I don't mind play and movie being different animals. Translations between media require major alterations. I really think losing the humor was a mistake. Also, Burton is a master of Brechtian alienation. If you look at plot an dialog, Burton was (for a movie) pretty damn faithful. What he lost was the spirit. He altered the characters, the theme, and the feel of the play. None of the characters was the star of the show. The damn pomegranate juice/blood was. Jilli often points out that Goth does not have to equal depressed. Burton seems to have forgotten that for this show, and he is usually the one who can see the funny side of Goth.

We'll have to agree to disagree, Typo. I would call the "spirit" the interpretation. I can see that you didn't like Burton's interpretation and you do a great job of explaining why. But it's a valid way to approach the material. To use two shows I saw--Kevin Kline's Hamlet was very funny and dark and clearly using humor to manipulate everyone around him. Rafe Fiennes Hamlet was tortured and enraged and using humor to hurt. Both were good interpretations of the play, and all of us would likely respond more to one than another depending on our temperament--but both happened to be good productions. I think a BAD production is different than production which one doesn't respond to. and I feel this production of Sweeney is good--but one which didn't work for you.

Hmm _ I'll accept that for the most part. I really think there were some serious errors even given this interpretation - Mrs. Lovett and Johanna were seriously miscast.

Saw Sweeney this afternoon with Tom Scola (at the fancy new Kabuki theater refurbished by Sundance).

I'm with Robin. I think the movie worked as a movie, and it would've been very difficult to maintain the tone of the stage production. I just watched Angela Lansbury and George Hearn doing "A Little Priest" on YouTube and it was much more broad - as it should be on a stage.

The movie was dark and tragic with some great bits of grim humor. I really liked HBC's performance. Didn't mind her voice. The smaller voices worked fine with the intimacy of all the closeups. Much more like thinking aloud than declaiming.

Also, it is criminal that Jilli hasn't seen it yet since the costuming is spectacular. (Particularly in "By the Sea.")

Before the movie, Scola and I had donburi at the Japantown Center, then we got a drink at the cinema's bar. Afterwards we went to Bittersweets the chocolate cafe and had superdelicious hot chocolate.

A day well spent.

think the movie worked as a movie,

Here it is not worth arguing over - depends on what you like. You do, I don't.

and it would've been very difficult to maintain the tone of the stage production.

That is worth arguing over. Don't see why it would have been more difficult to make a dark comedy rather than tragedy with comic overtones - especially for Burton, a master of dark comedy. I would not expect it to be exactly the same; to maintain it as a dark comedy rather than a tragedy with grim humor might have required a slightly less literal translation of the plot, though maybe it could have kept more of the music.

The smaller voices worked fine with the intimacy of all the closeups. Much more like thinking aloud than declaiming.

Except I would swear Jayne Wisener as Joanna was straining for the high notes in "little bird". And maybe HBC would have been better off she'd really declaimed rather than tried to sing - like Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady".

I am very very very frustrated that this damn movie (a) won't come to the UK until long after I've returned to Thailand and (b) doesn't seem to HAVE an opening date in Thailand.

Still, hopefully it'll be available as a pirate DVD once I get back there, so there is that. But I'd rather see it on the screen!

I discovered how easily I can be bought. I just found out that new flick from the Date Movie people, Meet the Spartans, features Sean Maguire as Leonidas. Despite the fact that it also features Kevin Sorbo and Diedrich Bader likewise running around 7/8 naked, I think I'm going to have to see it.

Oh, Matt, Matt.

shakes head.

...I have to say, I rather think that The 300 WAS its own pastiche already. I mean, how are they going to top it?

Ah. No bowm-chika-bowm-bowm soundtrack intended on that last sentence, and yet somehow...

Sadly, I might be tempted to see it. But of the three nekkidish men mentioned, really, only Sorbo's the turn-off.

The smaller voices worked fine with the intimacy of all the closeups. Much more like thinking aloud than declaiming.

I agree wrt to Depp, but I honestly couldn't understand what HBC was saying half the time, and I've had the entire show memorized since I was 12.

She wasn't just singing small, she was mumbling. Which meant that the few jokes Burton did leave in for her got swallowed. And there's no reason for "inside my own head mumbly breathy singing" during numbers like the Pirelli scene and "God That's Good!" when she's supposed to be talking out loud to other people.