Originally Posted By leemac <<What was the song that played during the trailor of the newest Pooh movies?>> The earliest trailers used a British band called Keane - their song was Somewhere Only We Know. I posted a wonderful UK hand-drawn commercial for John Lewis that used a version of that song by Lily Allen. Wonderful version.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I love For The First Time (in reprise - wonderful countermelody)<< This is the part that's been stuck in my head since I saw the movie. It's grand and epic and glorious. If it were a marching band show (and I'm sure it will be this fall at high schools across the country), it's where they'd have a company front marching half-time, like Simple Gifts from Copland's Appalachian Spring. Obviously the music is very different, but the feeling is the same
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: It's not just us who can't stand the songs from the Nemo Stage Show, leemac, duckling. Every single person who has gone with us to see that show has had the same reaction. While they love the visuals, the music sounds so much like something an amateur would come up with and for that reason they never want to see it again. ORWEN: And talk about a 'sameness' quality with these song writers, I could hear a sameness quality between the Nemo Stage show songs and Frozen's too. They just seem so bland compared to better songs like: Whole New World, When You Wish Upon a Star, Some Day My Prince Will Come or Can You Feel the Love Tonight. ORDDU: None-the-less we still love FROZEN over all and are happy to see it doing so well at the box office.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>They just seem so bland compared to better songssongs like: Whole New World, When You Wish Upon a Star, Some Day My Prince Will Come or Can You Feel the Love Tonight.<< "Tell Me What You See" seems kind of bland compared to "Hey Jude" too. Not every Disney song can be a timeless classic.
Originally Posted By TheRedhead I remember my fist time seeing the Nemo show and immediately thinking that it is too good for a theme park. I've seen it four times, the last time just a few months ago, and I still can't believe how much it is leagues above anything Disney has done with live shows. The design, the songs, the level of acting (from the leads at least). I have the show's soundtrack on my phone. I find it shocking that anybody would think it dreadful. Sorry Witches!
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: That's okay. Not everyone can like the same things. There are a lot of songs out there, today, that others like which we do not. Most of the songs written for Disney movies are appealing to us. There's just something about the song writers for Frozen that isn't to our liking. But for those who DO like them we're happy for you because everybody needs to be inspired by something.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I really like the music in the Nemo show at the AK, but am not that wild about the puppets? What can I say? Different strokes...
Originally Posted By RedRider I agree with the witches here. I had heard how awesome the music was before seeing Frozen, but felt very underwhelmed. Maybe had I not had such high expectations going in I wouldn't have been disappointed. I liked, not loved, "Let it go" and really liked "Do you want to build a snowman", but other than that meh. Olaf was super cute and his song was really cute, but I'm not buying this soundtrack and if I don't stop getting the 2 lines from "Let it go" in my head every time someone talks about it I might go mad! Maybe I should just memorize the whole thing so I have something else to sing I did love the movie though.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I remember my fist time seeing the Nemo show and immediately thinking that it is too good for a theme park. I've seen it four times, the last time just a few months ago, and I still can't believe how much it is leagues above anything Disney has done with live shows. The design, the songs, the level of acting (from the leads at least). >> And that remains the feedback from most guests too - it matches Festival of The Lion King score for score in guest feedback surveys. Nemo always felt like the perfect storm for theme park shows - all of the elements just clicked into place. DAK has tried to chip away at the staffing level for the show to reduce their opex but thankfully they have afraid to butcher the show as it is so well-received.
Originally Posted By leemac <<ORDDU: It's not just us who can't stand the songs from the Nemo Stage Show, leemac, duckling. Every single person who has gone with us to see that show has had the same reaction. While they love the visuals, the music sounds so much like something an amateur would come up with and for that reason they never want to see it again. >> Different strokes I guess but I wonder what you think of classic musical scores by the likes of Rodgers/Hammerstein, Herman, Kander/Ebb etc. as the Lopezes come firmly from that school - they are almost the anti-Menken in that it is great music for music sake rather than pastiching a genre to fit a soundscape. What I've always loved about Bobby is that he has absolutely no snobbery about musical theater which is why he could compose for Avenue Q/The Book of Mormon in the same lifetime as Playhouse Disney and Finding Nemo. Both Bobby and Kristen loved working on Nemo. He also did a great job on the My Musical episode for Scrubs.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I really like the music in the Nemo show at the AK, but am not that wild about the puppets? >> I think you do have to be in to Michael Curry's style - do you like the puppets in his other work like The Lion King (Broadway musical) or Tapestry of Nations?
Originally Posted By leemac And the Lopezes are staying with Disney for the live-action Bob The Musical movie. This one has been on the cards for years and is finally moving ahead. It has a very fun script - like Cranium Command externalised!
