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Hello. You may remember me from such posts as "here is some Canadian trivia related to this week's movie" or "I'm baked and I could still make a better movie than this!" You may also recall that even though I'm part of the queer community, I watch a lot (I mean, a LOT) of Hallmark-style low budget made for TV romcoms. When my also queer friend Nicole discovered this, she proposed that we do a podcast about them in a very unusual format: an advent calendar. So since late October, we have been feverishly watching, making notes, and recording episodes of A Podcast in a Queer Tree, which will air a new episode every day in December up to and including the 25th. We have something like 10 episodes left to record and I have a ton of editing left to do but we are on track to get it all done. You can check out our still-in-progress website or check out our Patreon, where the episodes will be hosted. We will have no sponsors and there is no charge to listen to the main episodes. We're basically just doing it for fun and experience and to add a little cheer to our (and hopefully your) holidays. There is a short intro episode available if you need further convincing. Hope you enjoy. xo PS- we also made bingo cards thanks to some maniac online who has a script that generates bingo cards. So enjoy that.

In my elementary school all 3rd graders were weirdly required to pick a performance arts “class”. Option 1 was CLOGGING. Option 2 was putting on puppet shows of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Phantom. I desperately wanted to avoid clogging in front of the entire school to Elvira by Home Free, so I opted for the Cats puppet show. The teacher that ran it was obsessed with everything Andrew Lloyd Webber and rehearsals were like David O Russell’s I Heart Huckabees behind the scenes. She shared with us all her Cats knowledge and how it was so clever that Deuteronomy was the name of an old cat because Deuteronomy is one of the older books of the Bible/Torah. I think about the puppet show more than I’d like to. During Phantom I played the title character and my 3rd grade crush played Christine. The teacher put a lot of pressure on us to have our puppets kiss but even our 3rd grade brains knew that was super weird. I was horrified to see clogging in this movie.

Rubbybells checking in. The movie reviewing & driving cat.

Click bait me once, shame on you. Click bait me twice, shame on me. Click bait me three times, WHEN AM I GETTING MY PENIS PILLS?

This is a really cool idea!

I'm Jollygog the Christmas Cat

Does everyone want to share their cat name? I’m Piddledimple the Literary Cat.

Sure. I also buy this. You all make excellent points.

Like others, I'm someone who enjoyed the movie a lot on my first watch, for what that's worth. But I did appreciate a lot more of the artistry after watching it with Criterion's commentary track by David Desser (it's a very dry, often intrusive commentary, but there's a ton of interesting information in it). The sense I got is that Ozu set up his shots to have utility, both narratively and thematically, and thus perhaps aren't as jaw-droppingly showy as the "one perfect shot" aesthetic. I think that there are some fantastic compositions in Tokyo Story, but they are used purposefully. But while I did appreciate that aspect more on this commentary-supplemented rewatch, the thing that makes me love this movie is the universality, which paradoxically works with its specificity. The period of history between 1945 and 1956 in Japan is unlike anything I have ever lived through, and I think that point in time is crucial to Tokyo Story, but as Paul and Amy talked about, the characters and their relationships feel completely universal. But that's just why it worked for me, and I think it's reasonable for someone to see all that and just not have it connect with them. I agree with you that it feels snobby to posit that everyone is supposed to love this or any other film once they unlock it correctly, but I do happen to really like this particular film. I wouldn't put it at #1 in history though.

Ok. I made an account to respond to episode. In many ways, my entire life has been leading up to this. When I was a child I had a substantial surgery where I was on bed rest a while with a lot of Children's Motrin. I chose to spend my recovery watching the VHS of the 1998 performance film of Cats every day. I became obsessed and literally watched the VHS to Cats EVERY SINGLE DAY for over a year. I would estimate I've seen that specific filming of Cats at least 200 times. I have also seen the stage show a few times and then saw the 2019 movie in theaters I think three times. I had a Cats (musical) themed birthday party. Yes, I've become a weird 26 year old, also gay. Obviously. Also I am unfortunately a Swiftie and studied film theory, so 2019 was a big year for me. I could write a dissertation on Cats, but I'll make this as brief as possible. Off the bat, I would say the movie is very different than the musical- it definitely has more plot than the stage. The musical takes place in an abstract theater space and is just kind of silly songs with the underlining “plot” of cats introducing themselves and their culture to the audience to see which of them will go to the Heavy Side Layer to be reborn. In the film, the cats introduce themselves to Victoria, a white cat in the stage show that typically gets a ballet solo, but no songs. I think for what the musical is, they made a much more digestible story in this movie, which still does not make sense! To enjoy Cats you have to radically accept nonsense, and it’s not easy. My biggest critique of Cats (2019), is with the new song that Andrew Llyod Webber and Taylor Swift. The song “The Naming of The Cats” is about the real names of cats that humans don’t know and explains why you have characters who are named Mungojerrie, Skimbleshanks, etc. Essentially, when cats get to choose their name they go wild. Victoria is not a cat name, Victoria is a name that a human gave to a cat, so it would make sense in her original song that she gets to name herself something like Fluffergumbles. Instead they give her a ballad in a musical that already has an iconic ballad. I feel like this film didn’t fully commit to the (illogical) logic of the musical, and that is my main problem with it. I have other things to say but I will get carried away and I'm actually supposed to be working right now. Skimbleshanks is the best cat because he has actually has a job.

