Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Jason watches "Sweeney Todd"

Hello loyal readers! I just got back from two weeks in Alaska with my family. Hence I haven't been blogging, but I'm back now. I did see two movies while I was up there. If you want to see a bit of the other stuff I did up there, check out wienerfamily.net (especially, check out that cool HDR picture of me, my brother, and my sister-in-law in Fairbanks). But this blog is primarily about the movies I see, so here goes:

It's been over 10 years since I saw the stage version of Sweeney Todd, and even then it was not quite the Broadway version. I saw a small Asian-American theater troupe in LA called the East-West Players perform it, and they had to change all references to Johanna's yellow hair (no blond actresses, it was changed to "raven hair").

Anyway, with that caveat, to the best of my recollection the movie version is very, very faithful to the stage version. So faithful, in fact, that one could question whether the movie needed to be made at all. But given that it was made, it absolutely had to be made by Tim Burton. And although I suppose theoretically someone other than Johnny Depp could've taken the role, he was perfect as well. And there's a hell of a lot more arterial spray than any stage production (at least, any this side of the Primitive Screwheads), so I guess the movie's definitely worth something. In fact, I had a great ol' time watching it.

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