les miserables (the movie film; not the concert film or book. Dutch angles! Americans! Australians!)

lol
she is in everything
she and Helen Mirrin and Judi Dench are the Hecate of British cinema

never seen/heard the musical before. some of the big numbers were stirring, but i thought the second half of the movie was interminable. eponine, marius and cosette were all dumbass fucktards. russell crowe was alright in his scenes with other people, but his two big solos were real bad. he seemed like he was concentrating as hard as he could on getting the singing right, and as a consequence was really stiff. wolverine's got some pipes on him though, damn.

i dunno, maybe somethings wrong with me. the whole theater was sniffling during valjean's death scene, but i was just thinking about how bad i needed to piss. my attention wandered bigtime during a lot of the songs, including that one.

i agree with most of that, partic crowe's stiffness. thought all the acting was pretty good though

hathaway's "i dreamed a dream" was AMAZING, like i knew nothing about the story coming in and sobbed during it amazing

also agree the last third was too long. again i didn't know the story beforehand but i kind of expected it to end after

...valjean brought the young guy back to his daughter, though i can see how that might have been too disney-movie of an ending

also i kind of just loved the character of valjean and jackman's performance. his eyes did a lot of srs acting imo,

everyone dying at the end was pretty cool too

I understand that Sacha & Helena BC stink up the place but at least some Youtube searching on that matter has caused me to find Matt Lucas and Jenny Galloway at the 25th Anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sD5hjYXD3E

oh they were fine for the comic relief they were intended to be, but they were probably in too many scenes

I have a soft spot for musicals -- I blame it on incessant listening to Oliver! when I was a kid -- and I like Les Mis more for its ridiculousness than in spite of it. My theater-geek girlfriend is similarly inclined, so we're looking forward to this. Not because it will be good in any serious sense. But, you know, shamelessness can be its own reward.

i dig a lot of old movie musicals, but broadway-style musicals never did it for me

This is one of those movies that turns my FB feed into a true tale of two cities.

movie musicals absolutely need abstract body patterns and lots and lots of fountains

jackman is pretty much 100% why I want to see this - love any opportunity to see him sing
and I'm v curious about Hathaway

who is responsible for trading in dancing for belting out hallmark cards, and can we flog that person

Hathaway as Javert?

jackman's real good in this. if he wins an oscar it'd be well deserved. same with hathaway

this movie shouldve had the lyrics onscreen the whole time with that little ball bouncing on each syllable

who is responsible for trading in dancing for belting out hallmark cards, and can we flog that person

otm. I guess Fosse was the last gasp of great Broadway dance? Or I guess, Twyla Tharp has had some big shows. But none of those have been made into movies (and I haven't seen any of them, so I don't know if they were any good).

hathaway didn't have much screen time at all but she was wonderful, yeah. jackman should get some recognition for his part i think

Jackman only seemed great because he played most of his scenes opposite Russell Crowe.

Like the Twilight movies, I'm only happy that this exists for the hilarious Walter Chaw review:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2012/12/les-misérables-2012.html

the only one who makes real emotion of the melodrama of cramped source material that has the audacity to not only introduce a new generation of characters post intermission, but also ask us to invest in a love triangle between three pretty little ciphers chirping their sorta-pretty little songs.

yeah, exactly. the part where it turns into a teen movie is when i started checking out mentally, and spent the rest of the movie counting the pores on the actors faces

I cannot emphasize enough, again, how horrible Crowe is in this

I really liked Crowe as Javert. I feel so lonely.

Doubt I'll be seeing this. Saw it on Broadway, didn't even love it THEN, and well...

But, ain't gonna hate on those who did like it. I'm just more miffed at the people who are writing scathing nastygrams on their FB Wall to people who had the audacity to criticize the film. One FB friend boasted that Crowe could "wipe his ass" with your paycheck.

