I’m only at the 40 minute mark but wanted to take a moment to toss in a quick comment, after reading someone else’s grumble about the length. The bulk of your subscribers enjoy the full-scale in-depth analyses and I suspect most of us see no point in someone posting such a remark, especially because it seemed to include a gratuitous smack down. I rather enjoyed your awesomely genteel version of “then take your business elsewhere” reply. Did you notice, when Geoff first gets up and walks a bit, his fingers seem to “spider walk” along the edge of the piano. It’s just a lovely bit of added creepiness from a character who, after all, specializes in “creepy.” I was reading a bit on the movie and Danny Elfman, the composer of all the music, also sings all of Jack’s bits. He wanted to play Jack’s speaking voice but the article just said it didn’t work right, so Chris Sarandon does that part. Also, your speechless dumbfounded look at the end of the first watching looked exactly like Mortius’ meltdown. I love it.
Some fun Jack's Lament (my very FAVORITE video Geoff's done) facts: Most of the pumpkins used in the video belong to the Castelluccis (one of the large pumpkin stacks belongs to PattyCake Productions). The tombstones belong to PCP. Geoff found that amazing moon light on Amazon. The video shoot piano was, once again, out of tune. The scene at the end, intended to give a bit of hope after such a somber song, was originally meant to have the present Geoff had in White Christmas to suddenly appear before Jack, but they couldn't find it. While Kathy was talking to Tony about it, he said "Oh, we have a snow machine" and thus, the credits scene was born. Zero was not in the cut of the video released to Patreon, and Jack's eyes turned red rather than having the pumpkins in them. Geoff has merch on his website with the Jack's Lament artwork on it.
Hola desde Argentina!!!... Cómo siempre un placer el poder disfrutar tus reacciones y cada explicación es fenomenal!!! Muchas gracias por enseñarnos los pequeños detalles de cada obra maestra de Geoff y Voiceplay a los que adoro!!! Un abrazo a la distancia ❤
Thanks so much for acknowledging that perfect finishing touch of the snowfall in the credits of Jack's Lament! Villains like Frollo are necessary, IMO, not despite but _because_ of how uncomfortable and horrified they make us feel. Because evil is not inhuman. To distance ourselves from that reality, and to put humanity on a pedestal and equate it with goodness, is dangerous. It invites us to dismiss our own capacity for monstrous acts. Not everyone is capable of Frollo's behavior, of course (and thank goodness for that!) but none of us is so pure and irreproachable that we're in a position to treat him as some alien species with whom we share nothing in common, either. A fact that _Hunchback_ drives home to great effect through the character, whose evil is fueled by that pride in a moral superiority over others that exists only in his own mind. That seeming dichotomy between his 'light' and 'dark' sides is so very treacherous and deceptive--his faith and virtue were never anything but empty facades overlying his power-hungry violence, manipulation and bigotry. But you know plenty of his fellow Parisians were taken in by it, not just poor Quasimodo. I've been going on like the proverbial broken record in the comments to reactions for this one about the words to the Confietor ("mea maxima culpa") and what a brilliant backdrop they make to Frollo's insistence that none of this is his fault, because so much of the song's depth and power comes from that contrast. I'm absolutely delighted that you recognized and commented on it!
Geoff was resistant to even doing Hellfire for so very long. I can only assume it was due to the uncomfortable subject matter. I am not sure who finally talked him into doing the performance. But once he agreed, he put his full talent into the character.
Enjoyed your silly intro. Laughed at how far you jumped at the jump scare. Appreciated your repetition of the term 'simplicity' during Jack's Lament as each element that is there stands out so clearly and feels as though that's exactly what the moment needed and nothing more. Laughed again when you called Geoff a cerberus. 😂 "'teleporting speedster thing" has got to be a phrase I didn't expect to ever hear in a lifetime, but it worked! One thing I'm grateful for in your videos is how you use the text blurbs to not only insert information that you missed expressing in the moment of recording, but that you also take the time to address things that may not be quite right in your video, audio or spoken words, I appreciate the quality control there.
I am consistently enthralled by how your brain works. I love the long format and how much you are able to really delve into all the details i dont catch on my own after many viewings/listenings. You are insightful quirky funny and still compassionate and real. Youre a true gem!
These two videos are a great balance. In Jack's Lament we express the duality of the fictional character villan. In Hellfire we express the duality of human villans.
Wow, that was an ambitious undertaking! No wonder you needed a lie down after it! Both covers were so fantastic, each in their own way, and so packed with so many visual and aural details; I'm glad you sifted through all the little gems and articulated so many of the reasons I love both of these songs (and helped me understand exactly why I like them). In my opinion Jack's Lament is the best all-around video Geoff has done (squeaking past I See Fire), and Hellfire is way up there for VP as well (way too many contenders for favorites in their catalog--I basically now think of my favorite VoicePlay as "2023" since this has been such a peak year for them). An impressive finale to your month of (extended) Halloween reactions!
I love Geoff's arrangement and performance of "Jack's Lament" because it shows off his range in timbre and acting and not just pitch (and I think your analysis is the first I've seen that comments on the harmonies provided by the instrumentation). And Layne's arrangement of "Hellfire" is just ~chef's kiss~. I don't remember any other cover that includes the dialog with the guard, and I've seen some reactors complain about that, but I think it's a brilliant trigger for pushing Frolllo over the edge.
My favorite thing about this arrangement of Hellfire is actually the background vocals. The ecclesial Latin and Greek keep up a narrative of penitence, awareness of fault, and begging forgiveness that self-righteous Frollo entirely misses in his heap of awfulness. So ironic that gentle, genuinely good-guy Geoff has such a *perfect* voice to sing the villain here; I know it’s hard for him to sing this role for the same reasons it hard for a lot of us to listen to these verses.
Since you brought up the musical theatre corollaries for Hellfire, would you ever consider analysing any of the stage version of Hunchback, where Patrick Page plays a DELIGHTFULLY WICKED Frollo? The entirety of it is available on youtube. Also, re: Voiceplay's arrangement... Something that struck me the first time I watched this, and continues to resonate is J. None's verse, but not for the reason you might think. If you listen to it, you can hear big gasping audible breaths between his phrases. (Protect me Maria breath don't let this siren cast her spell breath etc) Not only is this not something J needs to do to support his singing here, as he's in the sweet spot of his range, but its not something Voiceplay typically leaves in an audio mix. That's when I realized. Frollo is desperate, pleading. He's coming undone due to his temptation. Of course the singing isn't smooth and polished. Think about the last time you begged with someone for something, if even just to listen to you in conversation. So much meticulous care in this arrangement, and the final mix.
Remember: musicians make more money from merch than Spotify or RUclips plays. I recently saw one musician pointing out "one shirt makes us more than 10,000 Spotify plays" and that's just horrible.
