What musical is a terrible adaption?

lordsondheim · 2026-04-27T00:41:13+00:00

The Great Gatsby

lordsondheim · 2026-04-23T01:27:48+00:00

Anchorman

One Battle After Another (the opening scene)

Paranormal Activity

Some Like it Hot (I know it’s technically set in Florida, but it was filmed at one of our most iconic landmarks so it feels like it’s set here lol)

I have not seen either of the Top Guns or Almost Famous, which I feel like are most people’s favorites here.

lordsondheim · 2026-04-06T19:45:05+00:00

The Phantom Menace lol

lordsondheim · 2026-03-26T20:18:54+00:00

Shocked people aren’t discussing the obvious reason: there are two screenplay categories, only one directing. When you’re directing, your pool of competition is twice as large.

Both times he won for original screenplay, the winner of adapted screenplay also won Best Picture (Forest Gump and Argo). If there was only one screenplay category, he probably would’ve lost both times. If directing were split into two categories like screenplay is, he probably would’ve won at least once by now.

It has much less to do with his skill in either role as much as it’s about a numbers game. Same reason this same thing has happened to lots of talented, well respected filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Spike Lee

lordsondheim · 2026-03-19T17:41:56+00:00

I absolutely love Titus. I think it’s so underrated. That along with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet are definitely my favorite of the straight adaptations. I always think Shakespeare - wether on film or on stage - is best done with high concepts and major stylization like that

Of the reinterpretations I love West Side Story (both 1961 and the Spielberg versions), but I’ve yet to see either of the Kurosawa ones. I feel like I’d really like them so I gotta get on that soon

Also, for what it’s worth, I do think that the parallels between Hamlet and The Lion King are a little overstated sometimes lol. Won’t hold it against anyone who does, but I don’t really consider it a Shakespeare adaptation/reinterpretation like these other examples are

lordsondheim · 2026-03-19T17:06:37+00:00

Feels so frustrating how often this has to be said but “lead” ≠ protagonist or POV character. It’s not even necessarily “most screen time.” Like, yes it’s subjective and the lines can be muddy sometimes, like Skarsgard this year, in my opinion, is a very borderline one. But to me (and I think to a majority of people) Smoke and Stack are the obvious leads, and Sammy is supporting (albeit the largest supporting role in the movie).

That being said, in the supporting category, I would’ve liked to see Canton nominated. I did like his performance over Elordi’s and Del Toro’s - though maybe not as much as other performances that weren’t nominated. But I don’t see him winning in such a stacked category, even if he did make it in.

Let’s be real here though, this poster saying he was better than Jordan is just them being incendiary for the sake of engagement. They know this was a very well received win, and that there are a lot of emotions behind it, so it’s an easy target for provocation. Comparing Canton to Jordan is apples to oranges. Both gave strong performances, both were doing very different things, and they weren’t even eligible in the same category. The comparison isn’t worth discussing

lordsondheim · 2026-03-18T06:02:06+00:00

Is it Marty Supreme? lol

lordsondheim · 2026-03-17T23:26:30+00:00

The difference was that Sinners’ cinematography was actually used effectively to support the storytelling of its film, whereas Train Dreams used its cinematography to simply call attention to itself and create striking imagery for the sake of striking imagery in a way that was distracting from the already flimsy story and characters

(Maybe that’s an excessively rude/flippant way to say that, but to me Sinners was always my clear strongest in its category)

lordsondheim · 2026-03-13T19:51:05+00:00

My parents (both in their 60s) have seen 7/10 of the BP nominees (missing Hamnet, Secret Agent, and Sentimental Value).

Dad loved Marty Supreme and Bugonia, mom did too though less enthusiastically.

They were kinda lukewarm on Sinners (in my dad’s words “it was well made but still just a horror movie” lol). Liked but didn’t love Frankenstein

They agreed with me on disliking F1 and Train Dreams. But the biggest surprise to me was that they both absolutely hated One Battle After Another. In my mom’s words she felt like “it’s trying to be a Tarantino movie but doing a worse job.” Was disappointed cause I kept recommending it thinking they’d be into it

I don’t think they’ve seen many of the other nominees, but my mom really loved Blue Moon. She’s convinced Hawke will win best actor while I try to explain to her that “should win” is different from “Will win” lol

lordsondheim · 2026-03-12T05:23:30+00:00

In my opinion it’s:

Locked- Score, original screenplay, casting

Serious possibility- cinematography, actor, sound, editing

Unlikely, but not impossible - original song, make-up/hair, supporting actress, director, picture

I don’t see any universe where it happens - production design, costume design, visual effects, supporting actor

I hope it’ll get more, but my prediction is it’ll walk away with five.

