Attend the tale...

In 1979 Stephen Sondheim brought his groundbreaking musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” to Broadway. It won a total of 8 Tony Awards and went on to become one of the most revered Sondheim musicals of all time. A much-loved televised version would air on cable in 1982 starring it’s TONY Award-winning star, Angela Lansbury. And now, 28 years after it’s Broadway debut, Sondheim’s operatic tale of the demon barber has finally found it’s way to the big-screen.
Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” hit theaters a few days before Christmas and gave movie-goers a cinematic masterpiece for the holiday. Albeit, a bloody one.
“Sweeney Todd” tells the story of Benjamin Barker, the wrongly imprisoned barber who returns to London to seek revenge on a corrupt Judge named Turpin who sent him away on a trumped-up charge in an attempt to gain Barker’s wife and child. Changing his name to Sweeney Todd, the vengeful barber Barker pairs up with landlady Nellie Lovett as they try to lure the Judge to Todd’s barber shop for one final shave. Along the way, Lovett and Todd concoct a scheme to turn Todd’s unknowing customers into meat pies via Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, which is conveniently located beneath Todd’s barber parlor.
Sondheim’s original stage production was over three hours long and contained some of the most difficult music any stage performer could ever want to sing. So, when word went out that Burton would cut the film’s running time to under two hours and cast mostly non-singers in all the leading roles, many were understandably skeptical. As a fan of the 1982 televised version I approached this film adaptation reluctantly at first, only to emerge from the theater with not only a greater appreciation for the material but an even larger one for it’s cast and crew.
Tim Burton has created his best film since 1994‘s “Ed Wood,” making some really interesting and brave choices in translating one of the most difficult and unlikely musical theater pieces of all time to the silver screen. Burton, while trimming songs and cutting just a few has somehow managed to maintain the mostly sung libretto of Sondheim’s stage masterpiece. Sondheim’s brilliantly ironic and clever lyrics are preserved here along with one of the most beautifully orchestrated arrangements of his score to date. Jonathan Tunick, who orchestrated the original Broadway production orchestrates here as well, making the musical soundtrack alone a great reason to see this film.
If bringing original Broadway crew members like Tunick (as well as original Broadway conductor, Paul Gemignani) into the film’s production was a wise choice by director, Burton, the casting of movie-star and Burton regular Johnny Depp was an inspired one. Depp takes-on the role of the barber bent on revenge with a fearless passion. His Todd never forgives and never forgets, not even for a moment. He sets out to destroy the one who has brought rack and ruin to his life and anyone else for that matter who gets in his way. Depp’s brooding Sweeney is relentless. He forgoes much of the humor Len Cariou and George Hearn found in their respective stage performances, leaving much of the film’s humor to co-star Helena Bonham Carter.
As Mrs. Lovett, Bonham Carter walks ghostly through the film, falling hopelessly in love with the vengeful Todd. The two make a great pairing in this younger casting of the two leads. (Angela Lansbury was 54 when she played Lovett on stage, Bonham Carter is 41. Depp, 44 is actually four years older then Cariou was when he played Todd in 1979.)
Also on screen is the always resourceful Alan Rickman as the evil Judge Turpin, along with a slimy Timothy Spall as his henchman Beadle Bamford. Sacha Baron Cohen appears briefly as a competing barber for some humorous and bloody moments. And young newcomer Ed Sanders sings beautifully as Toby the workhouse boy turned Mrs. Lovett’s tagalong.
All these performers are shot strikingly by Warsaw-born cinematographer Dariusz Wolski against a background of sets created by Italian production designer Dante Ferretti. Ferretti and Wolski create an atmosphere that is gorgeously gothic and as representative of 19th century London as any Dickens novel could ever hope to be. Of course the blood flows freely in Burton’s filming of “Todd,” cleverly serving as an homage to the Hammer Horror movies of the 1960s. Burton frames his subjects mostly in close-up and with great care carefully crafting every frame in what is easily his most visually striking film to date.
Of course the big question mark with this film has to do with the singing voices of it’s leading players. Can they sing? Yes, and well, actually! Are they Broadway voices? No. Do they have to be? Not really. Yes, if you are looking for the prettiest translations of these Sondheim classics, you may fair better listening to the original Broadway CD. But if you want to see and hear an honest attempt by brave multi-talented actors translating Sondheim’s most difficult work to screen, then treat yourself to this unique tale of regret and revenge. For it is told so interestingly and artistically through music, song and celluloid by one of the greatest assembling of talent brought together for a film in years.



