Remember Daniel Day-Lewis was Marshall's second choice for Guido. He really wanted and cast Javier Bardem, who dropped out of the movie before production began due to exhaustion.
Daniel is a great actor, but he's not good at light comedy bordering on the satirical. He has a built-in gravitas about him, even in an occasionally humorous moment. There is always underlying "heavy turmoil." Way too heavy for Guido. So Day-Lewis ended up weighing the movie down with his brooding, introspective smiles, and the whole thing became morose and disengaging.
(For those who haven't tried this yet, watch the movie again, but start it AFTER the opening scene, where Daniel explains through much broody pondering what he thinks of "making film." Bleccch. Start the movie when he walks into the empty soundstage and the Overture Delle Donne starts. It takes about 300 pounds off of the film. Then you can see what a difference his "heavy" performance makes.)
I think Rob Marshall generally casts very well, given his (no doubt) studio edict of casting people who will increase box office (aka "movie stars," music stars, tv sensations, with plenty of acting trophies around them).
I also think that when he goes outside the box (Fergie, Queen Latifah) he often has his biggest triumphs. I'm hoping Sophia Grace falls into that category. We shall see.
This whole process of making this movie with people involved tweeting daily and what not is realllllly going to drag on. I hope they're smart enough not to make everybody sick of it by the time it's released. Not only that, I wonder how they can even do it. Whenever I worked on a movie (albeit for home video release), we were involved with pre-production, seeing dailies, being on set, and were privy to all sorts of "leakable" information as much as a year before the films were released. And we all signed NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements). Not only could we be fired if we leaked photos or info, we could be sued.
I'm sure everyone involved with production is on an NDA, even the big stars like Streep. It's a standard part of any contract to do studio work.
Regardless, I got sick of all the Les Mis tweeting many months before the movie came out. Still, that movie did really well at the box office, so maybe all the advance buzzy tweeting does help ... as long as they don't show too much behind the curtain.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22