Category Archives: QuossOver

Quossover: Cinderella

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Earlier in the year (back in the spring) my friend wanted to see the live-action film version of Disney’s Cinderella, and so I accompanied her.

When it comes to the online world, Cinderella is not typically considered a prime role model for the “modern female”. Cinderella being the traditional “rags-to-riches” story depicted a young lady forced to be a servant in the home that she grew up in by a step mother and step siblings, her fairy godmother creates the means for Cinderella to go to the ball, she meets the prince, they fall in love, she flees, and the prince finds her.

On the surface it appears that actions happen to and around her in order for her happily ever after to come around. In a way emphasizing the notion that “good things comes to those who wait” which in today’s modernized way of thinking, is not always the case.

Disney’s original animated classic, stays along the lines of that mythos, that someone that was neglected and abused and quieted would one day receive their reward for their kindness. Although this is typically true in the sense of karma in today’s world, what is not necessarily true is the sense that things will happen to the protagonist, versus the protagonist seeking out what they desire.

Granted if there is anything that the Cinderella does emphasis to their audience and is something that I would emphasize as well is to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (which if memory serves is a biblical verse, but I am not going to go and do any comparisons at this point in time).

So how does Disney’s live action version of Cinderella compare to that of the original animated classic?
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Reflection: Sense & Sensibility the Musical

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Now that I have had a few days to really let Denver’s production of Sense & Sensibility musical by Jeffrey Haddow and Neal Hampton sink in I could give details of what I liked and didn’t like, etc…

CHARACTER / ACTOR BREAKDOWN
The first thing I noticed was that aside from six characters:
– Elinor Dashwood
– Marianne Dashwood
– Mrs Jennings
– Edward Ferrars
– Colonel Brandon
– John Willoughby
Everyone else in the cast was playing dual (if not triple) roles… most as an ensemble-ish group similar to the Liebeslieders (or the Quintet) of A Little Night Music. Though unlike in A Little Night Music, the ensemble fluctuates from as little as four players to as many as eight/nine (I do not remember which).

However, there are two others within the cast who are not necessarily part of the general ensemble but do play multiple roles on stage.

This ingenious casting piqued my interest because it gives performing arts groups the flexibility of having a medium sized cast of 16 actors (maybe less depending on how things break down) to as large as need be for high school groups… and yes I am thinking very far ahead.

Anyway!!!!!
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Review: Sense & Sensibility World Premiere in Denver

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Wow, it was almost a year ago that I was listening to the music clips on the Sense and Sensibility the Musical website and was drawn into the show… Draw into it enough to want to see the production upon its arrival in Denver.

It has been a year and well… I did end up making that trip to Colorado specifically so I could see this production live. Don’t judge me.

First… the quickies:
– Acting: LOVE
– Vocals: LOVE
– Music / Orchestration: LOVE
– Set Design: LOVE
– Directing: LOVE
– OVERALL: LOVE!!!

I was seriously considering buying another ticket for the matinee production on Sunday but thought better of it.

But where to begin? Well to start the one thing I like is that there isn’t some massive ensemble in addition to the cast, there is a group of five to seven actors/actresses who help move the story along (a la A Little Night Music). Why five to seven? Because not only do they help move the story along, but some of them also play smaller parts in the production when needed:
– Lucy Steele
– Thomas (Dashwoods servant)
– Peter (London servant)
– Miss Grey (Willoughby’s bride)
– John and Fanny Dashwood
And others, but the above are the most “obvious” I would say.

Personally I didn’t notice when each of the above players were in the “ensemble” so to speak until much later in the production… which was a good thing… otherwise I would have to watch the show again just so I could see if I had missed anything.

Since this is my impression / review of the production itself I won’t go into detail about changes from the original novel… that is going to be a post in and of itself. However what I will say is this:

When it comes to the storylines of the Dashwood sisters the stage adaptation is fairly close to the novel (with a few changes here and there). When it comes to where a lot of where particular points of the storyline happens, there are far more changes that a total purist may not be too keen on, but for me being a purist… I find that the changes made were probably the best ones that could have been done.

But again that’s another post for another day.