I think the reason that Frollo is what seems to be the most evil of the Disney Villains is because he is purely human. There is the uncomfortable recognition that his actions are totally within the remit of many (sadly). And there are no ‘mystical/magical’ monster excuses for his failings.
I've been watching you since i discovered your first Voiceplay reaction, and I wanted to say two things. First, watching you now as compared to then shows just how very far you've come as a reactor/analyser, as you've relaxed into knowing your audience and becoming more comfortable with holding to the line of how and when and what you want to present. It's one of my favourite things to watch on my journeys with different creators, and you're no exception! Second, however, and more directly relevant to *this* video... Thank you for addressing the very upsetting themes in Hellfire. I have truly loved everything from Voiceplay, and musically this is no exception, but I have been disappointed in them, and in the whole of the reactor community, for not taking a moment at all to even begin to address the darkness inherent in the song. Not just of Frolo as a character, which a couple have hit on, but i think you're only the fourth? of the twenty or so reactors I watch to do so. But you're the very first to address the racism especially, along with the misogyny, and just plain actual evil encapsulated and underscored in this song. The lyrics literally contain a racial slur multiple times and no one even thought to at least even mention 'hey, that's a little mesed up'. It's excellent music, and excellent reaction and breakdown despite the content. So thank you for that. And thank you for your acknowledgement of the harms this song could perpetuate being spread about without the warning you attached to it.
Someone on another reaction pointed out something that I have now noticed every time I've seen this video. Eli's "It's not my fault!" section goes up. Then Cesar matches his notes and takes it down...where then J. None matches Cesar's low note and takes it lower. So Eli starts high, it transitions through Cesar down to J. and then Geoff takes it into the basement. The descent from distress through recognition of how wrong he is and into then justifying it and shifting the blame to HER.
I want to deeply thank you for your acknowledgement of the g-slur as a slur and a word whose usage is part of what brands Frollo as the kind of villian he is. I have seen other reactors talk about the misogyny but I think you are the only one who spoke about the language. Thank you.
I'm glad you decided not to put these two off until next year. Extending the Halloween theme an extra week is well worth it when VoicePlay and Geoff put out their annual holiday themed material. Geoff and Cathy really outdid themselves with this. I agree with your comments on Hellfire. I don't like the song but the performance is so good it's hard to turn away, and I always want to know what you will have to say about their work.
My apologies if this has already been stated elsewhere in another comment but in Hellfire, they use the Latin phrases from the Confiteor which is the a penitential prayer said at the beginning of the Roman Catholic Mass. The lines are: "Congitatione, verbo, opere et omissione" which means "in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do". Thus, according to Genius Lyrics, "the way Menken writes it puts emphasis on the sins of thought he has committed, specifically implying lustful thoughts given the lines that follow. The final bit of Latin before the chorus starts references the lies and sinful actions of Frollo". Also, Eli actually voices the guard, Tony was just used for the video so they could have a physical person there. Also also, to your point about the word gypsy. Obviously the word is derogatory today but at the time the original piece was written by Victor Hugo, I do not believe (I very well could be wrong) the word was as derogatory. It obviously was not a very nice way to describe people but I do not believe it was as taboo to say as it is now. It's like the N word. That word is most assuredly not appropriate to use today however, when books like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were written, it was a common phrase. Albeit a nasty one but a common phrase all the same
One obvious limitation to the production that stood out to me, is the jump cut from Geoff with his head in its normal position, to Geoff with his head on his hand, stationary. A full Hollywood-level production would've let us watch him taking his head off his shoulders in realtime while singing, and I'm sure Geoff _thought_ of that; presumably he rejected it as too difficult to fully realize in a convincing way on the budget he's working with. Yeah, pretty much all words of Classical (Greek or Latin) origin would've had a K wherever we have a C. Otherwise it would be spelled with S. The history of the letter C is an interesting little piece of the history of our alphabet and orthography more generally, although my personal favorite is the story of upsilon diverging into U, V, W, and Y. The character who is "speaking" in Hellfire is clearly the villain; I think it is reasonable to assume that the people who wrote the song don't necessarily share all of his views. Granted, Frollo is an especially dark villain, partly because his views are unnervingly similar to those of some well-known real-world villains (unlike, say, Cruella, who wants to skin puppies pretty much just because children love them, which is cartoonish and absurd). I've never really studied a language with an ablative case, so I can't tell you anything specific about it. I can say that the Classical languages (Greek in particular, but I think also Latin) often used the cases for more than just their most common/obvious meaning. For example, grammar books will usually tell you that the dative case in Greek is used to express indirect objects, and yes, that _is_ how indirect objects are expressed, but in practice the dative shows up more often being used to indicate a reason or cause. It's possible there could be something similar going on with the Latin ablative here, but I don't actually know Latin beyond the standard smattering of well-known words and phrases that routinely show up in English-language texts.
Finally found the time to watch this - brilliant reactanalysis, thanks! And even if your idea about the guard obscuring certain of the voices in Frollo's head didn't quite work, it was fascinating to see inside _your_ head...
I’d not seen Disney’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ before listening to this but I was struck by how reminiscent this theme is of the Scarpia aria “Va, Tosca” by Puccini in which a powerful religious man blames the woman he targets for his fall from grace to the backing of religious chanting. Very powerful renditions of the first rule of misogyny in both pieces.
I admit, I'd been very much hoping you'd get to these even though I knew your to-do list was already so long! Thank you for the fascinating analysis as always. (Also: There are four lights!)
Oh, and after reading someone else's comment, I'll chime in with the hope that you do not shorten your videos. Any time I see you've posted a new VP or Geoff video, I know I'm in for a good time for forty-five-minutes-to-an-hour, and if I have to wait to watch it until my day off, that's just longer to happily anticipate.
Thank you for how you addressed the problematic language and themes. Your respect for them, and consideration of them in the following analysis, helped me to feel like I better understand why this song was used by Disney in the first place. I can't think of anything else that would truly demonstrate how despicable Frollo is. I've had mixed feelings about VP doing a cover of it (their rendition is amazing, more just concerned with the fact of it happening at all), and I think you've helped me be more okay with it. At the start of the song, Frollo seems to be a human going through a fairly relatable emotion. Then, over the course of the song it becomes exceedingly clear how a person can take that emotion to extremes in the name of getting what they want. The scariest thing about all of this is that it's very real, and it happens more than any of us want to think about.
I don't know if I'm the only one taking this view on the lighting in Hellfire (and the album art), but I see it as a Dante-esque reference of the orange and blue as the hot and cold fires of hell. And I agree, Jack's Lament is an 11 or 12. Absolute brilliance.
YES. The first time I heard Hellfire by VoicePlay it sounded so passionate that it made me think it was a totally unsuitable song for a Disney film! Well done you guys for your interpretation! He is the nastiest creepiest of villains.
