TV Chat
Related: About this forumAnyone see Sound of Music live on NBC last night?
Love the movie...have to give Carrie Underwood an A for effort - but she has zero acting ability, speaking ability, and dancing ability. Other than that, thought she was great.
funny reviews today:
nip
(Sidebar conspiracy theory: the wardrobe department was out to sabotage Underwood. Take the party scene. Every guest is outfitted in exquisite ball gowns and tuxedos. Underwood is wearing an oversized milkmaid's dress, frumpier than the milkmaid's dress she wore in the previous scene
but not as frumpy as the one she put on for the next one. So much frump!)
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It's a musical where, essentially, three songs are sung six times each at various points throughout the show and you're expected not to get bored of them. It's a show with two major conflicts. In one, a father is upset that his children's clothes are made out of curtains. In the other, the Nazis are invading Austria. They are given the same weight. It's a show where a Mother Superior at an abbey sings an epically moving ballad to a scared young nun, and you later realize that she was just telling the nun to go out there, sex herself up a little, and break up a pending marriage. The Sound of Music: The Story of Maria, the Hussy Nun.
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But whether it was because of nerves or lack of experience, her acting was painfully lifeless and amateur throughout the first two thirds of the lengthy ordeal. The singer, it seems, is a proud graduate of the school of "If I don't blink, they'll think I'm acting!"
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The quick sigh of relief came at the sound of the nuns prettily singing the opening song, only to be followed by the gut-punch suffocation of every breath when, all-of-a-sudden, Carrie Underwood was frolicking manically in a fake forest wearing Austrian drag. Nothing, really, can prepare one for that.
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The only real problem was the real reason most people tuned in: Carrie Underwood, an American Idol winner and country music star, sang well as Maria but her acting inexperience was laid bare. She had zero chemistry with her love interest and lacked any intensity or shading. Deer in headlights have emoted more. How do you solve a problem like Maria, indeed.
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Romance is dead. This is an argument in defense of screen/stage chemistry. There is such a thing and it generally comes from actors being able to convey a shared sense of history. I can tell Stephen Moyer is trying, and for that matter, so is Carrie Underwood, but something is missing. Excruciatingly missing. Underwood seems convincing enough when she's singing, but conveying emotion while speaking is not her strong suit. Each time she and the Captain speak, it seems like they are strangers on line in a bank. She always seems somewhat surprised that the Captain exists.
mainstreetonce
(4,178 posts)I'm no7 particularly an Underwoid fan, but I was very impressed with her singing.
All the singing was worth the watching.
Nicely done.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)but nothing without the singing. it's interesting.
Politicub
(12,165 posts)I think Entertainment Weekly suggested how great it would have been if Maria would have been played by Kristin Chenoweth.
Even so, I think it's great that a stage show was able to pull so many viewers. I'm watching it again right now on TiVO. Hopefully there will be more live musicals coming to network TV.
Everyone except for Underwood was fantastic, and the live staging was a pleasure to watch.
http://postimg.org/image/gf3444249/
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)and how they cast the kids.
Politicub
(12,165 posts)Atlanta has a large number of HD over the air broadcast stations so I decided to try life without cable TV. I wish there was a way to buy access to the 3 or 4 shows I would like to see on cable channels.
displacedtexan
(15,696 posts)"Never before has a production of The Sound Of Music made me root for the Nazis."
Iggo
(47,558 posts)displacedtexan
(15,696 posts)I love that character! And I also love the actress! I know she doesn't need to work, but I wish she'd do more.