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Literary Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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This was probably one of the more unique ways of storytelling that I have seen in a very long time. Taking six seemingly independent short stories and tying them together where not only does one influence the next, but they all have common threads and tie-ins with one another… rather fun to see and watch.

Now… I know there is a film out there that was inspired, adapted from the book itself, but I haven’t seen it and I still have yet to decide if I really wanted to… so until then I will focus more on the short stories and what I liked and didn’t like… come to think of it lets my life easier and just do a quick list first:
1: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing – Meh
2: Letters from Zedelghem – Meh
3: Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery – Love
4: The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish – Like
5: An Orison of Sonmi~451 – Love
6: Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After – Meh

So the second half of the post I would focus on those that I either liked or loved and those that got a “meh” I might go ahead and talk a little about them, but not really… mainly because they were just “meh” to me.

Anyway, the novel opens with a short story that goes into the past and continues until it reaches a particular climax when it then opens the next story in chronological order and stops when that hits the climax and rinse and repeat until the sixth story in the series when it goes uninterrupted until a moment in time when the action has ended and the protagonist (or relation thereof) goes back to the story, film, inspiration that drove some of the action in their particular thread and opens to the climax of the previous story and so on…. confused yet?

Well… let’s look at it from a numeric point of view:

first half of story 1 –>
first half of story 2 –>
first half of story 3 –>
first half of story 4 –>
first half of story 5 –> story 6 –> second half of story 5 –>
second half of story 4 –>
second half of story 3 –>
second half of story 2 –>
second half of story 1

It is like opening a book in the middle and placing another book in it and opening that in the middle and rinse and repeat for up to six books and then just read all six books straight through like that. A little disconcerting to be sure, but fun to me nonetheless.

So now let’s go into the short stories… shall we?
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Review: The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn Part Two

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Ok… I am going to admit, the main reason that I wanted to see this movie was because of the fight scene. The one scene in the movie that is blatantly not in the book. I know when I read the book (and yes I will admit to reading the book, no shame in that… much) I was supremely disappointed that there was no battle, just one massive chess match. Especially since Alice had a vision that showed that some number of the Cullens (if not just Edward and Bella) and other vampires would not survive the Volturi’s visit in some capacity.

I wanted to see how that would have played out, who would have survived as well as how and who did in the battle?

What we know from the books:
– Jacob and Renesemse survive
– Bella and Edward die
– Other members of the Cullens die

That’s about it… Well not really.

Later in the novel (towards the end to be exact) Edward mentions his theories as to why and how the Cullens and company survive. His speculation was that Bella defensive shield was enough to throw Aro and the Volturi off to the point that battle was more than evenly match… Edward admitted that the Cullens and company would have sustained heavy losses but so would the Volturi. If there is anything that Aro hated it was losing… in any capacity.

After watching the film, I finally decided that the best bit of the series was the faux-battle scene that happened. Yes it was just a future that Alice saw as long as Aro continued on his path to destroy the Cullens, but still that was one damn fun battle to watch.

So what actually happened in the battle?

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Literary Review: The Guardians of Childhood (Book Three) by William Joyce

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It finally arrived! The audiobook to the third book in William Joyce’s series “The Guardians of Childhood“. So who is next up to bat? The wonderful Tooth Fairy also known as Toothiana in William Joyce’s world.

According to the website Toothiana is noted as:

One of the most riveting and mysterious Guardians of all time!

The Tooth Fairy can spin herself into a multitude of selves, all depending on nightly teeth-placed-under-pillow rates. And her diminutive size is not at all indicative of how fierce of a warrior she can be — Pitch has no idea what he is up against.

No kidding. Via this particular novel we are given a glimpse of her parents and what happened to them and the backstory of how she came about to gather the tooths of children. Which technically is a lot, but we are also given a secondary antagonist who apparently has a major thing against Toothiana and has found itself aligned with Pitch Black (aka Bogeyman) in hopes of regaining his former glory.

So now the battle between good and evil is coming down on a more personal level.

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Review: The Hobbit

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So how to explain this one?

First off… I had the slight inkling that this was Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring except with smaller people and uneven pacing and more fun? I think that pretty much sums it up. (And the LOTRProject appears to agree with me)

There are twelve dwarves on a quest to regain the mountain their forefathers have been driven away from… with the help of Gandalf they went on a search to find a final member of their little entourage and Gandalf decided to engage the use of a Hobbit… particularly Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.