I said something similar in my Letterboxd review. I feel like this movie would have been better with either practical costumes (like the stage show) or been a full on CG animated movie. Like, you’re watching this movie for the dancing, and ultimately, even the real stuff looks fake.

What I absolutely loved about this movie was not the movie, but one of my friends' reactions to it. As Paul mentioned at the end of this episode, a lot of movie drafthouses started doing rowdy-showings of Cats, and the Alamo in VA was hosting one early this year. That sounded like it would be hilarious, so me and a handful of friends (we all love to riff on movies/shows) decided it'd be a fun night, and got tickets. The night of the show, a different friend of mine texts me, and asks if I wanted to do something, and I tell them that we're going to watch a rowdy screening of Cats. He asks if he can join, and he gets to the Alamo with about a minute to spare... They had cat ears for us to wear, a cat toy at each seat, the cocktails came in little cat saucers, they gave us name tags to write our jellicle names on them. They encouraged us to sing-along and be generally rowdy (as long as we weren't yelling the whole time). About a minute into the first song, the last-minute-addition friend leans to me and asks "Is this going to be one of those singing things? ... 'cause I hate those." It turns out, he'd never heard of the Broadway show, the poems, none of it. The only thing he knew was that it was a movie that came out last year, and totally bombed. (He'd seen midnight showings with our group of things like The Room, and Monty Python, so he was always down for a hilarious movie) But he was completely unprepared for what a delightful travesty we'd experience. He'd occasionally ask what this or that meant, who these cats were, etc. and the rest of our group got to watch his face contort as we explained "Nothing means anything." I think it was about 3/4 of the way through, we see a scene of a lit-up city street (or alleyway, I can't remember) with no people, and he asks him: "So, is like the plot that the world ended in 1920's London?" me: "The real world ended about 80 minutes ago, and this is our last acid-trip, fever-dream before we all die." him: "No, but like...what's the plot?" me: "A bunch of cats are auditioning to die." him: "Seriously? That's it?" me: "That is it." him: "...metal." And given all the times the whole theater was chanting for two cats to kiss (who never did), when Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy are in the hot air balloon, that same friend yells out "OKAY! YOU KISS, THEN! I DON'T REALLY CARE WHO, AT THIS POINT!", which got a great laugh from the theater. After the movie, we all joked about not knowing whether we actually died in that theater or not. And about 4 days later...the Covid lock-downs started happening. To this day, we blame Covid-19 not on illegal pangolin-trade, but Cats.

Okay, one last comment. Jason mentioned the green screen issue. From the special features, it's clear that they used some other method where the actors/dancers were recorded using transponders in their suits rather than visual dots which would be painted on (though the faces had the reference dots and cat makeup painted on). They don't go too closely into detail, but this recorded multiple actors at once and their positions relative to each other and the set. You can see they are wearing weird white coresets with antennae coming out of small packs on their backs in the DVD features. It's mentioned briefly in this youtube clip, but not really and mostly shows the rehearsals: I don't recommend the commentary for the film, but the other special features are interesting to see how pivotal it seems Taylor Swift was in getting this greenlit and how everyone seems pretty optimistic about the finished project.

This was Judi Dench's role in the original cast before she broke her ankle and had to be replaced. She was also going to be Jennyanydots since the show allows for some actors to play multiple parts. There are a lot of weird choices in this movie that only make sense for fans of the Broadway production, like Jennyanydots unzipping her skin. That's a reference to an onstage costume change where she removes basically a fur coat and then has sequins on and does a dance. I think the film would have been better received among a certain demographic if they had leaned further into the weird horniness and went full-furry instead of falling into the uncanny valley. I also remember seeing a paper (which I admit I haven't read) which mentions that people on the autism spectrum may not experience the uncanny valley effect in the same way as neurotypical individuals. I don't know if Tom Hooper is on the spectrum, but that could be an explanation for why production proceeded in this direction. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6211702/

Yeah, I think Phantom would definitely fall into “Thank God this Got Made” territory.

Hope you all like it.