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Cameron H.

Musical Mondays-Week 5-Across the Universe

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In addition, what record company commissions an illegal immigrant to come up with their logo?

 

I bought this. Starving artist living in a bohemian style in a edgy part of NYC

 

Who wants to deal with tax returns and getting their SIN on file?

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Strawberry Jamz duh

 

Because "Apple Corps." Puny Banner! Hulk Strong!!

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I bought this. Starving artist living in a bohemian style in a edgy part of NYC

 

Who wants to deal with tax returns and getting their SIN on file?

 

For Jude it's all fine, but I couldn't see a record company doing this, especially because they were going to pay for it.

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For Jude it's all fine, but I couldn't see a record company doing this, especially because they were going to pay for it.

They pay him in strawberries so NBD.

 

Also, this stupid post was the post I chose to be my 500th post on these boards. How momentous.

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So, I mentioned this in the Beauty and the Beast thread, but...let's talk about age. When we first meet Sadie, Max and Jude say how she's hot "for an older woman." Dana Fuchs is three years older than Jim Sturgess. But they need to age her up I guess? So they put her with Martin Luther McCoy, who is 6 years older than Fuchs.

 

Meanwhile, Sturgess is 29 here, and Evan Rachel Wood is 20. Why isn't he saying how ERW is "a younger girl"? She's literally 3X younger than him compared to him and Dana Fuchs.

 

Like, in this universe (and in plenty of others, to be fair) women are either 20 or 50.

 

Side note: Dana Fuchs is probably my favorite part of the movie, even if I didn't really like her character. She has a really great presence. It's a bummer she didn't do more after this.

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Plus Lucy gets picked up from high school the first time she meets Jude, so she's 17. Max even goes so far as to note that one of Lucy's friends 'got boobs' which ages her down if anything. And there's no reason to think Jude is the same age, since he's been working on the docks for lord knows how long. The movie's supposed to cover 2 years (with six years of stuff squashed in), so at best Lucy's 19 at the end of the movie. Max is dropping out of college and he's been there long enough to have 'pissed off every professor in Princeton' plus also somehow knows the janitor's name (that's commitment to a community right there), so I'd say he's not a freshman. The 'older woman' comment clearly aligns to the fact that she's not 20, so she must be 'older'. Why bother qualifying that? Why not just say 'what a fox', without the offensive follow up?

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They pay him in strawberries so NBD.

 

Also, this stupid post was the post I chose to be my 500th post on these boards. How momentous.

 

Those are the juiciest strawberries I've ever seen...

 

And congrats on 500!

 

kbs.gif

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For Jude it's all fine, but I couldn't see a record company doing this, especially because they were going to pay for it.

I still thinks it's valid. I'm unfamiliar about how royalties work but I'd think that the record company would prefer to pay him under the table and use his illegal status against him, rather than pay him royalties for the logo.

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One highlight for me was I Want to Hold Your Hand. I remember the big "reveal" that holy shit, she's longing for the cheerleader, not the QB! Although some people have commented that this arrangement is too dirge-like, I would argue that they couldn't have retained the peppiness of the original song. It would've made no sense.

 

I wish they had done more with Prudence though. After this scene, she's relegated to making a bathroom window entrance and then locking herself in a closet. Then she runs off to the circus where she gets her groove back? It pains me somewhat to say this, but I think they could've cut out her part.

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I'm sitting here wondering what kind of movie AtU would be if we cut all of the music. That would probably knock out characters like Prudence, Bono, Izzard, Sadie, JoJo, Joe Cocker, but then with that freedom (and potentially adding us back into a world where the Beatles exist), the story between Jude and Lucy (and Max?) could have some room to breathe. Take out the cringey references, and make a new movie where a Liverpudlian named Jude meets an American named Lucy. I think it'd be better.

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One highlight for me was I Want to Hold Your Hand. I remember the big "reveal" that holy shit, she's longing for the cheerleader, not the QB! Although some people have commented that this arrangement is too dirge-like, I would argue that they couldn't have retained the peppiness of the original song. It would've made no sense.

