sevenkittensinatrenchcoat

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

#pouncival #also everyone at some point #bomba cannot be confined to a single ship #bombalurina #cats the musical

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

I've got two things to sort of add:

Misto reacts to Grizabella more like the kittens do, but there's a very subtle difference that I think hints that he's still slightly older than them. Jemima, Electra, and Victoria (and Etcetera if Victoria's with her) are all immediately welcoming, reaching out to touch Grizabella. Misto's hands are behind his back. He doesn't know who she is and he's curious. He has no reason to be hostile towards her, but he has no reason to welcome her either. When Munkustrap pushes him back, he trusts his judgement and turns against Grizabella. He's not as trusting as the kittens and he wants to be an adult and follow the adult rules.

When Misto messes up at the beginning of Gumbie cat, the queens aren't waving at him. We see him sit down next to the kittens, who tease him a little and then we get the shot of the queen motioning. They're not telling Misto to sit down. They're telling the kittens to stop picking on him.

I could write 10 million essays about how cats 98 communicates things to its audience without directly stating them but one of those things i love is Misto's age.

Jacob Brent once referred to Misto as 'not an adult yet, but he's not a kitten, so he's at that in-between stage' and I love that quote, bc that's pretty much exactly what I would've guessed based off of what 98 shows us.

Firstly, most of the time when Misto is on stage, he's hanging around other adults, like in Pekes, Bustopher, & Jenny's songs. When the kittens are all grouped up together, Misto is pretty much never with them. He also walks a lot, in comparison to the obvious kitten characters doing a lot of crawling and rolling about-- he does crawl, just not as often as the others. And admittedly all the adults cats also crawl on occasion.

(Most of them at least. As far as I'm aware, the only time Tugger crawls anywhere in 98 is when he does that s‌lut‌ty hand-walk thing during his song)

So given all of that, one might categorize Misto as a shortish adult, but he gives his age away during Grizabella's introduction, when he notably fails to recognize her like all the adult cats do, and gets shuffled away from her like the young girls.

Another moment that gives away that he's not that old is when he messes up during Jenny's number. After he realizes Munk isn't talking about him, he gets waved off to the floor by the older queens, (basically to The Kids' Table™) and then the girls there all heckle him-- not only does he get gestured at to sit there of all places (pretty much the only time I'm aware of that Misto sits amongst the kittens) but the girls all react to him with evident familiarity that makes it obvious they're peers-- he may be older than them, but not by much.

Also given his mild reaction to how they poke at him, he might not be exactly at the top of the Kitten Pecking Order, either. He acts like an adult and gets treated as a kitten-- both by the adults and the actual kitten characters. 'In-between stage' for sure.

#mr mistoffelees #cats 1998

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

#cats zurich #love this bit so much #mr mistoffelees #mistoffeless #zurich misto my beloved #munkustrap

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Y'all PLEASE listen to this line from the 2013 German production I’m pissing

#rum tum tugger #mr mistoffelees #tugger such a misto fanboy #he's such a dork #tuggoffelees

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

hello fellow Cats enjoyers

Being that it looks like the full Cats 98 video on youtube got taken down again, here's a copy that I ripped from yt the other day while it was still up; you should be able to watch it right in google drive

#cats 1998 #everything is right with the world now yay

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

I saw your post saying Cats 1998 was made public on yt, would you mind sharing the link?

I’m happy to! The Show Must Go On made it public here: https://youtu.be/TAAaq7M0aXs?si=8JoU7LRycjFU9E7C

It’s technically not a new upload since it seems people were watching it during the pandemic, but I guess they decided to make it private for the past few years. Anyway, it’s publicly available now!

#cats 1998 #!!!

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

The Moments of Happiness and the Meaning of Rhyming

Yeah, weird title, I know.

Also, I know I don't post much here anymore. I have other hyperfixations. But, I still occasionally have Cats-related things to say.

I have some things to say about The Moments of Happiness, the number that opens the second act of the show. Since it's not a dance number and not very catchy, it's often ignored. Some people find it boring. Strangely, I think the fact that it's slow, not catchy, and hard to follow is kind of the point.

