CATS is closing!!

secretly was it any good? you know we won't laugh at you

And why didn't they ever make a movie of it?

Yeah, it was called SCAT heh.

However it did bring back the even earlier childhood trauma of my crazed cat-loving grandpa who would beckon me aside, recite long chunks of Bustopher Jones / Skimbleshanks / The Naming of Cats and then say 'go and tell Daddy that', at which point I would run off and interrupt my dad mid-shave in order to recite whatever I could remember at him. If only I had known the songs first this would have been much easier.

WHich reminds me of a Jaffa Cake Box question.

The bottles look fantastic as I like the idea of trying to drink directly from one. I'd say they're about 8 or 10 pints. The French have it right with those litre mini barrels of Kronenberg that you stick the spout on to drink. They cost 8 francs aswell in OLD money.

Fascinating history of beer cans, including 'party cans' at beercannews.com.

What happen?

So the cast for this year's movie version is its own parody:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5697572/fullcredits/

Love Swifty. Love cats. Hate Cats.

Well, here we go

One night. One chance. Watch the #CatsMovie trailer now. pic.twitter.com/7XwCx79xOh

— Universal PicturesUK (@universaluk) July 18, 2019

cursed

Twitter is in amazing meltdown mode right now.

pic.twitter.com/Puc7vxvDIH

— Sean O'Kane (@sokane1) July 18, 2019

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no noooooo

Lousy musical makes lousy movie. Starting the trailer with the only big song is a very bad sign.

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/catinthehat.jpg?quality=100&w=650

Boxcar

Holy shit, I made it 10 seconds through the trailer.

My family is seeing the musical tomorrow night.

Someone should replace all those cat people with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Not people who follow ALW though xps

The official trailer for the @catsmovie has been released. Coming to cinemas this December. #TeamALW #CatsMovie pic.twitter.com/bG6vxlX7U4

— Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) July 18, 2019

I love Phil Spector's well-trod zing: "“I respect Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work so much that someday I’d like to set it to music.”

oh god oh fuck there’s gonna be so much erotic fan-art made about this

Uh, that IS the erotic fan-art

what the fuck did i just watch

scientists have distilled physical pain into a single image, and it is this: pic.twitter.com/rKoEq1bnJM

— isekobra kai (@Sona_Sonara) July 18, 2019

lol

how does this keep happening

I will say that this looks more entertaining than The Lion King

You have no chance to survive make your time

^an oldie but goodie.

congrats ALW, first you did disco tetris and now this

^an oldie but goodie.

I don't know why but I was under the impression that this was going to be an animated thing, like with actual cartoon cats rather than hellbeast cat/human hybrids. I guess because...that makes more sense? And might've actually been semi-appealing? I...I don't know how you spend so much time and money making something like this without at some point conceding that you're doing something unholy and should stop.

The whole 'people in shabby cat costumes' thing...I mean, I always just assumed that was for the sake of practicality and expedience in the context of a stage production, not an intentional aesthetic choice that you throw hundreds of millions of dollars behind.

what the hecking shit is the source of that fake Watchmen panel that ppl keep memeing? I never have any idea what point they’re trying to make w/ it

so one of my key findings from having cats for a year plus now after a lifetime of not having cats is that cats have very prominent assholes that you see like, all the time because they walk around with their tails in an 'up' position, and honestly that's the main thing i thought of while i was watching this trailer.

it’s a real short hop from that post to erotic fan-art

itshappening.gif

it's the confidence of cat asshole display that I find the most troubling

I had completely forgotten if there had been a Cats movie, so life has worked out after all

The costume design actually looks pretty good (or at least not shabby) - I assume the cat costumes IE the fur is 100% CGI.

should've just used real cats tbh

I dunno, it sure looks to me like they're wearing real cats.

Also, while Satan is surely pleased with what they've created, you figure they almost certainly made a blood offering to the dark lord, as well, to ensure the success of this pantomime of the damned. The question, really, is just how many dozens (hundreds?) of felines lost their lives over the course of birthing this cinematic abomination.

Uncanny Valley: The Movie

the rogue font in this thread is worse than the trailer

the trailer so cursed it broke ilx

How do I shot rogue font?

Blursed af.

TS: Jack Reynor in a skinned bear vs Judi Dench in a skinned cat

https://imgur.com/FBPADCh.jpg

CATS, Christmas 2019 pic.twitter.com/jiypvYbZB8

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 18, 2019

This is the cinematic equivalent of holing up alone inside your home for a year and then walking out into the world without ever glancing into a mirror beforehand. The producers of the film are currently standing in the street with a slice of pizza stuck to their shirt and their dick hanging out and going 'What? What?!' at the bystanders currently gawking in understandable disgust.

Something that's been cracking me up are people who missed out on the original phenomenon looking at the trailing and going "but what is it ABOUT?" and I can't wait for them to find out it's basically a musical revue with a tenuous narrative throughline

That was one of the first things that occurred to me when I saw the trailer, that the 'oh, hey, it's Cats, the musical whose unique visual style is familiar to me because it was something of a cultural phenomenon within recent memory' window is kinda way way closed.

While we're at it, I'd argue that there's no time like 2019 for a reverent adaptation of Starlight Express.

Only if it's done like Thomas the Tank Engine

https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DD0woFSXoAAJqhS.jpg

daer god

look, my mention of 'erotic fan-art' itt wasn't an invitation to start posting it ffs

easily a five bagger for me

and this is why, ultimately, I will never completely hate Cats

Given the era, I assume that coke was largely responsible for the musical, but I'm not sure what the excuse for this movie is. Synthetic weed?

cultural marxism iirc

Personally I am excited for the Stomp! movie to come out in 2030

o irony, thy name is imdb trivia

Ironically, Rebel Wilson is allergic to cats in real life.

IRONY

"Tragically"
"Coincidentally"
"Inappropriately"
"Genetically"
"Seriously"

In the interest of full disclosure: when I was a kid, my parents signed up for Columbia House and let me pick one of the introductory albums, which was the original Broadway cast recording of Cats. I hadn't seen the show, I don't know why I did it, and I vaguely recall my parents being all '...uh, are you sure?'. So I probably know all the songs quite well despite having almost no corresponding visual association aside from whatever brief snippets of insane footage they used in commercials for the traveling production.

Does anyone know how much they're paying to have costumed actors come out into the audience at every screening? Seems like that could add up, especially if the film unaccountably stays in theaters for two weeks or more.

It's like starring in the movie of Cats
When you're actually allergic to cats
It's like raaaa-eeee-aaaaaaaain

Hell, I saw Cats in the theater in London when I was in high school

furries are volunteering to do it for their twisted sexual pleasure free, i think xxp

one of the great jokes in the last season of kimmy schmidt is tituss finding out that cats is 100 percent improvised and made up and anyone can add themselves as a new character to the show and no one in the audience will ever notice

Something that's been cracking me up are people who missed out on the original phenomenon looking at the trailing and going "but what is it ABOUT?" and I can't wait for them to find out it's basically a musical revue with a tenuous narrative throughline

how much do we think bovril paid for this prominent shout-out in what looks set to be the highest-grossing movie of all time

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_1hF6VXUAA2AQY.jpg

I think even Eliot would argue that reading Eliot is a pale comparison to seeing Eliot's vision represented with such fidelity.

