What did you bitches think of Madonna as Evita?

Pretty much my thoughts too OP. Although I will say, persona wise, there wasn’t anyone more fit for the role. But her acting and singing were no better than the decent/serviceable range.

Couldn't sing the score. Couldn't act the script. Couldn't dance the choreography.

Vadge is a brain dead turd on two legs. She was terrible. I have hated Antonia Banderas ever since he starred in this crap.

It might be a shock but I think she did an excellent job. I’ve heard other professional vocalists singing those songs and for some unknown reasons, they did not sound as good as madge

Just for context, (for those who don't know), early on Meryl Streep was to star with Alan Pakula directing. But they had trouble getting financing (or something), and Meryl dropped out when she got pregnant....years later, it was supposed to be MIchelle Pfeiffer with Oliver Stone directing. The project went in turnaround when Pfeiffer got pregnant. .... Finally, Alan Parker was set to direct, (years after being the first director listed), and Madonna sent him a letter practically begging to be considered along with a video audition. He gave her the part! Then she discovered she was pregnant. So the bitch lied! and 6 weeks into filming when it was obvious she was pregnant and too much money had already been spent on the production, the decided they had no choice but to work around her pregnancy.

I just love that story!!

blahh

She was too old to play Eva.

She was better than I was expecting. It's her best work onscreen, for sure, and she actually has a few moments that are very good. Madonna's problem has always been that she refuses to allow herself to be vulnerable. The few times she has done it (I saw her in a play in London in which she was very good) she has been impressive. Ray of Light is also an example of Madonna allowing herself to be human and vulnerable and it's still the best album she's ever done. So she is capable, she just doesn't like to go there.

She was somewhere on a rung just below mediocre. She could have been even worse, I guess. Vocally, the part was light years beyond her range. She just doesn't have the right kind of voice, though she did her best and obviously studio magic was exerted to help. Her acting has always been middling, so she didn't shine there either. She also had the added burden of being MADONNA, whose public persona is so strongly embedded that it's pretty much impossible to forget that you're watching MADONNA when she tries to act, and with such limited acting ability she was completely unable to overcome it.

With all that said, I don't think she was that much worse than a lot of the Hollywood/pop music types who try to do musicals. Musicals are a distinct art form unto themselves and even actors who can technically sing, like the aforementioned Michelle Pfeiffer, don't have the right equipment for the job.

Michelle Pfeiifer's demo track .

She was ok, but the role belonged to Patti LuPone. Duh.

I agree with OP. She worked her ass off and managed to be somewhere in between mediocre and adequate, with a few nice moments and a few cringe-worthy ones.

But LuPone was too old and I can't think of anyone with the required name recognition who would have been better.

Even if Lupone had been young enough at the time of filming, having to see her hideous, sneering Sicilian fishwife face in close-up on the big screen would have been a terrifying prospect. Lupone has always had a face made for radio and the apperance and mannerisms of a boozed up hag.

I think she was good for the movie, if not the best possible actress for the role.

I wasn’t familiar with LuPone’s power vocals and I thought (and still think) Madonna sounds nice. By her own standards, she was very good and by average standards I’d say she was a little above average.

Michelle Pfeiffer’s demo may be a rough cut compared with Madonna’s produced vocals, but Madonna has a warmer vocal tone and I think that that brought some warmth to the role. I was 18 or 19 when the movie came out and my idea of Evita based on Madonna’s performance was that she had warmth and ambition. I’ve since listened to LuPone, and from her I get ambition and cunning. The characterizations based solely on how the lines are sung are very different to my ears.

It may be because of my age at the time, but Evita was an event movie. There was so much press leading up to it, and all of it was about Madonna. It was about how much she was made over to resemble Evita, how similar their life stories could be said to be, how hard she worked on her voice, how well she wore the clothes. The media conveyed a strong sense that Madonna worked her ass off, that this was the role of a lifetime and she not only earned it but she put her whole self into it. And I think that REALLY raised the profile of the movie and expanded the audience.

If Michelle Pfeiffer had been in it, I think it would have appealed only to theatre nerds and would be largely forgotten unless Evita makes another stage comeback or is remade as a movie.

If Meryl had been in it, it would have been a “Meryl movie,” and people who admire her would view it as another vehicle to showcase her versatility.

Instead it’s “the” Madonna movie, the one that isn’t Desperately Seeking Susan and which can be taken seriously and appreciated as the realization of a long dream of Hollywood to make the musical and Madonna to be a legit actress.