Well what happened there after is a long series of unfortunate events where the endgame includes managing to find a way to the elven territory of Rivendell…

Anyone else see a pattern or is it just me?

Heck I can’t even get a quick list down other than to say that I liked it…
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Literary Review: The Guardians of Childhood (Books One and Two) by William Joyce

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After watching The Rise of the Guardians last month I immediately got intrigued (as I often do) with the idea that some of the worlds most loved icons were real and guarding the children. That here is Santa Claus (also known as North), the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman (aka Sandy) who are protecting the children and their hopes and dreams from the evil Bogeyman (aka Pitch Dark).

So when I realized (upon some research) that the Rise of the Guardians were based off of a series of children’s novels by the writer William Joyce, I eagerly found the audiobooks for the first two in the series and am looking forward to listening to the third and the fourth.

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Review: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (aka LBD)

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I fell down a rabbit hole… a major rabbit hole. It was a rabbit hole so deep that I haven’t really taken any time to get out of it because it is so much fun in this rabbit hole.

So what am I going on about?

Well.. as I was lurking at the Pemberley Discussion Boards, I noticed via the Austenations board the acronym LBD with a vast number of episodes. I got curious… when looking at a few posts and how it would appear to be Pride and Prejudice related and how certain characters were emulated other characters I can’t help but be intrigued with this conundrum.

Thank goodness for Google… kind of.

A quick Google look up for LBD revealed a long list of various companies and groups with the initials LBD… but nothing Jane Austen related… which is what hit me.

Another quick Google look up for LBD and “Jane Austen” revealed the website The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: An Online Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice which led to the online web series of the same name… And OH. EM. GEE.

According to the website it is…

The home of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries an online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Developed by Hank Green and Bernie Su

And they went all out… a fair number of the characters have twitter accounts, there is a tumblr, there is even an online presence for the companies featured on the show (Collins and Collins, Pemberley Digital) outside of the actual Lizzie Bennet Diaries series…

First a quick round up… here is how the characters have been changed / adapted from the original Jane Austen novel:

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Review: Rise of the Guardians

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With all the fairytales, folklore, fantasy related stuff out there, it only seemed a matter of time until someone came along and turned some of the world’s most loved figures and created a movie where they are guarding the children and their hopes and dreams.

The best way to describe Rise of the Guardians:

The Bogeyman (aka Pitch Dark) threatens to take over the world and fill it with darkness and fear once again causing the Guardians to rise up in an attempt to stop him before it is too late. The Guardians include Santa Claus the Guardian of Wonderment, the Tooth Fairy the Guardian of Memories, the Sandman the Guardian of Dreams, and the Easter Bunny the Guardian of Hope. But according to their entity “The Man in the Moon” they need another to help them take down the Bogeyman…

After much hoping and wishing it would be the Leprechaun (Luck) or some other fable… in the end “The Man in the Moon” selects Jack Frost to join the Guardians.

Within the first five minutes of seeing Jack Frost at work in the modern century, it isn’t all that hard that he will be the one that becomes the Guardian of “Fun”… but for some reason Jack Frost is unsure what his center is when prompted by Santa.

Voiced by a stellar cast, including: Alec Baldwin (Santa Claus), Hugh Jackman (Easter Bunny), Chris Pine (Jack Frost), Isla Fisher (Tooth Fairy) and Jude Law (Bogeyman)… there was never a moment where I did not find myself engaged in the movie.

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Review: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

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Show: HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS
Produced by: 		Location: Cadillac Palace Theatre
Director:

So first we have the famed Dr Seuss book which inspired a film adaptation with Jim Carrey and now there is a stage musical production? Riiiiiight…

I was cautiously curious about this stage production but my date for the evening wanted to see it (of the choices presented to him) so I figured, “how bad could it be?”. As it would turn out, I had more fun in this quick 90 minute production than I had originally anticipated… go figure.

