High School Musical Brought Back the Musical Movie

I remember waiting anxiously for High School Musical to premiere on Disney Channel in 2006. It was not a very highly anticipated movie because it was "just another DCOM." However, this movie's fame blew up immensely as soon as it came out and paved the way for musical movies to come back into the scene.

After this movie was released, it became very popular for Broadway musicals to create movies, such as Hairspray or Mamma Mia!. Also, Disney Channel tried to follow up with musicals that were not nearly as popular but still in the limelight, like Camp Rock or Starstruck. High School Musical was a very large part of my childhood that I will never forget. I am obsessed with musical theatre and this just gave me a new genre to fangirl over. It became popular again for teenagers to listen to musical theatre and I finally wasn't THAT big of a loser anymore.

High School Musical was a phenomenon and  released two more movies after the first, with the third hitting the big screen. I will alwayys remember how sad I was at the end of the third movie, because it felt like a significant part of me was over. High School Musical made stars out of many people such as Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, or Ashley Tisdale. It brought new talent to the screen and was a hit of its time. I still love High School Musical and appreciate all that it has done for the musical theatre movie world.

The Fall

The Fall is a film set in 1920s L.A. in a hospital where we meet a little girl, Alexandria who has recently broken her arm while picking oranges with her family. She becomes friends with Roy, an actor and stunt double in silent films. He has recently broken his legs and they are possibly paralyzed. He starts telling Alexandria a beautiful story about love, revenge and adventure and uses this to get her to steal Morphine for him.

This film is actually based off another film called Yo Ho Ho,  a Bulgarian film where instead of a silent film actor, Roy's character is a stage actor and Alexandria's character is actually a boy and also is tricked by the Roy character to get drugs.

I've seen posts about this film for a while but have never seen it until now. I'm in love with Lee Pace, so after a bunch of Tumblr posts about it, I finally added it to my instant que.

The cinematography was phenomenal. Even though this film came out in 2006, I want them to resubmit the film and get all of the Oscars for cinematography  Lead Actor and Lead Actress. That little girl who played Alexandria broke my heart. She deeply cared for Roy and just wanted to stay with him and listen to his story. Roy is just so caught up on not being able to act and that his girlfriend has left him for the leading man that he doesn't see how much he's influencing this little girl.

As Roy's telling Alexandria the epic, it breaks the fourth wall within the film universe. At one point Alexandria sneezes and they incorporate that within the dialogue the epics' characters. You also get the narration from Roy and Alexandria's feedback. Once and a while she'll break in and say what she wants to hear from the story. It's an adorable way to play with the imagination of a five year old.

I cried. Yes, I admit it, I cried hard. This is one in a handful of movies that I have actually sobbed during. Lee Pace is amazing in this film. The colors were so vibrant and breath taking, I could just watch it again just to purely look at the color schemes. I mean, just look at Charles Darwin's fur coat (Yes, he's based off of the real Darwin which I found clever since he was still pretty controversial in the 20s). That red stands out so beautifully. Gah! I want to live in those colors!

If you ever get the chance to watch The Fall, I highly recommend it! Bring extra tissues because you will be surprised at how emotional you will get during this film.