I would rate her *acting* as pretty poor. It’s hard to say because nearly every line is sung, and I think her singing is pretty good, but her ability to convey authentic emotion with her facial expression and her body language are pretty abysmal. It’s essentially pantomime. That’s the only reason I would be curious to see a real actress in the role, one whose face makes me feel something other than “how glamorous she looks on her deathbed!”

I do get the sense Madonna and the director agreed much of the movie’s appeal was supposed to have been Madonna modeling lots of retro dresses and suits.

She was mediocre. But Antonio Banderas growled through the entire musical score and made Madonna sound like Maria Callas.

Worst casting decision EVAH.

She’s a mediocre to terrible actress. The soundtrack for the film is her vocal peak. The voice lessons during that time payed off.

She doesn’t have the vocal power to make “Don’t Cry for Me” feel powerful and strong, but rather comes across as sad and fragile.

But I think her fragile delivery works well in songs like ‘Another Suitcase in Another Hall.’

They should have made it in 1982 with Julie Covington.

And her own pop star/fashionista persona + the decision to make ‘Rainbow High’ a quick-cut music video-style montage/fashion show were well matched. It’s one of her best roles because the cinematography and editing made acting a very limited part of the overall movie.

The LuPone haters are pathetic. She was made for the role, what other talent comes close (for the role)? How many Tonys do Madonna and Pfeiffer have? Half of Argentina is ethnically Sicilian. What do you look like, R13?

This was before my time—I was born halfway through 1978—and so Madonna’s Evita was my generation’s Evita.

That said, I am really impressed with this performance and watching it, I understand why Patti LuPone is the standard by which Evita players are measured.

Her 1979 “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” Tony performance on YouTube is a much better quality video, but honestly it isn’t as impressive to me. I realize it’s musical theatre and so *obviously* it’s going to be a theatrical performance...but that performance is overly theatrical/unsubtle. But “Rainbow High” demands a bravura beam of pure energy and that’s what she gives here.

My mother who remembered Evita told me that Madonna captured how the people saw Eva, that she was just what people imagined Evita to be.

Take it for what's it worth.

I actually thought she did fine - not award winning, not terrible, either.

It was one big music video. It bombed.

It's been years since I saw Evita in its entirety but I loved it for what it was - essential an anthology of 4 minute pop videos, and there's no better actor in 4 minute pop videos than Madonna. In Evita, you got the same emotion she poured into Rain, Take A Bow, Oh Father, Live To Tell and Ypu'll See.

Singing wise, her voice suited the cinema. I've seen 3 productions of Evita in theatres with different actresses and they've all been fine. Madonna's more understated performance wouldn't work in a 1500 seat theatre, and musical theatre actors would be too intense for the cinema.

The Madonna version was entertaining but I felt it could have been so much more with Patti Lupone. Lupone could have brought so many more layers to Evita and captured the character in ways Madonna did not. That being said,Madonna was OK and not as appalling to watch as she had been in her other films. I feel Pfeiffer would have been an unmitigated disaster. Banderas was fantastic and seemed to really embody his role.

Mariah Carey would have been better. Or Janet Jackson.

She sucked in Evita, which means she would have been perfect in CATS.

I demand a full-on expressionistic Kate Bush Evita experience. No nuance or subtext, just explosive raw emotion!

Janet Jackson

I thought she was very believable as Evita. It was Madonna’s best movie work by far

While LuPone is the standard, she sings the whole thing like she’s a tigress.

In London last summer, I got to see the wonderful production in Regent’s Park. That Evita was America Samantha Pauly. She was fantastic—hitting all the notes but portraying a sexier, younger, more subtle Evita

I think she was a good fit for the role. Evita as written is a two-dimensional character defined by crude ambition and self-absorption, so in a way a great actress would be wasted in the part. You do need to be a damn good singer to put across that score on stage and she never could have done it, but on the motion picture soundtrack they just used the same tricks that Madonna's producers have been using her whole career and it was fine.

She was awful. We walked out of that movie after 20 minutes.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen.

She should've stopped "acting" after Desperately Seeking Susan and stopped her pop career after, I don't know, Music?

I have never seen it. I thought she was good in Susan, Dick Tracy and League of their own. So I guess she had 4 good roles including this? Which isn't that bad. Some bad missteps- Who's that girl, shanghai surprise and Body of Evidence being 3. Although the latter she may have got away with. If had done fabulous baker boys, a role she could have been OK with, she would have had more of a career.

[quote]Mariah Carey would have been better. Or Janet Jackson.

Except Eva Peron wasn't black.

