Tuesday 10 December 2013

Hollywood Babble On & On #1098: Musicals, Apples & Apple Juice.

NBC recently had a ratings smash with The Sound of Music Live starring Carrie Underwood as Maria Von Trapp. Its success has spawned two things:



1. NBC is going to do a live musical next year, possibly a production of Cabaret starring Miley Cyrus as Sally Bowles, and David Hasselhoff as the Emcee.

2. People love to snark about how Carrie Underwood did a great job at singing the part, but her acting proved she was no Julie Andrews who starred in the 1965 movie version.

Now I decided right away to not snark about Carrie Underwood's acting, mainly because comparing her to Julie Andrews was not a case of comparing apples to oranges, but apples to apple juice.

Let me clarify.

Julie Andrews is the
apple
Carrie Underwood is the
apple juice.

See, it's perfectly clear.

What? You still don't get what I'm getting at, you're not hep to my groove?

Fine, I'll explain some more.

Julie Andrews is an apple, because by the time she did the defining portrayal of Maria Von Trapp in 1965 she had been an experienced performer on Broadway and London's West End. She had training, and had been singing and performing since she was 10 years old.

Underwood is the apple juice since she has spent most of her career as just a singer, and her acting resume is comparatively thin, consisting of a few cameos, usually as a variation of herself. It also took a hell of a lot of courage to dive into performing a musical, one of the toughest gigs in acting, broadcast live to the world, something that's only been done rarely since the early 1950s.

Now do you see what I'm getting at?

Experience, talent, and the comfort of shooting a feature film with multiple takes makes Julie Andrews the apple, a complete package as a performer.

Inexperience, a lack of training, doing it on live TV with no second takes, but a strong singing voice made Carrie Underwood the apple juice. Sweet,  pleasant, reminds you of apples, but not really a complete apple, just part of one.

And that's why I cut Ms. Underwood some slack.

2 comments:

  1. The Giant's mother tricked him into watching The Sound of Music eight or nine times before he was five. I am probably the best person to judge since I hate the songs and can't get it out of my head.

    It was just fine for what it was. Live tv is a bitch anyway. She is not an actress by trade so I think she did as well as could be expected.

    Rainforest Giant

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  2. That show had a small bit of charm, but as I've seen a movie like 'Frozen' that really tired me out w/ the singing at the drop of a hat.. it kinda wore me out before it ended. Thankfully for the former it stopped belting out a tune and just got to the fricking point to wrap up the cartoon.
    +
    I do have a tangental question in regards to the above mentioned movie.. why does it cost $150 MILLION to make a Computer Generated Cartoon?! $150 MILLION DOLLARS for an animation that w/ the assistance of computers 80% shown was done without the hand of man! Where the flub is all that dough going into?
    +
    Side Note: In your -Legal Mumbo Jumbo- paragraph.. the last sentence was a ~bit~ off... "So you don't you even think about pinching something and claiming it as yours."
    +
    So you can go either way with an Aggressive "So don't you~" or coy "So you don't~"

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