La La Land

You know, as a younger viewer who works in film but isn't a cinema buff, I *REALLY* liked it. I haven't seen many older musicals. I haven't seen Sing Street. I might have been in the wrong mood but I got a little bored in Once (I will probably get crucified for saying that!!).

It seems most of the older population or cinema buffs think it's "ok" and I totally get that. I'll probably be annoyed in 30 years when someone talks about how great XYZ film is and I'll think "they did it better in 2015 or 1984 in this film..."

So it's probably my lack of experience or growing up with these, but man I loved the film. I'm not a musician but the music was stuck in my head for weeks, I bought the soundtrack. In my perspective it's more than passable, but I'm just a lay person in the musical sense. I loved the visual art style and story themes etc. Really, one of my favorite movies in years.

I'm wondering if there's a divide because the film themes resonate so much with a younger millennial generation (people in late 20s / early 30s seem to be facing both genders working and pursuing dreams in overly busy culture more so than ever), and the older generations have experienced a lot more musicals - so in addition, to the younger generations, it's got a "new to you" feel (I can barely remember Sound of Music and don't think I've ever seen any of the classic musicals... shame on me, right?).

For those who didn't like it (or just thought it was mediocre), if the film does anything good, I do think it will restore interest in the genre!
 
filmguy123 said:
You know, as a younger viewer who works in film but isn't a cinema buff, I *REALLY* liked it. I haven't seen many older musicals. I haven't seen Sing Street. I might have been in the wrong mood but I got a little bored in Once (I will probably get crucified for saying that!!).

It seems most of the older population or cinema buffs think it's "ok" and I totally get that. I'll probably be annoyed in 30 years when someone talks about how great XYZ film is and I'll think "they did it better in 2015 or 1984 in this film..."

So it's probably my lack of experience or growing up with these, but man I loved the film. I'm not a musician but the music was stuck in my head for weeks, I bought the soundtrack. In my perspective it's more than passable, but I'm just a lay person in the musical sense. I loved the visual art style and story themes etc. Really, one of my favorite movies in years.

I'm wondering if there's a divide because the film themes resonate so much with a younger millennial generation (people in late 20s / early 30s seem to be facing both genders working and pursuing dreams in overly busy culture more so than ever), and the older generations have experienced a lot more musicals - so in addition, to the younger generations, it's got a "new to you" feel (I can barely remember Sound of Music and don't think I've ever seen any of the classic musicals... shame on me, right?).

For those who didn't like it (or just thought it was mediocre), if the film does anything good, I do think it will restore interest in the genre!
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Good points. Agreed. (or "+1" in the Millennial vernacular)
 
If one feels like going to the best of the best of the musical genre, he ought to go back to the early talkies and, mainly among them, were the Fred and Ginger series of romcom's (muromcom?) from the 1930's, such as "Top Hat", Gay Divorcee", "Swing Time", etc.

Then the second run of musicals were with only Astaire being the lead - "Holiday Inn" (w/ Bing Crosby), "Blue Skies" (also with Crosby), "Easter Parade" (w/ Judy Garland and Peter Lawford), "Band Wagon" (w/Syd Charisse), etc.

 
DANCING IN THE DARK is a great example of Astaire's deal with Louis B. Mayer: you can cut-away when you film the dancing of Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Ray Bolger, Donald O'Connor, et. al. to close ups of their feet, face, hands, partners, etc.- but you shall film me head-to-toe in a single take - so the audience will know that I did what they are watching.
 
cyclone said:
DANCING IN THE DARK is a great example of Astaire's deal with Louis B. Mayer: you can cut-away when you film the dancing of Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Ray Bolger, Donald O'Connor, et. al. to close ups of their feet, face, hands, partners, etc.- but you shall film me head-to-toe in a single take - so the audience will know that I did what they are watching.
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Louie B's negotiating went like this, "Ya, sure, Fred. Whatever you want, you got it".

In any case, this is something that drives me nuts. I can see moving the camera and changing the angles but totally cutting in and out takes away from the performance

 
We had fun re-creating the look of the Fred Astaire era on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I think the editors struck a pretty good balance between letting it play in wide shots and adding in some coverage for the comedy.

 
CharlesPapert said:
We had fun re-creating the look of the Fred Astaire era on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
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Nice job. Speaking of Astaire - we all know he was a perfectionist. And arguably the greatest dancer in the world, not just film. Here is a sequence that always impressed me from That Entertainment III. The studio shot his routine for the film, but then he and the studio decided that his costume didn't fit his character, so they reshot it. Check this out...it's like a mirror image, even down to the smallest gesture. Perfection:

 
It is a cutesy movie made for millenials brought up watching High School Musical and other Disney trash. It is an artsy movie for the kind of people who enjoy Taylor Swift music.
 
