Geoff, I loved it and saw it three times.  The original show is great but a lot of the music cuts made sense and it flowed cinematically.

Now I am still awaiting to see if "Follies" will ever see the light of day on celluloid.

You know I think a great comic book musical would be kind of interesting. Maybe a campy Superman one. I think it would be really fun. But what do I know, I am on cold medicine and it just really makes me loopy. I'll read this tomorrow and go  "Geeze what was I thinking?"

This thread will not die!  I think it's been over a hundred pages since the "enough of this thread" rudeness.

Viva la Gay wedding/drift Thread  and Viva La Nightquill!

You know I think a great comic book musical would be kind of interesting. Maybe a campy Superman one.

Jodi -- it's been done.  IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S SUPERMAN (1967) starring Jack Cassidy.  With "music" by Charles Strouse (composer of ANNIE and other less-than-masterpieces).  A truly terrible show that lasted about a 120 performances on Broadway.  They made it a tv-movie with Leslie Ann Warren as Lois Lane in 1975.

I didn't get Sweeney Todd, just such an odd story combined with odd visuals and odd characters and I couldn't bring myself to care. Also, and this is the key to a great musical to me, I didn't remember any of the songs after the movie and certainly wasn't humming them.

The novels that I'd like to see made into a series of musicals would be Terry Pratchett's Discworld. They are absurd, but realistic and brilliantly written but some of that absurdity and humor would be lost in a visual translation (the humor often comes from NOT seeing the characters and having their visual tics spelled out using dialogue and deflective narration) but music would work incredibly well. In fact one of my favorite characters (cap'n carrot) was described as someone who could start singing in the middle of the street for no reason and soon acquire a town full of backup singers and incredibly well choreographed dancers. The problem for me personally is; there is probably no chance that they would be made into musicals (if they were made at all) but now that I thought of them as musicals I would be bitterly disappointed if they weren't musicals.

One of the things I like about theatre is the way reality can be warped and reshaped and there doesn't have to be a long exposition about the why and wherefore, it just IS -- the characters accept it, and so do we (the audience).  It's the same theory of comic books, right? 

In theatre, we enter (we "give up to") this reality for a short while, a few hours, we learn our lesson, and then we exit back into the "real" world.  Theatre to me is a giant "What If..?" scenario. 

Which is what I love about Sondheim.  Sondheim gets theatre.  He doesn't waste time pretending; he takes it very seriously.  You can enjoy his work on simply that level alone.  How is he stretching the conventions of musical theatre THIS time?

That said, I thought the new SWEENEY TODD was okay.  I approved of the cuts (which Sondheim at least supervised), though thought the movie was a little too bloody.  <- That sentence contained a pun of which Sondheim would approve!

I like the show.  It's a theatre piece -- it's not a movie.  I'm not a fan of musicals that are made into movies (not movie-musicals, which I largely enjoy).  Theatre belongs on the stage and loses some of its "believability" when put into reality.  So leave musicals on the stage, don't film them!

On the other hand, I don't mind when they film the SHOW on stage and show that.  Many of the Sondheim musicals are recorded that way.  I prefer it.

I've been trying to place a song someone mentioned earlier (Keep it light, keep it gay) and just realized that was from the Producers which brings up an interesting question: Is anyone offended that Roger Devries is used as a means to mock Hitler, by playing Hitler in such an over the top, campy, stereotypical gay manner, as if that behaviour is both inherently humourous and also a good way to bring Hitler down by making him gay? Don't get me wrong, I loved the Roger Devries parts of that movie and nearly died laughing when he first slouched as Hitler but after a bit of thought I was disquieted by it.

That's a musical that should have had no problem being turned into a movie (since it originally was a movie) but inept direction and unwillingness to make large cuts and slim bloated songs turns it into an okay movie with a bunch of high points (the worst piece of direction in the movie for me is when the producers have to give the nazi oath on the rooftop with the pigeons and the gag is that instead of holding up their hand they are just holding up one finger. That finger just fades into the background when it should be front and center since that's the joke).

But Steve, that gay-crap is one-hundred percent Mel Brooks.  Personally, I found the most insulting moment in THE PRODUCERS to be the "Village People" gag when the director was trying on costumes in the first act.  I mean, the Village People didn't even "exist" in the era in which this show is set -- not that that makes it insulting, but it certainly goes to show how Brooks will stoop to any level to get a laugh, whether the laugh is legitimate or not.

Also, all the gay gags in all his movies clearly show what his belief about homosexuals is: they're all prissy girls who lisp.  He uses homosexuality to mock and degenerate.  Makes me wonder more about what Brooks himself is hiding...