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Jan 15, 2008 22:11

I've been back in school for a little over a week now, oh joy. For some reason I'm still staying up until about 12:30 every night, even though I have to get up early again. Fortunately, my sister's carpooling friends aren't coming over as much as the last week of the first semester, when they came over in the morning and after school almost every day. This has been nice, as they annoy me.

I also SAW SWEENEY TODD on Sunday, which I've been wanting to do since I read about it in a magazine in October or November.
I was worried I wouldn't be allowed to go, since it's rated R and I'm not 17 yet, but that wasn't a problem. Even my 11 year old sister got to go, although my dad said he probably wouldn't have taken her if he knew more about the movie. My older cousin is visiting us this week, still on winter holiday, following a second Christmas with my dad's side of the family and  mad rush to clean the house. She also came to see the movie, although she didn't know it was a musical and was a bit unpleasantly surprised. See, everyone else who came with me didn't quite share in my joy and excitement at SEEING SWEENEY TODD. My cousin had the aforementioned surprise of finding it to be musical, my sister thought the blood looked really lame and Sweeney's hair was creepy, and my dad fell asleep during the middle. We literally heard him snoring and all tried to look over and see if he was really asleep. The blood really did look quite fake, like bright red paint, but I'm glad it did; I'm not sure how I would have done had it looked more realistic. There was a lot of violence, excessive throat slitting, people getting beaten over the head with hard objects until they died, a bit of neck-stabbing on the creepy pedophile, someone getting thrown in the oven etc., not to mention everyone died at the end,  but I liked it anyway. Seriously, it was like Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or some other Shakespeare play where no one survives. But it had good music!

To tell the truth, I was pretty concerned going into the movie about the quality of the singing. I envisioned a POTO-esque failure by casting big-name stars in the main roles. I had no idea whether they could sing well, and was rather inclined to doubt it. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Some of the minor roles were filled by unknowns who could actually sing well, in my opinion a wise decision. Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter weren't perfect, but they weren't terrible either. I had been expecting a singing pirate, mostly due to the similarities in the accents of Sweeney Todd and Jack Sparrow. Sometimes it seems like Johnny Depp has one all-purpose English accent he uses whenever it is required. But I got used to it after a while. I lamented the loss of so many songs from the musical (even though I've never seen it on stage), particularly the Ballad of Sweeney Todd (because it was the only song I knew). Overall, I agreed with my cousin on the fact that it's plot was somewhat lacking in structure and the climax hard to find amongst all the dead bodies, but I loved the movie overall. I suppose I just have a thing for musicals about Victorian psychopaths. Everyone agreed in the car afterwards that they wouldn't want to see the musical onstage. I disagree. I think it would be interesting, mainly to see how they handle all the throat-slitting.

I also finished watching the third season of Dr Who sometime since I last updated, I can't remember exactly when. It was kind of like last Christmas when I got the first two seasons of House on DVD. I spent the next week or so watching those DVDs about 8 hours a day, stopping only when forced to go to bed, eat, or leave the House. This year wasn't as bad, because I spaced the episodes out more evenly and watched them mainly at night. Now I'm a bit depressed, squeezing out every last bonus feature on the DVDs. It drives me crazy that BBC America is a season behind, just now beginning to air the season three episodes. This week is the last week for the season 2 reruns. Well, now I just have an excuse to get my mom to buy Season 2, and maybe 1 too.

I have an English assignment I really need to get started, considering it's 11:00 at night. I really don't want to do it right now, but I have no choice.

movies, dr who, sweeney todd

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