DREAMGIRLS

What does it say about our world that you can lose "American Idol" and win an Academy Award for doing basically the same thing? -- Matt Singer

For better or worse, the people who win American Idol typically don't respond as well to vocal pyrotechnics as they do to unique personalities. It's why Paris didn't win last time around and that doofus (who I'm told is likable) did.

What does it say about our world that you can lose "American Idol" and win an Academy Award for doing basically the same thing? -- Matt Singer

For better or worse, the people who win American Idol typically don't respond as well to vocal pyrotechnics as they do to unique personalities. It's why Paris didn't win last time around and that doofus (who I'm told is likable) did.

-- Eric H. (ephende...), Today. (later

wtf does this post mean at all? she hasn't even won an oscar yet! how can you "agree" with that?

well there are a number of reasons I have no desire to see it: no one I like is involved, I'm overly familiar with the story and don't find it engaging as subject matter, I haven't liked the music to any Broadway musical post-1980 or so, no actual Supremes music is used, etc. None of these are really related to my feelings about melisma-as-style.

"How do you sleep at night?!"

dood Dan said it was 40 years old. I asked why. end of story. it isn't really that complicated.

Critics in overstating the importance of things like, oh, Dreamgirls shockah!

unless the realization that american idol is about singing and the oscars are about acting has blown your mind!

See, the sad thing about this whole thing is that Jennifer Hudson ... is a terrible actress.

I'm not. I like to eat.

You don't need to tell me twice. You're talking to the only person in the world whose favorite performance in Magnolia was Cleo King's.

Yes, and I should probably stop talking about a movie that I basically have no strong feelings about.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! she was awesome! I'm not saying she'd be good in anything, but she was good in this! I started sobbing the second she shot Jamie Foxx a loving look during "I love you, I do"! okay, maybe that was an overshare.

she was almost always singing, though. anyway, I'm officially taking a deep breath and stepping away from this thread. but seriously, people who said you have no interest in seeing the movie, I'd reconsider. it's good.

if you don't understand the difference between melisma in pop music and opera...? one is the vocal equivalent of the bent-note, blues-based 'runs' of a guitar solo - a showy improvisation intended to suggest the singer such that heightened emotion compels the singer to vary from the main melody (never mind that such variations appear to be de rigeur to be on tv) - the other is the written melody itself, without note-bending. the latter can be showy, sure, but what it's showing is the composer before the singer, and showiness is not always or even often of a piece with emotion - the singer has to rely more on non-improvisational, non-melodic devices for that purpose. but you weren't suggesting that jennifer hudson get on a stage with anna netrebko, right?

...outside of the noise board.

Somebody needs to find an mp3 of Forbidden Broadway's parody "And I Am Telling You, I'm Not Singing" ("I'm screaming, I'm screa-ea-ea-eaming. . .")

I will sacrifice a thousand fanboys to let this be true. Or just one Harry Knowles.

So basically you don't understand or know the genesis behind operatic melisma. (Many of those runs weren't in the original scores, especially cadenzas in bel canto singing; they were embellishments the singers added later to show how awesome they were and the best ones have, over time, become codified as "the way to sing it". See also baroque ornamentation.)