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« on: January 23, 2008, 08:21:54 PM »
I'm enjoying reading this thread. Sweeney Todd from the reviews I've seen has the same gore quotient as The Texas Chain Saw Massacres and although I enjoy classic horror I really can live without the splatter biz, so I'll be giving it a miss. But it's interesting to see all the comments about it. I'm just a little disappointed that nobody thought it was a dud--there's usually at least somebody who proves to be the odd man (or woman) out in the group.
Two very short responses to comments above: I used to own the Original Cast Recordings for Mame and Dear World, and I saw Lansbury do Everything's coming up Roses (when she was doing her triumphal revival of Gypsy) at a Tony show back several decades ago, and I think that in her way, Lansbury may have had one of those archetypally golden Broadway voices. I can't really say more about it than that, just my opinion. Her singing on Dear World (a show that regrettably flopped) is particularly exquisite. God, I need to get the CD for that show...
As for Johnny Depp, although he seems like a very likeable, wonderful fellow, I have yet to see him do anything that made me raise my eyebrows, much less knock my socks off. (His stunt cameo as a prison drag queen in that Javier Bardem thing did amuse me, I'll admit.) The MB advised me to hie myself to the video shop and check out Depp's thesping in From Hell, but I have yet to manage to do that. I'm afraid all I can conjure up in the notion of Depp as Barnabas is a cartoon rendition of the character, although I do attempt to keep an open mind.
I'm not sure who I would nominate as the greatest actor of our times. Different actors show different strengths in different roles. It would probably be someone like Viggo Mortensen or Ewan MacGregor, though. I realized all over again today how little I know or comprehend about "the industry" nowadays when I read in an obit for poor Heathie Ledger that Ledger, who I regarded as a major box office draw today, was "not a marquee movie star." WTF?
cheers, Gothique