It is certainly a very difficult, unsettling and creepy song. I think it was a very brave move on Disney's part to put something so hateable into a movie, and I don't really know where I sit on "was it a good decision," if I'm honest. They certainly make it very clear that Frollo is a truly awful person, but goodness it's hard to sit through, and that's spoken as someone who saw that film for the first time aged something over 25... VP certainly did a phenomenal job with it though.
you always have some of the most detailed analyses of the music and arrangement and i love it!!!! other reactors are great to watch for vocal analysis and you address the other aspect of things, so thank you :) also, watch geoff’s hands in jacks lament, and in hellfire when geoff says “god has mercy on her, god have mercy on me”, her does a breathy pause before “her” as if trying to get the word out, and the “me” is so strong. such difference at the end of the same sentence really shows frollo and is great story telling. btw, in the original book, esmeralda was an actual gypsy
Geoff and Kathy outdid themselves with Jack's Lamet. Geoff really, really likes Halloween. He used it to excuse buying lots of new things like the pumpkin stack, single pumpkins, fencing, headstones, spooky trees, and that moon. They did fill in with the pillar and a few other things from Patty Cakes. He had to take everything home but the moon that he donated to Patty Cake. Geoff isn't fond of this Hell Fire song so Layne made Geoff lead. Good choice as Geoff has the perfect voice to be the vile and evil Minister Frollo.
This was a joy to watch, both your reactions and your insights. Thank you for putting time stamps in your videos. It makes rewatching the reaction sections easier.
Love that you mentioned that little quirk in the beginning of hellfire, when Frollo is SO sure about his rightiousness (or not?) LOVED your reaction on both songs - and I have watched a lot... you pointed out more than others! Very good! Please don't hesitate to stop every two seconds if necessary. An with Geoff & VP it IS necessary... very often. 🎉😂❤
Well, Guy F day, Voiceplay released another firework. And, it is actually an older Irish song called Whiskey in the Jar. As to these two? You are going to be utterly melted down by the time you finish these.
The bare necessities was the first music video Geoff released when he started his channel. He also has several narrations from several books & poems on his you tube channel i think you might like. I love his & Voiceplays versatiliy shows thay'er not afraid to use a wide variety of settings for their videos. Love your humor & reactions. Ive watched several of them. and tonight i became a new sub to your channel see ta soon❤😊
To me, Geoff is sort of a Rumpelstiltskin, evil character, and everything he touches turns to gold! 🤯 Watching you go speechless at the end of Jack's Lament was priceless! I still need to go thru the rest of it, I'm sure it will be as enjoyable! Thanks, David for such an insightful analysis! 😍
David, First thank you for reacting to both in 1 video and second for allowing me to geek out for almost an hour and a half. I loved every second of your analysis. Also, the intro was fantastic lol. Thank you, Thank you ❤❤
I was about to go to bed, when I saw this video and just had to watch it immediately 😅 I absolutely love both covers and your reactions to them. I think it´s pretty funny, that in Jack´s Lament we get the typical "come on" moment (kind of), by Geoff patting his leg to call for Zero 🤣
Interesting shirt. Thanks for reminding me of V. I'll be digging that out - my favorite yearly November movie. I love both Geoff's solo Jack's Lament and the incredible Hellfire. This one I found stunning, evil, mesmerizing, and utterly unforgettable. Love J and Cesar's duet line "the sun caught in her raven hair". Cesar's incredible air guitar with the soaring vocals. Layne knocked it out of the park with "Burn it" and then all the rest of the vocal percussion. Eli and Geoff carried so much of this, Eli with a lot of the evil, Geoff with some but conflicted. Tony Wakim was the guard that came in - I heard Eli did the voicing. Geoff has done monsters before, but he didn't want to do this one. Layne wouldn't hear of it. Jack's Lament is hauntingly beautiful, and the first line could not be truer, he also speaks of being tired of the same old things (How long has he been there?) Most of the Halloween props came from Geoff and Kathy's home and yard. Love the makeup Rick Underwood did on face, hands, and ribcage. When he reached out to the moon, it made me think of the sheer number of people that suggest Geoff is actually an alien. Loved watching Kathy animating Zero, the ghost dog. The one has bumped out Geoff's others out of first place. It is perfect. VoicePlay dropped a new one today: Whiskey in the Jar. And you outdid yourself on this reaction/analysis.
You missed a tiny detail on Jack’s Lament. A reused prop. 😊 The stack of pumpkins in the center of the pumpkin pile for “This is Halloween” appear here too. They’re to the far left on the jumps scare scene. There’s a second such stack broken up on the right.
Rough one, eh? Two videos that leaves one speechless...even if you did spend quite awhile afterward telling us what you loved about it. Lol. If this is you speechless I would hate to hear you chatty. Lol. I tease, of course. This reaction was, as always, a lot of fun. The two pieces were amazingly well done. Not a whole lot more that needs to be said. Catch you in the next one, sir.
I thoroughly enjoyed your analysis! You pretty much mirrored my reactions for Jack's Lament and I absolutely agree with the brilliance of both arrangements and executions!
Hey David, I wanted to say how much I appreciate the time and effort you put into your analysis. For me at least, I don’t find the length off putting, but rather I look forward to it knowing the detail you go into. I enjoy being able to geek out with you. Looking forward to the next one 😁
Great reactions. Enjoyed start to finish!! Yes all of it!! Well done and Voiceplay and Geoff separately are just insanely talented. They've raised their own bar and taken it up to a whole other level. Amazing!!
I think the two lower blue lights are supposed to be the blue part of the flame that the Frollo is staring into. The four higher orange ones are the upper part of the fireplace or the raging hellfire/lust.
Yay bonus double Halloween reaction! 😍 Very enjoyable and interesting to hear your reaction and analyses, and thank you for all your videos over the last month.
Thank you so much for this David !!!! I enjoyed every minute of it. Most reactors keep it very short and don’t go into every single detail. I am no professional so I love to get the impressions and analysis’ of you and Elizabeth for example. Waiting for the next one
Great job. The piano you hear is not the piano he’s playing. The piano you see is trash sounding. He’s playing the piano from Til then that they searched high and low to find one he liked the tone of. ETA yes that piano you see is haunted or at least sounds like it 😅😅😅. It has been moved had the legs put on wrong then changed to the correct way. 😅😅
Great job David!! I absolutely enjoyed your reactions to these two songs!! Loved that you discovered so many details and insights that I didn't pick up when I checked them out. Thank you for another great reaction and analysis and looking forward to more!!
I also think that modern perspectives cannot be applied to historical sources. The actual novel related a character that was consistent with the time period. That said, Frollo is a self righteous person as opposed to a truly righteous person (holy and pure).
