The voices are generally just so thin. It's a bad choice for an operatic score. Also, they cut everything sung by the chorus, which is a lot of my favorite stuff, including the ACTUAL SONG "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd."

I still haven't seen the movie Sweeney Todd, mostly out of laziness.

The performance with Angela Lansbury when I was in middle school - maybe 9th grade and it was one of those things that just blew me away. I love it.

Sweeney Todd was the movie where I realized my fierce irrational love of Sondheim trumps my fierce irrational love of Tim Burton by an order of magnitude. Seeing what he'd done to my favorite musical was just...depressing.

I just watched a bit of All The Real Girls (2003), Zooey Deschanel, Paul Schneider. Just to see if Zooey wasn't playing one of the variants I've seen her do. And she wasn't. But the movie was indie emo hell. Just...the slow conversations about nothing in particular, the pained squinting at each other to convey emotion, *that* music playing slowly low in the background, and just a lot of conversations about things and feelings that just weren't that interesting.

I googled around, to see the reception, and to see if I could find out how it ended since I wasn't going to watch the whole thing, and lo!

They revealed it had notable amounts of improvisation. I'm not going to say the bits I don't like are improv--I really like improv, comedy and serious both. I really dig it. But this movie was pretty much a game for On The Spot...they'd do this shit for mocking fun.

And that was entertaining. 7 minutes long, and entertaining. This? Ouch. This looked like a movie that felt it could be deeper with the actors really //talking//, you know. They're communicating.

Sweeney Todd was the movie where I realized my fierce irrational love of Sondheim trumps my fierce irrational love of Tim Burton by an order of magnitude. Seeing what he'd done to my favorite musical was just...depressing.

Sister!

I thought the movie was a really excellent rendition of Sweeney Todd, honestly. Though I agree that the music was definitely not the strong point, I thought they did a great job of keeping the tone, humor, and character of the original, and blew the visuals away. I would have preferred if they could have gotten better singers, but not if it would have degraded the look, since the look is where I wanted the movie to exceed the play. And frankly, I'm not sure Burton is capable of working with anybody but Depp and Carter these days, so it probably would have degraded the visuals if they had cast other people. I was not disappointed. Yes, they dropped some things, but it didn't bother me since I wasn't looking for the play; I was looking for a movie adaptation that played to the strengths of the film form, which I got.

Honestly, though, it might bother me more with Into the Woods, which I generally prefer to Sweeney Todd. But then again, I've loved Into The Woods in every horrible bastardized form I've ever seen it in, including an inner-city, shoestring-budget middle school production of the Junior version (which REALLY loses the themes of the original by cutting the whole second act). There's so much good there that even if you cut 80% of it and perform the remaining 20% badly, I STILL like it. So I'm hopeful for the movie.

Oh, and I meant to say, I think Sweeney and Into the Woods are both hard to sing, but for different reasons. Sweeney is hard because most of the score is semi-operatic in style, and really requires extraordinary singers to fulfill its potential. Into the Woods is a little more standard musical-theater in sound, but sped up to about 200 words per minute, so good annunciation is key, which can be incredibly difficult. I wouldn't choose Helena Bonham Carter to do either form, however, based on "Worst Pies in London" in the movie, which is the song in Sweeney Todd most similar to Into the Woods.

Whatever happened to voiceovers in musicals? I know we don't give enough credit to Marni Nixon and that's a shame, but I'm sure glad they had her sing over Hepburn for My Fair Lady. Not that Audrey had a bad voice - she definitely didn't - but Nixon had more gravitas. Depp could have used some help on that score.

New pic of Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games:

[link]

Zooey was excellent in that movie, ita. The movie was not excellent. Kinda made me think of "Justified" and I halfway watched for Raylan...too bad he didn't show up.

Speaking of the Angela Lansbury's Sweeney Todd, it's playing on TCM this month on Weds, 1/25.

That's on a night full of musicals so if you want to sit down with a tub of popcorn and a pony keg of your favorite potable you could also watch: Funny Girl, Gypsy and There's No Business Like Show Business.

On the 24th there are some interesting, somewhat rare spy comedies/spoofs that don't often get shown. So if you like Matt Helm or Derek Flint, check out Where the Spies Are, Agent 8 3/4 (with the gorgeous Sylvia Koscina) and Salt and Pepper (with Sammy Davis, Jr.)

Also on the 26th they're showing The Liquidator - another spy spoof with Rod Taylor and Jill St. John. I caught an earlier showing of this and it's pretty good, but worth catching mainly for the Amazing Spy Bachelor Pad they give him. Also Jill St. John is absolutely gorgeous and it's a fairly early movie role for her.

For the Cineaste's they're showing Ophul's "La Ronde" and "The Earrings of Madame De..." on 1/23 (The latter often makes lists of The Ten Best Movies Ever Made, so if you've never seen it, try it out. Suave, sophisticated and witty and wise about the human heart.)

Also Fellini's Nights of Cabiria is playing this month.

1/18 is Angela Lansbury night so aside from Sweeney Todd they're showing Manchurian Candidate and The World of Henry Orient (anybody else a fan of that movie? It reminds me of a proto Wes Anderson in some ways. The girl characters would fit right into Rushmore.)