(This criticism coming from a guy who...had yet to see the film).

can't find much to disagree with in that review - way too many closeups, at least 30 minutes too long, confused politics, and crowe's singing was pretty bad. yet...i liked it - am i just a sap? the whole thing is just so warm, deliberate, and kind-hearted. kind of think you have to be a real grump to not have felt it at times

Awwww crypto I love your DN <3

I like that the musical keeps the Balzacian epic quality of the book. It allows minor characters to have big lead songs. In contrast to, say, the latter day revisions of a lot of 19th c source material where the central romance is emphasized at the expense of setting and backstory (modern cinematic adaptations of Great Expectations, Jane Eyre for example)

way too many closeups, at least 30 minutes too long, confused politics.......yet...i liked it - am i just a sap?

i've been reading and re-reading this and i've decided this movie is just .... lyfe

aw sentimental k3v

i dig a lot of old movie musicals, but broadway-style musicals never did it for me

uh h4a these used to be basically the same thing until culture died.

Crowe's rock background is kind of obvious in this clip - dude stands like they're singing Evanescence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fB6LIsntpg

yeahhhhh i noticed that haha

for all the shit gerard butler got for his singing in phantom, crowe was way, way worse

I saw this, it was pretty OK. Considering how lame some of the songs are ("Bring him home", "Empty chairs") they did a great job, both actors and performers

I'm willing to admit that the 3 minutes of Anne Hathaway singing "I dreamed a dream" was the most moved I've ever been by anything since prepubescence

I liked also how gross it was, from Javert breaking his back as he fell to the snot and eye-boogers and shit and thing, it kept the pathos in the Real Zone

The whole second half has some dreadful songs though, some of them so bad I'd forgotten they'd existed

Russell Crowe wasn't as bad as people say, he just sings like a trombone. His death scene was good

ah now cmon, spoilers

lol @ "sings like a trombone"

His last sound going over should have been the "wah-wah-wahhhhhh" noise.

this fucking owned

― k3vin k

http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/kevin-keller2__oPt.jpg

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/531902_10151404089977783_1793876027_n.jpg

Denby opens a can of whupass, has rehab suggestions for you Les Shizzies:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/theres-still-hope-for-people-who-love-les-miserables.html

Wherever Valjean goes, Javert shows up; he’s everywhere at once, like the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” who was at least intended to be a fanciful creation.

Would like to shake the hands of whoever stuck a "Based on true events" on Denby's copy of the novel.

this was much, much better than i'd hoped for. crowe did struggle for air but tbh javert's just an awful part, even sung well, it's just continuous tuba notes going nowhere.

Hathaway, jackman and guy playing marius were all great. Bring him home was terrible tho, disappointing considering he did well with everything else asked of him.

Cosette sang like a cartoon mouse. HBC's singing was awful.

Whole thing looked amazing.

the songs are all really boring and awful songs even for a broadway-ish joint except for "i dreamed a dream" which is amazing, it's weird.

well i love 'bring him home' and the one or two ensembles bringing all the motifs together can be great too (lacked something in this tho, maybe too much focus on individual vocals i think)

Wait, you liked it but you hate the music? Not a dig, just wondering how you can enjoy a completely sung-thru musical and hate all of teh songs!

the songs are all really boring and awful songs even for a broadway-ish joint except for "i dreamed a dream" which is amazing, it's weird.

I agree that "Dream" outshines everything else, but "On my own", "Master of the house", "Do you hear the people sing?", "Castle on a cloud", and to a lesser extent "Look down", "Bring him home" and "Empty Chairs" are all good-to-great megamusical fare

And "Red & Black" is the best example of megamusical recitative that I've heard

But yeah, then there are five or six other songs that suuuuck

Re: "bad singing" I liked it, actually, every actor had their own kind of not-great singing style and it a) contributed to the snot and shit stylization of the whole thing, and b) it made every singer so individual and different. I actually was left the least moved by the "pro" stage singer (Eponine) just 'cause she seemed so out of place in an otherwise filthy and fucked up production

Like when Amanda Seyfried started singing and she sounds like a theremin I was like of course girl sounds like a theremin

Biggest head scratcher I've read about is that Sacha Baron Cohen sings/acts with an exaggerated French accent, despite the fact that the no one else in the movie has a French accent, even though it is set in France.

Because Thernardier is a racist, obv