Jessica Fletcher does penace for Mrs Lovett

I've only seen Angela Lansbury in three roles: Jessica Fletcher, the amateur sleuth on TV's Murder, She Wrote; the devious mother in the film The Manchurian Candidate; and the possibly sociopathic Mrs. Lovett in the musical Sweeney Todd. Of course, Jessica Fletcher was the last of these roles that Ms Lansbury created. Was it in penance for the crimes of the other two?

If Star Wars was an RPG

Less than a week ago, I stumbled on Irregular Webcomic, a series of several occasionally intertwined comic strips done with Lego minifigures and figurines made by someone else for RPG purposes, whose subjects cover many of the things I was into as a teen (and in a closeted way, I suppose I still am into). The comic has published close to 2000 episodes, so it took me two or three days to get through them all, but that's because I had other things to do as well (e.g. work, clean out the cats' litter box). The comics also include humor at a variety of levels, some of it based on misunderstanding, some of it meta, some of it involving early 21st century physics - basically, marvelous stuff for geeks such as myself and several of my friends, and in cases where an understanding of science is necessary, there's often an explanation given below the strip for the uninitiated. Check it out for yourselves.

The gentleman behind Irregular Webcomic, however, is also involved with Darths & Droids, a reimagination of Star Wars as an RPG. [Ed: those ignorant of RPGs may stop reading here.] Ah, yes, you think, another RPG set in the Star Wars universe. But no, not exactly. This comic imagines that there is no such thing as Star Wars, that Jedi Knights and the Force are character classes and phenomena dreamed up by the GM, and regarding which the players have no clue ("It's a type of Monk named after a cheese. Lawful Good, unfortunately.") and part of what is so marvelous about this version of events is that it allows the writers and readers to ponder over and poke fun at some of the peculiar decisions made in writing those six films. Or, one film, so far, as they're only about as far as the beginning of the pod race in Phantom Menace. So, check them out, to.

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.

James Cameron's Titanic

I found a post about "me movies," movies that really aren't good, but that I (or you, for your "me movie") like anyway.

My "me movie" is Cameron's Titanic.

I know that the movie won 11 Oscars plus any number of other awards and nominations, but really, the dialogue is poor and the story contrived. But that's not even the point, because that movie isn't about Rose and Jack. It's about the title character. The story of Jack and Rose is perhaps the world's largest MacGuffin, enabling Cameron to explore the first the ship, and then the disaster and its immediate aftermath.

As a Titanic buff, what more could I want?

Cameron's Movie on IMDB and Wikipedia.

Everybody comes to Rick's

I decided to make another attempt with the DVD player and television set last night. I put in Casablanca, and pleasantly, the cats joined me at intervals, without seeming particularly spooked. So, perhaps there was something else going on last time.

Come to think of it, if I didn't know what claymation was, I'd probably be pretty spooked by Wallace and Gromit, too.