Movie: La La Land And The Movie Musical

La La Land and the Movie Musical

Within the last few decades we've seen a huge resurgence in the popularity of the musical. With shows like Hamilton, Wicked, and Once, musicals have become more modern, edgy, and overall more accessible to a wide range of patrons of the arts. In this, the movie musical has also seen a regrowth in popularity – with reinventions of classic musicals like Hairspray (2007), Sweeny Todd (2007), and Les Miserables (2012) and original movie musicals like La La Land (2016) and Across the Universe (2007).

Hollywood began as a place for musicals – from the release of the first feature length "talkie", The Jazz Singer in 1927, which featured seven songs and very little dialogue, these films were all the rage. Hollywood executives and studios alike prided themselves on the spectacle of the piece, dazzling audiences with elaborate choreography, beautiful scenery, and star studded casts. In 1930 alone Hollywood released over 100 movie musicals including The Vagabond King, The

Everything is bright, warm, and playful. And ultimately, maybe that's it biggest success. Writers of the past have tried to fight the comparisons, often trying and failing to be completely original, La La Land revels in it's comparison by often, using shots and scenes directly from the most poignant movie musicals of the century (hello, Ryan Gosling channeling Gene Kelly in Singin' In The Rain.) And more importantly the film doesn't ust draw from musicals, it takes pieces from other genres. "Chazelle, who directed the Oscar-winning feature Whiplash in 2014, told Ew La La Land was inspired by everything from Los Angeles traffic and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to short stories from Ry Cooder and paintings by artists like David Hockney and Henri Matisse." [link: