jenkinscrowe
Apr. 2003 ist beigetreten
Willkommen auf neuen Profil
Unsere Aktualisierungen befinden sich noch in der Entwicklung. Die vorherige Version Profils ist zwar nicht mehr zugänglich, aber wir arbeiten aktiv an Verbesserungen und einige der fehlenden Funktionen werden bald wieder verfügbar sein! Bleibe dran, bis sie wieder verfügbar sind. In der Zwischenzeit ist Bewertungsanalyse weiterhin in unseren iOS- und Android-Apps verfügbar, die auf deiner Profilseite findest. Damit deine Bewertungsverteilung nach Jahr und Genre angezeigt wird, beziehe dich bitte auf unsere neue Hilfeleitfaden.
Abzeichen3
Wie du dir Kennzeichnungen verdienen kannst, erfährst du unter Hilfeseite für Kennzeichnungen.
Rezensionen3
Bewertung von jenkinscrowe
WARNING--the below contains SPOILERS, particularly for those not familiar with the original stage show.
I'm not even going to try to be objective: I loved this movie. No, it wasn't the same as the stage show at all, but it succeeded much better than it would have had it tried to be another "filmed play" version. The decision of which numbers to cut to take an hour out of the show was judicious. Much of the love story between Johanna and Anthony is given short shrift, which is great--in most plays, the young lovers are the least interesting characters. I was a bit sorry that "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" was not sung in the movie, but although it's a great song, it is very stage-bound and was better left out. Burton did choose to use its tune as background music, over the credits and elsewhere. (Its ominousness/"Dies Irae" riff means this decision probably worked as well for those not familiar with the show as those who are.) The fact that Burton made a movie rather than a filmed play also really helped the number "By the Sea," which comes off as overlong and a bit boring on the Broadway soundtrack. Freed from its staging, the song is hilarious and doesn't drag a bit. In fact, it much better accomplishes its purpose--showing the contrast between Mrs. Lovett's feelings and imagination and Sweeney's attitude about it all--than in the play.
Depp's Sweeney, of course, is pitch perfect, with equal parts pathos, psychopathology and comedy. Bonham Clark's Mrs. Lovett is very different from former interpretations, and I'm not sure something wasn't lost here--I missed, for example, the Angela Lansbury Lovett's seeming(?)love for young orphan Toby, which chillingly vanishes when convenient. Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall were brilliant choices for the judge and beadle characters, and Sasha Baron Cohen's Pirelli is both hilarious and effective. (He's the first character to die; thus the balance of comedy and our desire to see those who deserve punishment get it has to be established with him.) The singing is, well, adequate. It succeeds even though we're not listening to opera-quality voices because nobody sings much better or worse than anyone else. The problem comes with some of the numbers that are sung very fast and/or dialectically, as conversations with overlapping speakers. It takes amazing diction to sing such numbers such that every word can be understood, and Burton's cast wasn't always equal to the task.
Like No Country for Old Men, Sweeney is a perfect marriage of director and subject matter. Burton's eye for dark but thoroughly imagined settings is a dead-on match for Sondheim's misanthropic, revenge-bent Todd and "black pit" of a London where children are executed and human bodies are baked into meat pies.
A few caveats: This is a musical that contains so little spoken dialog it might as well be called an opera. If you don't like musicals, you'll have a hard time enjoying this movie--although Jonathan, who hates musicals, liked it anyway. Also, Burton gives every throat-cutting in the script (and there are many) a cadmium-red- spurting Grand Guignol treatment that's appropriate- -even funny when it ought to be--but perhaps a bit disturbing for some viewers.
This film succeeds at doing the same thing the show does--attaining a perfect mix of horror, social justice, and comedy, but does so, as Sir Lancelot might say, in its own idiom.
I'm not even going to try to be objective: I loved this movie. No, it wasn't the same as the stage show at all, but it succeeded much better than it would have had it tried to be another "filmed play" version. The decision of which numbers to cut to take an hour out of the show was judicious. Much of the love story between Johanna and Anthony is given short shrift, which is great--in most plays, the young lovers are the least interesting characters. I was a bit sorry that "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" was not sung in the movie, but although it's a great song, it is very stage-bound and was better left out. Burton did choose to use its tune as background music, over the credits and elsewhere. (Its ominousness/"Dies Irae" riff means this decision probably worked as well for those not familiar with the show as those who are.) The fact that Burton made a movie rather than a filmed play also really helped the number "By the Sea," which comes off as overlong and a bit boring on the Broadway soundtrack. Freed from its staging, the song is hilarious and doesn't drag a bit. In fact, it much better accomplishes its purpose--showing the contrast between Mrs. Lovett's feelings and imagination and Sweeney's attitude about it all--than in the play.