Tim Burton Movies

The Three Faces of Neville

In 1954, Richard Matheson first published his sci-fi/horror novelette, I Am Legend. The book is no stranger to modern motion pictures. It first found its way onto the big screen in 1964 in an Italian-made film called The Last Man On Earth, starring Vincent Price. Just seven years later Warner Brothers updated and retooled Matheson's story in a big-budget release called, The Omega Man featuring 1970s sci-fi hero, Charlton Heston. Matheson's tale of a vampire plague leaving only one uninfected man alive to battle any remaining vampire/zombies, may have also inspired a generation of "Night of the Living Dead" films and it's many clones. In this current world of remakes and CGI visual effects it's no wonder that Warner Brothers has dusted off "Omega Man's" 1971 screenplay along with Matheson's original concept and given modern-day Sci-fi hero, Will Smith a crack at portraying Robert Neville. As Neville, Matheson's protagonist, Smith picks up where Heston left off, as a military doctor trying to find a cure for this man-made virus gone amok. Smith wanders the streets of post-plague New York, a solitary man but for the company of his faithful German Shepherd, Sam. Together they hunt for food and supplies all before nightfall, to avoid the hives of "dark seekers" (Matheson's Vampires) who prey at night. As Neville, Smith finds the time to daydream about his life before the plague wiped out civilization, his lost family and his failed attempt to save mankind from the impending plague. What works best in this latest version are the solitary moments Neville experiences early on in the film, which thanks to Smith's skill full performance are at times both light and touching. Something both Price and Heston failed to do in the previous two film versions. This latest filming of I Am Legend is at its best a much better version of '71's "Omega Man." What the original "Omega Man" lacked in suspense and striking visuals, this Legend has in spades. What this new version could have used is more of what made Matheson's novel so intriguing. Matheson's Neville was no doctor, but rather a lone victim who can't quite understand what has happened to the world around him. So he spends much of his days raiding libraries and performing amateur experiments trying to find some scientific reason as to why humanity has succumbed to this bizarre illness. And as for his nights, they are spent hunting and killing the Vampires who are trying to put an end to his unique survival. Of the three filmed versions of Matheson's story, only Price's "Last Man on Earth" comes closest to telling what its author had originally intended. But even in that cheaply made film, a warfare plague is used in place of Matheson's original idea of an illness brought about by vampires and how it was scientifically possible for them to replace all of mankind. Maybe in another thirty years a new sci-fi cinema star will emerge and finally bring Matheson's original and much darker intentions to the silver screen!

Shoulda Been Nominated!

For years I've been screaming at my TV set whenever the yearly crop of Oscar nominations are announced. For there is almost always a list of performers and artists whose work continues to go unrecognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But through the years I've also pondered how certain films and performances from the past were neglected by the Academy as well. I'm sure politics and outside forces played their parts equally in the past as they still do today, but I still find it amazing sometimes that certain performers and certain films went virtually unnoticed at Oscar-time. One such performance and film that comes to mind, is Boris Karloff in the 1968 film Targets. Made by Roger Corman's 1960s low-budget film company and directed by Peter Bogdanovich in his debut as a director, the story of how the film came to be is as almost as interesting as the movie itself. Bogdanovich had worked previously with Corman as a writer on two earlier films, when the producer offered the young talent a chance at directing a feature. Karloff had owed Corman two-days of work as an actor, and the producer was determined to get his money's worth. He proposed to Bogdanovich that he write a script utilizing Karloff for the two-days of filming, and then splice in unused footage of the horror star from a recent Karloff/Corman collaboration The Terror, and then shoot an hour of new footage without Karloff and somehow find a way to tie it all together and make a new Karloff Picture! Bogdanovich jumped at the chance to direct and then went about the task of writing this puzzle of a picture with his then wife, Polly Platt. And what Bogdanovich and Platt came up with was not only brilliant considering the filming conditions just described, but also a suspenseful tension filled 90 minutes in the dark with an understated, yet towering performance by the film's legendary star. Karloff basically plays himself as an aging out-of-fashion horror star from the past named Byron Orlok, who has announced his retirement from movies, since the violence in the real world around him has far exceeded the horrors he is famous for portraying on screen. Bogdanovich cuts back and forth from Karloff's exit from the big-screen to a young all-American boy gone bad (based on the Charles Whitman shootings at the University of Texas) as he slowly and methodically kills his family and others for no apparent reason at all. The long slow tracking shots, the use of natural sound with no music score (all brilliantly edited by Verna Fields) gives Targets a slightly documentary feel that would later figure greatly into the films of the 1970s. The uneasiness of the shooter scenes are at time absolutely chilling as in the end, when Bogdanovich finds a way to bring Karloff and the young assassin together for the films climax. Karloff again proves his weight in gold in the final scene, as he does throughout the entire film. It is here that I found myself wondering why his performance went unnoticed by the Academy in 1968. But, as Bogdanovich would later tell that even after the film was picked-up by Paramount Pictures for release (normally all Corman produced films were distributed through the low-budget AIP), it failed at the box-office probably due to the recent assassinations of both MLK and RFK. If the film were made today, any aging actor playing the Orlock role would no doubt get a nomination out of sympathy as often older actors do these days, but back in '68 it would have been genuinely deserved. It would have been nice if the man who created one of the most enduring images in film history had been recognized by the industry for such a valedictorian exit.

Boris Karloff Movies