What's happening in the story here is that, after the Jellicle Ball at the end of act one, Grizabella shows up and gets rejected by the tribe again. Everyone runs away and hides for a bit, except for Old Deuteronomy, who sits on his throne in the back while Grizabella sings the first part of Memory. Being the Big Good of the show, Old D already likes Griz and wants the tribe to be nice to her. As the leader, you'd think he could just tell the others to behave, but he wants them to understand why they should except Grizabella. A lot of the respect the tribe has for him probably comes from the fact that he doesn't just tell them what to do.

So, after intermission, all the cats come out of hiding and gather around Old Deuteronomy and he tries to explain the themes of Grizabella's role in the story. You experience moments of happiness throughout your life, but your memories of them are something else, and that something has value and...it actually doesn't really matter if the human audience gets it or not. The lecture isn't for us.

But, nobody's getting it. Well, it kind of depends on the production and interpretation here. In replica productions, the way the story usually goes, nobody's getting it. Old D knows that he needs to simplify the message somehow, but it's not really what he does. Honestly, he's just been thinking out loud this whole time and has no idea what he's doing. He basically simplifies the message by sending it through a simpler brain. Coricopat and Tantomile, the most telepathic of cats, help him out here. They sort of connect his mind to Jemima's mind. Jemima is the youngest cat in the tribe. Her mind is not complicated and very open, so it's easy to speak through her. She falls into a trance and delivers Old D's message in her own words, simple words that everyone can understand.

I'm writing this mainly to talk about a detail of the number that sort of allows the audience to feel what the tribe is feeling throughout this, though this isn't exactly universal.

Basically, though not all English language poetry rhymes, it usually does. This is especially true with songs lyrics. Songs in English that were originally written in English almost always rhyme. This is also the case for most European languages. I say that it's not universal because Cats is very popular in Japan and Japanese songs usually don't rhyme. It's just not a priority there. If you listen to Japanese dubs or translations of English songs, you'll notice that the rhyme scheme isn't followed. It's not something Japanese listeners would probably notice. Meanwhile, when Japanese songs are translated into English, you might actually notice that it doesn't rhyme. Listening to the song in Japanese, it sounds normal. But it sounds weird in English. The best English translations of Japanese songs tend to add a rhyme scheme into it to sound more natural in English.

Yeah, I'm getting a little side-tracked here but it's a cool thing I noticed.

So, in English, and a lot of other languages, songs usually rhyme. Why's that important? If you primarily listen to music in a language where songs rhyme, you begin to intuitively expect it. The lack of rhyming starts to mean something. It doesn't mean that the song is bad. There are situations where English song lyrics not rhyming works. The example I usually think of for this is Strawberry Fields Forever. Try to find Beatles songs when explaining music and lyrics. Everyone's listened to the Beatles. Anyway, though the chorus sort of rhymes (fields/real), the verses don't. If you look at the lyrics of the song, this actually makes sense. When you have lyrics like:

I think, I know, I mean...a yes, but it's all wrong

That isn't a coherent sentence. It sounds like someone's thoughts unfiltered. It works as an expression of emotion, but it's not carefully composed. It's raw. It's stream of consciousness. And you're thoughts, raw, unfiltered, don't rhyme. When you're writing rhyming lyrics, you have to think carefully about the words. A lack of rhyme conveys "I'm talking without really thinking through what I'm going to say. This is all off the top of my head."

Old Deuteronomy's part of The Moments of Happiness doesn't rhyme. Every other song in the show rhymes at least a little. Old Deuteronomy is just thinking out loud here. He's still figuring things out as he goes. That's why it's so hard to follow. It's harder to follow the lyrics, so the audience tends to get lost here, which is exactly what's happening to the characters listening.

Then you have Jemima's "Moonlight" bit. We go back to rhyming. There's clarity there that there isn't in the rest of the number. The words have been rephrased in a way that's easier to understand and follow. When you're used to songs rhyming, your brain sort of maps itself onto the rhyme scheme. You follow the lyrics by picking up on and anticipating the rhyme. So we go from something that's hard to follow to something that's easy to follow. Even if you don't get the actual message of what's being said here, the feeling of confusion and clarity is still there.

So, that's pretty cool, I guess.

#the moments of happiness #old deuteronomy #rhyming is cool #i learned about poetic meter from a video with beatles songs they are very good for teaching things

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Oh, this is fun!