I did a double-take when Eliot's name appeared in the trailer.

tbr I get why people dislike Cats and it was never my favorite musical but I really enjoy a few of the songs from it and it was great spectacle in the theater

this movie looks ridiculous though

I confess I have not actually seen this trailer but I am as pleased to learn that Eliot gets a shoutout in it as I was when Visionary Director Carol Morley adapted a Martin Amis book and his name was nowhere near any of the marketing

Why, if these are CG enhanced/augmented bodies, do the Corden and Rebel Wilson cats still have to be overweight?

I sent the trailer to my wife with the subject line "holy shit," but never heard back. So this morning I asked her, hey, did you get a chance to watch that? And she basically said, annoyed, "I get it, you don't like musicals, but some people do." And I was perplexed, because I was not expecting what amounted to a defense of this thing. Turns out she only saw the first 5 seconds alone and thought it was just an ad for the stage version (which, again, she is seeing tonight), and that I was teasing her for liking "Cats." I told her, first of all, people have been making fun of "Cats" for decades, but that is neither here nor there, because this is (no pun intended) a whole different animal. She sat down and watched the whole thing, and her jaw just dropped. "Wait, they're actually cat-sized? This is sooooooo weird."

......"have to be"?

Why wouldn't the Corden/Wilson cats be overweight?

itt: fatcatshaming

I'll tell you who's feeling vindicated right now, the graphic designers for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie

Seriously. But do these cats have human teeth?

It looks like they were fat in the o.g.

So was Rebel Wilson typecast again ... as an overweight CG cat-person?

are you suggesting they should have CGI'd her to be thinner or something?

Looking forward to this movie's wild success so we can at last see the obvious sequel we've been so long denied.

https://v.cdn.vine.co/r/thumbs/9E9520B3421127523132962471936_2.5.1.5085470408581007388.mp4.jpg

xpost No, not at all. Just that Taylor Swift could have just as easily been cast as an overweight cat and Wilson as a skinny cat and it wouldn't have made a difference, because they are not real, anyway.

I just spent 7 minutes pulling up clips from older productions that show both of those characters portrayed as bigger cats before realizing what I was doing and questioning everything about my decision-making process

ha

Taylor Swift shouldn't have been cast as anything because, even though her face does kind of look like a cat's, she can't sing that well

My 15 pound cat Oscar thinks they're all too small.

damn, josh really out here claiming that taylor swift and rebel wilson are 'not real', smdh

the sequel i want to see:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/417775nLOEL._SX271_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Characterwise, there's a lot more typecasting tied to the type of character Wilson's cat is than just body type; it's basically a fussier version of her character in Pitch Perfect

It would not surprise me in the least to learn that Swift and Wilson are both living holograms or something.

They should have CG'd Tupac into this. Maybe they did!

btw who wants to invest in my new musical The Hollow Men

we can combine this with starlight express and thomas the tank engine using my diagram posted above

xpost Only if it's a musical adaptation of the Verhoeven movie, with long scenes of no one on stage. Or, like, a floating pipe.

Taylor Swift shouldn't have been cast as anything because, even though her face does kind of look like a cat's, she can't sing that well

I suspect she will be far from the worst vocal offender in this cast

I'll pay money to see this if when Taylor Swift starts singing it's just loud screeching squawks like my cat

xp: I've heard everybody else except Judi Dench and Idris Elba and... I have doubts (esp given that Dench apparently was in the original cast and had to drop out because of injury???)

Hairballs, iirc.

It will honestly be pretty amusing when someone inevitably overdubs the entire movie with the sound of cats meowing and hissing and growling and caterwauling.

Leaked screen test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCja1WGZx-E

Production images are leaking:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdG2Jk5XUAE6isw.jpg
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3937/15453734999_f039472218_c.jpg
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/077/564/d5b.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7HsAaYbQ7Pw/hqdefault.jpg

https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/2019/01/cat_people_1982.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CT6VpKMpg88/hqdefault.jpg

TS Eliot was just a guy like you or me when he wrote CATS at his local Starbucks. Now he is probably gonna have an Oscar and take a selfie w ELLEN. Never give up on your dreams :-)

— Tavi Gevinson (@tavitulle) July 19, 2019

ts eliot is kind of the only person who deserves this happening tbh

Total Shit Eliot, amirite

turns out the uncanny valley was in the waste land the whole time

OMG I am so gullible, I don't know how it took me so long to realize that this 'trailer' is just the product of someone taking the werecat face from Thriller and deepfaking it onto all the dancing zombies from Thriller. Good one, guys. Good one.

No wonder I was so spooked!

the one nice thing I will say is that visually this looks to be less aggressively horrible in terms of shooting style than Les Miserables was. maybe he should take another stab at that one, except with CGI catsuits

https://imgix.bustle.com/lovelace/uploads/1143/e0c1a760-c164-0133-821d-0ed2e059c4cf.gif?fm=mp4

turns out the uncanny valley was in the waste land the whole time

theory: sonic, lion king and now cats are a coordinated effort by the government to deprogram furries through sheer horror - live action arthur is next pic.twitter.com/7vmxcX4OoS

— Daniel Howell (@danielhowell) July 19, 2019

how is there still cgi this bad in 2019, how

Like think how much cell phones have evolved since they became a thing. Now consider the decades-long evolution of CGI. I think there must've been some inbreeding somewhere in its lineage.

Hey, maybe the FX aren't complete (says every defender of shoddy CG in trailers ever).

Think how good Starship Troopers looks, and that movie is 50 years old.

Saw CATS as a kid. My mother got my playbill autographed and introduced me to one of the main actors. He OD’d on coke a week later and I was like “what’s Coke” and my parents just changed the subject.

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) July 19, 2019

xpost Or think how much worse the Hobbit looks than Lord of the Rings.

there are specific production-related reasons nu-CGI generally looks like shit but I'm sure that's been discussed elsewhere

It's like that thing where the initial practitioners of a technology are highly-skilled technicians but then as the thing becomes more pedestrian you just have a rag-tag group of scruffy misfits piloting the Nostromo from planet to planet.

Maybe one of you can illuminate, but I started to notice a change (and this is not scientific) when CG went from CG objects in real environments to majority CG, characters and. environments both, even if those environments were designed to look real. So every last inch of the screen has been tweaked and art directed and lit and so on in a really deliberate, almost accidentally stylized postcard way, right down to "artificial" elements (like fake lens flare, say), which introduces a different kind of uncanny valley. Everything calls attention it itself, so matter how small or insignificant.

I'm going to skip this and go see The Amazing Alexander. He was much better than CATS.

(Actually this thing is opening opposite Star Wars Episode IX, which either indicates a staggering amount of counterprogramming confidence, or "lol, let's make it up on ancillaries.")