 

I wish they had done more with Prudence though. After this scene, she's relegated to making a bathroom window entrance and then locking herself in a closet. Then she runs off to the circus where she gets her groove back? It pains me somewhat to say this, but I think they could've cut out her part.

Definitely agree. She was the character I thought had the most potential, and then they didn't do anything with her at all. It also feels like they worked backwards from the song they wanted to use.

 

They were like, "Let's create a character named Prudence so we can use 'Dear Prudence.'"

 

"But how can we make the song mean something in the movie?"

 

"Have her locked herself away somewhere and need to be coaxed out..."

 

"Like a closet?"

 

"Brilliant....and then we can make her gay!"

 

"And then we can have her sing a love song to a woman!"

 

"But what if we make everyone think it's a man?"

 

"You're on fucking fire!"

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Plus Lucy gets picked up from high school the first time she meets Jude, so she's 17. Max even goes so far as to note that one of Lucy's friends 'got boobs' which ages her down if anything. And there's no reason to think Jude is the same age, since he's been working on the docks for lord knows how long. The movie's supposed to cover 2 years (with six years of stuff squashed in), so at best Lucy's 19 at the end of the movie. Max is dropping out of college and he's been there long enough to have 'pissed off every professor in Princeton' plus also somehow knows the janitor's name (that's commitment to a community right there), so I'd say he's not a freshman. The 'older woman' comment clearly aligns to the fact that she's not 20, so she must be 'older'. Why bother qualifying that? Why not just say 'what a fox', without the offensive follow up?

 

Max even says "jailbait" under his breath right before Lucy recognizes him and yells out "Max!"

 

How did Max know all the Princeton faculty names to know that there was no professor Huber? It's not exactly a small school. Also, it was crazy how Jude ended up at Princeton. He said he found his father by using "army records." How did he obtain this?

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I wish they had done more with Prudence though. After this scene, she's relegated to making a bathroom window entrance and then locking herself in a closet. Then she runs off to the circus where she gets her groove back? It pains me somewhat to say this, but I think they could've cut out her part.

 

I agree with cutting Prudence. I'm not saying what she's about isn't important, but I'm not sure if it belongs in this movie. Again, someone, somewhere, thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' was a song about homosexual longing?" And sure, I see that, but where exactly does that fit in with my Liverpudlian Artist/American Teenage Girl love story? Or my boyfriend and brother went to Vietnam story? Or I'm meeting my father for the first time story? Or Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix form a supergroup story?

 

She literally gets introduced at about minute 8 and doesn't come in "through the bathroom window" until 30 minutes later. I had literally forgotten she existed.

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Also, it was crazy how Jude ended up at Princeton. He said he found his father by using "army records." How did he obtain this?

 

Clearly Professor Huber was a hot-shot professor at Princeton before the war, a child prodigy who graduated high school at 13, Bachelor's at 15, Master's at 16, PhD at 20. Ready to take on the world, tenure-track, ready to go, and then: Pearl Harbor. The patriot that he is, he drops everything, signs up to fight, writes his occupation on his army records, including a specific address at Princeton, then goes to Liverpool to do some basic training (as you do), knocks up Jude's mum, heads off to war, but receives a head injury that not only awards him a Purple Heart but an honourable discharge. Problem is, with the head injury, his academic career is in tatters. Along come the benevolent deans at Princeton, who offer him a job as a janitor who fixes the window leading, where he can gaze into the classrooms that once he prowled, stimulating the minds of future leaders. And one day, as he daydreamed into that window, an English boy calls him by his previous title... Professor Huber. It all comes flooding back.

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I agree with cutting Prudence. I'm not saying what she's about isn't important, but I'm not sure if it belongs in this movie. Again, someone, somewhere, thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' was a song about homosexual longing?" And sure, I see that, but where exactly does that fit in with my Liverpudlian Artist/American Teenage Girl love story? Or my boyfriend and brother went to Vietnam story? Or I'm meeting my father for the first time story? Or Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix form a supergroup story?

