Do you know how many minutes there are in a year?  If you answered 525,600, then you probably know Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent and its signature song, “Seasons of Love.”  I myself am a fan of the Chris Columbus movie from 2005, but I know there are others (no doubt more obsessed Rentheads than I am) who aren’t.  Those folks should be glad to know that Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway, which played in theaters in 2008 is now on DVD and Blu-ray.  As Broadway fans know, very few stage productions are commercially released, and often the shows get made into mediocre movies that make some people wonder what the fuss is about.  Face it, we’re fortunate that we’ll have both a pretty-darn-faithful movie and a stage production on both DVD and Blu-ray DVD, and in my mind the fact that the movie has almost all the original principals sets it apart from most other Broadway-based movies.  To see Anthony Rapp leading “La Vie Boheme,” or to see the cast singing “Seasons of Love” or “No Day but Today” is incredibly moving.  On the other hand, this new version gives us a talented young cast in a live stage environment, singing all the music that was cut out of the movie (watch the first 8.5 minutes below). It’s an embarrassment of riches!  Then again, few musicals would deserve the double treatment better than Rent, which defined Broadway for an entirely new generation.

Tags: anthony-rapp, broadway, chris-columbus, dvd, movie, musical, rent