> No no no no no no no no no. My aversion to gooey pet name stuff is purely for comic effect. [...] put me in a sincere frame of mind and I'll tell you I don't mind at all.
>

Understood, my pookie hunny wunny bunchkins :-)


> Wolf, I'm actually rather shocked that you don't "get" musicals, since I would consider you my cultural superior in almost every other manner.
>

Me? Your cultural superior? Nah. There's a reason I don't write what I'd consider 'real' movie reviews, and that's because I doubt very much that I've seen even one hundred movies in my lifetime. So my point of reference is somewhat truncated. (My husband Dave and his brothers, on the other hand, are like you. Dave has an uncanny ability to recognize even heavily disguised actors by voice in brief cameo appearances. If the background music is mainstream enough, he can instantly recognize the singers by name, too....)


> But how can you imply musicals aren't "genuine"? Is ANY stage show or movie any more genuine? Was Kate Winslet TRULY so overcome with emotion that she risked her own life to stick by Leonardo diCaprio?
>

My sensitivity to the "genuine-ness" criterion (i.e. that something sounded 'phoney' to me) is something, as I said, which especially bothered me when I was much younger. Other than that, I couldn't pinpoint why I didn't like musical ballads back then. Nowadays my main beef with them is that they cause loss of immersive movie magic to MY ears.


> Your criticism of musicals is an unfortunately common one. People don't burst out into song in real life. But what's that got to do with anything? The musical is an inspired means by which characters CAN voice their inner monologues with emotional impact and, in the best of cases, entertain with some moving, funny, or uplifting music. IS there anything more hilarious and joyous than Donald O'Connor's, "Make 'Em Laugh" number in "Singin' In the Rain"? How can "Hi, my little munchkin pookie" be considered less genuine than the heartswooning "Maria" from "West Side Story"?
>

No, I happen to like funny and hilarious music numbers with unexpected humour. That's got to be the only explanation for why, after only one viewing and off the top of my head, I know the words to silly ditties as diverse as R&S' "The Log Song"; and "Brave Sir Robin" and "The Lumberjack Song" from Monty Python, and "The Grapes of Wrath" from VeggieTales. Sure, the singing isn't the greatest in any of these, but engage both my funny bone and my rational appreciation for silliness, and I ignore that part.

Regarding heartswooning ballads, I recognize music and lyrics as powerful tools for emotional impact and tear-jerking sway. What bothers me about musicals that are badly interleaved (poorly inserted into the narrative) is that I see them as an attempt to build up sympathetic feelings of "character-bonding" between the audience and an actor who might otherwise be cardboard thin. I guess I do not like my feelings being manipulated in this fashion.


> Maybe the problem is good musicals vs. bad musicals, which is a distinctly different problem than the dismissal of an entire celebrated genre.

Like I said, I've enjoyed the humourous musicals I've seen. To some degree it is a matter of personal taste as to whether one actually ENJOYS an "entire celebrated genre." Do you make it a point to avidly watch certain wildly-celebrated genres like MTV music videos, or current-hits karaoke? Erm.

Tonight I asked a few of my relatives whether -- out of all the movies and musicals that they have seen and own -- what was the most memorable movie song (or vocal turn of phrase) in any film that they could recall. The answers were "Oklahoma" and "Sound of Music," but no one could remember having preferred any one song number over another. It seems I'm not the only one in my group for whom musical movie ballads remains only a peripheral interest. ,:-(

Wolf "Oh well" spirit