These cat people totally could have fit into Star Wars. Like, a cat planet where the good guys are, like:

Guy one: "Is this ... snow?"
Guy two: (tastes surface covering) "No, man, it's ... cat litter!"

xp to Josh: There was a good youtube that addressed that question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fZGcAmXWyM

With follow-up after input from the CGI community (which I haven't seen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM2s-McYNWM

There is a "canonical" feline species in Star Wars called (:sigh:) Cathars. They have been especially popular in video games.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/the_old_republic_cathar_2-590x334.jpg

I've heard everybody else except Judi Dench and Idris Elba and... I have doubts (esp given that Dench apparently was in the original cast and had to drop out because of injury???

xpost Great videos, thanks!

http://i.imgur.com/5435m4p.jpg

They should adapt this into a feature:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUEQYjYgf4

why does James Corden's character look like The Penguin

I want to file that under "questions that answer themselves" but it doesn't quite work

the only good and correct take:

I broke down the Cats trailer shot-for-shot. Let's dive into the hot takes that matter: who does Tom Hooper ship, reckless speculation on why Victoria is now in every song, and Old Dencheronomy. CATS. This is it.https://t.co/9L87dAC776

— sarah james #1 cats fan account (@cryingbaseball) July 19, 2019

this movie is my Star War

Here's my Cats hot take: they should've done the people dressed as animals thing for the new Lion King and the hyper-realistic animation for the Cats musical

— Sarah (@sarah_jwh) July 19, 2019

Actually all of the bad meme films should just cross over, I joke one year before they announce they will do this

They tried that—it was called the DCEU

I was thinking marvel honestly

The fun thing about our cinematic is that yours was a layup setup with several punchlines

*our cinematic age

if the taylor swift musical cgi cat movie is somehow better reviewed than the beyonce musical cgi cat movie then this will truly be the 10th anniversary of the 2009 VMAs

— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) July 19, 2019

I just don't understand why the cats are not furry? They look like lizards with cat ears and occasionally big sideburns.

Am I the only one when I see this thread title I pretty much always think of Stockard Channing in Six Degrees of Separation?

this is my review of cats pic.twitter.com/88o4dt7b1b

— David Farrier (@davidfarrier) December 19, 2019

SOLD

I always suspect that any movies that get 1 star P Bradshaw maulings must be actually good because he is irredeemably bad.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMGwTgDUcAA_NWv?format=png&name=small

xp Bradshaw wrote his review in verse, which was... not a good idea

omg

really wanna see this even tho the show has like one good song, but it sounds like the tribute that Lloyd Webber - the Coke Years deserves

plus if this does decent business just imagine Starlight Express with a bunch of stars CGI'd into singing trains

Had zero interest in this until all the extreme negative reviews started pouring in

"It's CINEMA"
— Martin Scorsese

incidentally is it just me or is the left-hand margin borked on this thread?

yeah, idris elba's feline area has broken ilx

Has anybody applied a snapchat cat filter to an entire film yet? They should. I'd love to see The Irishman as all cats.

The whole thread has some weird font imposed upon it when viewed in IE.

Lotta reviewers really champing at the bit to use some variant on 'turns out this Cats movie is a real dog!'

If this is truly some kind of eldritch horror orgy film, I'm sure I'll enjoy it

rogue font and borked margin both caused in may 2002 by N. (aka Alba) posting some now-vanished picture related to the history of beercans

I have two words for the people responsible for Cats: go fish.

I couldn't bear to watch another thirty seconds of this grizzly cinematic massacre. No thanks, Cats!

A humpback whale of a bad time. Blow it out your hole, Cats!

I always suspect that any movies that get 1 star P Bradshaw maulings must be actually good because he is irredeemably bad.

This is IMO a pretty good guide in life, but I'm not sure about this one - I've already arranged to go see Star Wars drunk.

By getting drunk?

The whole thread has some weird font imposed upon it when viewed in IE.

did u just admit to using internet explorer in december 2019

Given my workplace's fanaticism for bleeding age tech, I just thank my lucky stars we aren't still using Netscape.

Bleeding edge, bleeding age, it's all the same to me.

i send all my posts via telegram

*adjusts steampunk goggles, dies*

That's also the last line of the Cats screenplay

T.S. Eliot invented steampunk, whoa

what did you think the "s" stood for?

yeah his full name was 'the steampunk eliot' iirc

THERE'S A CRANK TO SHUT THE WINDOW IF YOU SNEEZE

cranks are steampunk, case closed

Q: is Jason Derulo's digitally-erased crank steampunk

here's the cg workstation used for derulorasure, decide 4 yrself

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.U0sp7mh-iSG2PkUteGzHfwHaE8%26pid%3DApi&f=1

xp it'll be addressed in the sequel

cats ii: the dept of crank yankers

One critic described proceedings as permanently on the brink of a sex party. Other reviewers were struck by Cats’ visual and tonal similarity to The Human Centipede, a horror film in which kidnap victims are stitched together mouth to anus.

Cats always feels like it’s two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster.

brb pitching my contrarian revisionist rave to sight and sound

50/50 chance Armond White is months ahead of you

'Cats is a jubilant celebration of the unspoken yet universal human desire to fuck a cat.' - Rex Reed

I've found myself wondering more than a few times since the trailer dropped whether this thing is a stealth recruitment video largely funded by the shadowy furry lobby. Because if so, it's working.

Oh weird, I just reloaded this thread and got the font problem for the first time.

I'm using safari and I see the different font, but it is not a problem, I kind of think this special thread deserves a special font.

this special thread deserves the https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?action=showall&boardid=60&threadid=2955 treatment

lmao at your post bumping that thread ulysses

holy shit, i just lost myself in that thread for ... what day is it?

Great thred

my gf really hates the uppers music as it means she needs to find my phone

Here's the one-two: FT's Nigel Andrews gives a positive review!

https://www.ft.com/content/cd836eb2-2180-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b

...and then IMMEDIATELY RETIRES.

https://www.ft.com/content/d70957b2-20e5-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b

All the best zings:

https://digg.com/2019/bad-reviews-cats-movie

Just had a -great- time reading those zings aloud to my partner - this one made her double over: “an approximation of what would happen if your third eye actually opened and you could suddenly see into the astral plane.”

There is a thin line between idiocy and genius, and Cats pukes a hairball on it and rubs its ass all over it.

A+

Best thread ever

Sounds like Sonic is really gonna have to deliver to top this one (I maintain hope that the 45 seconds of fan-pleasing reworked animation we've seen is all that they'll have the time to handle properly and that the remainder of the overhaul will somehow look even worse than the first trailer).

please don't make me think about sonic topping cats

Too late (barfs, coughs up hairball).

Sonic the Edgehog: Runpleteazer

the animators who worked 70 hour weeks to re-do the entire movie are probably pissed that this thing came out like that, "see, it's fine!!"

Just checked Box Office Mojo to see what kind of business this thing needs to do to break even ($95 million budget!) and only now learned that IMDB has recently destroyed Box Office Mojo. Capital work, fellows.

I'm actually amazed at all the reports of incomplete effects.

it's one of the aspects I'm most looking forward to tbh

2020 needed a showgirls

If I live long enough to see a megabudget Hollywood film released to theaters that features even like a few seconds of an actor jumping around in front of a green screen while wearing a ping pong ball-festooned jumpsuit before the finished effects shot jerkily resumes, I think I could die happily right then and there.

I'll be seeing Jumanji this weekend at my daughter's request. Daughter is into felines, but saw the Cats trailer and was appropriately put-off, thank god. She's still at an age where I want her to enjoy things because they are enjoyable, not because they are total travesties of cinema.

But my wife's mom occasionally recruits me to chaperone a learning-disabled relative to the cinema and that relative is a very big cat person. I'm going to casually introduce the topic while we're over there on Christmas Day and see where it leads. I'm intrigued enough to go see this in the theater if it's on someone else's dime.

showcats otm!

Daughter is into felines, but saw the Cats trailer and was appropriately put-off, thank god.

