Tag: review

Movie Review: Les Miserables

A revelation in Les Miserables was Samantha Barks as Éponine; she played the part on the London stage, and she was wonderful in the film.

My wife and I were in Oneonta, NY for the holidays, visiting the parents-in-law. They watched the Daughter while The Wife and I went to the local mall to see the movie Les Miserables.

I should note that I have never seen the musical, though, in fact, we will later this spring. Missed the 1998 iteration of the film with Liam Neeson and Gerard Depardieu. Not familiar with the songs at all, except one. Didn’t even know the story beyond the fact that some character named Jean Valjean went to jail for a long time for stealing bread. I had read some reviews suggesting that it was wonderful, but others, such as the one by Ken Levine, indicated that some in the cast, notably Russell Crowe, playing Javert, the official who pursues Valjean, could not sing. It took me a while to figure it out: many of the more critical opinions were based on their notions of the characters based on what they experienced before.

The “big deal” about this film is that director Tom Hooper decided that the singing should be done “live” as they are acting. They don’t record it first and then lip-synch to the track, as is usually done, where the voices can be “sweetened.” And this movie is almost all singing; the amount of standard dialogue wouldn’t fill a Twitter tweet, someone quipped.

Apparently, Javert is generally played by a bass with a richer tone. Still, I thought Crowe was perfectly adequate, consistent with his character’s persona. To my surprise, I had a greater difficulty listening to Hugh Jackman, who played Valjean. I know he CAN sing; he’s been on Broadway, and I’ve seen him on the Tonys. Here, though, everything seemed high in his range, and it was exhausting for me to listen to after a while.

Give Anne Hathaway her Oscar now. Not only will she be nominated this week for Best Supporting Actress, but she will also win for playing Fantine. She sings “I Dreamed a Dream,” that song that made Susan Boyle famous, but the passion here was just staggering.

Some thought Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier were too over-the-top goofy, but I found their first appearance, in particular, a welcome respite from the overwhelming gloominess of the story to that point.

Eddie Redmayne as Marius, a would-be suitor to Valjean’s ward, Cosette, was a better actor than singer. Amanda Seyfried as Cosette has a thin voice, though she had a limited amount to sing. However, a revelation was Samantha Barks as Éponine, who secretly loved Marius; she played the part on the London stage, and she was wonderful in the film. Aaron Tveit, as Enjolras, leader of the rebels, was very good, and I enjoyed Daniel Huttlestone as the boy Gavroche.

Still, I was moved at the end. At 158 minutes, it WAS too long, but the overarching story, as I understood it, of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice, came through.

Book Review: A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite as a morning show newsreader had dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick van Dyke.

At some point a year or two ago, I bought a whole bunch of books for not very much money; can’t remember where. They sat on my bookshelf en masse, all but untouched until I got into this recent reading binge. First up had to be the 1996 autobiography of Walter Cronkite (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009), for he was my all-time favorite news anchor.

The early chapters, about him growing up in Kansas City and later Houston, I found to be a bit bloodless, even as he tells about murderous racism. It seemed very “that’s the way it was.” His World War II retelling was somewhat livelier. When he described being stationed in Moscow for CBS News, he realized “how effective lies can be when the truth is suppressed,” so that his Russian driver was convinced that the Soviets had invented baseball and the Jeep.

When he gets to the issue of television, though, he lets his personality, and his opinions, shine through. He believes that the press’s focus on the “sizzle rather than the steak” of politics created a cynicism that resulted in an “international embarrassment” of low voter participation.

During Cronkite’s tenure as the anchor, US government officials were looking for the network to take a more supportive role toward the Vietnam war. He replied, “It is not the journalist’s job to be patriotic. How can patriotism be determined anyway? Is patriotism simply agreeing unquestioningly with every action of one’s government? Or might we define patriotism as having the courage to speak and act on those principles one thinks are best for the country…?”

My favorite parts of the book are the insights about the early days of television, where folks established in radio and print figuring out the new medium, including his tenure as a morning show newsreader having dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick Van Dyke. Later, he recognizes that he had become an “800-pound gorilla” of news trying not to upstage his news colleagues. When he retired, he developed disgust with the new CBS News ownership of the early 1980s over its concern with profits over content.

Of course, he tells about reporting the important events of the times, including the John Kennedy assassination and the landing on the moon. He namechecks his college physics teacher, who would be amazed how well Cronkite explained the technical aspects of the space missions.

I think that the state of television news, from the time he wrote this book until he died, must have filled him with despair for his chosen profession. Still, it was a most interesting read by a most stellar individual.

Wicked, the book versus Wicked, the musical

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book.

Reprinted from my Times Union blog.

My wife and I went to see the musical Wicked at the Thursday afternoon matinee on November 8, right after it opened, at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. We had not seen it before in any iteration, not at Proctors a couple of years before, or on Broadway. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the music, aside from Defying Gravity.

All in all, it was WONDERFUL. The performers were great, and the element that really impressed me was lighting. Michael Eck’s review is about right, though I obviously can’t speak to how much it may become dated.

My wife met me at the theater. She was driving from work with little time to spare, so I took the bus – the 905, for you locals – to Schenectady. I had left the book I had been reading, an autobiography of Walter Cronkite, at work, and I needed a distraction. I grabbed my copy of Wicked, the book written by Gregory Maguire. In fact, it was a copy signed by the author, to me, which I purchased from him at a Friends of the Albany Public Library event in April 2006.

I got about an eighth of the way through the book, and then I saw the musical, then I finished the book. Probably not recommended. These are very different animals. Wicked the book is grimmer, grimier, more sexually explicit, more about political intrigue and musings about religion.

I’m not talking about minor differences of interpretation. The musical’s book by Winnie Holzman resembles the book by Maguire in only minor ways. Elphaba, who Jaquandor describes here, is green; she has a distant father, a deceased mother, a sister Nessarose with cool shoes, and a secret romance. Almost everything else you THINK you know from one source will be negated by the other source. Characters are merged, characters who die in the book are pivotal in the music, relations are changed, and a whole lot of characters in the book never make it to the stage at all. Religion and politics, and what’s going on with the Animals, are central to the book, more peripheral to the musical.

For a spoiler-free analysis, go HERE. If you want analysis with specified spoiler alerts, look HERE. And if you like spoilers galore, go HERE.

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book. People who saw the musical first either really dislike the book, or can’t get through it. In fact, one said, the best thing, or even the only good thing, about the book is that it generated the musical. There’s a level of violence and sex in the Maguire book some found disturbing. For me, the extra characters left me a bit confused, and honestly, a tad bored in the middle – where is this GOING? – though it mostly made sense at the end.

There is a “reader’s group guide” at the back of the book. Question 1 notes that “Wicked derives some of its power from the popularity of the source material. Does meeting up with familiar characters and famous fictional situations require more patience and effort on the part of the reader or less?” I say “yes”, both. In particular, the musical is even more beholden to the classic film than the book.

I’m curious what others who both read the book and saw the musical think about each. In particular, I wonder if the order they experienced the media matters.

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