REVIEW: Newsies – The Broadway Musical (film)

Newsies_ The Broadway MusicalDisney’s Newsies: The Broadway Musical is a recording of the hit Broadway musical Newsies filmed live at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, CA during the last leg of the musical’s national tour. This filmed version features the return of many of the original Broadway cast – including Jeremy Jordan, Kara Lindsay, Ben Fankhauser, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Kevin Carolan, Mark Aldrich, Tommy Bracco, and John E. Brady – as well as the final national tour cast – including Steve Blanchard, Aisha de Haas, Ethan Steiner, Iain Young, Michael Gorman, Michael Rios, Devin Lewis, and Anthony Norman, among others – combined into one large cast to permanently capture this award-winning musical. As per Fathom Events: Newsies Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy, and leader of a ragged band of teenaged ‘newsies,’ who dreams only of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike and take a stand for what’s right.  Continue reading

REVIEW: Kingdom Hearts – Chain of Memories (the Novel) by Tomoco Kanemaki

51xkt7qmjhlKingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (the Novel) is an adaptation of the video game of the same name, written by Tomoco Kanemaki with illustrations by Shiro Amano. In Chain of Memories, Sora and the gang must make their way through Castle Oblivion, a mysterious castle under the control of Organization XIII, in order to find those he’s looking for and recover the memories he’s lost.

Like the previous Kingdom Hearts novel, Chain of Memories condenses much of the game into a format that works better as a novel. The video game itself was always a bit weak; its story was good, but much of it felt like a rehash of the first Kingdom Hearts game. This adaptation suffers a bit from that, especially in the first part of Sora’s story. But once the second part of Sora’s story starts, and all throughout Riku’s story, Chain of Memories starts to find its own story and ends up being more of an engaging story than the first game’s adaptation was. Especially in the department of character development. Continue reading

Lucasfilm Releases New Trailer for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”

It’s finally here! A trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi and HOLY CRAP. It doesn’t show much, but what it shows is all kinds of incredible. We, finally, hear Luke talk for the first time in these sequel movies, we see Rey doing some training in the Force, there’s a shot of Leia, a shot of what looks like Kylo Ren’s helmet shattered into pieces, some battle footage, some more of that flashback with the Knights of Ren (maybe?) and it all ends with Luke ominously saying, “It’s time for the Jedi to end.”

I mean, talk about a teaser trailer. I couldn’t be more excited for this movie right now. A+ to Disney and Lucasfilm for this trailer. It’s incredible and I can only hope that the actual movie is as good as this trailer looks.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is released in theaters on December 15, 2017.

REVIEW: Beauty and the Beast (2017 Film Soundtrack)

I mean, it’s not good. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good. Emma Watson really isn’t a strong singer. She’s trying, but she just doesn’t have the voice to pull off the role. Maybe watching her is better (I doubt it – I’ve never found her acting to be terribly strong, she has her moments and she’s not terrible by any means, but she’s also not great either). From the moment Watson starts singing, you can hear the autotune. I normally am not a person to even notice autotune (supposedly lots of things have been autotuned, and I rarely hear it), but Watson’s autotune was painfully noticeable from the first word. And it took me right out. Yeah, she looks the part of Belle and she’s star power, but she can’t sing the part of Belle. And that’s important.

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