“Some bad missteps- Who's that girl, shanghai surprise and Body of Evidence being 3.”

Four. Name that accent!

It's good for what it is.. I think I saw it at least 10 times in the theater sometimes I was the only person there

Yes- haven't seen that one either! Let's play a game and say films she could have pulled off that would have established her as having credibility! I think my suggestion of Fabulous Baker Boys is a good one. What else? I think actually Basic Instinct would have been hard for her. Sharon Stone was so good in that- exciting even

Five.

what about meeeeee???

Evita May very well be my favorite work of all time. I’m very close to the show although I was just a baby when it opened on Broadway. But I fell head over heels in love with the OBC as a child and began a long infatuation with Patti LuPone.

I cut school the day Evita opened in the theaters and was at the first showing. I was on pins and needles during the Requiem, although ALW changed one note in the requiem that burns my ass.

Then came Madonna.

Do we really think her wan performance portrayed a lady who captivated an entire nation? She had no “star quality.” She over annunciates words like she’s singing with a razor blade in her mouth. She’s very drab, and the keys are lowered to match her feeble voice.

I’ll never forget people in the theater crying in her death scene. They reaaaaaly softened the hard boiled Evita and played up the victim Evita. She’s anything but a victim except a victim of her own narcissism.

There is just no “drive” in the movie like on stage. Partly Madonna’s fault, mostly Andrew Lloyd Webber’s for futzing with the score and removing all the dynamics that made it great.

They also didn’t fix the fact that Evita is NOT cinematic as it is mostly narrative. The talking about and not showing was noticed in the original broadway reviews and it is the fatal flaw of the show.

IMHO, it should have never been a movie. The show just doesn’t work on film.

As much as I can’t stand GaGa, I think she’d make a better Evita than Madonna.

I remember being shocked in the movie theater that Madonna/Eva sang “Another Suitcase in Another Hall.”

I thought, that bitch couldn’t let another actress have her shining moment, no could she. She pried this song away from the mistress because she just had to sing the whole damn score, now didn’t she. Maybe she thought it would make a good single. Who knows. But I do NOT like that change in the film.

Actually r44, giving Evita that song was one of the few changes I liked in the movie.

I didn’t know “another suitcase” wasn’t originally Eva’s song. It makes a lot of sense for character development, showing how she went from a poor country girl, to ambitious and sleeping around in the big city to determining to do more with her life.

It’s also a really nice coda later on when the mistress sings it as Eva is taking her place. It shows that Eva was competing in a city of other ambitious women and, well, it’s one of those tie-ins to Madonna’s own persona.

It’s also a vet precocious song for the mistress is only supposed to be 15. I mean how far has she been around at that age?

Eva’s supposed to be around the same age as the mistress at that time too, but you believe that Eva HAS been around the block at 15. It’s good character development and helps put a coda on the Magaldi breakup.

I love Another Suitcase...beautiful song and Madonna did it well. The movie was a snooze though and Antonio was awful. Madonna was fine.

In the movie theatre, when Antonio opened his mouth and began to sing at the camera I burst out in laughter. It was just the most ridiculous thing to me. But I got myself together quickly because I didn’t want to be knifed by a buncha homos in the dark.

Hips don’t lie

R46, it only feels like a nice coda to the Magaldi plotline because they moved it’s placement in the film to much earlier than it should be sung. In the musical, it isn’t sung by the mistress until after « I’d be surprisingly good for you. » It isn’t an end to Magaldi- that is clearly laid on in « Goodnight and Thank You. »

« Another Suitcase in the Another Hall, » while acting as breather for Che and Eva in the stage show, also show’s Eva’s ruthlessness and disregard for the collateral damage she leaves in her wake on her quest for power. We get to spend a quiet moment with one of the other girls who was trying to do the same social ladder climbing that Eva excelled at, but didn’t have the cunning and cold-hearted drive required for such machinations.

« Another Suitcase » works because Eva has just snared Peron. It should a moment of triumph for our heroine. And yet, to achieve her success, she must destroy the dreams of another.

I was a huge fan of hers in the 90’s, and even I could not have cared less about the Evita period.

They played the DCFMA remix all the time in clubs(my heyday). I remember going to see a Madonna concert and the DCFMA music started and everyone freaked out but it was just transition music

Is the DCFMA remix the "Miami remix?" Because the radio played that one all of the time.

r54

probably... it was everywhere in the late 90s

Meryl desperately wanted to play the part.

WASPy Meryl would have been an awful choice.