Similarly, much as I love a good pear, I somehow refrained from eating the half-rotten bosc I once saw bobbing in a public toilet.

What if it was covered in vivid CGI fur?

I'll be seeing Jumanji this weekend at my daughter's request.

as harmless childrens' action-comedies go this was p good btw

first (well, first recent one, i mean) was good

These are surprising takes. I had assumed they were the hottest of trash.

they are no CATS (2019)

i love this movie so much, one day i will actually see it i guess probably

don't get me wrong I would never have watched it if my kid didn't wanna go see it (I mean, it's not Fantastic Mr. Fox) but it's amiable/pleasant and all the body-switching/actors-imitating-other-actors' delivery schtick is relatively charming. It's silly and low-stakes but it's fun. I admit I have a soft spot for Danny DeVito.

xps

Yeah, we saw the 2017 one recently and liked it pretty well as a movie to watch with the kid. And rated PG-13 for dick and boob jokes, which were cringey but also felt kinda refreshing, honestly. Not sure if those are super-common in PG-13s these days, but the last time I saw any were in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 and they just felt forced and lame.

Tracking services are suggesting $175 million to $200 million for Rise of Skywalker (Disney is being even more cautious in predicting $160 million-plus).
...
Reviews are all-out bleak for Cats, from Universal, Working Title and Amblin Entertainment. Its Rotten Tomatoes score was hovering around 17 percent on Thursday evening, a career-worst for Hooper, whose directing credits include the Oscar-winning The King's Speech and Les Miserables.

In a bold move, Cats is the first event pic daring to open against a modern-day Star Wars title.

Tracking figures show the adaptation of the hit Broadway musical debuting to a modest $14 million to $17 million.

Honestly, more than I was expecting.

never underestimate the draw of rubbernecking

a career-worst for Hooper, whose directing credits include the Oscar-winning The King's Speech and Les Miserables

14-17 million opening for CATS in this era of films just backing their way into 35-40 million openings is still p low.

are there any images floating around of the rendering error that supposedly made it into the film?

you just described every frame of the trailer iirc

TS Eliot would have liked Cats (2019 film) says his estate

Eliot himself, she said, would probably have approved. “We know he would have liked the lines because he wrote them. Then, he loved dance … his nickname at Harvard was Elbows Eliot, he loved dance so much. He also used to go to musical theatre all the time with [his wife] Valerie. So I can’t see how he wouldn’t have liked it, with all those things he loved being in one film. I think he would have had a sense of humour about it, he was very open-minded, he liked having his head blown. He was an unusual person and this is such an unusual thing.”

Reihill acknowledged that “there’s always been so much derision about the musical and that’s carried over to the film” and that “seeing Judi Dench’s face covered in fur is going to startle you, of course”.

But she said that Eliot’s widow Valerie “loved the musical and she knew him so well … If you take all those things he loved, they’re all in the film, and I like to imagine him sitting in the cinema with a smile on his face,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/19/ts-eliot-would-not-have-minded-cats-reviews-says-his-estate

I think it's fair to say that anyone who died prior to the advent of shitty CGI and who has subsequently been made aware of the existence of shitty CGI (by like say a psychic medium or the ghost of a latter-day decedent who described in vivid detail that one infamous scene with the Scorpion King) is thankful that they never had to experience shitty CGI with their own living eyes.

Which is to posit that a miraculously-resurrected Eliot who bore witness to this celluloid abortion would likely scoop his eyes out of his skull in a fit of abject horror for what has become of humanity.

We lost our minds when the train cat exploded into dust pic.twitter.com/dsXcvOmhVx

— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) December 20, 2019

genuinely stoked to see this now tbh

I think I'm gonna wait and see how many Razzies it wins. I mean I expect at least two but if it clinches four or more I'm totally there.

if you wait that long it might already have been shamed out of theaters

"He was an unusual person and this is such an unusual thing”

^^^this is also why i will like it and also why you sad normies are missing out iirc

I need to know that it's elicited Lonely Lady levels of excoriation before I plunk down my hard-earned money.

I assume because of the season, I've been seeing a lot of images from the Grinch movie popping up lately. This movie is giving off very similar 'how could anyone involved who wasn't heavily intoxicated for the entire span of its production ever have thought this was anything but an irrefutable denunciation of the human act of creativity' vibes.

if all the dollar/discount theaters in my area hadnt gone out of business this would 100% be a classic postholiday hangover cheapo matinee

I wager that it's best experienced via bootleg download projected from an iPhone onto an alley wall.

Train cat has me puriently wanting a starlight express adaptation with the same direction and cgi tech. What could go wrong.

^^^this is also why i will like it and also why you sad normies are missing out iirc

Prognosticating about which terrible films will actually be fun and palatable despite their terribleness is, at best, an imprecise art.

This film comes 37 years after the stage megahit. Surely a record?

next s&s "greatest films" round-up is in 2022, time to topple vertigo

will zizek have also pencilled it in?

xpost I'm pretty sure the 2015 film was the first adaptation of 1897's stage smash Daddy, Won't You Buy Me a Hoop and Stick? Oh, Say You Will, Daddy Dearest!

i really miss dollar theaters

used to be a dollar place near me that offered "the big deal" a couple days a week - ticket, drink, and popcorn for 4 bucks. the gas to drive there & back was the most expensive part of the evening.

Matinee at my local place is $6 for anything before 6pm, weekends included.

Saw it...

...liked it!

So look basically you have about one, two minutes at the start to get used to what this is out of the gate. My theory is that if you buy that the rest happens — you buy the Lloyd Webber, you buy Holland’s direction, you buy the CGI, or you just don’t. And it was all surprisingly very easy to buy. After that everything just flowed as it should. Trust me I’m surprised too.

great take

have yet to see this because a) I generally can't deal with Cats b) I think I've reached the age where "Memory" starts hitting a little close to home, and I'd rather not confront that just yet

can't be worse than the phantom movie was though

Ben Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.

My son went to see this yesterday for the lulz and he was still a gibbering traumatised mess when I saw him two hours later, apparently at least one small child was taken out crying mid-picture

Still kinda disappointed this isn't Tobe Hooper's Cats

That's what I keep thinking when I see his name too.

can't have been worse...

https://s9.rr.itc.cn/r/wapChange/201611_8_20/a8rq0c2240676214188.jpg

"mmmeeeeeeeeemorieeeeeeeeees...."

Latest Dailies

Fri Dec 20
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker $90,000,000
Jumanji: The Next Level $7,100,000
Frozen II $3,300,000
Cats $2,620,000
Bombshell $1,830,000

I kinda liked it! I’ve never been a musical theater person so I didn’t know the songs or the characters or even what the hell was going on but it was weird and colorful and never boring

the entire legacy of this show in my world is David Letterman's rendition of that song

Meeeeednight
And the kit-ties are sleeeeeping

lmao morbs i hate to tell you this but this is 100% true for me as well

I just think that critics don't 'get' musical theatre. Audience score is 62% at RT which isn't great but isn't terrible.

plenty of ok musical theatre gets ok reviews

this doesn't seem that

audiences don't necessarily get musical theatre either, hence the popularity of the terrible not-really-musical-theatre Greatest Showman

don't get me wrong i still really want to see this car crash but it's not even a great stage show

starlight express is the only good musical

bcz the trains fuck

https://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/DD0woFSXoAAJqhS.jpg

CGI Starlight Express must be built

Was trying to explain to a group of 20-something’s what starlight express was. Didn’t go well

I’d much rather see this than star wars

abuse your ears in your chosen way

FWIW, "Greatest Showman" on Rotten Tomatoes is currently 56% critics, 86% audience. "Cats" (for now) is 19% critics, 62% audience.

