Watch Original Cast Album - Company Movie Online
Jeudi, mai 20th, 2010 |
Watch Original Cast Album - Company Movie Online.
Movie Title: Original Cast Album - Company Original Cast Album - Company is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Original Cast Album - Company |
What a great idea: record the cast album for Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” live, as it were–no overdubs, no artificial mixdown. What a great idea: get a documentary crew to record the record session. The filmmaker caught 15-and-a-half hours of bleary-eyed cast members giving their all for a tough record producer and an even tougher composer/lyricist. (It had to be one marathon session because it would be too expensive to assemble all those singers and musicians for multiple sessions.) This is a great documentary that shows how hard it all is. If you’ve only seen her on the incipid show “Alice,” you’ll have no idea how talented Beth Howland is till you see her in “Getting Married Today.” Donna McKechnie, Susan Browning, and Pamela Myers spoof Rogers and Hart (and not the Andrew Sisters as everyone seems to think) with verve in “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” which also finds Sondheim at his most clever. Charles Kimbrough would go on to do Murphy Brown and Barbara Barrie would briefly be in Barney Miller, and both shine here as effortless, “natural” actors. Star Dean Jones is perfect as the slightly dopey Bobby, even if some of his singing will make you wince. What’s perhaps most remarkable is that the numbers that sound so fresh and improvisational actually took 8, 10, 15 takes. Especially “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Elaine Stritch’s famous song was the last number they recorded. By the time they were ready, it was after four in the morning and everyone was exhausted. Stritch tries, but after about eight takes it’s clear she’s not going to make it that night. With everyone getting punchy, they decide to record her music track separately, bringing her back the next day to knock the song out of the park.
The DVD has a commentary track, as Stritch, Hal Prince and the filmmaker reminisce about the session 30 years later. There’s also a strange feature where one of the songs not covered in the doc can be listened to over B&W stills from the theatrical production. This didn’t do anything for me, but there’s no harm in having it there, either.
So this is a very good documentary. But it could have been even better. Two of the most complex and interesting songs, the opening number and “Side By Side/What Would We Do Without You,” are barely covered in the film. I really wanted to see how they pulled off these extraordinarily complex numbers with the complete cast “live,” but the documentary doesn’t show it. Too bad. A 90 minute documentary with this material would hae been so much better than a 60 minute documentary without. It’s probably true the 60 minute limit was imposed by ABC, which originally aired the documentary, but I’d be surprised if the filmmaker didn’t save material that could have been added back for this DVD.
Still, this is worth owning, if a little pricey for a 53 minute CD (not 58, as advertised on the case). In some ways this musical is a classic, and in others it’s incredibly (and amusingly) dated. Both qualities just make it all the more wonderful.
If you care about musical theatre, then you will want to see this 1-hour condesation of the 18 1/2 hour recording session that yielded the original cast album of COMPANY.
This documentary will give you an idea of how much sweat goes into making these albums… usually done in one long day in a cramped recording studio. Once you see this documentary, you’ll listen to the album in a totally different way. Watch Sondheim coach the singers: correct their pronunciations, or even correct notes they have changed over the weeks of performances. Best of all watch Elaine Stritch struggle to record “The Ladies Who Lunch” until exhaustion gets the better of her and she starts screaming back at her own playback. And yet … and yet the final result is worth it! No other cast album documentary captures as much as this one.
A must for those who know that cast albums are NOT “soundtracks!”
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