Phantom Movie
I'm sure I'll have even more to say after I see it for the fifth time on Friday, but anyway...
The cast is good. I thought Gerard Butler was a total miscast a first. Didn't like his voice, but I like it now. Emmy Rossum has the whole wide eyed innocent look that's good, and her voice is quite good too. Patrick Wilson, well, I guess he makes a fine Raoul. To quote the girls sitting behind us at the last showing I was at: "No one gives a crap about Raoul anyway." So it doesn't matter as much who plays him, I guess. I have to say they managed to make his hair very unattractive. I don't know what it is about it, but I don't like his hair, and I think it makes him look ugly. He really looks okay in real life. Just not in the movie. (Whereas, in my opinion - barring the facial prosthetic deformity - Gerard looks better in the movie than in real life.)
The sets, awesome. The costumes, double awesome. Except for the leather coat Raoul wears (looks weirdly modern to me, but what do I know?) and that little filmy slip thing Christine is wearing during the Phantom of the Opera/Music of the Night bit, that has the slit all the way up to her hip. Had to groan when she's sitting in the boat with it all open, like she's just TRYING to look ... I dunno... ravishable. And trying way too hard. It just seemed excessive. Oh, and there is way too much heaving bosom in the movie as a whole.
The music is - duh - fantastic, of course. Though there are a significant number of lyric changes between the movie versions and the OCR (original cast recording) versions, which I, in my limited experience, have to wonder if they are now standard lyrics at some other performance (US, UK, Australia?) or if they changed them specifically for the movie. And why were they changed in the first place? What was wrong with the originals?
There's a couple of things I keep picking on, though. Couple makeup issues. The one that bothers other people the most doesn't bother me. Christine's makeup changes when she's decending for the first time into the Phantom's lair, during Phantom of the Opera. Well... I see where they were going with it, I mean, it's all a sort of dreamlike, altered pereception kind of thing, so okay, I'll go with it. What bugs me is that her lipstick changes three times on the roof scene during All I Ask Of You. I keep trying to tell myself it's the changing lighting conditions as they move closer and farther from the yellower light of the theater windows, but I'm really not sure it is. The other major thing is that the Phantom's masks do not all cover the entire area that his deformity later covers when he is unmasked. The Don Juan mask is particularly guilty of it, and I don't think the Death's Head mask from Masquerade extends far enough down, either. (I used to be much more upset about the discrepancies when I hadn't realized that the character himself was supposed to also be wearing a wig... I get that now, so that HELPS, but it does not fix the issues that are left...) And NONE of them, not a ONE, covers the eyelid thing. You can always see his eye/lid/socket area fine, and it never looks bad until he's unmasked.
It looks better their way, I know. I mean, they're obviously going for a sexy Phantom thing here, so you wouldn't want to go and ruin that with an always-ugly eye, but it just bothers me when I think about it. You could almost make a case for him covering the rest of it with makeup (he's supposed to be a genius, after all) when his mask of the day is not large enough, but he couldn't cover the eye. Oh well.
It really takes something to make me cry at a movie. I mean, I just don't. Not in the theaters, especially. But I have cried at least a little every time I have seen this one. Well, that's not a HUGE surprise when you consider that listening to the OCR makes me tear up too... but still. Stranger Than You Dreamt It gets me a little, though I rarely tear up at it, just get choked up, and the whole Final Lair bit pretty much does it to me. He's so desperate, so deeply hurting, so angry... and then he realizes he has to let them go... but it just breaks his heart. How can you see that/hear that and not tear up? Last time I saw it, I was particularly emotional, apparently, because Music of the Night and Point of No Return got me, too. Every single time, I sit there, during Point of No Return, and I KNOW what's gonna happen, and I REALLY know I can't change it, and I guess if it really really came down to it, I wouldn't WANT to, but I sit there and my mind is just screaming, Don't do it! PLEASE don't do it. Don't go out there! You can't! It's all going to be ruined! .... Obviously it never changes anything. When he's singing to the music box at the end... boy, if you're not already crying, that's got to get you going. And the rose on the grave.... Well, by then I'm usually wiping away any tears that leaked out and trying to get myself presentable for when the theater lights come up.