Depp's Sweeney, of course, is pitch perfect, with equal parts pathos, psychopathology and comedy. Bonham Clark's Mrs. Lovett is very different from former interpretations, and I'm not sure something wasn't lost here--I missed, for example, the Angela Lansbury Lovett's seeming(?)love for young orphan Toby, which chillingly vanishes when convenient. Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall were brilliant choices for the judge and beadle characters, and Sasha Baron Cohen's Pirelli is both hilarious and effective. (He's the first character to die; thus the balance of comedy and our desire to see those who deserve punishment get it has to be established with him.) The singing is, well, adequate. It succeeds even though we're not listening to opera-quality voices because nobody sings much better or worse than anyone else. The problem comes with some of the numbers that are sung very fast and/or dialectically, as conversations with overlapping speakers. It takes amazing diction to sing such numbers such that every word can be understood, and Burton's cast wasn't always equal to the task.
Like No Country for Old Men, Sweeney is a perfect marriage of director and subject matter. Burton's eye for dark but thoroughly imagined settings is a dead-on match for Sondheim's misanthropic, revenge-bent Todd and "black pit" of a London where children are executed and human bodies are baked into meat pies.
A few caveats: This is a musical that contains so little spoken dialog it might as well be called an opera. If you don't like musicals, you'll have a hard time enjoying this movie--although Jonathan, who hates musicals, liked it anyway. Also, Burton gives every throat-cutting in the script (and there are many) a cadmium-red- spurting Grand Guignol treatment that's appropriate- -even funny when it ought to be--but perhaps a bit disturbing for some viewers.
This film succeeds at doing the same thing the show does--attaining a perfect mix of horror, social justice, and comedy, but does so, as Sir Lancelot might say, in its own idiom.
The world wasn't quite campy enough for that tagline when this film premiered. Too bad for the world, says I. I Was A Zombie For the FBI is an ahead-of-its-time, Southern-fried, zomboid romp through retro-B-movie territory, Memphis style.
My vote is intended to split the difference between interested and disinterested fans and original versus DVD versions. I lived in Memphis for 30 years. I am, as they say in those parts, partial to this movie for many reasons. All biases aside, the longer, older, grainier, slower version of Zombie is just plain funnier and more interesting than the recent anniversary DVD release. Most importantly, it's far more faithful to the sort of movie Zombie originally set out to parody; some of the new supers/effects on the new DVD seem intrusive and counter to the style of the original work.
I don't know why this film hasn't garnered a wider cult audience, given its long run on USA's Night Flight in the 80s alongside the likes of Forbidden Zone. Watch it now--especially if you love zombie movies and remember the "cola wars" of the 80s.
My vote is intended to split the difference between interested and disinterested fans and original versus DVD versions. I lived in Memphis for 30 years. I am, as they say in those parts, partial to this movie for many reasons. All biases aside, the longer, older, grainier, slower version of Zombie is just plain funnier and more interesting than the recent anniversary DVD release. Most importantly, it's far more faithful to the sort of movie Zombie originally set out to parody; some of the new supers/effects on the new DVD seem intrusive and counter to the style of the original work.
I don't know why this film hasn't garnered a wider cult audience, given its long run on USA's Night Flight in the 80s alongside the likes of Forbidden Zone. Watch it now--especially if you love zombie movies and remember the "cola wars" of the 80s.
Good? No. Accurate? Nah. Entertaining? Oh, yeah.
I've misplaced my copy of Travels in Hyperreality, but I seem to remember that Umberto Eco described cult movies as those which, rather than presenting a seamless whole, can be dismantled; a viewer selects his or her own aspect or fragment to treasure and thus becomes a fan.
Walker, in this sense, is the perfect cult movie. If you don't like the fractured story (and I mean that in a good way), you'll love the humor, or find a line of dialog to treasure, or dig the Joe Strummer soundtrack (or the casting, or the visual anachronisms that pop up too occasionally and too late to be anything but bizarre, or the twisted FUBARing of history, or the Peckinpah-esquire violence, or the amazing cinematography, or...).
What this movie fails to do is bore. I've only seen it once, and I'm pretty sure a single viewing fails to plumb its depths. I mean that in a good way too.
I've misplaced my copy of Travels in Hyperreality, but I seem to remember that Umberto Eco described cult movies as those which, rather than presenting a seamless whole, can be dismantled; a viewer selects his or her own aspect or fragment to treasure and thus becomes a fan.
Walker, in this sense, is the perfect cult movie. If you don't like the fractured story (and I mean that in a good way), you'll love the humor, or find a line of dialog to treasure, or dig the Joe Strummer soundtrack (or the casting, or the visual anachronisms that pop up too occasionally and too late to be anything but bizarre, or the twisted FUBARing of history, or the Peckinpah-esquire violence, or the amazing cinematography, or...).
What this movie fails to do is bore. I've only seen it once, and I'm pretty sure a single viewing fails to plumb its depths. I mean that in a good way too.