 

She literally gets introduced at about minute 8 and doesn't come in "through the bathroom window" until 30 minutes later. I had literally forgotten she existed.

I feel like a Prudence story would have been incredibly more interesting than this. I wanted to follow her when she disappeared after "Dear Prudence". And then when she turned up at the circus, I was like, "Why did I have to watch these fucking jerkoffs when we could have been seeing what brought her to this point?"

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I feel like a Prudence story would have been incredibly more interesting than this. I wanted to follow her when she disappeared after "Dear Prudence". And then when she turned up at the circus, I was like, "Why did I have to watch these fucking jerkoffs when we could have been seeing what brought her to this point?"

 

I would too, but that's it's own, totally different, movie.

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Okay. Just as an exercise: here's every track and its function moving the plot along, ignoring lyrics.

  • "Blackbird" — Lucy (LUCY GETS CONTEMPLATIVE)

 

How much do you want to bet that early drafts included a scene where the kids run over a crow and nurse it back to health?

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Where the heck is Taylor Anne? We need her to bring the blind love for this thing back into play!

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How much do you want to bet that early drafts included a scene where the kids run over a crow and nurse it back to health?

 

That was another weird thing. I know I'm not supposed to be "listening to the lyrics," but sometimes the movie would call attention to them in weirdly literal ways. Like the "Jai Guru Deva" line in "Across the Universe." Oh, yes,, of course a bunch of Hare Krisnas pass by at that exact moment. What else could have logically happened?

 

And speaking of weird literal translations, I HATED the "Revolution" scene. Here's a legit protest song, that could work in a number of relevant places, but let's turn it into a "jealous boyfriend storming into his girlfriend's workplace" song instead. But thank God there was a picture of Chairman Mao on the wall. Otherwise the whole scene would have been ridiculous...

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And speaking of weird literal translations, I HATED the "Revolution" scene. Here's a legit protest song, that could work in a number of relevant places, but let's turn it into a "jealous boyfriend storming into his girlfriend's workplace" song instead. But thank God there was a picture of Chairman Mao on the wall. Otherwise the whole scene would have been ridiculous...

 

To be fair, they did go ALL OUT in the soft-eyed-bearded-revolutionary-guru-who-seduces-his-acolytes casting trope.

 

578245198-sorry-for-ruining-your-black-panther-party.jpg

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Something that I noticed on this viewing was the scene early in the movie where Lucy and her sister? friend? walk home from school. We're not given any context and Lucy says "Ugh! I can't believe her. Ugh. I'm never having children. Think about it, it's pure narcissism." And she says it's disgusting when parents say that their babies have the father's eyes or mother's lips. What was the point of this conversation? At first I thought maybe it was a quote from one of the Beatles, but I didn't find anything. Am I missing something?

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578245198-sorry-for-ruining-your-black-panther-party.jpg

 

Honestly, Forest Gump: the Musical is what this movie wanted to be and should have been.

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Something that I noticed on this viewing was the scene early in the movie where Lucy and her sister? friend? walk home from school. We're not given any context and Lucy says "Ugh! I can't believe her. Ugh. I'm never having children. Think about it, it's pure narcissism." And she says it's disgusting when parents say that their babies have the father's eyes or mother's lips. What was the point of this conversation? At first I thought maybe it was a quote from one of the Beatles, but I didn't find anything. Am I missing something?

 

I think it was just showing how "progressive and modern" she was.

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Something that I noticed on this viewing was the scene early in the movie where Lucy and her sister? friend? walk home from school. We're not given any context and Lucy says "Ugh! I can't believe her. Ugh. I'm never having children. Think about it, it's pure narcissism." And she says it's disgusting when parents say that their babies have the father's eyes or mother's lips. What was the point of this conversation? At first I thought maybe it was a quote from one of the Beatles, but I didn't find anything. Am I missing something?

100% guarantee you that's actors making improvised filler talk. Julie Taymor IS BATSHIT INSANE.

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