release from GKids in the fall. Oscar possibility?
Gothamist oh dear. Sean Young is in trouble again. The Blade Runner actress is wanted for questioning about a burglarly in Queens.
Coming Soon Paul Rudd to co-star with himself in philosophical Netflix comedy Living With Yourself
Coming Soon Ava DuVernay has cast her Central Park Five. It's mostly unknowns but Jharrel Jerome (Moonlight) and Jovan Adepo (Fences) are in there, too. 

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Review)

by Jorge Molina

Almost ten years ago to the date, Mamma Mia! opened in theaters. The jukebox musical based on the theater phenomenon that at the same time was based on the biggest hits of Europop sensation ABBA went on to gross almost 600 million dollars globally, and became the highest grossing live action musical ever. That movie seems to be divisive among fans of the genre because of the fluffy, silly and often nonsensical joy that poured out of the screens (you can read about the emotional connection I personally have with the movie here). 

Ten years and a Cher later, Donna and her Dynamos make a return to the island of Kalokairi with a sequel that doubles down on everything that made adamant fans of the first one fell in love with it, and made the skeptics roll their eyes...

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Knowing ABBA, Knowing Cher

By Glenn Dunks

This week is the opening weekend of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, almost exactly ten years to the date of the original 2008 adaptation of the ever-popular West End/Broadway musical that was the highest grossing live-action musical of all time until Beauty and the Beast came along. Coming on the heels of equally feel-good The Greatest Showman and ahead of Mary Poppins Returns, 2018 is proving to be a very cheesy good time at the movies if you’re a fan of these old fashioned singfests.

I adored the movie, writing in my review:

While it is very easy to dismiss, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again shifts from strange and award to daggy and deliriously dumb so easily that I didn’t even notice I had found myself smiling along to every goofy moment.

It will come as no surprise that the one and only Cher is a blast in her glorified cameo singing ABBA classic “Fernando” to Andy Garcia, which I think means he was a soldier in some war in Mexico? Who cares? It’s amazing! She shares an ability with ABBA themselves for wringing every ounce of drama and pathos out of lyrics that many would (incorrectly) label as frothy or silly or melodramatic. ABBA’s music can be all of these things, of course, but never without a wink to let us know they’re aware of it. Cher sounds natural singing these songs, her voice slotting in perfectly having gained plenty of experience with disco and pop at the same time that ABBA reigned over the music charts (fun fact: more Australians watched the group sing “Fernando” live on national television than they did the moon landing, how about that!).

And to top it all off, we just learnt that Cher will be releasing an entire album of ABBA covers! There’s been no word yet on when it will come out but, she has teased that her renditions have been done “in a different way”. Beginning now with Mamma Mia! – her first on-screen role since Burlesque and just her second film musical – Cher will be everywhere over the next twelve months with this new album, a new tour and her own jukebox musical, The Cher Show, on the way. Her "Fernando" has even charted with Billboard.

Which ABBA hits do you want Queen Cher to perform on her new album?

While it is very easy to dismiss, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again shifts from strange and awkward to daggy and deliriously dumb so easily that I didn’t even notice I had found myself smiling along to every goofy moment. There’s Lily James cartwheeling through an orchard for some reason, and wow suddenly there is a flotilla of Greeks sailing across the Mediterranean to the beat of Dancing Queen. Donna very inappropriately sings I Kissed the Teacher with a useless microphone at her Oxford College graduation. Seyfreid wears an ugly poncho for half the movie and Colin Firth wears satin pants so tight you can see what got him into this whole mystery pregnancy fiasco in the first place. Christine Baranski is still a lush and Julie Walters still can’t dance. It’s a hoot.