Incredible reaction and analysis of two amazing songs. Jack’s Lament was always my favorite song of Nightmare before Christmas. I love the wistfulness that is present in at least part of the song. He pulled out all the stops when it came to acting in this one. I don’t know why but I particularly like his finger walking across the piano, and that sad little slump when he’s Mr. Unlucky. He is an amazing storyteller. I had not heard the song Hellfire until they covered it in ACA Disney villains. So I went to watch the movie and absolutely hated it. It still bothers me. I always thought that Frollo was a one dimensional twisted evil man in that movie. I did not see any humanity in him. But in this version you can see and hear his struggle. In the beginning, you can see furloughs torment. Just after Layne says “burn it”, Geoff sings “the fire within my skin” and he’s staring at his hands like he’s as if he is confused by his mania. And then that descent into madness begins. And at the end he is truly consumed.🔥🔥🔥 In the beginning, the BGVs in that choral portion (dum dum dum) sounds like church bells tolling. It makes Frollo even more detestable. There is so much to unpack in this. I had to listen over a dozen times before I heard some of the details like Geoff’s arpeggios(?) while J is singing. And when the guard is telling Frollo that she has gone, you can hear the BGV’s’s singing “gyp-sy es-caped”.
I love your analyses! I always have so many thoughts while watching, but they are too many so I have forgotten them all by the end of the video when I want to write a comment😊. I am always very glad for the in depth analyses you give us, thank you for this one!
Thank you for bringing so much of your music analysis into this. I love great music yet have no music training and have learned greatly through this process.
I knew these would be awesome reactions!! Was excited and pleased that we got both at the same time!!! Well deserved lie down ;-) Thanks David!! I don't know if you're a patreon of Geoff's but ... the demonstration of that particular piano is hilarious 😄😁😆
I did not expect to stay in this video almost 1,5 hours till the end, but I did. Great reaction and analysis. 👍 I don't know why Disney made this movie at all, but compared to the original, the novel by Victor Hugo (Notre Dame de Paris, 1482), the Disney movie is already toned down. Not just because the novel has no happy end (for none of the main characters), all male characters are selfish, just seeking for their own advantage. No idols, no heros, just people you would not like to meet.
God I adore long reactions, this has been a joy. I’m always so excited every second for how you’ll react to each piece of these songs. I’m so glad I found your channel. I had to hunt down the reaction to these two songs immediately.
In Hellfire, Tony is the body of the guard as he was at PattyCake Productions that day. The guard is voiced by Eli. I always read the other four voices as Frollo's inner thoughts, much the same way the gargoyles are Quasimodo's inner voices in the film.
Great reaction! I love your detailed analysis, even though I sometimes have to break it into several viewing sessions. I always learn so much, and it helps me understand why something hits me the way that it does. I agree with Hellfire being problematic. Geoff resisted doing it for a long time, but when he was outvoted in the group he put on his professional pants and did a heck of a job, as he always does. Like with Sweeney Todd, I don't understand the continued popularity of listening to Frollo's meltdown but I guess I'm in the minority. Danny Elfman is a brilliant composer and adequate singer. Geoff was so good at conveying Jack's emotions and the many facets of his personality. Rick was so good with the makeup it took poor Geoff a couple days to wash it all off. It's funny that Layne and Tony went through so much to acquire that old, out of tune baby grand piano but Geoff got to use it first (three times now, with his two new shorts) before Pattycake did. But watch out ... the Halloween video Pattycake planned for this year but had to postpone until next year, should be great. It was why they got this piano.
About Jack's Lament - at least of half of the decorations/props were Geoff and Kathy's. They purchased the pumpkin tower, and when they got to PattyCake, Layne said, we already have that. So more pumpkins all around. Geoff wanted that hopeful ending, but it was not in the song, so he put it in the outro. He wanted to have the wrapped gift from last year's White Christmas, but they couldn't find it. Layne said, well, we have a snow machine..... problem solved. About Hellfire. I had never heard it and was absolutely mesmerized by it. I've listened to it countless times. Geoff did not want to do it; I think because of the pure evil in Frollo's character. Your disclaimers were totally unnecessary, no one would have thought you harbored any racist or misogynist feelings of any kind. My family is from a portion of Hungary that is now in Romania, my grandmother was always adamant that our family were not gypsies. That being said, would you change Victor Hugo's novel? No. Also, no reason to change the song. My opinion (which is always right). Love your double features, I am here every time you react to Geoff and/or Voiceplay!
Re: gypsy. The story this play was based on was written in the 19th century. The phrase "gypsy" only became derogatory at the end of 20th century. Don't judge previous generations by today's standards.
I’m certainly not attempting to do that. But I am recognising that it is today’s audience watching, and not many know the original etymology - plus it is not a word to thoughtlessly add into a modern vocabulary. Today’s standards do apply to today’s speech, and the words of previous generations are not necessarily appropriate to use today.
Keep it up David I really enjoy your reactions and analysis. You enlighten the musicality and give me and even more appreciation for them than I already have.❤ I did think that was possible.
Thanks for your reaction 🙂 I would really be interested in your reaction/analysis to Dan Vasc's version of "Gethsemane" (Jesus Christ superstar)... it's an amazing cover!
The piano you see in the video is woefully out of tune. Of course, the one you actually hear is fine. I love the way he stoops playing and the piano keeps going.
I don't know whether someone else has mentioned that Geoff always said he wouldn't play Frollo. And who can blame him? But this was Layne's arrangement and no doubt Geoff had to do what he was told. As per usual. :) Apparently it's : celesta /sɪˈlɛstə/ or celeste /sɪˈlɛst/. I'm not sure i follow you comments about the use of gypsy girl. Until fairly recently the word was in common use as a description of Romany or really any travelling folk. In the novel the people who took the baby who becomes Esemeralda are referred to as Gypsies.
I’m only at the 40 minute mark but wanted to take a moment to toss in a quick comment, after reading someone else’s grumble about the length. The bulk of your subscribers enjoy the full-scale in-depth analyses and I suspect most of us see no point in someone posting such a remark, especially because it seemed to include a gratuitous smack down. I rather enjoyed your awesomely genteel version of “then take your business elsewhere” reply.
Did you notice, when Geoff first gets up and walks a bit, his fingers seem to “spider walk” along the edge of the piano. It’s just a lovely bit of added creepiness from a character who, after all, specializes in “creepy.”
I was reading a bit on the movie and Danny Elfman, the composer of all the music, also sings all of Jack’s bits. He wanted to play Jack’s speaking voice but the article just said it didn’t work right, so Chris Sarandon does that part.
Also, your speechless dumbfounded look at the end of the first watching looked exactly like Mortius’ meltdown. I love it.
