cleolinda | Sunday, arghhh (Reply)

Oh my God, I'm so stiff. I hardly drank anything at all last night--a tiny glass of Riesling, a Bacardi mixer in the same glass (hey, it's recycling!), a plastic cup of champagne, and then two or three cups of Coke, and a frozen Coke at the theater--over ten hours. I didn't have enough water to drink the whole day ("I know! I'll drink a Mountain Dew!"), I don't think, and my evening started at 4 pm with Sweeney Todd and didn't end until 2 am when I got home. And then I didn't get to sleep until 4:30 am, because of all the caffeine I'd had, damn. Valkyrie ended up with my swap present, Dirty Minds (what's a four-letter word for a woman that ends in U-N-T? Aunt), and gave me Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her (YAY!) for my birthday, while I ended up with David and Karen's Dirty Hippie Soaps (soap, salts, balm, lip balm) in Rosemary's Stretch myself.

Sweeney Todd was awesome, by the way, but I don't know that I have the strength to really get into a proper discussion of it--I've been sleeping most of the day, with intermittent trips downstairs for food and water. Mmm, ~~lazy~~ decadent. I'll just say that I thought that the singing and acting were fantastic--well, let me qualify that the singing served the acting; Helena Bonham might not have the strongest voice in the world, but it served the way she characterized Mrs. Lovett really, really well. My two favorite parts were "A Little Priest" and "By the Sea," the latter of which got the biggest laughs of the entire movie in my theater. (Regarding the former--if you're trying to explain the movie to someone who didn't even know--and is perhaps appalled to hear--that it's a musical, tell them that there's a song where Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter watch people on the street to pick out who they'd most like to turn into a pie.) And the end, the final shot, is just... amazing. The whole movie is very grounded in tragedy and sorrow and grief, rather than the kind of brassy, flamboyant crazy you might have gotten on stage, but then, on stage you're playing to the balconies. On screen, every little twitch is forty feet high, so film acting tends to be, by necessity, keyed a little lower than stage acting, so I think this was a good choice. And it makes the black humor stand out in even greater relief--and it also ratchets up the tension. When Sweeney finally gets Turpin into his clutches for the second time, the suspense is almost unbearable because you know it's time now, but you also know what it means to Sweeney, how long he's been waiting to do this, and how bad it's going to be when he finally gets to it. And the end--I still can't quite get over how beautiful and horrible it is. Well done, bravo.

Huh. I guess I discussed the movie anyway. I have to go wrap presents now, so any linkspam will have to be for later.