I think she had to be Madonna to get away with that performance. It was adequate but they’re only going to make Evita once so if another actress had delivered something that modest she would have been excoriated - like CATS the movie excoriated.

The role is for a belter. Madonna doesn’t have those pipes.

She was such shit I thought I was watching Glenn Close.

It's the best work she's ever done.

They should do a sequel -- a wizened Madonna plays the ghost of Evita come back to life, forsaking her political ambitions to instead pursue a career as a reggaeton star.

Additionally, every Eva’s voice seemed to have an edge to it. Madonna’s voice is soft. Her Eva didn’t scare anyone, in the usual sense.

I'm old enough to have seen pretty much all of the Evita's, from Paige and LuPone up to the recent revivals. London, New York, Los Angeles, Munich, Berlin...

And Madge.

Honestly, the film was a disappointment on many levels. But Madonna was fine. Always at least adequate, and sometimes very good. Not the most powerful voice, but belting songs goes over much better in live theater than across a movie screen. There really wan't a "name" actress/singer out there who was close enough to the right age for the role, and Madonna rocked those 40s-50s outfits like no one else would have.

It's exceedingly popular here to trash Madonna -fine. I was never a fan. But in Evita she did good work, and was far from the worst thing about the film. Those who revel in bitching about her performance should sit down and tell us who should have gotten the role. And then we can trash that person in true DL fashion.

The process of making a film like EVITA did her no favors in that the role is ENTIRELY her lip-synching to her own prerecorded voice (that's how musicals are made), and doing silent movie acting/reaction shots when she's not singing. If there had been some dialogue or live singing her work might've had more immediacy to it.

In her spotty-at-best filmography, it's one of the films that made money. And don't forget, with just the pipes she's got, she's still introduced two Oscar winning songs, one here and one in DICK TRACY.

Antonio ruined the film for me. His singing voice was atrocious.

r64 That's also how music videos are made. And that's why she was fine as Evita.

I went to opening day in NYC which was Christmas Day. I think it was the first time I bought tickets for a movie prior than actually going to the theater. There were many Madonnaesque and Evitaesque drag queens in the audience.

This is the best rendering I've ever heard...and I thought Madonna was perfectly cast as Evita. I enjoy it.

I can't watch this movie. A friend of mine who is a huge Madonna fanatic, bought the Maxi CD of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", complete with all the remixes. A 4 hour drive down to Columbus, OH for Pride and back, he kept emphatically begging we play this whole CD on repeat the entire time. I was ready to kill him.

r68

she does sing ALW pretty well... anyone know why didn't come over with Cats?

She got a TV gig.

R69 this never happened, stupid cunt. Nobody begs unless they are a fucking slave picking cotton on a plantation.

Her voice is perfect for the song

I'll never forget.... I was dating this guy at the time: a very masculine bodybuilder, (hyper-masculine if you get my drift), who knew everything about sports, (especially football), but practically nothing else. Including pop culture. He did enjoy musicals though, whenever I'd take him to one or throw a classic in the VCR. (I introduced him to Singin' in the Rain. He watched it 5 times within 2 days). One afternoon we were on the couch and I had The Rosie O'Donnell Show on. Her Bff Madonna came on to promote her new movie, Evita. While watching a clip of her singing, he turned to me and asked, in all sincerity, "Is Evita a musical?" He'd never heard of it! I said "yah, you wanna see it?". So we went the next week when it opened. 20 minutes into the movie, he turns to me and asks, "Is this based on a true story?"

I really miss him!

he sounds adorbs

[quote]I’ll never forget people in the theater crying in her death scene. They reaaaaaly softened the hard boiled Evita and played up the victim Evita. She’s anything but a victim except a victim of her own narcissism.

When the lyrics were written in the 70s the only two biographies available in English completely eviscerated Eva, detailing a virago that subsumed the country and destroyed Argentina.

New biographies of Eva Peron have shown a more nuanced view of her, one who loved her family dearly, whose brothers looked out for her when she went to Buenos Aires, who found success in the emerging medium of radio, like so many find jobs in emerging industries.

Moreover, Eva's Foundation was not a money laundering operation but a misguided attempt to help the poor by soaking the rich. A cross between the United Way and "mandatory redistribution of wealth." Eva worked long hours at her foundation and was shaken to find how poor the Argentine people were. (Eva's family was lower middle class at its nadir).

Moreover, it appears Peron loved her although at the end of her life, she became so unmanageable that he approved a lobotomy for her. After the operation, she just stopped eating and died a month later.