Some fun Jack's Lament (my very FAVORITE video Geoff's done) facts: Most of the pumpkins used in the video belong to the Castelluccis (one of the large pumpkin stacks belongs to PattyCake Productions). The tombstones belong to PCP. Geoff found that amazing moon light on Amazon. The video shoot piano was, once again, out of tune. The scene at the end, intended to give a bit of hope after such a somber song, was originally meant to have the present Geoff had in White Christmas to suddenly appear before Jack, but they couldn't find it. While Kathy was talking to Tony about it, he said "Oh, we have a snow machine" and thus, the credits scene was born. Zero was not in the cut of the video released to Patreon, and Jack's eyes turned red rather than having the pumpkins in them. Geoff has merch on his website with the Jack's Lament artwork on it.
Its been such a pleasure to see you improve as a host, your reactions/analyses only get funnier and more insightful. Thanks David!
Thank you so much - that is incredible kind of you, and means an awful lot. :-)
Hola desde Argentina!!!... Cómo siempre un placer el poder disfrutar tus reacciones y cada explicación es fenomenal!!! Muchas gracias por enseñarnos los pequeños detalles de cada obra maestra de Geoff y Voiceplay a los que adoro!!! Un abrazo a la distancia ❤
Thanks so much for acknowledging that perfect finishing touch of the snowfall in the credits of Jack's Lament!
Villains like Frollo are necessary, IMO, not despite but _because_ of how uncomfortable and horrified they make us feel. Because evil is not inhuman. To distance ourselves from that reality, and to put humanity on a pedestal and equate it with goodness, is dangerous. It invites us to dismiss our own capacity for monstrous acts.
Not everyone is capable of Frollo's behavior, of course (and thank goodness for that!) but none of us is so pure and irreproachable that we're in a position to treat him as some alien species with whom we share nothing in common, either. A fact that _Hunchback_ drives home to great effect through the character, whose evil is fueled by that pride in a moral superiority over others that exists only in his own mind. That seeming dichotomy between his 'light' and 'dark' sides is so very treacherous and deceptive--his faith and virtue were never anything but empty facades overlying his power-hungry violence, manipulation and bigotry. But you know plenty of his fellow Parisians were taken in by it, not just poor Quasimodo.
I've been going on like the proverbial broken record in the comments to reactions for this one about the words to the Confietor ("mea maxima culpa") and what a brilliant backdrop they make to Frollo's insistence that none of this is his fault, because so much of the song's depth and power comes from that contrast. I'm absolutely delighted that you recognized and commented on it!
Love these reactions!! ❤
Geoff was resistant to even doing Hellfire for so very long. I can only assume it was due to the uncomfortable subject matter.
I am not sure who finally talked him into doing the performance. But once he agreed, he put his full talent into the character.
You're absolutely correct in thinking it was the subject matter that gave Geoff pause. Only Layne could work the magic to make this doable for Geoff.
Enjoyed your silly intro. Laughed at how far you jumped at the jump scare. Appreciated your repetition of the term 'simplicity' during Jack's Lament as each element that is there stands out so clearly and feels as though that's exactly what the moment needed and nothing more. Laughed again when you called Geoff a cerberus. 😂 "'teleporting speedster thing" has got to be a phrase I didn't expect to ever hear in a lifetime, but it worked! One thing I'm grateful for in your videos is how you use the text blurbs to not only insert information that you missed expressing in the moment of recording, but that you also take the time to address things that may not be quite right in your video, audio or spoken words, I appreciate the quality control there.
I am consistently enthralled by how your brain works. I love the long format and how much you are able to really delve into all the details i dont catch on my own after many viewings/listenings. You are insightful quirky funny and still compassionate and real. Youre a true gem!
These two videos are a great balance.
In Jack's Lament we express the duality of the fictional character villan.
In Hellfire we express the duality of human villans.
Wow, that was an ambitious undertaking! No wonder you needed a lie down after it! Both covers were so fantastic, each in their own way, and so packed with so many visual and aural details; I'm glad you sifted through all the little gems and articulated so many of the reasons I love both of these songs (and helped me understand exactly why I like them). In my opinion Jack's Lament is the best all-around video Geoff has done (squeaking past I See Fire), and Hellfire is way up there for VP as well (way too many contenders for favorites in their catalog--I basically now think of my favorite VoicePlay as "2023" since this has been such a peak year for them). An impressive finale to your month of (extended) Halloween reactions!
I love Geoff's arrangement and performance of "Jack's Lament" because it shows off his range in timbre and acting and not just pitch (and I think your analysis is the first I've seen that comments on the harmonies provided by the instrumentation). And Layne's arrangement of "Hellfire" is just ~chef's kiss~. I don't remember any other cover that includes the dialog with the guard, and I've seen some reactors complain about that, but I think it's a brilliant trigger for pushing Frolllo over the edge.
My favorite thing about this arrangement of Hellfire is actually the background vocals. The ecclesial Latin and Greek keep up a narrative of penitence, awareness of fault, and begging forgiveness that self-righteous Frollo entirely misses in his heap of awfulness. So ironic that gentle, genuinely good-guy Geoff has such a *perfect* voice to sing the villain here; I know it’s hard for him to sing this role for the same reasons it hard for a lot of us to listen to these verses.
Since you brought up the musical theatre corollaries for Hellfire, would you ever consider analysing any of the stage version of Hunchback, where Patrick Page plays a DELIGHTFULLY WICKED Frollo? The entirety of it is available on youtube.
Also, re: Voiceplay's arrangement... Something that struck me the first time I watched this, and continues to resonate is J. None's verse, but not for the reason you might think. If you listen to it, you can hear big gasping audible breaths between his phrases. (Protect me Maria breath don't let this siren cast her spell breath etc) Not only is this not something J needs to do to support his singing here, as he's in the sweet spot of his range, but its not something Voiceplay typically leaves in an audio mix. That's when I realized. Frollo is desperate, pleading. He's coming undone due to his temptation. Of course the singing isn't smooth and polished. Think about the last time you begged with someone for something, if even just to listen to you in conversation. So much meticulous care in this arrangement, and the final mix.
That artwork is available in Geoff's merch store on mugs and t-shirts.
Remember: musicians make more money from merch than Spotify or RUclips plays. I recently saw one musician pointing out "one shirt makes us more than 10,000 Spotify plays" and that's just horrible.
I think the reason that Frollo is what seems to be the most evil of the Disney Villains is because he is purely human. There is the uncomfortable recognition that his actions are totally within the remit of many (sadly). And there are no ‘mystical/magical’ monster excuses for his failings.
I've been watching you since i discovered your first Voiceplay reaction, and I wanted to say two things. First, watching you now as compared to then shows just how very far you've come as a reactor/analyser, as you've relaxed into knowing your audience and becoming more comfortable with holding to the line of how and when and what you want to present. It's one of my favourite things to watch on my journeys with different creators, and you're no exception!