Cats has been a punchline in the musical theatre community for decades.

I'm kinda shocked the audience score is that high but I had one group of friends who went purely to gawk at the trainwreck so...maybe that accounts for it?

tag yrself i'm a jellicle critic

It just keeps getting worse for Universal / Amblin / Working Title’s Cats, with business now down to $7.6M in fourth place for the weekend, well below the $15M that tracking was seeing. More injury: CinemaScore audiences pronounced the movie dead with a C+ to go along with its awfully updated PostTrak exits of 2 stars. Word is that there’s advance ticket sales for Christmas Day, but Cats isn’t looking like The Greatest Showman, which despite its slow start of $8.8M over three days and $19M over six days mushroomed to $174.3M stateside off an A CinemaScore.

ppl who show up at Cats are predisposed to like it

:D

This isn’t a joke: CATS was rushed into theaters before being finished so a new version is being sent to theaters with updated effects. How do you know if you have the old version? Look for Judi Dench’s human hand, wedding ring and all. pic.twitter.com/VDUOevePU9

— Jenelle Riley (@jenelleriley) December 22, 2019

More on that: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/universal-notifies-theaters-cats-is-being-updated-improved-visual-effects-1264689

wow, they told Lucas "hold my beer", they did

“Look for judi dench’s human hand” I mean can you say that about star wars, didn’t think so

lol

It is a time of civil war. Look for Judi Dench's human hand.

Jerry Lewis always wore his big diamond ring when he played shlubs, whats the big deal

Because she's supposed to be a cat lady, not a cat lady with human hands.

have you never seen a Vincent Price movie

I swear to god I thought it was Bert Lahr at first glance

omg

We lost our minds when the train cat exploded into dust pic.twitter.com/dsXcvOmhVx

— Kevin T. Porter (@KevinTPorter) December 20, 2019

“Look for judi dench’s human hand” I mean can you say that about star wars, didn’t think so

― Baby yoda laid an egg (wins)

more of a doctor who thing, quite true

My mom and dad both unironically loved this and are bewildered as to its negative reception. I loved it, too, but my brain is broken.

I think this looks hilariously bad but I also doubt it’s any *less* tolerable than a mysteriously critically acclaimed piece of shit like Shrek 2 for example

Potentially better, even

I love that thread with the exploding cat, mostly because the next tweet is about them all dancing and singing along to Magical Mister Mestofoles, and he later clarified that none in the cinema knew the song before, it's just so mindnumpingly repetitive that they knew the words after the first chorus. As someone who has had that jingle-like crap chorus stuck in my head since a friend showed me the show recording in 9th grade, I feel validated.

starlight express is the only good musical

bcz the trains fuck

andrew lloyd webber is our marquis de sade

Hey, maybe the FX aren't complete (says every defender of shoddy CG in trailers ever).

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, July 20, 2019 1:08 AM (five months ago)

love that thanks to Cats (2019) this defense can now be applied to films in current release

the updated version should get up to each repaired shot and then pause with a rotating hourglass icon onscreen so you know the new FX are installing for your enhanced entertainment

first (well, first recent one, i mean) was good

― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Saturday, December 21, 2019 3:26 AM (two days ago)

Twomanji is good and fun, JumanjIII is not written by Chris McKenna and is not good and not very fun

what the hecking shit is the source of that fake Watchmen panel that ppl keep memeing? I never have any idea what point they’re trying to make w/ it

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Friday, July 19, 2019 10:41 AM (five months ago)

did we ever get this sorted btw

Jumanji Next Level may have had it's problems but it was way better than "not good and not very fun". Problems were with like, parts of the script, not chemistry. The main cast all seemed to be having a ball. My 9-year-old was totally stoked. The Rock as Danny Devito and Kevin Hart as Danny Glover (no spoilers as this is in the trailer) were pretty amazing. Liked Awkwafina as well.

the next tweet is about them all dancing and singing along to Magical Mister Mestofoles, and he later clarified that none in the cinema knew the song before, it's just so mindnumpingly repetitive that they knew the words after the first chorus. As someone who has had that jingle-like crap chorus stuck in my head since a friend showed me the show recording in 9th grade, I feel validated.

Same, except since it was performed by kids at an elementary school assembly 30-odd years ago. I'm not sure if I have heard the actual cast recording.

Just love how this is being updated. Will need a blow-by-blow account of its production in the BFI book.

CATS! CATS! CATS!!!

should be seeing this on NYE, if I spot Judi Dench's unfurred hand I may be forced to point and shout "hand!!"

They're replacing the real cats with fake cats

The timing of the FX update is odd to me. OK, movie comes out Friday, people shoo it out of theaters (practically). A few people point out incomplete FX, and the stories come out of work being done on the film right up to the last minute, even right up to the premiere (a week or so ago?); supposedly even erstwhile producer Spielberg didn't get to see it when it was "done." And now the fabled day-one patch is on its way.

So: either they literally needed just a couple of more days to complete the FX, or they knew the FX were incomplete and didn't care/had to live with it, or they knew the FX were incomplete but had fixes ready just in case, or they didn't know the FX were incomplete and hustled after its release for another couple of days to attend the most glaring issues (and perhaps ignoring others?). It seems unusual to me that in a time of massive FX movies this one, "Cats," is the one that ran out of time and was released prematurely ... but still conveniently just days before the FX would have been completed anyway. My guess is that they were in such a rush to finish they didn't even notice people cats amidst the cat people.

Or they know that no amount of effects work will make it watchable but having the update pushed out keeps it in the media and maybe a few more poor saps will go see it just in case

Has Armond White weighed in? Does he think it's genius?

He was kidnapped by being invited to a fake showing, then sealed inside a geodesic dome

Same, except since it was performed by kids at an elementary school assembly 30-odd years ago. I'm not sure if I have heard the actual cast recording.

― Un sang impur (Sund4r), Monday, December 23, 2019 2:26 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I remember it from seeing a TV commercial for either a VHS release or perhaps a tour stop in Baltimore 30 years ago. Haven't listened to it since, but I know the deal.

Jumanji Next Level may have had it's problems but it was way better than "not good and not very fun". Problems were with like, parts of the script, not chemistry.

seems possible that two of the three words immediately before "not good and not very fun" might have some connection to this?

(no spoilers as this is in the trailer)

it's a spoiler if you don't watch trailers, especially in an unrelated thread! (I hadn't looked up the credits either or I would have been braced for some of the weaknesses)

Chemistry is fine when people get to be on camera together. DeVito does wonders in his scenes with others, but he's in maybe ten minutes total. Glover being too old for this shit is fine, but he's in three or four minutes, and largely in single shots. The main cast do have chemistry, especially Black and Gillan, but it looks like the four of them spent maybe a week together in a couple of locations, and there are hardly any scenes of them in the same frame actually displaying that chemistry - even in the group scenes, it's lots of SHOT OF PERSON SAYING LINE and CUT TO PERSON REACTING.

