One of the better, and more underrated, albums of 2009 was Stuart Murdoch's breezy God Help the Girl, a 1960s girl group-inspired pop record that may not have sounded that different from his day job (which would be Belle and Sebastian) but infused his wispy indie pop with an agreeable grandeur and hints of some kind of larger plot. It turns out that this was just phase one, since Murdoch wants to turn the album into a film. Thanks to a Kickstarter campaign, the movie actually seems close to happening and it has just picked up a pair of actors.
Elle Fanning, who has broken out in a big way over the last year between Sophia Coppola's totally underrated Somewhere and Super 8, and Olly Alexander, who has been in smaller films like Bright Star and Enter the Void, will play two of the films' three leads according to Variety. I'm not sure about their singing voices, but both are certainly capable actors.
As for the film itself, Murdoch described it on Kickstarter as inspired by “the French New Wave of Truffaut and Godard, the early post-punk movement in music, pop musical movies of the 70's and 80s, classics by John Hughes, the great British comedies of Bruce Robinson and Bill Forsythe and just the city of Glasgow itself” which sounds kind of like a movie version of Belle and Sebastian's music. In a landscape filled with projects like Les Miserables and Rock of Ages, I'm really excited to see people trying to do something different with the musical, so here's hoping this promising project can deliver.
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[Elle Fanning & Olly Alexander To Topline Musical 'God Help The Girl' From Belle & Sebastian Frontman Stuart Murdoch]
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