But is it more awesome than “Paint Your Wagon”?
I found myself inferring that this operatic version was going to beef up the impact of the good Catholic Bishop in ValJean’s life course. I hope that proves correct. The Christian life lessons could use a more truthful approach out of Hollywood.
It is an over blown show about a very evil event.
I went to see a stage version in Hollywood some time back ... and walked out ... during their perversion of the wedding scene.
I hate musicals. Needless to say, I would have seen this movie if not for that fact.
From the little bit I heard in the trailer, Russell Crowe is no Philip Quast. But I congratulate him for trying anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urxk4mveLCw
As I told my wife when we saw the previews for the first time in the theater, “I’ll be washing my hair that night”.
I think I have more interest in watching a slasher film than this piece of pickled tripe.
I still can’t see how you can make a musical about a very sad story.
les mis ping to self
I won’t pay to see anything Anne Hathaway is in. So, I will wait to see it someday and may not, even then.
I saw the movie trailer at a theater when I went to see the excellent The Sessions. Yes, bombastic looks to be the word to describe it, if the trailer gave you a taste of what to expect. Too bad, since this show has a few of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard in a musical. I knew this guy Todd McCarthy at the U. of Chicago nearly 40 years ago!
He’s writing well, and has been working for VARIETY for a long time now!
Hoping to see it opening day
I will not see this movie, after having viewed a news story of Anne Hathaway’s desperate attempt to garner publicity via an unfortunate failure to clothe her nether regions, which was filmed courtesy of our ever-vigilant media during a recent exit from her limousine. If the movie is so dreadful that such tactics must be used to draw the public, I’ll pass.
Of course I understand the ‘need’ to make everything into a movie (like Lincoln), how else the young could learn anything otherwise?
But above ‘well sung’ quote is as bad as it gets. How can you mess up the original scores? A couple of them (ok more than a couple) are truly beautiful.
when a TV commerical starts with “critics rave...” then it is more than likely the movie is terrible.
For those who have read the brilliant novel (despite its rather tedious first part), some of Hugo’s paragraphs run a page and a half, but so smoothly that you hardly notice.
In some parts the emotional highs and lows of kinds that human beings rarely experience. A single page might leave you in tears of sympathy, righteous indignation, burning anger, or angelic joy.
After he sent the manuscript to the publisher, Hugo went off for some weeks to an isolated house in England. After a short time, he sent his publisher a telegram that just said “?”
His publisher replied “!” They couldn’t print them fast enough.
At the time, the French pastime was writing novels, but after reading it, people just stopped, knowing that anything they wrote would be unfavorably compared to it.
Since that time, actors have been driven to distraction trying to portray emotions that are far beyond the range of most. They rarely succeed.
Victor Hugo is better known in France as the greatest of French poets.
His poetry is excellent and too many Westerners think his reputation rests on “Les Mis.” It doesn’t.
The article is in error - the later events in Hugo’s novel are a portrait of the July Revolution of 1830 that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and brought to power Louis-Phillipe - the “Citizen King.” Hugo was originally a conservative and monarchist but the events of the Second Empire under Napoleon III made him a republican and socialist.
On the stage, when Valjean dies he's greeted by Fantine and Eponine.
In the movie, it's just Fantine.
-PJ
It was a powerful and moving film. The actors sang live on the sets as opposed to the usual recording/syncing later method. It is full of Christian imagery and themes. A great show. Take the spouse or if you dont have one then take the neighbor’s spouse.