Second, however, and more directly relevant to *this* video... Thank you for addressing the very upsetting themes in Hellfire. I have truly loved everything from Voiceplay, and musically this is no exception, but I have been disappointed in them, and in the whole of the reactor community, for not taking a moment at all to even begin to address the darkness inherent in the song. Not just of Frolo as a character, which a couple have hit on, but i think you're only the fourth? of the twenty or so reactors I watch to do so.
But you're the very first to address the racism especially, along with the misogyny, and just plain actual evil encapsulated and underscored in this song. The lyrics literally contain a racial slur multiple times and no one even thought to at least even mention 'hey, that's a little mesed up'.
It's excellent music, and excellent reaction and breakdown despite the content. So thank you for that. And thank you for your acknowledgement of the harms this song could perpetuate being spread about without the warning you attached to it.
Someone on another reaction pointed out something that I have now noticed every time I've seen this video. Eli's "It's not my fault!" section goes up. Then Cesar matches his notes and takes it down...where then J. None matches Cesar's low note and takes it lower. So Eli starts high, it transitions through Cesar down to J. and then Geoff takes it into the basement. The descent from distress through recognition of how wrong he is and into then justifying it and shifting the blame to HER.
Go back into "Hellfire" and listen for Geoff's arpeggiated section about midway through. Skills!!
Both?! What a super treat for us!!! ❤
I want to deeply thank you for your acknowledgement of the g-slur as a slur and a word whose usage is part of what brands Frollo as the kind of villian he is. I have seen other reactors talk about the misogyny but I think you are the only one who spoke about the language. Thank you.
I'm glad you decided not to put these two off until next year. Extending the Halloween theme an extra week is well worth it when VoicePlay and Geoff put out their annual holiday themed material. Geoff and Cathy really outdid themselves with this. I agree with your comments on Hellfire. I don't like the song but the performance is so good it's hard to turn away, and I always want to know what you will have to say about their work.
My apologies if this has already been stated elsewhere in another comment but in Hellfire, they use the Latin phrases from the Confiteor which is the a penitential prayer said at the beginning of the Roman Catholic Mass. The lines are: "Congitatione, verbo, opere et omissione" which means "in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do". Thus, according to Genius Lyrics, "the way Menken writes it puts emphasis on the sins of thought he has committed, specifically implying lustful thoughts given the lines that follow. The final bit of Latin before the chorus starts references the lies and sinful actions of Frollo". Also, Eli actually voices the guard, Tony was just used for the video so they could have a physical person there. Also also, to your point about the word gypsy. Obviously the word is derogatory today but at the time the original piece was written by Victor Hugo, I do not believe (I very well could be wrong) the word was as derogatory. It obviously was not a very nice way to describe people but I do not believe it was as taboo to say as it is now. It's like the N word. That word is most assuredly not appropriate to use today however, when books like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were written, it was a common phrase. Albeit a nasty one but a common phrase all the same
I've had their version of Hellfire in my head for .... weeks? I wake up with it in my head. It's the last thing I hear before I drop off to sleep.
🎃👑 and 🔥🔥 in one go... might make one combust! Very interesting and high quality releases. I, for one, enjoyed both very much.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t overwhelmed by the awesomeness of both!
One obvious limitation to the production that stood out to me, is the jump cut from Geoff with his head in its normal position, to Geoff with his head on his hand, stationary. A full Hollywood-level production would've let us watch him taking his head off his shoulders in realtime while singing, and I'm sure Geoff _thought_ of that; presumably he rejected it as too difficult to fully realize in a convincing way on the budget he's working with.
Yeah, pretty much all words of Classical (Greek or Latin) origin would've had a K wherever we have a C. Otherwise it would be spelled with S. The history of the letter C is an interesting little piece of the history of our alphabet and orthography more generally, although my personal favorite is the story of upsilon diverging into U, V, W, and Y.
The character who is "speaking" in Hellfire is clearly the villain; I think it is reasonable to assume that the people who wrote the song don't necessarily share all of his views. Granted, Frollo is an especially dark villain, partly because his views are unnervingly similar to those of some well-known real-world villains (unlike, say, Cruella, who wants to skin puppies pretty much just because children love them, which is cartoonish and absurd).
I've never really studied a language with an ablative case, so I can't tell you anything specific about it. I can say that the Classical languages (Greek in particular, but I think also Latin) often used the cases for more than just their most common/obvious meaning. For example, grammar books will usually tell you that the dative case in Greek is used to express indirect objects, and yes, that _is_ how indirect objects are expressed, but in practice the dative shows up more often being used to indicate a reason or cause. It's possible there could be something similar going on with the Latin ablative here, but I don't actually know Latin beyond the standard smattering of well-known words and phrases that routinely show up in English-language texts.
Finally found the time to watch this - brilliant reactanalysis, thanks! And even if your idea about the guard obscuring certain of the voices in Frollo's head didn't quite work, it was fascinating to see inside _your_ head...
I’d not seen Disney’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ before listening to this but I was struck by how reminiscent this theme is of the Scarpia aria “Va, Tosca” by Puccini in which a powerful religious man blames the woman he targets for his fall from grace to the backing of religious chanting. Very powerful renditions of the first rule of misogyny in both pieces.
I admit, I'd been very much hoping you'd get to these even though I knew your to-do list was already so long! Thank you for the fascinating analysis as always. (Also: There are four lights!)
Oh, and after reading someone else's comment, I'll chime in with the hope that you do not shorten your videos. Any time I see you've posted a new VP or Geoff video, I know I'm in for a good time for forty-five-minutes-to-an-hour, and if I have to wait to watch it until my day off, that's just longer to happily anticipate.
Thank you for how you addressed the problematic language and themes. Your respect for them, and consideration of them in the following analysis, helped me to feel like I better understand why this song was used by Disney in the first place. I can't think of anything else that would truly demonstrate how despicable Frollo is. I've had mixed feelings about VP doing a cover of it (their rendition is amazing, more just concerned with the fact of it happening at all), and I think you've helped me be more okay with it. At the start of the song, Frollo seems to be a human going through a fairly relatable emotion. Then, over the course of the song it becomes exceedingly clear how a person can take that emotion to extremes in the name of getting what they want. The scariest thing about all of this is that it's very real, and it happens more than any of us want to think about.
I don't know if I'm the only one taking this view on the lighting in Hellfire (and the album art), but I see it as a Dante-esque reference of the orange and blue as the hot and cold fires of hell.
And I agree, Jack's Lament is an 11 or 12. Absolute brilliance.
YES. The first time I heard Hellfire by VoicePlay it sounded so passionate that it made me think it was a totally unsuitable song for a Disney film! Well done you guys for your interpretation! He is the nastiest creepiest of villains.
