Comments on: Sweeney Fatigue

By: caleb

caleb — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:50:49 +0000

I’m a middle-aged composer, with conservatory training and a long checkered career.

I’ve enjoyed recordings of the play, but heard only two versions, and never studied the score as you have.

I don’t like singerly singers, and I love the effects of amplification–singers don’t have to be belters any more. This doesn’t mean that anyone can sing: Madonna always sounds bad, no matter what. Sade, also.

Depp sounds pretty good, Helen Bonham Carter a little weak, imo.

The focus remained on the music, the new orchestrations (? I’m curious to what extent these are new) sound good to me, except some weirdness at the very beginning–where was 1 of the bar?–and the violence is contrived to be still cartoonish. It’s still pretty dark humor–the song Johanna (sp?) to the cutting of throats.

The original Sondheim music is so damn good that it still succeeds. Tim Burton is an ok director for the project–his dark and twisted London present contrasted with the absurdly pretty memories of Todd work just fine.

I, too, would just as soon see a film of the stage play, with a tweaked recording, but I’m obviously no purist: The artifice makes nuances possible, Depp can do subtle things with his face, and his singing is good enough. Art shouldn’t be about muscles.

By: NMBioguy

NMBioguy — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 03:13:26 +0000

Michael—
I saw the movie the day it opened and I was rapt. Now, remember, I met many of the cast members of the road production (the one from Philly in 1980-81) and I’ve seen the original production, the tour, the NYC Opera version and, yes, even a community theater production. In every case, I am blown away by the performances that are achieved by everyone, almost as though Sondheim wrote a piece that even some mediocre actors can transcend. Put someone as powerful as Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman all together and you’ve got a moving piece of cinema, compounded with Tim Burton’s direction and Oscar-worthy (and winning) art direction, there’s something that just blows me away….

BTW, I’m in Albuquerque, now—- see the web page

By: Michael Kaulkin

Michael Kaulkin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:22:39 +0000

I also hope that the film will generate curiosity among younger folks about Sondheim.

Since writing this post, I listened to some excerpts of the sountrack CD on Amazon. Actually, I was really pleased to hear a child actor in the role of Toby, because he’s supposed to be a child. At least the film makes that clearer. The orchestration was also interesting to me — not as “Hollywoodized” as I’d been led to think from the trailers.

By: Elaine Fine

Elaine Fine — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:02:51 +0000

I enjoyed the movie because of what it will most certainly do for a generation of young people who have little exposure to anything of any musical value in the mainstream cinema. My hope is that Sondheim will have a new following of young people. Some of them might even set foot in a real theater one day.

I could not stand the gore, computer-generated as it was. I hated having to close my eyes. Still, I felt that as a film it worked well. Having a boy soprano in there made the film a bit like “Oliver,” but he did have a lovely voice and good diction.

Nothing can ever compare to the original production I saw on Broadway in 1979.

By: patty

patty — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:05:25 +0000

I did go see the movie yesterday. The more I think about it, the more underwhelmed I am. I’m still glad I saw it, but it was not anywhere near as powerful as the stage production. The gore was cartoonish, but still horrifying enough to me that I couldn’t watch it the whole time.

The singers needed to learn how to really SING … not just try to be pretty voices. But oh well.

I’ll be so curious to hear what you have to say about it!