Compounding this feel is the way the action sequences consistently go from Main Cast Interacting to Stuntpeople Hiding Their Faces, Shot Elsewhere By A Completely Separate Unit, and almost entirely animated apart from the stuntfolk. I know some audiences supposedly parse these fine, but my brain glazes over in stuff like this (like: I literally dozed off during the spinning bridges segment and missed Awkwafina's introduction), and it disconnects anyone from the value of the chemistry.

The twist that allows the in-game cast to play different characters is a great gag, exactly the sort of thing that a movie like this should come up with to differentiate itself and advance from its predecessor. And the performances are delightful, as you noted. But there just aren't jokes written in as well, so it's only the premise and the performance carrying those moments: imagine how much gold McKenna would have spun out of those setups.

The change in dynamic for the bookend characters is so flimsily dealt with that it gives the impression that the writers dgaf about them, and just wanted to switch things up for in-game. But without caring about the "real" version of them, it's harder to commit to their situation under the "main" actors.

Also, not enough Rhys Darby.

just saw this. first half was a kind of memorably unique oddity, a plotless succession of character-introduction songs performed by scale-be-damned CGI cat people which in its mix of unfunny jokes and seemingly unintentional sexuality suggested a movie made by aliens processing all recent CGI children's films through Deep Dream. second half settled into something that met the basic definition of a plot, and had a couple of affecting and melodically memorable songs, so even though the introduction songs never stopped, it became much more watchable but much less distinctive. it would have been better to stay in trainwreck mode all the way through but hollywood just won't let us have great cinema these days.

that was re: the film CATS not Jumanji: The Next Level in case there was any confusion

I'm sad this wasn't released in 3D, not only because it would add to the madness, but also because it would presumably have made the rendering errors considerably tougher to fix

Wear your 3D glasses anyway

and also take kratom

Oh my fucking God. Judi? No. OK? No.

I don’t wanna taaaalk about Juuuudi

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMsjRKPUEAEhAKB?format=jpg

is... is that a length of intestine

catsible holocaust

are there spidercats behind her

fuck i should have gone with cannibal holocats smdh

i will probably never watch this but i'm kinda glad it exists

I’m going on in!

I took an, um, well-deserved catnap through a bunch of this but basically agree with Ned’s take.

"Cats: Great If You're Asleep!"

Catnip For Cat Lovers, Cat Nap For Others! Two Stars!

Catsup? More like CatsDOWN!

Cats It Meow, While You Can! Or Cats It Litter, With Brand Mew Effects!

lol, keep them coming

there is no sanity claws in cats, 2019’s biggest hairball

Cats At Bat: A Swing and a Hiss

Cats Will Make You Yarn For Better Strays

Guaranteed a Spot in the Caterwaul of Shame!

Hi

It was alright.

Cheers

Just now, I did check imdb for triv etc.

I did see all the 1 🌟 reviews, I think people were doing a creative writing opportunity.

If you go in expecting a pawsitive experience, you may come out singing a different tuna.

Sexless cats? This movie's got them in spayeds!

Could the Cats movie actually be (whisker it) kinda enjoyable? Some say: meowby!

The only reason I would think of watching this is if it's really as bad as people say, if it's alright I won't bother.

Hollywood hopes Cats finds second life in Europe. Germans, for their part, suggest "nein."

Do cats pee in this movie

Like do we get to see Idris Elva spray someone

xxpost Yeah, why settle for meowdiocrity?

xpost These junkyard cats got no junk.

Lol Idris peeing out of a non-existent penis might get me to see it

Just a cavernous, non-descript ever-expanding cat hole for pee to rain out of, filling the night sky like Singin in the Rain

They can just add the arcs of pee (and penises) with the next fx update.

Audience members can log into apps to vote on cat genitalia shape and size

Like, suck it, Marty, we spent $200 million adding penises to people-cats.

Or Robert DeNiro's face

Ironically, they had to spend millions removing all the penises the FX jokers added to DeNiro's face in "The Irishman.'

Stars human actors with CGI fur, not actual cats with CGI human features
18 of 35 found this interesting | Share this

CATS is kind of remarkable for the moment in that it seems so demented it's impossible to map a political valence onto it

— christmas cheer liz bruenig (@ebruenig) December 27, 2019

bruenig annoys me more than not but if this^^^ observation is correct -- i still haven't seen it -- it makes CATS (2019) good not bad

Cats v Dogs is like the ur schism.

dargis didn't have much trouble
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/movies/cats-review.html

It’s too bad that no one seems to have thought through the semiotics of Victoria’s chalky white cat face, given that Hayward is of mixed race and that the heavy is Idris Elba’s predatory Macavity. Elba seems to be having a fine time, but come on!

damn. what a tragedy for Cats, the movie

Cats on a Plane

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/evan-rachel-wood-cats-review-frozen-2-a9262481.html

“……..#cats is actually worse than I thought it would be, And I already thought it would be horrible. But….I am actually speechless. Why would you change the choreography? I…am SPEECHLESS,” Wood said in a now-deleted tweet.

On Instagram Stories she exclaimed: “I have to have an actual live reaction of this. What the f—, what the f—, what the f—? What? What? What… the f—? What the f—? Oh my god!”

lol, i wonder if that won't inspire more famous people to drop the omerta and dogpile

From the article, it seems that ERW is actually upset because she is a fan of the original stage production of CATS though, which makes her take a little different from most everybody else's.

I wonder if the creators of Cats: The Movie would like to use a time machine to make my former misapprehension about the movie (i.e. that it was an animated endeavor, as it would have been in any sane and unbroken world) a reality.

If it were still the DVD era they would add a few naughty bits and re-release it as "Cats: Unrated In-Heat Cut."

you know in an era where every wide release film winds up getting neutered and focus grouped to death it's kind of a miracle that this exists

neutered, lol

I sense this might have worked with an under $25 M budget. No CGI, more lavish sets/makeup than the stage show, drop in a few stars willing to perform for modest salaries/cuts, then play up the naughty bits and release unrated (even if technically PG), with marketing to theater geek adults. Aim it at the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd, rather than soccer moms.

if you really want to make money explicitly aim it at furries imo

they did! they just overbudgeted.
I do think this becomes the next decade's showgirls and everyone involved gets really tired of having to field "i hate to ask, but i have to ask... Cats... what were you thinking?" questions.

From what I gather (mostly from comments to this review by a open furry), to aim at furries you'd need to go the full "fur suit" approach, with no visible human faces and markedly distorted body forms. It would turn off other audiences, and the # of lapsed theater/dance peeps >> # of furries into cats or Cats the musical.

ah yes, the ol’ ‘i was only RESEARCHING the furry community, yr honour’ defence

My closest graze was wearing bunny ears as a 8-year old at Easter. YMS probably has more subscribers than there are furries in the world.

this did not disappoint. truly deranged and as my viewing partner accurately stated, "relentless"

knew exactly what movie they were in and thus made off with their dignity mostly intact: idris elba, francesca hayward (who deserves a medal for being in so much of this, really), ian mckellen
did their usual shtick and thus made off with their dignity mostly intact: ray winstone, jennifer hudson, taylor swift ("beautiful ghosts" fucking sucks, though)
deserve hazard pay for the nonstop fat jokes and characters mostly defined by their fatness: rebel wilson, james corden
totally miscast and generally just dogshit in both performance and design: judi dench
jason derulo: miiiiiilk!

people who left early were congratulated by other members of the audience on their way out for their sound judgment and wished a happy new year

there was a bit of a mr. mestopheles sing/clapalong

the drunk guy behind us kept pointing at judi dench and saying "she's the worst one!" (accurate)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/31/cats-film-box-office-failure-universal

Seems it's a box-office bomb! Never mind, these big-budget flicks have a long tail.

