Thursday, October 04, 2007

At Long Last!!!!

The trailer I have very obsessively been checking for, day in and out, is finally here!

Excitable bullet points thoughts:
  • Music over logo is definitely Sweeney music, but arranged differently than in the score. Awesome. I was fearing that some generic "spooky" music would be used instead.
  • Voice over? Nicely gravelly.
  • First look at Todd? It's pre-banishment Sweeney, and he looks just fine.
  • Closeup of Mrs. Lovett. "Barker, his name was. Benjamin Barker." I love how dirty and decrepit she looks.
  • Alan Rickman is suitably oily and evil-sounding as Turpin.
  • Gambit of using the opening of the trailer to tell the Sweeney backstory? Not sure I'm completely sold, as part of the fun of the musical is getting that info after we meet Sweeney post-banishment, but this is Hollywood, and the ship has long sailed on trailers not giving away too much of the plot.
  • We see Sweeney return - I love the look here, the look of the film. Dirty, and frayed, and torn.
  • Wow. I was getting the sinking feeling that they would play the fact that the film is a musical coy - but then, boom! A substantial chunk of the score's best song is sung.
  • Can Depp sing? Not really. It's a kind of character-singing (think Henry Higgins) he's doing, but it might (might) work. The tome of his voice and the insane depravity are spot on.
  • Then we go into a quick montage (set to beautiful, lushly orchestrated Sweeney music) of images. Quick views of Beadle (looking beautifully ratlike), Pirelli, of the chair in action - awesome all. Whatever else they do or don't do right, they got the look spot on.
  • I love, love, love the set up of ending on Sweeney's triumphant "At last, my arm is complete again!" only to undercut the drama of the moment by cutting right to Lovett asking what they will do with the dead body.
  • Set up aside, they give away none of the twists, which is great too - no reference to meat pies!

Verdict. Very nervous about the singing. Love the sense that Sondheim's very dramatic, film-music inspired score will get a full unleashing, even as traditional underscoring. Overall impression? Good. Very, very good.

Until Whenever

4 comments:

R.A. Porter said...

I'm a little less nervous than before, but they killed one of Mrs. Lovett's lines! "That's all very well, but what are we going to do about him??!??" Where's my Eye-talian?

Tosy And Cosh said...

I know I'm being super-optimistic here, but I wonder if they changed it just for the trailer so as not to give away the fact that Pirelli gets murdered?

R.A. Porter said...

Anything's possible. I've been very critical of Tim Burton without having seen anything (I'm not a fan of the work he does with others' source material) but he nailed the look beautifully here.

And while Johnny's voice doesn't sound great, it's interesting. I'd say it's a step above Rex Harrison, maybe more like Robert Preston's talk-sing. And acting-wise, he seems to be really firing on all cylinders.

Tosy And Cosh said...

I also love what looks like a stylized way of dealing with the singing. Instead of Sweeney singing to himself in his room, we get him singing to the people on the streets of London (although they can't see him). Kind of an "in-his-head" approach. We also get a quick look of what looks to me will be a "By the Sea" done as a fantasy sequence, with the audience seeing the fantasy Lovett is singing about portrayed on screen. Nice.