This makes the "You Must Love Me" song more contemporary and true to the facts.

Patti LuPone is brutal here, but she is no more brutal than Madonna would be, and she’s correct. Madonna is a great performer when she is being Madonna. She also is a movie killer, and she is dead behind the eyes in acting roles, and she is not an actor. It’s just reality.

Fried Fish !!!!

Dried fish, anyway.

Terrible. Lousy acting, lousy singing, and you could see her trying to remember her choreography.

Terrible.

Madonna and Antonio were good, their chemistry was hot in the Waltz scene. The problem is the length and some of the music isn't that good, IMO.

Madonna and Antonio were good, their chemistry was hot in the Waltz scene. The problem is the length and some of the music isn't that good, IMO.

[quote]R5 early on Meryl Streep was to star with Alan Pakula directing. But they had trouble getting financing (or something), and Meryl dropped out when she got pregnant....

I read she dropped out when they would not agree to give her a million dollars salary, while they were offering the male star (I think Jack Nicholson) even more than that.

It was a matter of principal.

(0oops....or, [italic]principle!)

r83

Jack Nicholson as CHE??? are you kidding?

I would think as Peron....

r86

ok... As PERON??? lol

“Eva, you are dying.”

Madonna's best roles were Desperately Seeking Susan, Truth or Dare, A League of their Own and Dangerous Game.

So Streep was originally cast but withdrew?

Who needs fucking songs.

I'm wearing TRAVILLA!

That bitch gave me chills , R68 . Couple of slips at the end ,but overall she was magnificent . And looked amazing doing it ! Those earrings are to die for !

Marie/R76 She wasn't Santa Evita. Her "unmanageable at the end" was in part trying to arm and train leftwing [italic]descamisados[/italic] with blackmarket guns bought from Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands for an insurrection in Posados against her husband's government in the name of a "true revolution." Peron was afraid of her popularity, power, and her supporters: she was a threat if only because she was a better politician than him and more obsessed as the symptoms of her cancer progressed. The Fundacion Eva Peron was not the United Way. It did good for the poor if they supported the Perons (it wasn't Social Security), but a lot of the "money, money, money" stuck to the Perons' fingers to finance the DC-6 and the Cadillacs and the Paris couture.

I've been in her office at the Ministry of Labor in BA that's maintained as a shrine and knew the neurosurgeon who did the lobotomy (supposedly for pain control but c'mon: a neurosurgeon when the patient has uterine cancer, even as it had metastasized?) near the end of his life. I have an autographed copy of his book "Peron the Man" about what a great guy Juan was. By today's standards he'd be a monster: he "operated" on a couple of political prisoners in jail in BA prior to operating on Evita as a favor to Peron. It's not that Evita was without nuance (she was more ruthless than him, for one thing) but it'll take more than sympathetic biographies to change the narrative - their version of the politics of personality brought Argentina from the peak (it was one of the richest countries in the world after WWII) to the sad point where it is now.

[italic]I came from the people, they need to adore me

So Christian Dior me from my head to my toes

I need to be dazzling, I want to be rainbow high

They must have excitement, and so must I[/italic]

I think Madonna was very good in the first half of the movie. She’s a cold blooded cutthroat like Evita was.

I honestly might have walked out of the theater near the end, though. It was taking her SO LONG to die, and she wasn’t up to the challenge, dramatically.

R97 while I generally liked You Must Love Me, it did extend the dying much to long, they needed to streamline if they were adding a song there.

r96

I didn't say she was Santa Evita. Just the view that existed of her when the lyrics were written was distorted; that her true character was more nuanced. Most of the money from the foundation ([italic]you would have thought it should have been a voluntary cause[/italic]) was expropriated from the moneyed classes and the Perons kept quite a bit for themselves. But it was not a money laundering operation as the original lyrics had us believe.

Yes - by unmanageable I meant she was equipping radical [italic]descamisados[/italic] for armed insurrection. I know all about that. At any rate, she quite mad by then. The cancer treatment was primitive and she was (so she thought) just beginning to make changes to society. Her frustration must have been intense.

So you knew the surgeon who performed the lobotomy - do tell us what you know. Please....

Was there anything written about what lyrics tweaking, or changing up of the song sequencing were done differently between the original score and the movie?

the only reason she came close to pulling it off is because the movie was basically a long form music video- and videos were something she was very good at. When called upon to actually act minus the music , dancing and sets she just plain stunk.

