How about the BEST musical film adaptations of all time?- Page 5

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/5/10 at 10:37pm

JohnBoy, you and I part ways on Gene Kelly. I love that man. When I was a kid, my friends and I used to fight over whose Barbie was going to have Gene Kelly as their boyfriend. (Even though he was the same age as my grandfather.)

Just for the record, I think "Alternate Universe: The Musical" is one of the best screen adaptations EVER. I just hope Baz Luhrmann directs the remake.

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 10:11am

I part ways with pretty much everybody when it comes to Gene Kelly. And that wretched My Fair Lady, too!

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 1:10pm

I'm with ya on MFL, JB.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 2:35pm

ssssshhhh, haven't you been paying attention? this is the thread for happy thoughts about musicals, you don't want the wrath of besty to descend upon you, do you?

[JohnBoy2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:14pm

I have lots of happy thoughts when I think back on the London production of MFL I saw with Julie Andrews and Alec Clunes, and remember everything that made it my favorite musical of all-time! The perfect direction, staging and choreography. The magnificent performances. The enthralling scope of the production. The excitement at watching it unfold, moving the audience to give it, not one, not two, but three standing ovations during the performance! In a day when they were a rare occurrence. You know, everything the film lacks. Very happy thoughts, indeed.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 3:57pm

Regarding MFL the movie: I think Audrey Hepburn is beautiful, and I love the costumes. There. I'm being positive.

:PPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:11pm

Positive things about MY FAIR LADY -- it has been restored so it can be seen by those who wish to see it.

[tazber]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:15pm

I have yet to stay awake through the entire running length of MFL.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:18pm

Cukor's film of MY FAIR LADY -- better than Nyquil.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:21pm

I liked the costumes, too--particularly during the "Carnaby Street Gavotte."

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:26pm

Cukor's MY FAIR LADY -- filmed almost entirely in focus!

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:32pm

All right. Never let it be said that I have never said anything positive about something. Do your worst, you jackals!

Let me be clear. Tim Burton’s film of SWEENEY TODD is magnificent. Funny, terrifying, deeply moving and deeply disgusting. I felt the way I felt when I saw RAN or TITUS or THE GODFATHER PART II or PSYCHO. I felt purged. I felt pity and terror. It is not everybody’s cup of tea. It is the absolute cinematic embodiment of My Cup Of Tea. I love every single ****ing frame of it.

I’d been dreading this film. I didn’t know if Tim Burton had the real chops to make this film what it needs to be: a rip-snorting blood-gushing tear-wrenching High Musical Tragedy Slaughterhouse. Could Burton handle SWEENEY TODD, getting the right balance between Blood and Tears? His films tend to either really really work (EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, ED WOOD) or really really not work (BATMAN, MARS ATTACKS, PLANET OF THE APES) and sometimes both (BATMAN RETURNS, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, SLEEPY HOLLOW). SWEENEY TODD is his least compromised, most assured film to date. And it is also the single finest live action musical film made in, well, at least as long as I can remember.

Burton does what no other filmmaker of the current alleged Musical Renaissance has done: he has put the focus back on the characters, the story, and the songs. When Sweeney Todd sings the heart-rending ballad “My Friends” to his razors, Burton actually allows me to see Johnny Depp sing. And then he does something even more astonishing. He allows me to continue seeing Johnny Depp sing. And then, to cap it all off, he lets me see Johnny Depp sing with Helena Bonham Carter. Two people sing. At the same time. And you can see them both! Singing! Burton keeps the camera in tight, creating an intimacy that is quite simply lacking in the other recent musicals that have gotten so much attention. This is a film, after all, that is set in a series of small, cramped rooms: a barber shop, a pie shop, a basement bakehouse, an insane asylum rather than the series of showbiz stages, imaginary or otherwise, in CHICAGO, DREAMGIRLS, HAIRSPRAY, or PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.

Tim Burton is reminding the world of how to make a musical. There’s none of the hyper-caffeinated gonzo MTVwannabe editing and incompetent framing that demolishes the sense and feeling of the songs in CHICAGO (or the fear of singing on display in DREAMGIRLS (where someone beginning to sing is a cue for a cut to a shot of the back of the singer’s head) or PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (where the drapes get as much screen time as the actors), or the appalling miscasting that finally sinks HAIRSPRAY. Where these other films make the mistake of laying on the “cinematic” trappings of Attention Deficit Editing and Over-Ornate Camerawork, Burton strips it all down, creating a lean mean musical machine.