It is certainly a very difficult, unsettling and creepy song. I think it was a very brave move on Disney's part to put something so hateable into a movie, and I don't really know where I sit on "was it a good decision," if I'm honest. They certainly make it very clear that Frollo is a truly awful person, but goodness it's hard to sit through, and that's spoken as someone who saw that film for the first time aged something over 25... VP certainly did a phenomenal job with it though.
you always have some of the most detailed analyses of the music and arrangement and i love it!!!! other reactors are great to watch for vocal analysis and you address the other aspect of things, so thank you :) also, watch geoff’s hands in jacks lament, and in hellfire when geoff says “god has mercy on her, god have mercy on me”, her does a breathy pause before “her” as if trying to get the word out, and the “me” is so strong. such difference at the end of the same sentence really shows frollo and is great story telling. btw, in the original book, esmeralda was an actual gypsy
Geoff and Kathy outdid themselves with Jack's Lamet. Geoff really, really likes Halloween. He used it to excuse buying lots of new things like the pumpkin stack, single pumpkins, fencing, headstones, spooky trees, and that moon. They did fill in with the pillar and a few other things from Patty Cakes. He had to take everything home but the moon that he donated to Patty Cake. Geoff isn't fond of this Hell Fire song so Layne made Geoff lead. Good choice as Geoff has the perfect voice to be the vile and evil Minister Frollo.
This was a joy to watch, both your reactions and your insights. Thank you for putting time stamps in your videos. It makes rewatching the reaction sections easier.
Love that you mentioned that little quirk in the beginning of hellfire, when Frollo is SO sure about his rightiousness (or not?) LOVED your reaction on both songs - and I have watched a lot... you pointed out more than others! Very good! Please don't hesitate to stop every two seconds if necessary. An with Geoff & VP it IS necessary... very often. 🎉😂❤
"Course it was higher, it wasn't Geoff" 😊
Well, Guy F day, Voiceplay released another firework. And, it is actually an older Irish song called Whiskey in the Jar.
As to these two? You are going to be utterly melted down by the time you finish these.
The bare necessities was the first music video Geoff released when he started his channel. He also has several narrations from several books & poems on his you tube channel i think you might like. I love his & Voiceplays versatiliy shows thay'er not afraid to use a wide variety of settings for their videos. Love your humor & reactions. Ive watched several of them. and tonight i became a new sub to your channel see ta soon❤😊
To me, Geoff is sort of a Rumpelstiltskin, evil character, and everything he touches turns to gold! 🤯
Watching you go speechless at the end of Jack's Lament was priceless! I still need to go thru the rest of it, I'm sure it will be as enjoyable!
Thanks, David for such an insightful analysis! 😍
David,
First thank you for reacting to both in 1 video and second for allowing me to geek out for almost an hour and a half.
I loved every second of your analysis.
Also, the intro was fantastic lol.
Thank you, Thank you ❤❤
I was about to go to bed, when I saw this video and just had to watch it immediately 😅
I absolutely love both covers and your reactions to them.
I think it´s pretty funny, that in Jack´s Lament we get the typical "come on" moment (kind of), by Geoff patting his leg to call for Zero 🤣
Has it been over a year since you did wicked? Wow! Time flies. Still love watching you. ❤
Interesting shirt. Thanks for reminding me of V. I'll be digging that out - my favorite yearly November movie. I love both Geoff's solo Jack's Lament and the incredible Hellfire. This one I found stunning, evil, mesmerizing, and utterly unforgettable. Love J and Cesar's duet line "the sun caught in her raven hair". Cesar's incredible air guitar with the soaring vocals. Layne knocked it out of the park with "Burn it" and then all the rest of the vocal percussion. Eli and Geoff carried so much of this, Eli with a lot of the evil, Geoff with some but conflicted. Tony Wakim was the guard that came in - I heard Eli did the voicing. Geoff has done monsters before, but he didn't want to do this one. Layne wouldn't hear of it.
Jack's Lament is hauntingly beautiful, and the first line could not be truer, he also speaks of being tired of the same old things (How long has he been there?) Most of the Halloween props came from Geoff and Kathy's home and yard. Love the makeup Rick Underwood did on face, hands, and ribcage. When he reached out to the moon, it made me think of the sheer number of people that suggest Geoff is actually an alien. Loved watching Kathy animating Zero, the ghost dog. The one has bumped out Geoff's others out of first place. It is perfect.
VoicePlay dropped a new one today: Whiskey in the Jar. And you outdid yourself on this reaction/analysis.
Love your in-depth analysis. Great material to react to and I’ll be there to check it out. Many thanks!
You missed a tiny detail on Jack’s Lament. A reused prop. 😊
The stack of pumpkins in the center of the pumpkin pile for “This is Halloween” appear here too. They’re to the far left on the jumps scare scene.
There’s a second such stack broken up on the right.
Now they need to cover Sally's song and i think that might be the entire movie they've covered lol
Rough one, eh? Two videos that leaves one speechless...even if you did spend quite awhile afterward telling us what you loved about it. Lol. If this is you speechless I would hate to hear you chatty. Lol.
I tease, of course. This reaction was, as always, a lot of fun. The two pieces were amazingly well done. Not a whole lot more that needs to be said. Catch you in the next one, sir.
I thoroughly enjoyed your analysis! You pretty much mirrored my reactions for Jack's Lament and I absolutely agree with the brilliance of both arrangements and executions!
What a marathon! This was lovely!!!
Hey David, I wanted to say how much I appreciate the time and effort you put into your analysis. For me at least, I don’t find the length off putting, but rather I look forward to it knowing the detail you go into. I enjoy being able to geek out with you. Looking forward to the next one 😁
Great reactions. Enjoyed start to finish!! Yes all of it!! Well done and Voiceplay and Geoff separately are just insanely talented. They've raised their own bar and taken it up to a whole other level. Amazing!!
I think the two lower blue lights are supposed to be the blue part of the flame that the Frollo is staring into. The four higher orange ones are the upper part of the fireplace or the raging hellfire/lust.
Geoff and VP bring such intense emotions to the lyrics and just master what it should have been all along.
Yay bonus double Halloween reaction! 😍 Very enjoyable and interesting to hear your reaction and analyses, and thank you for all your videos over the last month.
great reactions and I could tell how much you got out of these ❤🏴
Thank you so much for this David !!!!
I enjoyed every minute of it. Most reactors keep it very short and don’t go into every single detail. I am no professional so I love to get the impressions and analysis’ of you and Elizabeth for example. Waiting for the next one
Great job. The piano you hear is not the piano he’s playing. The piano you see is trash sounding. He’s playing the piano from Til then that they searched high and low to find one he liked the tone of.
ETA yes that piano you see is haunted or at least sounds like it 😅😅😅. It has been moved had the legs put on wrong then changed to the correct way. 😅😅
Great job David!! I absolutely enjoyed your reactions to these two songs!! Loved that you discovered so many details and insights that I didn't pick up when I checked them out. Thank you for another great reaction and analysis and looking forward to more!!