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>And talk about a 'sameness' quality with these song writers, I could hear a sameness quality between the Nemo Stage show songs and Frozen's too.<< I definitely heard it with some of the songs, but others felt fresh. Love is an Open Door, Olaf's song, and the troll song all felt quite similar to the Nemo stuff and Avenue Q. Not bad, but not really fresh and exciting; compared to how much I liked the other songs, my disappointment with these ones seems to make them that much worse in my mind For what it's worth, from the Nemo show I think Go with the Flow and Big Blue World are a lot of fun; the other ones didn't leave as lasting of an impression on me, but they're all well-suited for their role in the show. Overall, I think I'd rate that music as a solid B+ for me. It's very good, but just not quite great
Originally Posted By TheRedhead "DAK has tried to chip away at the staffing level for the show" I have a friend who is a casting agent who had clients in the original NYC workshop of the Nemo musical, one of them a lead. There was an offer made to that lead to move to Orlando to keep doing the role. My friend said the offer was insane. He gave me a ballpark...many many APs would need to be sold. I always wondered how they can cover such costs.
Originally Posted By TheRedhead "they are almost the anti-Menken in that it is great music for music sake rather than pastiching a genre to fit a soundscape." I think you're being unfairly harsh to Alan Menken, especially considering that one half of the Lopezes is a guy who can out-pastiche anyone: half of Avenue Q is imitating Sesame Street and half of Book of Mormon is imitating Up With People. And let's not judge a man based mainly on what he's done lately. Menken has an incredible body of work. But yeah, he's past his prime. It happens to EVERY composer. And the stuff he's done lately for Broadway IS dreadful. But were we to judge Kander and Ebb solely by their later shows, there would be no reverence necessary. I said before that playing my Frozen CD made me think of first playing my Beauty and the Beast CD. Not just because of the excitement, but because the scores are very similar, mixing music that is both wholly their own and music that reminds you of something else. There's no need to bash Menken in order to praise the other.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I think you're being unfairly harsh to Alan Menken, especially considering that one half of the Lopezes is a guy who can out-pastiche anyone: half of Avenue Q is imitating Sesame Street and half of Book of Mormon is imitating Up With People. >> Apologies as I wasn't passing judgement on Menken - or that certainly wasn't my intention. However Menken has done little of merit since Hunchback - that is 15 years of either average or dreadful output. The crap is starting to outweigh the marvellous stuff from Little Shop to HOND. He also started to work with a woefully dull lyricist in Slater (he openly admitted that he just wanted a yes man after years of playing hardball with the likes of Ashman and Schwartz). The new stuff in Mermaid was truly terrible. I think only Compass of My Heart from TDS's Sindbad attraction is passable. See - now that is me criticising Menken.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I think you're being unfairly harsh to Alan Menken, especially considering that one half of the Lopezes is a guy who can out-pastiche anyone: half of Avenue Q is imitating Sesame Street and half of Book of Mormon is imitating Up With People. >> Musical style reminds me of that old Hollywood maxim that there are only 7 stories in the world. I think that a similar adage can be levelled at musical theatre. It is always fine lines but IMHO Menken has jumped the shark and just ended up as some lousy Vegas imitator (his body of work on Sister Act was some of the worst I've ever heard from him - so wedded to the disco theme that he couldn't construct good music) whereas Bobby can be a little fresher. Doesn't mean he won't go down that path at some point - I just hope he doesn't sell out - Menken is money obsessed to the point that it is embarrassing talking to him. After Snow Queen was ditched he whined at every opportunity that he was missing out on big royalty checks from a show that would have run 4-6 times per day.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I have a friend who is a casting agent who had clients in the original NYC workshop of the Nemo musical, one of them a lead. There was an offer made to that lead to move to Orlando to keep doing the role. My friend said the offer was insane. He gave me a ballpark...many many APs would need to be sold. I always wondered how they can cover such costs.>> Nemo really was the perfect storm. Anne Hamburger had found her feet (and voice) within WDP&R and was able to push for some major changes to Creative Entertainment - first and foremost was attracting Broadway talent (both on-stage and off-stage creative) to work with the theme parks. She literally had carte blanche to explore a new type of theme park show. One of the biggest surprises for me at the Company in the past decade or so was the approval to create an enclosed theatre for Nemo - that option had and has been thrown up all the time for FL Theater in DL and never gets funding. Management just hates that expense but Anne got it done for Nemo. Some of the other Anne projects weren't quite so great - Twice Charmed on the DCL is a real mixed bag, Villains Tonight is just plain awful and Toy Story - The Musical tried too hard to replicate Nemo.
Originally Posted By leemac << I always wondered how they can cover such costs.>> They don't - and aren't expected to either. The issue is that in the past there was a genuine appreciation within the division to that dark art of menu planning - the belief that a Disney theme park needs to offer a smorgasbord of product from attractions to shows to spectacles. Entertainment didn't need to wash its face as it was part and parcel of the overall experience. WDP&R's former CFO Jim Hunt pushed every park to constantly evaluate their opex and that meant that low-hanging fruit was culled first - and that was always entertainment. Real easy to cut streetmosphere or meet 'n' greets. Once the availability of those cost savings dried up they worked up to other things like cutting shows or parade staffing. It always breaks my heart as I was educated in the spirit of the founding of the parks and the mantra that menu planning needed to provide for every experience. That just doesn't resonate in today's parks.