Overall... it's just fantastic.
The cast is good. I thought Gerard Butler was a total miscast a first. Didn't like his voice, but I like it now. Emmy Rossum has the whole wide eyed innocent look that's good, and her voice is quite good too. Patrick Wilson, well, I guess he makes a fine Raoul. To quote the girls sitting behind us at the last showing I was at: "No one gives a crap about Raoul anyway." So it doesn't matter as much who plays him, I guess. I have to say they managed to make his hair very unattractive. I don't know what it is about it, but I don't like his hair, and I think it makes him look ugly. He really looks okay in real life. Just not in the movie. (Whereas, in my opinion - barring the facial prosthetic deformity - Gerard looks better in the movie than in real life.)
The sets, awesome. The costumes, double awesome. Except for the leather coat Raoul wears (looks weirdly modern to me, but what do I know?) and that little filmy slip thing Christine is wearing during the Phantom of the Opera/Music of the Night bit, that has the slit all the way up to her hip. Had to groan when she's sitting in the boat with it all open, like she's just TRYING to look ... I dunno... ravishable. And trying way too hard. It just seemed excessive. Oh, and there is way too much heaving bosom in the movie as a whole.
The music is - duh - fantastic, of course. Though there are a significant number of lyric changes between the movie versions and the OCR (original cast recording) versions, which I, in my limited experience, have to wonder if they are now standard lyrics at some other performance (US, UK, Australia?) or if they changed them specifically for the movie. And why were they changed in the first place? What was wrong with the originals?
There's a couple of things I keep picking on, though. Couple makeup issues. The one that bothers other people the most doesn't bother me. Christine's makeup changes when she's decending for the first time into the Phantom's lair, during Phantom of the Opera. Well... I see where they were going with it, I mean, it's all a sort of dreamlike, altered pereception kind of thing, so okay, I'll go with it. What bugs me is that her lipstick changes three times on the roof scene during All I Ask Of You. I keep trying to tell myself it's the changing lighting conditions as they move closer and farther from the yellower light of the theater windows, but I'm really not sure it is. The other major thing is that the Phantom's masks do not all cover the entire area that his deformity later covers when he is unmasked. The Don Juan mask is particularly guilty of it, and I don't think the Death's Head mask from Masquerade extends far enough down, either. (I used to be much more upset about the discrepancies when I hadn't realized that the character himself was supposed to also be wearing a wig... I get that now, so that HELPS, but it does not fix the issues that are left...) And NONE of them, not a ONE, covers the eyelid thing. You can always see his eye/lid/socket area fine, and it never looks bad until he's unmasked.
It looks better their way, I know. I mean, they're obviously going for a sexy Phantom thing here, so you wouldn't want to go and ruin that with an always-ugly eye, but it just bothers me when I think about it. You could almost make a case for him covering the rest of it with makeup (he's supposed to be a genius, after all) when his mask of the day is not large enough, but he couldn't cover the eye. Oh well.
It really takes something to make me cry at a movie. I mean, I just don't. Not in the theaters, especially. But I have cried at least a little every time I have seen this one. Well, that's not a HUGE surprise when you consider that listening to the OCR makes me tear up too... but still. Stranger Than You Dreamt It gets me a little, though I rarely tear up at it, just get choked up, and the whole Final Lair bit pretty much does it to me. He's so desperate, so deeply hurting, so angry... and then he realizes he has to let them go... but it just breaks his heart. How can you see that/hear that and not tear up? Last time I saw it, I was particularly emotional, apparently, because Music of the Night and Point of No Return got me, too. Every single time, I sit there, during Point of No Return, and I KNOW what's gonna happen, and I REALLY know I can't change it, and I guess if it really really came down to it, I wouldn't WANT to, but I sit there and my mind is just screaming, Don't do it! PLEASE don't do it. Don't go out there! You can't! It's all going to be ruined! .... Obviously it never changes anything. When he's singing to the music box at the end... boy, if you're not already crying, that's got to get you going. And the rose on the grave.... Well, by then I'm usually wiping away any tears that leaked out and trying to get myself presentable for when the theater lights come up.
Overall... it's just fantastic.