That isn’t to say that the film is cinematically inert, though. There are plenty of fluorishes, including a wonderful opening credit sequence, a marvelous journey through nocturnal London, spectacularly gory throat slashings, etc. I mean, really, this is Tim Burton after all. Burton, however, knows when to go for broke, and when to back off and let me watch these people do their stuff. There are plenty of small spine-tingling pleasures, among them Sweeney’s lovingly careful shaving of the area on Judge Turpin’s throat that he is hoping to slash open. Just imagining what Rob Marshall would have done with a song like “Pretty Women” makes me nauseous.

Johnny Depp makes a splendid Sweeney Todd, the only actor I’ve seen apart from Len Cariou (the Broadway original) to capture the pain behind the rage. Helena Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett is a marvel, showing me a woman who grinds corpses into pie filling in one moment and whose eyes fill with tears over the fate of a young boy the very next. Alan Rickman’s surprisingly dashing Judge Turpin and Timothy Spall’s repellent Beadle Bamford work beautifully. Not the least of the performances comes from the young boy playing Toby, who delivers possibly the most moving “Not While I’m Around” I’ve ever heard. I hope this film banishes once and for all the complaint that Burton doesn’t deal effectively with actors.

I could go on and on and on. I loved it. I’ll leave it to you to discover the joys of the color scheme, the art direction and costume design, and all of the other elements I haven’t got space to mention, because just when I get something down here a thousand other delights come flooding back to me. I can’t wait to see it again. And again. And again.

I’ll say it loud and clear. If you don’t see this film as the great masterwork of contemporary cinema that it is, you deserve a lifetime of Rob Marshall's crapfests.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:36pm

I totally agree with you. I loved Sweeney Todd.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:38pm

Me too.

(How's that for in-depth analysis?)

[tazber]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:39pm

I honestly couldn't get past Depp's singing, but you have inspired me to revisit it this weekend.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:41pm

But I love Roscoe, too. So there!

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:43pm

Taz, dear boy. The choice is yours. Appreciate the genius of Burton's film, or be condemned to an eternity of CHICAGO and NINE.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:43pm

Roscoe, OF COURSE you love the bloody, grotesque and terrifying musicals! It's the dainty, refined and ordinary musicals you dislike.

Fave line of day:

"Cukor's MY FAIR LADY -- filmed almost entirely in focus!"

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 4:49pm

Not so, Miss P. I like SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, TOP HAT, 42nd STREET, etc., which are pretty dainty and refined, as much as I love SWEENEY TODD. Well, maybe not as much. But they're pretty damn cool, and I haven't mentioned them because they aren't adaptations from stage to screen.

[miss pennywise]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 5:20pm

As I said in one post: the best movie musicals are NOT stage adaptations, but, rather, written for the medium. (I love all those movies, too, BTW. I would even have chosen Fred Astaire over Gene Kelly for my Barbie's boyfriend if Fred hadn't looked like a light bulb.)

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 5:27pm

Johnny Depp makes a splendid Sweeney Todd, the only actor I’ve seen apart from Len Cariou (the Broadway original) to capture the pain behind the rage.

Oh, I am so glad that someone else feels that way! I really liked Sweeney Todd, and I normally don't even like Johnny Depp (don't tell the fangirls) and I've never liked any other Burton film I've seen. Honestly, as a huge fan of Len Cariou, I feel like most of the people who've REALLY hated Johnny Depp have been big George Hearn fans (and as talented as Hearn is, I never liked his Sweeney).

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 5:33pm

Thank you Roscoe.

I love your posts: they have such a great combination of conviction, perception and integrity.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 5:33pm

You left out spleen.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 6:02pm

I gave that to Mrs Lovett.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/6/10 at 6:30pm

What the f*cK?!?

(... borrowing an asterisk from Roscoe)

You mean this thread is actually BACK ON TRACK? How DARE you? What WILL I bitch about now in this happy thread?

Maybe I ought to hop over to a political thread ... Nah.

P.S. --- Great Sweeney post, Roscoe. I'm not quite as sold on it as you are, but I still think so much is right about it. If it weren't for Tim Burton's irrational fear of choral singing, and his overuse of the leading players whispering all their dialogue, I think it would be higher up on my favorites list. Still, one of the better musical flicks to come down the (bloody) pipes in a long time.