I also think that modern perspectives cannot be applied to historical sources. The actual novel related a character that was consistent with the time period. That said, Frollo is a self righteous person as opposed to a truly righteous person (holy and pure).
Incredible reaction and analysis of two amazing songs.
Jack’s Lament was always my favorite song of Nightmare before Christmas. I love the wistfulness that is present in at least part of the song. He pulled out all the stops when it came to acting in this one. I don’t know why but I particularly like his finger walking across the piano, and that sad little slump when he’s Mr. Unlucky. He is an amazing storyteller.
I had not heard the song Hellfire until they covered it in ACA Disney villains. So I went to watch the movie and absolutely hated it. It still bothers me.
I always thought that Frollo was a one dimensional twisted evil man in that movie. I did not see any humanity in him. But in this version you can see and hear his struggle. In the beginning, you can see furloughs torment. Just after Layne says “burn it”, Geoff sings “the fire within my skin” and he’s staring at his hands like he’s as if he is confused by his mania. And then that descent into madness begins. And at the end he is truly consumed.🔥🔥🔥
In the beginning, the BGVs in that choral portion (dum dum dum) sounds like church bells tolling. It makes Frollo even more detestable.
There is so much to unpack in this. I had to listen over a dozen times before I heard some of the details like Geoff’s arpeggios(?) while J is singing. And when the guard is telling Frollo that she has gone, you can hear the BGV’s’s singing “gyp-sy es-caped”.
I love your analyses! I always have so many thoughts while watching, but they are too many so I have forgotten them all by the end of the video when I want to write a comment😊. I am always very glad for the in depth analyses you give us, thank you for this one!
Thank you for bringing so much of your music analysis into this. I love great music yet have no music training and have learned greatly through this process.
Wonderful reactions…really enjoyed them. Thanks so much!
I knew these would be awesome reactions!! Was excited and pleased that we got both at the same time!!! Well deserved lie down ;-) Thanks David!! I don't know if you're a patreon of Geoff's but ... the demonstration of that particular piano is hilarious 😄😁😆
Thank you very much! And yes I am - it was the scariest thing I saw all October...
I did not expect to stay in this video almost 1,5 hours till the end, but I did. Great reaction and analysis. 👍 I don't know why Disney made this movie at all, but compared to the original, the novel by Victor Hugo (Notre Dame de Paris, 1482), the Disney movie is already toned down. Not just because the novel has no happy end (for none of the main characters), all male characters are selfish, just seeking for their own advantage. No idols, no heros, just people you would not like to meet.
Wonderful reaction/analysis as usual, Thank you.
God I adore long reactions, this has been a joy. I’m always so excited every second for how you’ll react to each piece of these songs. I’m so glad I found your channel. I had to hunt down the reaction to these two songs immediately.
In Hellfire, Tony is the body of the guard as he was at PattyCake Productions that day. The guard is voiced by Eli. I always read the other four voices as Frollo's inner thoughts, much the same way the gargoyles are Quasimodo's inner voices in the film.
Great reaction! I love your detailed analysis, even though I sometimes have to break it into several viewing sessions. I always learn so much, and it helps me understand why something hits me the way that it does. I agree with Hellfire being problematic. Geoff resisted doing it for a long time, but when he was outvoted in the group he put on his professional pants and did a heck of a job, as he always does. Like with Sweeney Todd, I don't understand the continued popularity of listening to Frollo's meltdown but I guess I'm in the minority.
Danny Elfman is a brilliant composer and adequate singer. Geoff was so good at conveying Jack's emotions and the many facets of his personality. Rick was so good with the makeup it took poor Geoff a couple days to wash it all off. It's funny that Layne and Tony went through so much to acquire that old, out of tune baby grand piano but Geoff got to use it first (three times now, with his two new shorts) before Pattycake did. But watch out ... the Halloween video Pattycake planned for this year but had to postpone until next year, should be great. It was why they got this piano.
About Jack's Lament - at least of half of the decorations/props were Geoff and Kathy's. They purchased the pumpkin tower, and when they got to PattyCake, Layne said, we already have that. So more pumpkins all around. Geoff wanted that hopeful ending, but it was not in the song, so he put it in the outro. He wanted to have the wrapped gift from last year's White Christmas, but they couldn't find it. Layne said, well, we have a snow machine..... problem solved.
About Hellfire. I had never heard it and was absolutely mesmerized by it. I've listened to it countless times. Geoff did not want to do it; I think because of the pure evil in Frollo's character.
Your disclaimers were totally unnecessary, no one would have thought you harbored any racist or misogynist feelings of any kind. My family is from a portion of Hungary that is now in Romania, my grandmother was always adamant that our family were not gypsies. That being said, would you change Victor Hugo's novel? No. Also, no reason to change the song. My opinion (which is always right).
Love your double features, I am here every time you react to Geoff and/or Voiceplay!
Re: gypsy. The story this play was based on was written in the 19th century. The phrase "gypsy" only became derogatory at the end of 20th century. Don't judge previous generations by today's standards.
I’m certainly not attempting to do that. But I am recognising that it is today’s audience watching, and not many know the original etymology - plus it is not a word to thoughtlessly add into a modern vocabulary. Today’s standards do apply to today’s speech, and the words of previous generations are not necessarily appropriate to use today.
Keep it up David I really enjoy your reactions and analysis. You enlighten the musicality and give me and even more appreciation for them than I already have.❤ I did think that was possible.
That was a glorious breakdown of two fabulous videos. I learned so much and appreciate them even more than I did!
Wow this was an amazing reaction and analysis... Love how you connect the music to emotion and the message! Thank you so much for these insights!!!
Also I love the sidebar comments. Just fantastic points for thought and discussion.
amazing as always! thank you
Loved it! 😊💜💜
Thanks for your reaction 🙂
I would really be interested in your reaction/analysis to Dan Vasc's version of "Gethsemane" (Jesus Christ superstar)... it's an amazing cover!
And, once again, the victim is to blame for what is done to them.
The choir unfortunately was a cut from The original, where it says "Father, I've sinned in words, thoughts and deeds" in a free translation from latin
Loved it.
The piano you see in the video is woefully out of tune. Of course, the one you actually hear is fine. I love the way he stoops playing and the piano keeps going.
I don't know whether someone else has mentioned that Geoff always said he wouldn't play Frollo. And who can blame him? But this was Layne's arrangement and no doubt Geoff had to do what he was told. As per usual. :) Apparently it's : celesta /sɪˈlɛstə/ or celeste /sɪˈlɛst/. I'm not sure i follow you comments about the use of gypsy girl. Until fairly recently the word was in common use as a description of Romany or really any travelling folk. In the novel the people who took the baby who becomes Esemeralda are referred to as Gypsies.
David, you doing ok there, man? :D 12:10
What a welcome 😂