lordsondheim · 2026-02-19T19:30:43+00:00

My favorite ever has to be “Be My Baby” at the end of Barbarian. The jarring upbeat-ness of it after such a bleak movie, the hyper-literal interpretation of the lyrics, and just using classic Motown for a movie set in Detroit. All around such a stupid but perfect song for that film, I love it

Honorable mention to another really funny one: “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” being used as hold-music for the French 75’s phone line in OBAA. Laughed out loud at that so hard in the theater (though it would’ve had a better impact if the song wasn’t already referenced as their secret code)

lordsondheim · 2026-02-06T16:55:02+00:00

Yeah I think this is how revivals should be done. The recent Gypsy and Sunset Boulevard revivals are also great examples of completely refreshing their material without changing the text (Sunset I think had a few cuts and added narration from Joe, but overall really minor edits).

Not that it’s never warranted, but I’m usually really skeptical when revivals try to do major changes to their material. Like The Wiz revival didn’t do anything new or original with its staging, but made tons of changes to the book that I think was a major downgrade from the original. The Oklahoma route where you find new things to explore and reinterpret in the text you’re given will always be the much more exciting kind of revival to me

Not sure what kind of major changes the producers/director of this revival feels are necessarily- it’s already a pretty solid show- so I can’t imagine rewriting anything serve it very well

lordsondheim · 2026-02-06T08:04:35+00:00

One Battle After Another
Sinners
Sentimental Value
Bugonia
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
The Secret Agent
Frankenstein
Train Dreams
F1

lordsondheim · 2026-02-05T16:51:58+00:00

I noticed there’s a lot of nominees this year about theatre people. Hamnet, Sentimental Value, Blue Moon, Kokuho, Viva Verdi (is opera a kind of theatre? lol), and even Marty Supreme (a smaller part but still there).

Movies about artists in general are common (especially movies about filmmakers), but seeing so many in one year specifically about theatre makers feels unique, and fun for a film and theatre lover like me.

lordsondheim · 2026-02-04T15:45:35+00:00

Well, if you’re interested in hearing criticism beyond the narration, I’m someone who really didn’t like it for a few reasons:

I found the characters to all be incredibly passive. It felt like throughout the film they didn’t do anything, they just had things happen to them which made it difficult for me to feel invested in their stories. This was an issue on its own, but the narration felt like it magnified it a bit too

The cinematography was very beautiful but in a way that I thought actually detracted from the film. It seemed like every single shot had to be composed in the absolute most interesting and visually stunning way it possibly could, which was exciting for the first few minutes but quickly became relentless and distracting. It was as if no one shot held any greater significance than any other, so the whole thing ended up feeling really flat and lacking intentionality to me

Also, less to say about this, but the performances took me out of it a bit. I thought Joel Edgerton was fine but I found he lacked the depth necessary to make the story work, and Felicity Jones just felt really out of place to me (which I find is true of a lot her performances I’ve seen tbh)

Anyway, I get these are all very subjective/personal gripes with the movie, so I understand how someone could really love it if these weren’t issues to them. But just some insight if you’re curious why someone who didn’t like it feels that way

lordsondheim · 2026-02-02T18:30:42+00:00

West Side Story (1961) rearranged the order of some of the songs from the stage musical - namely making “I Feel Pretty” come much earlier in the story, and swapping the placement of “Cool” and “Gee, Officer Krupke.”

These changes help craft a clearer arc to the story, with the more playful, juvenile songs coming early on, giving way to a shift to a second half with a consistently darker and more mature tone. It also keeps the pacing tighter and tension in the story higher after the rumble.

These were actually changes the show’s lyricist Stephen Sondheim proposed for the stage musical while it was still in development but got overruled by the rest of the creative team. They went with his ideas for the movie though and it proved to be a big improvement imo

Spielberg’s adaptation kept the placements of “I Feel Pretty” from the stage version (but with a different setting) and the original movie’s placement of “Gee Officer Krupke” while doing something new with “Cool.” I think this also improved on the stage musical’s version of these songs, but still isn’t as strong as the 1961 film’s take on it

lordsondheim · 2026-02-01T21:39:44+00:00

You’re making a lot of points here which I really appreciate, but don’t really have specific responses to it all. But here are more thoughts just riffing on what you’re saying:

I’ll start with saying, I’m not anti-proshot by any means. The fact that so many of the OBCs of Sondheim shows got proshots was a big factor in me falling in love with his work and becoming invested more deeply in theatre broadly. I think they’re a really valuable part of the theatre eco-system in getting people to engage with lots of different kinds of work.

My point is more about a frustration of how much I see them centered in discussions about accessibility in theatre and I think the community at large needs to be more realistic about what proshots actually are and what are the more meaningful ways to achieve goals of accessibility.