People love to hate on Madonna, becaus she's Madonna. Personally. I thought she was terrific. Yes, she was no Lupone...but Patti was to old at this point to do the film and not a big enough screen name. However, she did an impressive job and doesn't deserve all the negative feedback

I think they should have had a younger actress play Evita when she meets Migaldi, at least. Madonna trying to pass for a teenager is laughable.

Madonna is a terrible actress because she’s incapable of being vulnerable. That seems to be something essential to good acting. Her brittleness served her in this role, though.

I don't know how you can consider her dancing bad in this movie. Her dancing in the Buenos Aires song was spectacular. And her waltz with Che had great chemistry. Those were the only time she even danced in the movie.

I don't understand why they changed Eva's outfit for DCFMA. That white sequined Christian Dior dress was divine.

I went to see it expecting her to be terrible and walked out thinking she was actually quite good. Not great, but she certainly didn't embarrass herself. And, given her vocal limitations, I thought she sang most of the songs effectively. It isn't an easy score to sing.

Lupone is no great shakes as an actress either. I saw her on stage in GYPSY and while her Rose's Turn was thrilling, the rest of the role was unimpressive. Besides, Lupone is like Merman: too big for the screen. No producer would EVER has cast her in the movie, so it's a moot point.

Madonna and Evita had very similar levels of ambition and both rose to the top of their chosen professions. Madonna did an excellent job and her voice never sounded better. The real question is would Evita have been as giid in the role of Madonna

Patti LuPone was robbed.Madonna is compelling on stage but not good on camera.

[Quote] that her true character was more nuanced.

And you supported that argument with some spiel about "she loved her family, her dog, her dry cleaner" etc.

R99 Initially, that the surgery wasn't successful - Eva died a month later, basically shutting down and refusing to eat - so presumably and with what facilities she had left, his patient must have felt used or defeated or both by Peron in her last months but what, if anything, was she feeling by then? Later, much later, he felt he'd been used as a pawn in Argentine politics. He was haunted by it; the whole episode was a blot on his career and he knew it. He had heard of the 1976 album version of the show, then thought of as a sort of rock opera, which was a jumping-off point to my hearing him reminisce. Before he died in 1978 he'd given me a copy of the self-published book he'd written about the Perons (Peron the Man/Peron El Hombre) and asked if I knew of anyone else who wanted a copy - he had hundreds of unsold copies in boxes in his basement. It came out around the time Peron was deposed in 1955 so it wasn't a best-seller.

The doctor's name was James Poppen and he is recognized as one of the greatest neurosurgeons of the 20th century. When he performed the procedure, prefrontal lobotomy was considered an advance in the treatment of intractable pain. In retrospect we can see that even then it was barbaric no matter how skillfully performed. It was thought to be a suitable alternative to aggressive opiate treatment for pain as doctors were afraid their patients would become addicted to morphine or other opiates. (If I could roll my eyes here I would.) The story is discussed in a NYT (12/19/11) essay entitled "When Lobotomy Was Seen as Advanced" by Barron H. Lerner, M.D.

Lerner's essay was in response to research by Dr. Daniel Nijensohn, an associate clinical professor of neurosurgery at Yale Medical School and summarized below.

The unabashed bitchiness of R77 is pretty awesome. Patti has a very definite opinion on the subject of Madonna as Evita. She has her Madonna as Evita boundaries. I especially love that as she digs her nails deeper into her rant I felt as though it's a rant that she's done/performed in different rooms at different times since the movie came out.

Patti LuPone mentions meeting the daughter of Evita's embalmer. She claims the embalmer has written a book about the Perons... Perhaps it was actually the lobotomist to whom she's referring.

Now I can get shy and tongue tied but even so, I have a difficult time imagining just how to politely yet usefully navigate a conversation with Eva Peron’s embalmer.

Todd in the Shadows has a YouTube channel based mostly on music, but one of his series is reviewing Madonna's movie career. He's pretty much unimpressed most of the time, but I think fair in his approach. This is his video on Evita:

Incidentally, I'm currently listening to the original concept album for the first time ever. Colm Wilkinson always irritates me for some reason. He pronounces his vowels strangely and whenever I've seen him on stage he's been smirking his way through his roles (ie as Valjean) and I can't unsee him doing that. He's also got all these recurring lines about insecticide which I guess is meant to be funny, but is just weird. Glad they got rid of that. Also Barbara Dickson is doing some weird pronunciations of her own ("where am I goowwing to?").

Very interesting to see what they had originally and removed or altered for the stage show though.

Boring.

PUTA!

La Lupone is the one. Madge was mediocre at best.