Oh, Mister Todd, Ooh, Mister Todd, What Is That Sound?

[filkertom]

The official Sweeney Todd movie site has song excerpts. (Click on "Enter the Site", then go to "Audio" in the upper right of the window that pops up.) They sound good. Not great, not fantastic... but certainly good. I wish the singing director had told them to put more energy into it... but we'll see how it works on screen.

Please, please don't suck.

Comments

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

My initial take is H.B.C is NO Angela Landsbury... Mrs Lovett needs a much stronger singer.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

I don't like black comedy, but I love Sweeny Todd. I've never quite figured out why, except that it's wonderful and when things are rough, I can look across the table at my husband and say "Times is hard, Sir, times is hard. And oof, them pussy cats is quick!"

You may add in my prayers for lack of suckage, but I'm a little worried about the overly stylized look I've seen in the previews. If they play this for slapstick, they're going to be missing a lot of what makes it great.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

That doesn't appear to be what I perceive to be a problem. I think it's gonna be too understated. Depp and HBC are not trained singers, although that's not necessarily a problem. But it seems... subdued. As opposed to brutally but barely restrained.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

On another forum, someone mentioned that's part of the luxury of doing it for film rather than on stage: you can whisper and growl and underplay without it being lost in the back rows.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

It's so hard to walk the line with this show. It's enormously powerful, but enormously difficult marterial.

And in this one, IMHO, the lack of training can't help but tell on the part of the main actors, this being Soundheim and not Weber. However, I think the really tough songs may be sung by the chorus and the side characters, so maybe we'll be all right. What's important for Todd and Lovett is clear enunciation (Have a little priest?), and madness.

Well, Burton is very, very good, and so is Depp, so we'll just have to see I guess.

[roane.livejournal.com]

Borders' website has two full songs, "Wait" (http://www.bordersmedia.com/features/audio/sweeneytodd_wait.asp) and "My Friends" (http://www.bordersmedia.com/features/audio/sweeneytodd_myfriends.asp).

My first impression is that HBC is a better singer than I would've expected, and that, sadly, Depp is using the same accent he used for Jack Sparrow. I really really really want to like this.

huh.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Brief impressions:

Technically they're each not bad.

In terms of interpretation...they each sound too young and not tortured/crazy enough. (And I agree that Depp is using his Jack Sparrow voice.) HBC a bit too soft and sweet, Depp a bit too much like a pop vocalist (as I think someone else observed). Granted, I'm very fond of the Len Cariou/Angela Lansbury interpretation, but I've heard others that were better than this, too.

I have a great deal of respect for Depp as an actor, so he might make it work overall. But the vocals aren't really helping much.

[n-e-star.livejournal.com]

My first reaction from listening is that HBC would make a wonderful Joanna, she has this innocences to her voice in all the songs.

JD sounds like a pop singer trying to do opera. And, um... wasn't his wife and child taken from him and he's spent the last 15 odd years in a prison colony? Where's the anger?

ST trivia: the opening of the overture is the start Catholic death mass played backwards.

[lizard-sf.livejournal.com]

Heard at my weekly D&D game:"That Sweeney Todd movie looks cool...I just hope they don't put in all that singing!"

Me: (Smashheadondesk)

*facepaw*

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

We file that under 'people unclear on the concept.'

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

In general I'm disappointed with the singing I've heard so far but then that might because I regularly listen to Sweeney Todd in concert. The point that I'm most disappointed with based on what I heard on the website? When HBC says (going into Have a little priest) "If you get it" and JD gets it he's VERY understated. I have a feeling that's going to be a visual thing...

[morpheus0013.livejournal.com]

Please, please don't suck.

PLEASE. I'm begging here.

I adore Johnny Depp, but thus far, I've been underwhelmed by him in the trailers. So maybe I should be saying, "Please, please let it be the trailers that suck."

[lizreay.livejournal.com]

If they botch this, I will go on a rampage. Sweeney Todd is one of my favorite musicals of all time.

[madama.livejournal.com]

Well i will be honest, my first impression was cor, johnny depp looking marvolous, but after my first girlish *squee* i acctually bothered to look at the movie trailer and things. Although the songs are sung with less feeling than some other performances of sweeny todd, i think that the combination of depp and HBC should be a worth while look. Lets face it has tim burton really gone really wrong on his movies? Even charlie and the choloclate factory had its pluses! I hope it dosent suck, i really really do. I will go and see it when it comes over to the UK. But from what i have seen from the site it should at least be worth the admission price!

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Gad Sir! Todd Slaughter is the definitive Todd, and Stella Rho, Mrs Lovett!

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

I'm actually going to be seeing a sneak preview tonight with my Mom. I snagged a free pass for two.

[ddrussianinja.livejournal.com]

Let us know how it is!

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

*DED OF ENVY*

[signy1.livejournal.com]

I second the plea for non-suckage. The fact that they cut the 'Ballad of Sweeney Todd' inspired me with no confidence, but I must admit that the visuals so far do look wonderful.

If worst comes to worst, I suppose I can do what I did for the 'Phantom' film-- ie, hit mute every time they start singing onscreen and cue up my trusty CD of REAL singers-- but I won't be happy about it.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

Oh, they DIDN'T cut that one! That song is one of the most brilliant in the piece:

"So what if none of their souls were saved? They went to their maker impeccably shaved..."

Okay. Okay. I will refuse to panic, but will hug my tape of the Angela Lansbury version tightly.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

See, I'm less worried about them being REAL singers. I loved Phantom, for instance, despite the fact that Michael Crawford... well, kind of sucks, when measured by the standards of REAL singers. (Check out that wobble on "Sing WAAaaaAAaaaANCE again with me...") But that never mattered, because the emotion he put into it was so wonderful.

