Attend the tale, but wait till it comes out on DVD

Well, and so I've now seen Burton's Sweeney Todd. And it's not bad, but it's not great, either.

I was very impressed by Rickman as Turpin - I thought he did a great job. Cohen did a good job, too. And I didn't think that any of the actors were bad, though on the other hand I wasn't impressed by the singing abilities of either Depp or Carter. I thought "By the Sea" was very cleverly done, and by extension so was Epiphany" (though "Epiphany" seemed peculiar until it was revealed that he wasn't actually running around with a razor and being ignored by everyone). The setting was appropriately dim and dreary.

But I found the contrast between the underplayed singing and the lush score to be bit jarring, and several of the actors seemed to make a real distinction between singing and speaking, which I found to be a bit disruptive to the movie's flow. There also seemed points where the actors clearly waited for the score to catch up before
singing. I remember that in the stage production's wigmaker's sequence Sondheim included some spoken lines ("Repeat that. Repeat that!""Yes, Mr Todd.") to cover the change in key before Anthony sang in response to Sweeney, and the movie might have benefited from similar devices. Alternately, it might have been better off as a non-musical, perhaps using Sondheim's music as underscoring or background music.

So, see it, because it is a good story, but you don't need to see it in the theaters.

Sweeney preview part 2

In my previous post, I said that I wasn't impressed with what little I'd seen of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. Having now seen the rest of the clips, plus the associated behind the scenes videos, I think I have determined what it is that I don't like about Burton's Sweeney Todd.

Perhaps because he has moved from the stage to the screen, and perhaps because the songs in Sondheim's Sweeney are so difficult to sing, Burton has underplayed the singing tremendously. Many of the lines are spoken, rather than sung, and not all of the actors seem to be good singers. He has not given the music the same treatment, however. The result is a lush musical score that supports, and overwhelms, some very flat singing. The comparison makes the singing look very bad, to the point of being distracting.

This is unfortunate, as much of the rest of Burton's vision seems to be on target. I'm not nuts about his staging of "Epiphany," but I don't know that it could have been handled any better. "Epiphany," for all of its qualities, may not be translatable to the screen. The rest has real potential, but I found the disagreement between the music and singing to be too great a distractor. For a show like Sweeney, where almost all of the dialogue is sung, this is a major concern.

More as I have it.

Sweeney preview

This link leads to a series of clips from the upcoming Sweeney movie. I watched 3 of them, but wasn't impressed.

To seek revenge may lead to hell...

...but everyone does it, though seldom as well.

I don't really have a television, or to be more accurate, my television has neither an antenna, a cable connection, or a satellite hookup, so it was not until last night that I saw an ad for the Sweeney Todd movie.

We did Sweeney in high school - Stephen Sondheim's version from 1979, and I expect that the movie is based on this musical, though of course the story of Fleet Street's demon barber dates back at least to the late 1800s. In college I found a straight play version from - the 1920's, I think. It was wretched, with improbable language and no real reason given, or even speculated upon, for Sweeney's actions. I caught the Circle in the Square production in the 90s, though I missed last year's Broadway production.

For those unfamiliar with Sondheim, I should state here that he does not write ordinary musicals. There is no fluff here; this is not Anything Goes. There is real substance here, and the Sweeney is more thriller or horror than anything else. The back story, as I mentioned, is also compelling.

I'm also curious to see what Depp does with the role. Needless to say, I'll be seeing this movie, and I'll write more once I do.