In The Heights & The Book Of Life

One For You Podcast

The One for You Podcast returns from the summer break! Naturally, we watched a ton of movies during that time, but we’ll focus on two for this episode. First, IN THE HEIGHTS, the adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre-HAMILTON Broadway musical (06:00). The movie tells the stories of various people struggling and dreaming in the Heights, the New York neighbourhood groaning under the pressures of gentrification. Astrit Abazi and I discuss whether the movie works as an adaptation, which our favourite songs are, and also talk about the colourism controversy the film as sparked. Second, THE BOOK OF LIFE (27:12), an animated story from 2014, produced by Guillermo del Toro, tells the story of a trio of friends whose lives become the playthings for the mythical entities La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman). We struggle with the terribly old-fashioned story set-up, which sees two men competing for the love of a woman, have diverging opinions on the animation style, but agree on our assessment of the musical numbers. Join the discussion on social media @oneforyoupod or write an email to [e-mail]