#cats wichita #munkustrap #i also love this version of misto in gumbie cat #munk trying to quietly signal him to go away #more productions should have this one silly misto moment

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Where to watch Cats

I answered an ask about this earlier so here’s a masterpost including the movie as well

Cats 2016 Broadway revival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8AqwM7jOn8&list=PLXEAO5Ybcf7Ljx4otO4LLTkVeCUjOCdUU&index=2

Cats 1998: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x78x981

Cats 2019 movie: https://mega.nz/#F!9ZZ2yCII!AdiRaYOMcWCzbIO7aR0fdw (only hd version out as of now, it’s a download. Has korean subtitles.)

have fun!

#rb for warsaw #cats warsaw #from the warsaw guy #wait am i the tecklenburg guy/girl now?

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Semifinals, Poll 2

#we got this #we're almost there

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

A playlist with a variety of productions (Vienna, Paris, Zurich, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Budapest, RCCL, and Various Tours):

A playlist I put together of versions that I found that either aren't on this playlist or weren't when I added them (Including Hamburg, more tours, including a German tour, and a Korean university production good enough to count):

And my favorite non-replica: Cats Tecklenburg

Where to watch Cats

I answered an ask about this earlier so here’s a masterpost including the movie as well

Cats 2016 Broadway revival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8AqwM7jOn8&list=PLXEAO5Ybcf7Ljx4otO4LLTkVeCUjOCdUU&index=2

Cats 1998: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x78x981

Cats 2019 movie: https://mega.nz/#F!9ZZ2yCII!AdiRaYOMcWCzbIO7aR0fdw (only hd version out as of now, it’s a download. Has korean subtitles.)

have fun!

#too many productions to tag #hello here's almost everything I've got #cats the musical

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

#touch choice here #went with macavity because it's the best example of the way the show tells its story #the lyrics are basically exposition with the choreography and performances telling the story #the song is really about demeter and bombalurina and their past with macavity #mistoffeless is a close second as the most fun number in the show #skimbleshanks is a close third because it's the only number where the 2019 version is as good as the stage version #the rest vary from okay to godawful but skimbleshanks is actually good #but macavity done right is cats done right #it's the number that sums up how the show works and versions that mess it up are versions that miss the point entirely #As much as I love tecklenberg i'll admit that they don't quite get it but it still functions #warsaw gets it #2019 doesn't get it at all to the point that demeter isn't even in it

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People who say 2019 cats is a crazy/weird masterpiece have never seen an actually crazy weird movie in their lives I'm so sick of 2019 cats propaganda it's not even entertaining bad it's literally completely devoid of creativity and artistry and I'm SICK of people acting like its anything more than bad acting and bad cgi the visuals aren't even that weird!! Nothing pisses me off more than someone acting like 2019 cats is anything more than a poorly made normie film. It's a "weird" film for disney fans that's it.

#cats 2019

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

reblog and put in the tags what comes up when you type "i want"

#do i want to know

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

I

Humbled

I’m humbled in the name of Jesus.

I now truly understand what it means to keep quiet, until God says to speak.

I give up on my own understanding.

From now on, I shall only use The Lords discernment.

I’m ashamed and tired of my own judgement.

We’re all human. We make mistakes, at some point God will call us to stop wasting time.

Gods kingdom needs people who are dedicated to HIS will & not our own.

We’re given free will as a test to see where our heart lies.

My heart is tired of fighting the Truth.

I give up, not on life. I give up on trying to know it all. God show me the way. Without you I am nothing.

Written by T.K ✍🏽

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Hi, I was looking through your Cats Brno tag, and your thoughts about it have really piqued my curiosity. I saw that you shared a Google drive link for it, but that’s not working anymore. Is it possible you could share it again?

I know that all your posts about it are from January, so if you’re on to something else then please don’t feel obligated to dredge anything up!

I just checked my Google Drive and it's gone. My computer didn't seem to like this one very much so I couldn't download it. I've lost access. Sorry about that. :(

#cats brno

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

Zurich Misto’s Tiny Beard:

When Misto’s makeup design has black around the jawline so it looks like stubble, reblog if you agree

Weiterlesen

#Mr Mistoffelees #so many mistos #misto stubble #cats zurich