Quote:
Originally posted by Gattigap
The great thing about overly-hyped play productions-cum-movies is that everyone involved gets inspired, including movie critics. The LA Times' Carina Chocano (reg. requ'd) tells us to run for the exits.
- How to put this. "Rent" is a Chris Columbus adaptation of a smash-hit Broadway musical about artistic integrity, counterculture, political activism and squatters' rights that may have been the most successful moneymaking venture ever staked on selling the idea that "selling out" is bad.
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It's hard to put the experience of watching "Rent" into words, especially after "Team America: World Police" said everything there was to say about the play with puppets, and so succinctly. ("Everyone has AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS! Everyone has AIDS!")
But I'll try.
"Rent" is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads. It's about art, activism and counterculture in the same way that a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree branch ("Hang in There!") is about commitment and heroic perseverance. It represents everything the people it pretends to stand for hate. And it doesn't even know it. Watching it feels sort of like watching "Touched by an Angel" with your grandmother and realizing that although you're clearly looking at the same thing, you're seeing something entirely different. It's awkward to behold.
Snarky movie reviews are, IMHO, the best way to start the week. You're instantly fueled with the schadenfreude that makes getting through the upcoming days of incessant nattering of clients and the soul-crushing mandatory sexual harrassment seminars with Flinty possible.
You're welcome.
Gattigap
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Jonathan Larson is a rock and roll musical poet, and if you (and the LA Times) fail to recognize, well then you're just a ninny-pants. And I'm not just saying this because whenever I hear "Rent," it takes me back to my summers (which in high school meant volunteering at hospices in the lower east village, and in college meant doing the same in the Castro). No, it's much much more than that. "Rent" is the soundtrack for my entire fucking life. When I hear "No Day But Today" it takes me back to my Bar Mitzvah. When I hear "Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand," it's working on the final issue of "Rumpus" senior year. Or "Tango Maureen" -- taking dance lessons to prepare for my wedding. "Rent" inspires me, as it has countless others, and you and Carina Chocano can just go pound sand.