Considering I saw this back in mid-December, there is much that is bound to be forgotten, but I will try to recall as much as possible:
Acting: like
Singing: like
Choreography: like
Set Design: love
Figures doesn’t it?
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Review: Wheaton Drama’s It’s a Wonderful Life Radio Show

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Show: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE RADIO SHOW
Produced by: 		Location: Wheaton Drama
Director: Sean Ogren

Earlier in December of 2012, a friend of mine and I went to Wheaton Drama to see a bunch of our friends in the holiday radio show “It’s a Wonderful Life”. When I say “a bunch” I mean I knew a fair number of the case right of the bat… (I know that is considered par for the course for me). Anyway what is different about this particular radio show was the addition of a children’s dance troupe from Geneva.

Before I move on here were some first impressions:
Acting: like
Singing: like
Choreography: meh
Staging: like
Sound Effects: love

One of the first things I noticed is that while the audience was trickling into the theatre, various members of the cast were already fully in character, interacting with the audience. It was strange having this sense of being transported into a different decade completely and feeling a sense of being part of the live audience for such a production.

Off to the side of the stage was a couple of tables that were set up for what it would appear to be the “sound effects” guys for the production. Helmed by R J Ogren and Peter Lemongelli, I knew instinctively that we were in for a real treat.

The radio program was hosted by Randy Knott (also known as Count Carl-Magnus in VTG’s A Little Night Music) who was cracking jokes towards the audience and the sound effect guys. However, who really stole the pre-show was Steve Schroeder and his antics of dinging a bell and pointing randomly “and you get wings” *ding* “and you get wings” *ding* “and you get wings”… well you get the idea. That damn guy keeps stealing the show no matter where he is at… but I digress.

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Review: Les Miserables 2012 film

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lesmistheatreDuring Christmas Day my parents and I were part of the legions of people that went to see Les Miserables on the large silver screen.

Granted considering that it was Opening Day for the film the theatre was going to be jam packed with people that got there early enough to get the prime seats. So my parents and I ended up sitting third row from the front. Not terrible, but definitely not preferred.

So how to describe Les Miserables? Well for the non-musical non-drama people out there I would say it like this:

Les Miserables is about the Gladiator who spends almost two decades chasing Wolverine who in turn saves and becomes guardian to The White Queen’s daughter who is in the keeping of Borat and Bellatrix (who provide much of the film’s comedy relief and are apparently proficient at pickpocketing).

The Gladiator also has a bunch of college students that are trying to overthrow the monarchy and trying to cause another revolution… which doesn’t end well. Oh and a bunch of people die using the precursors to lightsabers and phasors.

To get you into the mood… here is something rather diverting from the Polish stage cast of Les Miserables:

Anyway… enough goofing around… for spoilers go beyond the break:

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Review: Sister Act the Musical – Chicago Tour Stop

Last night a friend of mine and I went to see the first performance of the Chicago Stop of Sister Act the Musical… and honestly it was loads of fun to watch.

My friend mentioned that he thought the musical was “fun” and “cute” which is probably the best words to describe the show. It was entertaining, but there were a few gaffes along the way… but that was more on the technical end of the spectrum. So meh.

In any case… the cast recording I have at home is actually the West End Cast, so there was a song or two that I expected to hear that I didn’t… and the replacement songs wasn’t bad, but for some reason I simply wasn’t as thrilled. Guess my heart is just not American enough 😉

ANYWAY.

For anyone not really familiar with the original movie that the musical was based off of starring Whoopi Goldberg:

A lot of the primary characters (ok many of them) are included in the musical, however don’t expect to hear any of songs made popular via the movie to be in the musical. Instead the score as composed by Alan Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater and with a book written by Cherie Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner (and with additional book material by Douglas Carter Beane) brings a fresh take of the music with catchy tunes and moving pieces.
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Review: Battleship

Before I get started, I will be the first to admit… I was very adverse to the idea of a movie being created about a board game that really didn’t have any premise except to try to sink the other player.

How do you base a whole movie on that? Well… as it would turn out, you don’t. Instead Battleship the Game was really a small ten to fifteen minute clip out of the entire film, while the rest of the film was a battle between the humans and the aliens who came to planet Earth with the intent of taking it over.

Best quote of the whole film?

Cal Zapata: If there is intelligent life out there and they come here, it’s going to be like Columbus and the Indians, only we’re the Indians.

This is going to be fun!

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