Word: burtons
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...theater-savvy friend Victor Nelson asked me a few weeks ago about Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton's film version of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical. He wondered if Helena Bonham Carter was up to the vocal challenge of the Mrs. Lovett role. She's excellent, I replied; but aren't you anxious about Johnny Depp as the mad barber? He's not a trained singer. "Oh," Victor said with a knowing laugh, "Johnny Depp can do anything...
...they - Burton, screenwriter John Logan, the whole cast and crew - they've done it. This adaptation of the Hugh Wheeler libretto (from Christopher Bond's play) is both faithful and liberating. The story, of a bitter man in 19th century London who has lost his wife and child and determines to carve out his revenge, has never seemed so human or so bleak. It's no longer just a Guignol songfest, staring at its creatures, with fascination but not pity, from an Olympian distance above the cage in which they claw at one another. Inside this sarcophagus of a play...
...Burton takes a purchase on our more elevated emotions by showing the source of Sweeney's rage. Fifteen years earlier he was a sweet young man, named Benjamin Barker. His beloved wife and young daughter were ripped from him by the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who exiled him to Australia. So Sweeney is a romantic tragic figure; he has fallen from a great height -off the cloud of his belief that love can last forever. Now he knows better, and throws himself into this amorality play. It's man devouring man, vengeance destroying ideals...
...effort to steer you away from the road of rash generalizations, I'd like to object to your preview of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, in which you wondered how the film's "buckets of gore" and singing and dancing might attract or repel "fogies" and kids [Dec. 3]. I'm a 17-year-old theatergoer, and I don't think kids are looking to Sweeney Todd for Saw IV thrills. Besides, the R rating precludes the Disney audience. And have you checked out Broadway lately? I believe the "fogey" audience has become accustomed to situations that are more violent...
...years spent living in Indonesia as a child gave him strong experience in foreign relations, his campaign revised the line to question her judgment as well. "Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have spent time in the White House and traveled to many countries as well," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, "but along with Hillary Clinton, they led us into the worst foreign-policy disaster in a generation and are now giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran...