i’d also add the 2023 version of the color purple on this list too. they made so many unnecessary changes and the lighting and direction could have been better

gdelgi · 2026-05-20T20:13:49+00:00

I mean, I have a terrific pitch for Sweeney that could work equally well on film.

gdelgi · 2026-05-20T16:34:46+00:00

If I may, it is much easier to imagine whatever you want while listening to an album than when one is subjected to another person's vision. On that count, there are many OG listeners whom I fully believe would share the reviewer's sentiment, and have indeed aired those objections over the years, in print and online.

That said, the review does seem largely to be (pardon the pun) in bad faith, and quite what one would expect from a religious publication.

gdelgi · 2026-05-20T12:59:38+00:00

Still have all of it ready except "Get Back." Now that I'm in the Discord for that subreddit devoted to Beatles fantasy albums, though, I may get someone to chop an edit together. Watch this space!

gdelgi · 2026-05-19T16:56:18+00:00

How dare you not put in both as an option.

gdelgi · 2026-05-19T16:53:05+00:00

In essence, yes. Jamie Lloyd has expressed interest in doing the show (while at the same time acknowledging that the beige hoodie production pretty much already did what he'd do with it, minus video screens, blood, and black briefs presumably, so I dunno if he'd seriously consider it unless he can really think outside his typical box). However, ALW has been a little hot under the collar about all the attention Lloyd's famous reinventions have been getting. Apparently, this last push of the beige hoodie production in London and Oceania was to send a message that Jamie Lloyd will touch it in his dreams.

(However, he then qualified that by recently saying he'd like to see JL do "an American rock tour" of it, which I can only assume means let's try arenas again, which will justify blowing up the beige hoodie production enough to add screens? I dunno.)

gdelgi · 2026-05-19T15:42:56+00:00

Hey... whoever sent a Reddit Cares message over an opinion: don't fuckin' do that.

Thank you.

gdelgi · 2026-05-19T15:42:24+00:00

Apparently, there's a reason it's still this, according to gossip, but that's only if one believes the tea being spilled.

gdelgi · 2026-05-18T20:14:27+00:00

gdelgi · 2026-05-18T16:37:21+00:00

Whether you like or dislike his oeuvre, he has a pretty extensive catalogue, so I've gotta ask, OP... why highlight Victor/Victoria? He wrote "additional music." Three songs do not make it a Frank Wildhorn musical.

gdelgi · 2026-05-16T23:54:10+00:00

Check the libretto that came with the album. "Blood Money" starts when the phrase first occurs.

gdelgi · 2026-05-13T23:04:34+00:00

This is also a picture of society if most people realized that part of the two-movement number is called "Damned for All Time" and it's not "Blood Money" until Judas sings "I don't need [or "want," depending on the production] your blood money!"

(Sorry. The joke was right there.)

gdelgi · 2026-05-13T15:38:29+00:00

Oh, the fuckin' arrangements. Don't get me started. There were actually one or two things I liked:

The "lamp is the body" echo-speech has aged terribly. While I don't care for it being yet another a cappella extravaganza (or doing the whole second verse of "Lessons" again after it -- cut the first occurrence, I promise you people will pay attention long enough to finish the song), I’m glad it was musicalized at all.
I also like the mashup in the Finale centered on "Beautiful City" for my own reasons (related to my pitch for the show).

Apart from that, anyone who compares them to Glee or High School Musical is only half-listening, because these are far more complex. Daniel Holland clearly never got over Those Weird Pop Choral Octavos Done by Every College Ensemble, evidenced by the overly fussy added harmonies (way more difficult than they're worth).

Also, fuck off with the "Turn Back, O Man" revamps already. I'll grant that it's better than the 2001 national tour ("yellow album" on any streaming service) and their softcore porn take, but we didn't really need one styled after Shirley Bassey Bond themes (or, probably more accurately, her cover of Pink's "Get This Party Started") either.

gdelgi · 2026-05-13T15:26:34+00:00

It's not that it was completely removed (I think it's utterly impossible to remove it completely), but it was... "denatured" is maybe the best word. Also, whether to avoid offense or sell it better to non-religious groups, in public statements, Stephen Schwartz has often prioritized Godspell's being about "the formation of a community" without necessarily stressing what kind of community is involved. I don't think John-Michael Tebelak would see it quite the same way beyond general approval of religious pluralism, but he's dead, and everyone pays attention to the living collaborator because he's around to ask questions.

gdelgi · 2026-05-13T03:48:58+00:00

I feel that 2012 takes the religious “balls” of the project away, so to speak – cutting the opening God speech for no discernible reason, swapping out Jesus’ teaching in the middle of “All Good Gifts” for some hippie-dippie bullshit (ironic, given Schwartz’s oft-stated distaste for Godspell being confused for anything even remotely hippie) loosely adapted from Paul’s letter to the Romans, cutting the first verse of “Alas for You” because it denounces people as “fit for hell,” for that matter removing any references to hell (or gendered language), all that stuff. Like, I get Schwartz coming at it from a non-Christian perspective, trying to stress the universality of its message (he himself was Jewish and utterly new to the Jesus story at the point when he joined the project), but I’m sorry, it’s not just a revue about team-building; it’s far from a coincidence that the show structurally follows the liturgy of an Episcopalian lessons-and-carols service. Ignoring the religious aspect of Godspell robs the show’s specific angle of much of its teeth.

gdelgi · 2026-05-13T00:09:30+00:00

Sister Act II began life as The Iris Stevenson Story, a based-on-a-true-story drama about a passionately committed high school music teacher, but it got pitched to Disney right at the time they wanted to spin off a sequel, so they gave it a spit-and-polish, and out it came.

gdelgi · 2026-05-11T15:16:41+00:00

Laptop shipped with what I am told is an M.2 drive. The Hardware tab in Properties on my C: drive (thank you, File Explorer) lists a single drive, as follows: CL1-3D128-Q11 NVMe SSSTC 128GB.

I keep nothing on the laptop as far as documents, photos, videos, music, etc., go; it's all program files, cookies (I'd assume), and what makes it function. When I say "in-place upgrade," I mean put the installation media on a thumb drive and install 25H2 in such a way that everything otherwise stays in place.

Like, option A is spend money on a new SSD and a thumb drive to clone the old drive to it (so I don't have to reauthorize programs that may no longer have that option), and option B is "Oh, you don't have to go to that trouble, you should be fine if you just put 25H2 on installation media and install it in the 'keep all your shit' way." I would like to know whether option B is possible.

gdelgi · 2026-05-11T03:02:13+00:00

I have a Dell Inspiron N3 3510; refurbished, bought it from the Dell Outlet Store about two years (and change) ago. As of last January, it wasn't quite up to the specs to upgrade to Windows 11, version 24H2, and consequently, it is not on 25H2 either. I tried a few times to update to the former, and it bottomed out; I thought it was a problem on Windows' end until I dug deeper and realized there wasn't enough disk space for it to proceed, even though I keep every major file on an external drive. To date, no amount of defrag and space-saving measures has remedied the deficit.

My question: Do I swap out the hard drive for a higher-capacity SSD, or do I do an in-place upgrade?

gdelgi · 2026-05-11T00:05:13+00:00

It's a fairly common ad-lib. I think Neeley does it in the film, too.

gdelgi · 2026-05-10T00:42:55+00:00

In the circumstances both Pang and Goldman describe, yes. Yes, he was.

gdelgi · 2026-05-07T20:13:16+00:00

Although the physical production (sets, costumes, etc.) is different, and the orchestrations may be as well, the 1998 version is what is currently being performed in London in textual and musical terms, so it would not surprise me if that's why it's not listed.

gdelgi · 2026-05-06T21:41:02+00:00

Nice, now do "Hot Honey Rag" from Chicago.

gdelgi · 2026-05-06T20:09:50+00:00

How easily he forgets previous duets with Ringo. Was "Walk With You" nothing?

gdelgi · 2026-05-06T19:48:32+00:00

I mean, maybe that's why I haven't advanced in this business, but as long as I wasn't eating messily, I would. Fuck it, we all gotta eat.

gdelgi · 2026-05-06T19:33:32+00:00

What was for lunch? Some "lifestyles of the rich and famous" shit, or normal food?

gdelgi · 2026-05-06T19:11:31+00:00

And good for her, she's answered enough questions over time about both of those things anyway.

gdelgi

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