Eligibility questions about the Music genre..
Is the IMDB tag sufficient? Would concert movies, MTV unplugged sessions, documentaries, biopics about musicians/singers, long music videos directed by famous directors all be eligible?
As with all of these genres it is going to be tough on how to whittle them down, but in the case of those specifics, mostly no. If you are talking about Musicals with a capital M, that is a genre that is rooted in the theatre and can be loosely defined as movies consisting of a plot integrating musical numbers. In the Broadway sense this also almost always means that characters express themselves in song and dance, and when they do so it is often like a Shakespearean soliloquy where thoughts are spoken for the benefit of the audience but not the other characters on stage. Or if the entire town or room is taking part in the number, no conscious acknowledgment is made that things are being expressed musically.
A concert or a documentary would not be Musicals with a capital M. That seems pretty obvious. The tougher distinction would be biopics and movies about musicians. If you wanted to be strict I suppose a movie like
Bohemian Rhapsody would not count as a Musical, but
Rocketman would. All of the numbers in
Bohemian Rhapsody are preformed on stages and in studios. In
Rocketman many of the songs are performed as fantasies. But unlike documentaries and concert films versus the Musical with a capital M, I suspect we could all agree that when comparing movies like
Bohemian Rhapsody and
Rocketman, in the long run it is a distinction without a difference. At least for the purposes of one of our lists. Which would mean biopics that are dramas about musicians such as
Coal Miner's Daughter and
Walk the Line and
Respect and
Amadeus can be considered Musicals, and then of course that means those kinds of movies about fictitious musicians also count, like
That Thing You Do and
Almost Famous and
A Star is Born and
Crazy Heart.
And that should certainly increase participation in the list site wide. If you think Musicals with a capital M are stupid you can still fill your ballot with movies where absolutely nobody starts singing and dancing unless they are on a stage or writing a song somewhere. And that greatly dilutes the list since somebody like that won't even give the obvious, undisputed classics of the genre a chance, which means those who do love and appreciate the form and are more strict in their definitions have little to no shot of seeing more obscure Musicals make it. Which is going to be the problem with all of the remaining genres being discussed.
Once you allow the definition to be broadened what you have at the end isn't really the genre anymore anyway, so why bother? As a proper cinemaniac I would much rather have twenty or thirty people well-versed and passionate about a genre debate and make a list within agreed upon parameters than those thirty people plus another forty or fifty who at heart kind of hate that genre but will begrudgingly participate if you let them bring in things that kinda sorta maybe-ish fit if you squint.
But...here we are. Bring on the poll.
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