Would anyone be willing to sell their Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway Blu-ray? PM me a price, including shipping. Must be willing to send tracking number for item and accept payment via PayPal.
It's kind of easy to critique the taping of a live event. Pointless, but easy.
But for the most part it wasn't actually filmed live. It was mostly filmed on a closed filming day a couple weeks prior to closing with only a few wide shots & the finale with the original cast being from the final performance.
TheatreFan4 said: "But for the most part it wasn't actually filmed live. It was mostly filmed on a closed filming day a couple weeks prior to closing with only a few wide shots & the finale with the original cast being from the final performance."
And you can tell which footage is which how exactly?
Either way, they only filmed for one extra day, and it's a two hour forty minute show show... it's not like they were retaking individual lines of a song for 30 takes. I thought the extra day was mainly for when they are onstage in ways they couldn't be for the final live show, although it's been so long since I watched it, I forget when they actually do that...
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
Fosse76 said: "DVDs play on Blu-ray players. And the RENT DVD looks and sounds fine. No reason to spend that much for a blu-ray."
Personally, I think regular DVDs look pretty bad on HDTVs. If you don't want to spend a lot, just get the HD digital download. I own it, and it looks great.
I own it on DVD and it looks terrible since it's not in HD. The HD digital download is so much better. This is a great way to see this show, it's perfect and it cancels out the horrendous movie :)
What made the Chris Columbus movie so bad, exactly? Granted, it was my first exposure to RENT so I'm not the most careful eye, but apart from the OBC being much older, what went wrong?
Ado Annie D'Ysquith said: "What made the Chris Columbus movie so bad, exactly? Granted, it was my first exposure to RENT so I'm not the most careful eye, but apart from the OBC being much older, what went wrong?"
That's a pretty big question to answer, but the biggest problem is Chris Columbus was not the right director for the material. It feels sanitized compared to the stage version, and it looks like it was produced by a big studio (which it was), which is bizarre considering the anti-capitalist subject matter. One look at the size of Mark and Roger's apartment tells you that Chris Columbus didn't really understand what was happening in the story. Replacing the recitative passages of the score with spoken dialogue sucked the energy out of the scenes. The unnecessary autotuning of the vocals to a super-pristine state created a sound that the characters would have complained about if they heard it in their own music. Plus, the oft-mentioned age of the characters. It's not that those actors weren't good enough, it's that I'm better able to forgive the flaws of the characters when they are idealistic 20-somethings trying to find their places in the world than when they are 30-somethings who still don't have anything figured out. When you're 24 and your best friend from college who promised you free rent demands a year's worth of payments, that's different from the same thing happening when you're 34.
This video essay takes one scene as a case study to show how the filmmaking failed the film: https://youtu.be/1XrQzhc186Q
It's not that Rent was a perfect musical onstage and the film ruined it... but the stage version was put together with so much more craft, energy, and commitment to and understanding of the story being told.
I remember reading what was supposed to be what Spike Lee wanted to do with it in script form somewhere online. (Does anybody remember this?) Don't know if it was the real thing but it was so much better than what Columbus did to it. I really wish they had filmed the revival. I know a lot of people didn't like it but I loved it. That set was incredible and the cast was wonderful. JMO