Shared Joy is Bigger Joy

I know this is quite silly, being silent for weeks and then suddenly having so much to talk about there are two new posts per day...
But today I've found some lovely, lovely musical things that I just have to share with so many people as possible.


First, this. It will be the best 2 minutes 26 seconds you'll spend on the net today. I guarantee it! "You stole four minutes of my life and I want them back! ...Oh, I'd only waste them anyway."
Defying Gravity from Wicked, gorgeously storyboarded by Heidi Jo Gilbert:

Edited to add: Thanks, NBC Universal, for taking the video down. It was really violating your rights to the material, what with all that promoting the musical free-of-charge and getting the hype about the movie up. You did the right thing removing it.
However, the video might still be available at Gilbert's blog, check it out.

As everybody keeps saying in the comments: this needs to get done.
I think animation is the right medium to do Wicked The Movie. With live-action all the flying around and monkeys and whatnot is very likely going to look cheesy - it's not 1939 anymore... But with animation - hand-drawn or CGI, doesn't really matter to me - it will look perfect. So many things that look great onstage but would look plain silly in live action could maintain the awesomeness in animation. Besides, there has never been an animated adaptation of a stage musical before, it'd be very unique!
And Defying Gravity just has to look like depicted above. It's perfection and deserves every praising comment it gets.


Second, this:

The first glimpse of the upcoming Finnish production of RENT.
It just might be that I'm going to love this when it premieres...

Or actually, I love it already. For two things: one is that they're gone outside to take these awesome pictures in costume. It shows some dedication!
The second is their website. For once, is one Finnish theatre company who knows how to handle the internet. The site can be found here, and is it nice already! Pictures, info on the actors, very well organised and looking good! It's a small, new company, but if the quality of their web page is anything to judge by, they've the energy and commitment to do some great musical theatre too!
You see, the websites of Finnish theatres are not that great on average.

Let's compare this to Helsinki City Theatre for example.
HKT has stuff. You can comment (oh, the numbers of caps locked exclamation points there...), you can see the pictures of their actors with info about which shows they are in, you can watch trailers for their plays (which I might talk about later, I've something to say about them)...
But the problem is that the whole place is a huge mess. Moving around the site to find what you want to see can be a big pain.
You won't find the actor's face even accidentally if you just keep surfing the HKT site - you have to get there through Google. Info about the play introductions they hold before every premiere can maybe be found if you dig around the site with a shovel, but even then it requires good luck. And even though there is a huge pile of pictures of nearly all their plays from the last ten years you can't see them: you can't get password to them unless you're a journalist (but then again, those with sharp eyes will find this super-secret password floating on their site too, so no panic).

And then there's RENT by Suomen Musiikkiteatteri Ensemble ry. A little group that has just been founded.
All the info on their site is in logical order, us un-journalist people can see and copy the pictures too, there will be videos in the future, share buttons to every website imaginable are readily available... This is what every big theatre in this country should look up to. This is how it's done today.
Well, there's something I'd still like to see: some sort of send feedback page. But since the premiere's still two months away, they'll have lots of time to put it in!

And of course I'm very much looking forwards the actual show too!