It was a very long day at the office today, and I was an hour late getting home. After taking time to make enough chicken salad to last several days, I headed to the sofa to veg out on television for a couple of hours. Tonight became movie night, and did I ever pick a couple of winners!
The first was a sick update of Psycho entitled Vacancy. One word title, motel out in the middle of nowhere, desk clerk with issues, late night arrival, no other occupants - you get the idea. This new movie differed from the original in that it didn't feature a Tony Perkins character with a domineering, dead mother. The desk clerk in this one booked people into the "honeymoon suite" and then he and his mechanic buddy would paint their faces and murder the guests. Of course, there was a kinky twist to the killings. The killers had cameras hidden throughout the room in order to make and sell snuff films. Although the movie was bloody awful in its inception, it did offer quite a bit of true Hitchcockian suspense. It was hard to watch, and even harder not to watch! (Watch out! He's in the room with you! Oh, no!)
The next movie on the agenda was the relatively recent 300. This was the story of the Spartan King Leonidas and his valiant stand against the Persian army of King Xerxes at Thermopolae. While the battle itself did occur, it was presented as more of a sweeping Homeric epic than as a military action. The vistas of golden wheat fields, rugged mountains, stormy summer nights, and clashing armies were stunning, but it was the almost constant arterial sprays that really gave the film its color. I will watch this movie again, and when I do my goal will be to tally the battlefield beheadings! Arms and legs were also whacked off with wild abandon, but it was the heads that really rolled! It was two hours of bloody good fun - Sweeney Todd on steroids!
Sleep well, America. I know that I will!
Showing posts with label Sweeney Todd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweeney Todd. Show all posts
Monday, March 3, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Blood, Glorious Blood!
The film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway classic, Sweeney Todd: The Demon of Fleet Street, opened this month to great reviews and sparse attendance. It is the sixth collaborative effort between director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp, both of whom tend to see the world from and a uniquely skewed perspective. (Their previous projects have included Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Corpse Bride.)
Sweeney Todd is the fictional account of a barber (Johnny Depp) whose life is ruined by a conniving judge. The judge had designs on the barber’s wife and young daughter. He shipped the barber overseas to a penal colony for some undisclosed crime, but the ever-resilient barber made his way back to London, years later, as the film begins. There he sets about exacting his revenge by giving “the closest shave you ever had.” The barber very quickly forms a partnership with his downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a pie maker, and together they are able to create the tastiest meat pies in the city.
The 19th century London of Tim Burton is a visual feast of dark blues and grays liberally punctuated with brilliant blood red bouquets of arterial spray. It is alive with rats, cockroaches, and street urchins scurrying through the fog and hazy illumination of gas street lamps. It is the London of Charles Dickens, only more sinister and macabre.
Johnny Depp gives life to the title character with his usual brilliance, and, in the process, proves to be a surprisingly good singer. Helena Bonham Carter is as cheery and cunning as Depp is diabolical and tragic. Together they infuse dreary London with a twisted sense that any wrong can be set right with a sharp barber’s razor and a good meat grinder. And, if you can turn a nice profit along the way, well, that’s all the better!
Stephen Sondheim is a taste that I have never acquired, but it was well worth sitting through a Sondheim musical to watch Depp and Bonham Carter romp about Burton’s London. Serial killing and inadvertent cannibalism add such a nice touch to the holiday season! Now that the world knows Johnny Depp can sing, perhaps he and Tim Burton will resurrect some other old chestnut next year – Oklahoma!, anyone?
Sweeney Todd is the fictional account of a barber (Johnny Depp) whose life is ruined by a conniving judge. The judge had designs on the barber’s wife and young daughter. He shipped the barber overseas to a penal colony for some undisclosed crime, but the ever-resilient barber made his way back to London, years later, as the film begins. There he sets about exacting his revenge by giving “the closest shave you ever had.” The barber very quickly forms a partnership with his downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a pie maker, and together they are able to create the tastiest meat pies in the city.
The 19th century London of Tim Burton is a visual feast of dark blues and grays liberally punctuated with brilliant blood red bouquets of arterial spray. It is alive with rats, cockroaches, and street urchins scurrying through the fog and hazy illumination of gas street lamps. It is the London of Charles Dickens, only more sinister and macabre.
Johnny Depp gives life to the title character with his usual brilliance, and, in the process, proves to be a surprisingly good singer. Helena Bonham Carter is as cheery and cunning as Depp is diabolical and tragic. Together they infuse dreary London with a twisted sense that any wrong can be set right with a sharp barber’s razor and a good meat grinder. And, if you can turn a nice profit along the way, well, that’s all the better!
Stephen Sondheim is a taste that I have never acquired, but it was well worth sitting through a Sondheim musical to watch Depp and Bonham Carter romp about Burton’s London. Serial killing and inadvertent cannibalism add such a nice touch to the holiday season! Now that the world knows Johnny Depp can sing, perhaps he and Tim Burton will resurrect some other old chestnut next year – Oklahoma!, anyone?
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