Hahah I'll let it go I swear--but aren't most movies marketed nowadays with the knowledge that the eventual DVD release will help them break even/turn a profit? Anyway I get the feeling it did better than some pundits hoped but not quite as well as expected--but I think it does show Hollywood that there is some interest still out there in musicals. (earlier in this thread someone said it got mixed to negative reviews--THAT I think can be proved as wrong with a look at the major reviews, either on your own or on a site like rotten tomatoes or metacritic--it did get some bad reviews and some middling but the avergae of good reviews is very high when you compare it to most films this year)
As for Sweeney's script--I read a while back re the cuts about Green Finch and Kiss Me (one of my faves) being cut in the early draft of the script but the same source (this was prob from the SOndheim forum so of course i'm not taking it as necesarily true--or necesarily false) said their sources said that many of these cuts were going back into the production script so weren't necesarily going to happen.
Sondheim himself has expressed pleasure with the script and said something like "I have no probs changing some of my music to suit the needs of the score" which of course means nothing to this argument :P However there is a person on the forum who claims to be in the chorus for the recordings of the film and said that they recorded God That's Good a bit over a week ago--so it sounds like it's in
Bk-- I agree with you spot on about the trouble with COndon (who, I'll say it again I think has the potential to be an amazing director but more from his earlier films) and his directing in Dreamgirls. For the record few people where I saw the movie, or my friends, knew anything abotu Dreamgirls being a Broadway show in the past (Chicago people knew more about because the show is still on stage in London and New York--or was when the movie came out and was touring)--at the Dreamgirls movie some girls behind me literally kept on asking each other "What? is this a musical?!?" and I heard one even after it was over and she wa walking out saying "so was that a musical??" (WTF?!) Anyway I think it did throw people that most of the songs were done as some sort of performance but then you'd have snatches (the first I remember is the street scene bit of Bad Side) where they sing in standard musical style--I think Condon shoulda figured out a way to have it all on stage/studio or else been more consistant.
Worrel said:"I think that Sweeney is right up Burton's alley and that he'll do a great job with it. Besides, Burton's been attached to direct since the early 90s, but then he dropped out and Sam Mendes took over, but then Burton came back into the mix"
This prob is the wrong thread for such arguments but... First I wanna say while I think the "cult of Burton" overates his style and movies a bit, I also think he's a great visual director, and for a while was one of my favorites--and I'd always go out of my way to see one of his movies.
I don't see why Sweeney is necesarily right up Burton's alley though--superficially I think peopel see it that way--the "Gothic light approach filled with dark humour". However I can't think of any Burton work where he scuessfully married black comedy, gothic archness with genuinely moving pathos in the Grand Guignol style Sweney on stagew does--some coudl say Edward Scissorhands but the characters in that are on the level (and quite rightly so) of a fairy tale. I'm scares of Sweeney not working on, for me, its greatest level, the true tragedy of the story--though I have no doubt it will work on at least some of its other levels under Burton.
I'm not worried abotu Burton working on a musical--his movies are often very reliant on music anyway (and he did co-direct the sorta musical Corpse Bride, though he didn't direct the more successully musical Nightmare Before Christmas even if nearly everyone likes to give him credit over Selick for that--pet peave of mine)
While a much more inconsistant director, out of major names I was actually kinda hoping for Neil Jordan--he would be dream choice for the project and I think could ahandle the scope of Sweeney better. However I stnad by what I said that at least with Burton (unless this proves ot be an exception like his plain dull Planet of the APes remake) I expect to find his film approach to Sweeney *interesting* as a piece of cinema.
E
Updated On: 2/28/07 at 10:26 PM