Charles Walters moved the camera a little more than Mark Sandrich in the earlier Astaire-Rodgers musicals and, given the complexity of shots and the length of the sequence, this type of editing was needed.

Includes the famous Slo-Mo Fred.


PS. I assume that the size of the 1940's cameras mostly precluded its rapid movement. These days, I would like to see a full body framing - feet included - off a glide or cable cam that can follow the dancers three dimensionally.
 
DLD:
Thank you for crediting 2 of his great directors. Yeah, those Mitchell BNC's were beasts! In the 30's, 40's and 50's, there was no greater studio than MGM. My wife and I roamed, unattended, the standing sets of MGM's Backlot 2 (the one that was right across the street from their stages in Culver City - now Sony Studios) a few months before they bulldozed it:
http://www.mgmbacklot2.com/MGM_-_Memories_of_the_Backlot/MGM_-_Memories_of_the_Backlot.html
 
Cyclone, those pictures were fantastic! I love old Hollywood locations. It's tempted to be sad seeing the crumbling "neglected" standing sets but of course, they were never built to be permanent in the first place. I recently snuck into the storage facility on Glendale Blvd that was one of the original Mack Sennet soundstages for a quick look around.

There's a great walking tour of the Sunset and Vine area that I took a few years back, highly recommended. The surrounding area is the most dense in LA for entertainment history, between the television, radio, music and film industries. http://felixinhollywoodtours.com
 
Thank you, Charles.
And thanks for the info about the tour; I'll check it out. I also love that kind of stuff (as you can tell by my website). It does make me sad, even though, yes, the sets were never meant to last. But as the late afternoon breeze was blowing (the lot was only about 5 miles from the ocean), you could also imagine W.C. Field's voice echoing through Copperfield court, or Gene Kelly singing "Singing in the Rain" on the sidewalk lamp post on the New York street set. My favorite set piece was the shot of Copperfield Court...mostly because it was deteriorating. It was almost like I was standing on one side of the draw bridge gate, the side of of reality, where life is real and sometimes ugly, but the steel gate was slowly lowering on the world behind it, the world of movies and dreams and fantasy...almost like a Twilight Zone episode. Almost like if we stood on the other side of the lowering gate, we'd become part of the "other" world. Also interesting to me was that train station actually had a spur of track leading off of the lot (through hidden gates) so that Louie B. Mayer could bring whatever actual train he needed for a western, or a Judy Garland picture or whatever. The tracks went much further than then just the station set (which was in the southwest corner of the lot). The tracks wound their way through the lot: a Middle America set, Andy Hardy's street and many others.
I'd love to get a glimpse of the old Mack Sennet place.
And can you believe that Universal, just 2 years ago, tore down Soundstage 28? - one of the oldest sound stages in Hollywood. It still had the sets inside still standing from Chaney's Phantom of the Opera (the sides of the Opera House interior). They tore it down to add a thrill ride to their amusement park. It truly does bring a tear to my eye.
1925:
stage28-1.jpg
2014:
stage28-2a.jpg
Today it's gone.
 
I heard that the Phantom set was put in storage though? So it may reappear at a later date. Better than nothing, I guess. Universal has made it quite clear that the revenue from the theme park trumps the studio rentals, so they will likely stop at nothing to favor the former over nostalgia for the latter.

To attempt to bring this back around to the subject--LA has traditionally been soft on preservation, something to do with that pioneer spirit I guess, but it has been heartening to see how the trend in recent years especially in nightlife has been to restore and revive rather than raze. Cole's, Clifton's, Highland Bowl, Idle Hour...honoring the original spirit with loving restorations and give them some new zip. Really glad to hear that Angel's Flight is due to trundle up Bunker Hill again soon (after that quick glimpse in LaLa Land)!
 
I loved the film...up to the ending. Guys...this is a fantasy! No one really breaks out in song except, of course, in musicals.

I gave it an 85. If the ending was nice and happy...I would have given it a 95.

La La Land was an audacious film that really was hugely satisfying...until that huge letdown.

The freeway shot was done on a weekend. They practiced the moves for months...on flat land. The city of LA would only let them shoot for that one weekend. It's edited to look like one take, but it's three takes, stitched together.

For $30 million, it was a HELL of a lot more satisfying than Superman v. Batman 11.

The world is a friggin' mess! A little (or a lot) of escapism is exactly what we need. I got the soundtrack, and I will actually but the DVD.
 
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