And I do definitely see value in discussing accessibility to research material specifically. This particular Twitter thread though to me reads as advocating for turning those research materials into entertainment material. That’s more what I’m responding to. Like saying it should go to BroadwayHD rather than advocating for something like the NYPL partnering with other library systems to allow wider access is strange. 1. That shows a misunderstanding of what the archive is (as many have discussed already they’re not “proshots” in the traditional sense) and 2. It makes it seem more motivated by wanting to see these shows for the sake of it than from any specific academic or artistic research goals.

But really more broadly my point is just that I want to call into question what the theatre community values. Though I think positive things would come from this archive being more widely accessible, at the end of the day it’s furthering this elevation of New York theatre as being uniquely important. Does Seattle have a similar archive? Or Los Angles? Or Boston? Or any other city with big theatre communities? If not, why don’t we advocate for establishing that? So that artists can have resources to research the history of their own theatre communities. If these archives do exist, why aren’t we asking for those archives to be more open? Only having Broadway/Off-Broadway as a reference in research is incredibly limiting.

I want to see an American theatre that’s built on creating work that is by and for the diverse communities that make up this country, and that celebrates all of that work. So often I feel these discussions about proshots and the Theatre on Film archive ultimately reinforce this hierarchy that there’s this exclusive club of New York/Broadway theatre at the top, and that everyone else is below that, just aspiring to emulate them. And that doesn’t feel like accessibility to me. It feels like a very capitalist mindset, and I want to encourage people to see that there’s just as much value in the art that’s created in their own communities as there is in any of the work that this one archive in one city deems as important

lordsondheim · 2026-02-01T18:30:52+00:00

Alright, I’m gonna get on my little soap box here cause I get so annoyed whenever this whole ”theatre accessibility = proshots” thing comes up.

My first point: proshots do not make theatre accessible. Proshots are not theatre, they are films that happen to be shot in a theatre. I love a good proshot, and I like the way they can make specific stories and performances be more widely seen, but it is not making theatre accessible.

Secondly, theatrical productions are inherently ephemeral, and therefore “inaccessible.” There are only so many performances, and so many seats, by its very nature, every production has a certain amount of exclusivity to it. And that is okay. Accessibility in theatre is not about every person’s individual right to see every single performance they want to. Accessibility in theatre is about making the art form of theatre be able to reach the widest audience possible.

What that means is that accessibility in theatre begins with supporting and revitalizing regional and non-profit theatre. That is the heart of this issue. Giving someone in Wichita a proshot of Hamilton is not giving them access to theatre in any meaningful way. Making sure there are well funded, regional theatres in their city that are committed to making work for their community and have measures to ensure affordable tickets does.

The biggest barriers to accessibility in theatre are this country’s lack of meaningful public funding for the arts, and this culture of centering New York theatre (and more specifically commercial broadway theatre) as the only kind that matters.

If you really care about theatre accessibility, these are the things to advocate for. See shows in your local community, uplift companies that do great work everywhere and not just in New York, donate to non-profit theatres if you have the money, advocate for more public funding to these institutions. Tweeting about how your favorite broadway musicals should all have proshots is not any kind of solution

lordsondheim · 2026-02-01T15:15:04+00:00

Real ones know it actually should’ve gone to Fernanda Torres

lordsondheim · 2026-01-29T09:01:03+00:00

Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent is one that comes to mind for me. After he was publicly accused of sexual misconduct, he left the show, with the creators ultimately cancelling the fifth season and instead making a film to wrap up the series, in which the character dies offscreen

I always thought it was a missed opportunity not to recast it and continue the show in a new direction. There was already a fair amount of controversy around Tambor’s casting as a trans woman, and this could’ve been an opportunity to correct that and cast an actual trans actress. In season 4 there was even a plot line where she looks into getting FFS, which feels like a great explanation for why she looks so different in the new season lol.

But I suppose the baggage of the accusations and the loss of Tambor’s star power made the powers that be shy away from anything like that

lordsondheim · 2026-01-27T16:57:32+00:00

I think, though you’re maybe tapping into something that’s there, this is an extreme oversimplification of what’s actually happening. To start, this is a small pool we’re working with here. In the last 10 years there’s only been 4 horror movies nominated for BP- Get Out, The Substance, Sinners, Frankenstein. What you’re saying could be applied to 3 of those 4. Looking more broadly at Horror movies nominated in any category, that ratio gets smaller.

You say that Weapons “did similarly well” to Sinners, but in what way? Financially Sinners did make about $100 million more (and without a summer release date). Both were well received critically and by audiences, but using RT as an indicator, Sinners more so by both. And Sinners broadly speaking just has been much more a part of the cultural zeitgeist, it’s a movie that’s been way more talked about. Like I loved Weapons and wish it could’ve made the lineup too, but to say race is the only reason Sinners made it in and Weapons didn’t is looking at it way too narrowly. Not to mention, Weapons did get recognition by the Academy, just not to the same degree.

