Sweeney Todd

This was a phenomenal movie musical. Haven’t seen the show in 2 years, but it’s Sondheim and Tim Burton and it’s just incredible. The bloody visions of Tim Burton fit perfectly with Sondheim’s bloodiest musical and it’s just beautiful. The film is visually very stylistic…I wouldn’t say cel-shaded per se, but it’s the closest description I have for the visual draining of color that occurs in the film that just makes the blood that much more stark and dramatic.

Johnny Depp delivers an amazing performance as the titular Demon Barber. Helena Bonham Carter-Burton is great as Mrs. Lovett – so very funny and very manipulative. Alan Rickman can sing? Holy crap! Is there anything he can’t do? Timothy Spall seems to have gotten a career spike from Harry Potter (Petter Pettigrew) as this is the second big holiday movie I’ve seen him in (Enchanted) but I can’t complain because he’s so very talented. Antony and Joanna were unknown to me and were very talented as singers and actors (I assume this will make their careers, but I’m too lazy to look them up on IMDB and see if they’ve done other work…).

I love “A Little Priest”. I was absolutely giddy and had to restrain myself from singing along in the crowded theatre. The other moment that had me totally enthralled was the dramatic finale because it was just so dramatic (duh) and powerful.

Moments I wish were included

• They don’t do the powerful chorus song (Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd…his face was pale and his eye was odd…)
• Although it’s on the soundtrack, they cut the beggar woman coming onto Antony (which is just fun and a shame of a cut)
• Tim Burton is apparently an atheist because God That’s Good is just the title of the song 🙁

The soundtrack is SO awesome. Buy it now. It’s a great highlight of the movie. No Danny Elfman? Oh well. 😀

Update: 7/27/2010

Just watched the special feature interview with Sondheim on the Blu-ray and this quote solves any problems I thought I had with the production (except perhaps for Burton’s “derivative” casting of Bonham-Carter whom people disagree with the most). 😀

Sondheim: What the fans of the stage musical are gonna find is a lot of cuts, both within the songs and songs that have been cut. And I’m gonna try to urge them as much as possible to leave their memory of the stage show outside the door because, as I say, unlike all other movies of musicals that I know…this really…movies of stage musicals…this really is an attempt to take the material of the stage musical and completely transform it into a movie. This is not a movie of the stage show. This is a movie based on the stage show.

Internet Mischief

XKCD has a Christmas treat up…hilarious

whysoserious – has the HD version of the new Dark Knight trailer. You can’t see the preview film unless you go see I Am Legend in Imax since it was shot in IMAX format….it’s TOTALLY worth it.