Hamilton

7/6/2020

A Disappointment This is a musical not made for people outside of the USA. I had to watch the thing again and wiki Hamilton to try to figure out who was who except for some of the bigger names. Going by the poster, this is was meant to be some attempted rise to fame of Harry Potter in Hollywood. The casting was varied, which is great generally, but not representative of history (noone looked like what they should have). Historical themes seemed to be swapped around and added in for convenience-sake. Some performances were good, Soo, Groff and Diggs, whilst others (MIranda - who was better in Mary Poppins Returns) just felt flat and tired. It felt like 6 or so cameras were placed and then just recorded. And the choreography was distracting at times, not complimentar

8/6/2020

I suppose this movie was behind the eight ball from the very start in a way. On the one hand, there was such a tremendous hype for it as a play, it built the expectation of being blown away, and on the other hand, it being presented in its live theater version made it lose some of the visual impact of seeing it in person. We expect a greater production value on the screen. The story is great, and should be required viewing for children at a certain age. I confess, I wasn’t enthralled by it as a musical. I guess I am too used to musicals that have regular dialogue broken up by songs rather than continuous sung dialogue. If there had been dialogue surroundIng eight or ten lovely songs like Helpless, I would have given it top marks. It is still an impressive production. I feel I have to

4/4/2021

This is not a Movie. It is a television program. It is a filmed stage play that is being broadcast on television. These things do not add up to this being a film, not even a TV-movie.

8/30/2022

"My name is Alexander Hamilton/And there's a million things I haven't done/But just you wait, just you wait," Lin-Manuel Miranda sort of sings at the beginning of Hamilton. About three hours later we're still waiting. Hamilton is divided into two acts. The first covers Hamilton's arrival in New York City in 1776, his work as General George Washington's aide-de-camp during the American Revolution, and how he met and married Eliza Schuyler. The second covers Hamilton's postwar work as the first United States Secretary of the Treasury and his death in a duel with Aaron Burr. The first act is strictly hagiographic; Hamilton is so messianic that Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.) might as well be called Judas. Watching the meteoric rise of the protagonist's military and political career unfold in

11/22/2022

If you didn't know going in, this isn't either a film or a TV show. It's a recording of the Broadway play of the same name. Admittedly, this play is for Americans who already have some idea of history. That probably excludes the younger generations, since the public school systems have gone south with years of Republican under-funding. (Seriously, some teachers make less than burger flippers.) As a stage actor and a history buff, I loved this play and am so sorry I didn't get a chance to see it on Broadway. There are multiple reasons I gave this a nine, the major of which is that I'm rating it as a play, not a film. First, I was blown away by the creativity. There is no spoken dialogue which is unusual for a musical. Second, it's done nearly all in hip-hop/rap, with one set-piece

1/11/2023

I guess it's a musical, and the world needs more of them, so there is that going for it. And I guess the races are swapped so... that is supposed to make it really good for reasons that aren't really clear. But, really, it's void of wit and insight, it is completely insulting to history with the only thing that seems accurate and true to life is that Hamilton existed and was Secretary of State And the views expressed by Hamilton are the least Hamiltonian views you're ever going to see. If you've ever read him, you kind of wonder if this is based on the same Alexander Hamilton. 1776 got a LOT of history wrong for artistic liberties, but at least the theme was accurate and it got more right than wrong. Hamilton doesn't even try. It's the story of Hamilton written by people tha