*That's* the part I'm worried about whether they'll get right... the emotion of it. Sweeney's got to be pretty complex. I hope he can pull it off.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

they cut the 'Ballad of Sweeney Todd'

They cut what?

Those [INSERT EXPLETIVE HERE]! I delete all over their censored!

(That was one of the pieces I studied while I was a voice student. I love that song. Plus it sets the stage most excellently.)

*wanders off singing "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd/He served a duck to a hungry God..."*

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

Well, because I'm in a procrastinating mood, I went to the site and listened.

I am now prepared to be optomistic. Obviously, you can't play a movie as broadly as a stage production, so the more subdued nature of the songs is probably going to work fine when it gets up on the big screen. And it's going to be really, REALLY interesting to see this done with a genuinely seductive Mrs. Lovett rather than just a cheerfully amoral one.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Obviously, you can't play a movie as broadly as a stage production, so the more subdued nature of the songs is probably going to work fine when it gets up on the big screen.

That also was my thought (and hope).

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

I will admit I'd have cast things differently. Howzabout Alan Rickman as Sweeney Todd, and, maybe, Johnny Depp as the sailor? Keep in mind, Todd's supposed to be old enough to have a grown-up daughter.

I will admit that after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I like the idea of HBC doing Mrs. Lovett. I always saw Mrs. Lovett as by far the more "evil" of the two---she didn't have Todd's excuse of "fifteen years in a penal colony, and coming back to London to find that my wife's apparently dead and my daughter's in the clutches of the man who sent me away unjustly;" she was just greedy, and led Todd down the primrose path.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, Rickman as Todd would have been delicious. Not to say I think Depp can't do it -- but the makeup doesn't seem quite right for it. at the least.

Although I agree that Mrs Lovett is likely more "evil" than Todd, I still think HBC was miscast in the role. I've nothing against playing Mrs Lovett as "genuinely seductive" (as noted earlier by sazettel), but from what I've seen so far HBC's portrayal is *WAY TOO YOUNG*. Remember, Lovett knew Todd from *before* he was transported -- *she* is old enough to have a grown-up daughter too! I've *seen* a 20 or 21 year old woman play Mrs Lovett convincingly (I was in the pit) so I know it can be done... but HBC either doesn't know how, or isn't trying hard enough. And *her* makeup is also wrong; Mrs Lovett is pushing 40 (if not already over) and a *shopkeeper*, and that should *show*, no matter how seductive she's supposed to be.

I commented elsewhere that, while Sweeney Todd is is filled with dark humor, the trailers and such seem to be *VERY* low on the humor angle. I sincerely hope the full movie carries out a better balance between "dark" and "humor", for that's what makes the musical so compelling... and is also characteristic of Burton's best work to date.

All that said, I am joining with you all in the prayers that this not suck.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I've been worried about their youth, too. I spose the younger and more seductive actors is their concession to Hollywood. But given that it's a miracle this could get made at *all*, in the current crush of utter Hollywood dreck, that's a compromise I'm willing to accept if they get the rest of it right.

And 'old enough to have a grown daughter' can be stretched if they married young...

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

It's Hollywood. The female lead is automatically going to be too young and too thin for the part.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I'd hope better of Burton. (And I don't mind the actor/actress *being* young -- but play the character as being believably the character's age, and get the makeup to enhance the effect, however subtly.)

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

I'm in an odd spot. I've heard of and about ST many times over the years but I've never actually seen it. I'm debating whether I should order the old Angela Lansbury version on DVD before or after seeing the Tim Burton version.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Either or. I'd say before.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Pfft. I made that same prayer, but the third "Pirates" was just as crappy and racist as #2.

I can, however, safely say that this Johnny Depp film will be leagues better than that one.

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Sorry, dude. It's going to suck. It's a law of nature, or perhaps the upshot of a deal with the devil: Stephen Sondheim does not get to see a decent movie version of one of his shows in his lifetime.

This is not to say the film won't be gorgeous (even Burton's worst films are 90+ minute eye-gasms). And certainly there will be some delightful (acting) performances.

But the music's going to be wrong. Go on all you want about intimate film performances vs. big stage performances. The music is the music. It is a fucking opera. You don't do a movie version of Don Giovanni and cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead because he's a terrific actor and (for the sake of argument) he can carry a tune.

It's idiotic. Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli, rapping his words because he can't sing _at_ _all_, much less manage a part written for a bravura classical tenor?

Johnny Depp as Todd? Helena Bonham Carter as Lovett? Okay, I know T.B. is required by California law (and several international treaties) to cast Depp in every movie he makes, and he's married to HBC. But if he insists on casting them in every movie he makes, he has a responsibility to chose material and roles that are appropriate to their (admittedly enormous) talents.

Cutting the Ballad of Sweeney Todd. That's a new one by me, but I'm not surprised.

So fuck you, Tim Burton. Fuck you casting your buddies and your life-partner in inappropriate roles, when there hundreds of actors better suited for them, who could have done justice to some of the finest stage music of the 20th or any other century; most are obscure (outside of New York), but (and this is the tragedy) you could have cast this with bankable stars* and not compromised the integrity of the score.

Also, fuck me, because I'm going to pay to see this film on opening night, anyway.

* okay, maybe not as bankable as Depp, but bankable. And yes, I can back that up, if challenged, in another post.

[youngcurmudgeon.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my Sondheim-loving professor saw it yesterday and loved it. He said the orchestrations were done by some of the original Broadway people, which is good. I'm seeing it next week.