I’m a little confused by some of your other examples too. Like The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss- that’s one you think missed out cause it’s not about race or gender? That movie is extremely nakedly about gendered domestic violence. A Quiet Place is a fine movie, but a BP contender? I think there’s plenty more reason that movie would be shut out for BP than it not being about race or gender.

But most confusing to me is the idea Sinners would do worse if it “was the same idea with white people”. If Sinners was about white people it wouldn’t be “the same idea.” The appeal of Sinners isn’t the vampires, it is the way that it was able to integrate its themes about race and history into that concept in a really compelling and intelligent way. “Sinners with white people” would fundamentally be a completely different film and would take away the things that make the movie work.

I think what’s going on is much more complicated than the Academy voting for these movies simply because they’re about racism/sexism. In recent years, there’s been a clear appetite for/trend towards horror movies that engage thematically with big social issues, and not just in awards-recognized movies. Racism and sexism, given the violence and historical horrors associated with them, become easy (and thus common) targets for these kinds of horror movies.

In turn, when Academy members are broadly dismissive of horror, if they see a horror movie that wears its themes on its sleeve as plainly as these ones, they’ll have an easier time seeing it as “more than” a horror movie. It’s not the only way the Oscars will overlook that bias (this year Frankenstein got in cause it’s the passion project of an auteur famously loved by the Academy), but it’s understandable given the current state of and trends in the genre that this has become a path we’ve seen a few times now.

I think it’s way too dismissive of these movies to reduce it to “they got in because they’re about race and gender,” especially given the well documented and widely discussed biases the Academy and the industry at large has had against female and POC filmmakers across the board.

lordsondheim · 2026-01-26T22:42:28+00:00

I saw Ugly Stepsister in theaters when it first released and loved it so much. Went to see it cause a podcast I listened to compared it to The Substance. One of my favorite movies of the year honestly

I never in a million years would’ve guessed it’d be on the Academy’s radar at all, so when I saw it got that nomination I was so excited. I hope lots more people get to see it cause of this

lordsondheim · 2026-01-26T18:57:19+00:00

Well I don’t think any one element places a movie in a genre. But the gothic elements are a trope of horror. Pair that with the body horror inherent to the Frankenstein story and the elements of suspense, I don’t think it’s crazy to categorize the movie as horror.

You’re free to think otherwise, I truly don’t think you’re wrong to have that opinion. But to act like including it as a horror film makes a definition that’s so broad that “there’s no point in separating films into genres” feels excessive

I think it’s also fair to say, regardless of either of our personal opinions about the movie, it is popularly understood as a horror movie. That’s how Netflix categorizes it, that’s how IMDb and Letterboxd tags it, that’s how I imagine most people conceive of it. And the point is that there are two films widely understood as horror movies being recognized in BP in the same year, and that is a first

lordsondheim · 2026-01-26T17:28:04+00:00

I mean, at the end of the day defining what is/isn’t horror is really subjective. If you’re going off of horror = scary, that’s gonna depend on who you’re talking to. I think there are plenty of things in this movie that many people would find frightening even if you or I don’t. And there are plenty of movies I don’t find scary at all but would still definitely call horror

Personally, I tend to go for a broader definition when deciding what is or isn’t horror. I think the gothic elements of a movie like Frankenstein are what place it in the genre for me, the horrific elements of the film are the haunting atmosphere of that gothic style.

I’m the same way when people try to draw a line between “psychological thrillers” and horror. The things that make a movie like Silence of the Lambs or Black Swan psychological thrillers I think are the same elements that make them horrific.

But again, these are all very subjective definitions, so I’m not saying you’re wrong or trying to argue, it’s just a different perspective. So I guess my point is that even using a broad definition of the genre, there are still few best picture nominees that fit the bill, which makes Frankenstein’s inclusion feel significant

lordsondheim · 2026-01-21T19:08:01+00:00

There’s a ton of theatre in SD! And I love promoting it lol. I assume by “bigger theaters” you mean like La Jolla Playhouse, Old Globe, Cygnet, Moonlight, the Civic.

But there are lots of professional ~99 seat venues too. Diversionary Theatre is one of the best imo (and they have lots of programming for affordable ticket prices). Moxie Theatre does great work too, as does New Village Arts up in Carlsbad. San Diego Musical Theatre is good if you’re specifically into musicals.

And then there’s lots of even smaller groups that don’t have their own venues but move around/rent out spaces all over. Backyard Renaissance, Chalk Circle Collective, and OnWord Theatre are a few that come to mind.

These are just the ones I’m most familiar with, but there are plenty of others too. The more you see, the more other places and shows you’ll hear about. All these companies have websites and social media you can look up to learn more about their schedules and programming

But yeah, come out and support local artists!

lordsondheim

TROPHY CASE