Xp did you see judi dench’s human hand or no

irl judi dench's hands are no more human than mine tbrr

The bare feet was an odd part

also an odd part: every other part

why does SNA show there's a new post from El Tomboto and then I don't see it here?

Cat got their tongue?

MACAVITY'S NOT THERE

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/63/e1/c5/63e1c5e4835ba62f4e7e6a08ed82e604.gif

are those....cat boobs?

Macavity gets us all in the end.

xpost:

https://media.giphy.com/media/jqrUmLpdklOx4syx9m/giphy.gif

fat fingers on Zing interface caused me to quote-post Matt#2 along with some random shit that was on my clipboard and I was irritated enough by the error to use MOD POWERS

while I'm at it I've fixed the font problem

incontestable proof/of his singular magical powers

https://i.imgur.com/rqD2llf.gif

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENJiX3yXUAALsxr?format=jpg

("beautiful ghosts" fucking sucks, though)

Not as much as every non-Memories song in the rest of the movie, though.

i wanna know what katherine thinks about Cats: The Movie

tbh all the music that wasn't "Memories" or "Mr. Mestopheles" sounded at least semi-improvised to me, not helped by the mushmouthed delivery of the movie stars

I was going to add it was the one song not inspired by TS Eliot, and had lyrics by Richard Stilgoe.

Anyway, it seems both of those are not so.

I do know the song is called "Memory" though.

important literary fact: ts eliot is an anagram of toilets, stilgoe is an anagram of toilegs

Remember what Delmore Schwartz said about Eliot.

I do think this becomes the next decade's showgirls and everyone involved gets really tired of having to field "i hate to ask, but i have to ask... Cats... what were you thinking?" questions.

They share (potential) midnight-movie longevity but just to be clear Showgirls rules and this fuckin sucks real bad and should only be enjoyed ironically

i've admittedly only seen showgirls once about two decades ago but i recall it being horrible

showgirls is at the very least a very well-made film technically, which, i haven't seen cats yet, but i bet i can't make that claim for it

oh yeah no this looks terrible on every level; it's not as frustratingly shot as Les Mis but for example the way the miniaturized ensemble takes up so little space in the frame makes the whole thing look a lot cheaper and shittier than it should. that's before you even get into how misconceived the character designs are

Has Verhoeven ever won an Academy Award? Didn't think so. Case closed, iirc.

(I see now that he was only ever nominated once, in '73. Criminal.)

also it's very clear that Hayward, the other theater ringers and the background players are all fantastic dancers, but since everyone is CGI'd out, it adds a level of distrust to the movement, so you can't even really enjoy *that*

Should have been about people that turn into cats when the moon is full.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/04/the-slog-comes-in-on-little-cat-feet

As the plotless spectacle drags on, disbelief at its oddness gives way to boredom and, at least at the screenings I attended, real-time conversation. In this respect, Cats is fitting for the Internet era as its emptiness accommodates the compulsive need to play with our phones at all times. Boisterous audiences are tweeting, instagramming, and otherwise sharing snippets of the film and, more importantly, the atmosphere of good-humored incredulity. Seen from this remove, certain moments rise to the surface, worthy of excerpting for the Internet... This mode of enjoyment is not quite camp, which typically results from the folly of overreaching, because the ambition of the movie (cats) is actually quite modest. But there is something stunning about the scale of the catastrophe on screen, given the slightness of its source material.

remind me of the recent ilx "why shouldn't i talk to my friends and check my phone during a film?" kerfuffle

definitely a lot of chatting at my screening

I'm glad he mentions the shot involving Hayward's outstretched foot - I almost lost it right there

this film is both perfect for and self-evidently about ilx

If x equals cats.

important literary fact: ts eliot is an anagram of toilets, stilgoe is an anagram of toilegs

Toilegs bad, four legs worse.

oh my strapped boobs and haunches i have seen CATS (2019) now

it was good not bad

i agree with some of simon h’s reading upthread — certainly it was relentless (which is good), and he’s right abt the various performances except for me swap idris a and judi d:

idris phones in cartoon panto villain, maybe pointed there by the song’s music. this was my favourite poem-character in the book as a kid, so i’m perhaps a bit territorial abt its spoliation — but i feel he could easily have taken it somewhere else more suavely slinkily interesting? except cleaerly decided he didn’t want to be remembered for being in the film at all and doesn’t know how to deliver a sly if undemanding bit of business in a show you wish you hadn’t signed up for which nevertheless keeps yr hand in and shows willing and is mildly diverting for you and those watching. unlike canny old thesps dench and mckellen, he’s a diva not a trouper.

JD isn’t miscast IMO — she’s playing what she is, a remarkable beloved ageing west end theatre dame, and at worst she’s fine, with at least one genius cattish move in the nearly-impossible-to-deliver not-very-good closing song, where, as she’s sprechgesanging some line abt food that cats love (grouse and salmon pie or whatever), she just licks her lips in the linebreak, quick-as-a-greedy-flash

(she does flub the reveal on the meaning of the word jellicle by mumbling it, which to be honest is the correct choice given the fuck-awful line)

so anyway, yes, relentless: the film decides its bit and commits to it (also good), CGI musical theatre with a nice simple plot — abandoned ingenue encounters a religious sect, is introduced to them one by one (this takes most of the running time), before solving the yearly issue of their big WICKER MAN-type ceremony, and is therefore accepted into their flock.

it is a very horny sect and this is a VERY horny film — last line notwithstanding the actual meaning of jellicle is full-spectrum polymorphous perverse and literally every character seems to be carnally hungry for every other character in every shot. it’s also all EXTREMELY sinister (courtesy the religion) the entire time and also anxious (probably courtesy the sex), and surprisingly squalid (courtesy this being west-end stage-world and the soho of 40-80 odd years ago). there’s MUCH more snot in close-up than i was expecting and i was startled — given that i vaguely remember what it is from school science lessons — when the Heaviside Layer was mentioned even once (it’s not in the book), let alone that it becomes a central plot point lol

the two commodities sponsoring this film are grouse and snot

wait i just remembered i need to "map a political valence" on it to prove liz breunig wrong

tho per me that wd make it bad not good

i went to see cats twice so i could check out what changes they'd made to the updated version and the amount of snot in version two is massively dialled down. the other big change is that the cockroaches lose their weird cardboard cut-out faces for more normal looking showgirl faces (normal being a relative term)

second time through i tried to count the number of times jellicle is said or sung. i got 138 times

https://electricliterature.com/this-is-the-backstory-you-need-to-understand-cats-2019/

otm

seconded

In the cradle

If civilization survives, I imagine this film will be "reappraised" in 15 years

rooting for apocalypse

Criterion Collection: Cats

Featuring 17 different cuts made over 15 years using improved CGI.

Featuring 65 page book by Ben Lyons, which are just crayon drawings of cats.

Featuring a foreword by Judi Dench titled "Why I Did Cats"

Also featuring 2 hour video showing Idris Elba getting into character on-set

if criterion hire me to write the reassessment essay this entire package will be worthwhile and everyone will learn something

I know that I will, for one, assuming I read it.

Saw this over the weekend. It's like the feeling you get from these two classic horror snippits drawn out for a whole movie:
https://nofilmschool.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_wide/public/shining-freaks.png

https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kw71uxPcVH1qa3nkyo1_500.jpg

these snippets are (a) the best bits in the respective films as all kno and (b) only snippets when they shd be full-length movies themselves

this is why CATS (2019) will be reassessed favourably as we all come to know our own deep desires better

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMsjRKPUEAEhAKB?format=jpg

me preaching this self-evident truth as ilx creeps down at to shut me up

I can't wait for the "Babe 2" styled insane sequel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaWtWAvUb-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAd0QlUaIBY

That son of sam video is one of the most purely awful bits of cinema I've seen in quite a while

I dunno, I'm a fan of the lab's confused wagging

Holy shit that's actually from the Spike Lee movie and not a The Room-style direct to video competitor?!

I’m watching this with my daughters and I can feel my grip on reality failing. Also if another human utters the word “jellicle” near me the retribution will be swift and violent.

tfw you realise this film's aesthetic is van meegeren's late vermeers (= scary AND taking the piss):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Smiling_girl_%28Fake_Vermeer%29.jpg/800px-Smiling_girl_%28Fake_Vermeer%29.jpg

good catch!

https://electricliterature.com/this-is-the-backstory-you-need-to-understand-cats-2019/

― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, January 18, 2020 11:31 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hmm I tweeted something verrrrry similar (down to the wording about the JLCL virus) not long after I saw the movie.

Weird coincidence. I’ll be charitable and assume the writer just has a similarly sc-fi poisoned brain

Tweet’s since deleted anyway :-/

🎵Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again🎵

forever reading this thread title to the melody of xtc’s ‘books are burning’

more films CATS (2019) resembles but is better than:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPvNYLsX0AAWZL8?format=png

Inevitable:

I’m pretty stoned and watching Cats. I’ve never seen the broadway show. It is truly trippy. Am I supposed to know what a Jellicle is? They’ve said it 200,000 times but I don’t know what’s happening haha.

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) March 18, 2020

Genuinely thought the revive would be about this:

A VFX producer friend of a friend was hired in November to finish some of the 400 effects shots in @catsmovie. His entire job was to remove CGI buttholes that had been inserted a few months before. Which means that, somewhere out there, there exists a butthole cut of Cats

— Jack Waz (@jackwaz) March 18, 2020

hashtag #ReleaseTheButtholeCut

Ever since CATS come out things have been way off

— Sam Sparro (@samsparro) March 13, 2020

*

valuable new poster

Four paws up, way up.

I need an HBS case study on this movie

good morning to DJP only :)

URGENT #ReleaseTheButtholeCut update/clarification, emailed to me by a CATS VFX crewmember who has asked to remain anonymous pic.twitter.com/nmta9CG08E

— ben mekler (@benmekler) March 18, 2020

good morning to DJP only :)

URGENT #ReleaseTheButtholeCut update/clarification, emailed to me by a CATS VFX crewmember who has asked to remain anonymous pic.twitter.com/nmta9CG08E

— ben mekler (@benmekler) March 18, 2020

#ButtholeGate

"Does this look like a fanny to you?"
"Well, it is James Corden."

a half dozen of us "celebrated" the beginning of covid lockdown by watching this movie together the night before last in a video chatroom

which version

had korean subtitles idk

I honestly don't know who James Corden is, so I kept thinking people in chat were saying "James Gordon" like the cop in Gotham/Batman and I was very confused, because it was CATS! not BATS!

i got to the point where Jason Derulo showed up and my partner said NOPE and walked out so that's as far as we got
the jenny anydots sequence is one of the most batshit things i've ever seen on film, reminded me of Miike!

My wife started this last night and made it ... not far before turning it off and saying it was even worse than she expected. I asked her what she expected, and she said, I dunno, but I didn't expect it to be *that* bad. And I asked, what, the literally universal derision and it bombing hard with a vengeance wasn't hint enough?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-edited-the-buttholes-out-of-cats-it-was-a-total-nightmare

That article needs more buttholes.

tom hooper seems like a real butthole

yet unremoved 🧐

a half dozen of us "celebrated" the beginning of covid lockdown by watching this movie together the night before last in a video chatroom

― sarahell, Wednesday, March 18, 2020 11:49 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I did this roughly at the same time but most of the people left way before the film finished.

just a ghastly looking thing. absolutely awful. I don't know the musical but the musical is definitely part of the problem here, there's not many tunes (I can really only remember the refrain from the magical mr mistoffelees song and the chorus of memory) and the story and book is just sort of bizarre. Jason de rulo is fine but the most of the cast is awful special mentions to rebel Wilson, James Corden, Idris, and Taylor Swift doing "sexy"

this film is both perfect for and self-evidently about ilx

― mark s, Sunday, 5 January 2020 18:14 (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

still true (the last movie i saw in a cinema before lockdown)

“I respect Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work so much,” he said, “that someday I’d like to set it to music.”

lol

(unfair tho, he has written a handful of good songs)

hopefully this will destroy tom hooper's career.

i don't know how a director can fuck up framing in multiple movies.

still true (the last movie i saw in a cinema before lockdown)

― mark s, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 4:36 PM (two hours ago)

haha me too

sometimes late at night i am haunted by the thought that this will end up being the last movie i ever see in a movie theater

we went out on a high is how i break it down to some extent

I went to an Alamo rowdy screening which was mostly a fun crowd with one or two people who thought they were Tom Servo. Movie is fully insane nonsense and still like 30 minutes too long.

I had little to no knowledge of the source material, but like 80% of the film is like "Let's introduce a cat so we have an excuse to sing a song about that particular cat.

That may be what the play is about too, I don't know for sure!

“We paused it,” the source said. “We went to call our supervisor, and we’re like, ‘There’s a fucking asshole in there! There’s buttholes!’

"Butthole emails ..."

it does feel like most of the movie is made up of songs that introduce a new cat.

this is also the stageplay

it's abt a sect (an extremely hrony) with an admin problem regarding its central ritual, they have to interview a consultant to solve the problem but it's ok bcz she does

the interview structure is arduous

an extremely hrony = an extremely horny sect, sorry i'm watching ponyo as i type

the lindsay ellis video on cats is worth watching

an extremely hrony = an extremely horny sect, sorry i'm watching ponyo as i type

watching hrony pr0nyo

:o

I also misread "porno" in that post

watching this was torture and I would like to do it again with a full house someday

how much hornier is starlight express than CATS (2019)? readers i revisited starlight express and the answer will distress you

plz tell me that is a bad joke about train horns and not about the sexual rambunctiousness of said trains.

only the finest peer-reviewed anthropology, i never joke

Surprised nobody posted this yet (amazing from Ellis as ever)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iqAip-ZNo

Someone just above noted it. Honestly, I totally forgot she existed, so appreciated the reminder! But yeah, it's great.

I just watched the movie last night and my overall opinion is WAHT

Same reaction I just had reading that you watched the movie!

ChatGPT helpded me
"A longing rises, odd but true,
For realism in a feline view.
Anuses absent, a quirky debate,
In the Cats film, a peculiar fate."

My only contribution to any Cats discussion:

https://t.co/mnR69btjEJ pic.twitter.com/vtBlnSxCUH

— Adam Sass 🌹🍇 (@TheAdamSass) December 30, 2023