Les Miserables: Even the thread will make you cry - Part 2

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‘Les Misérables’ Starts International Run By Beating ‘The Hobbit’ In Japan & Korea
By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Saturday December 22, 2012

Universal opened its big holiday musical Les Misérables first overseas this weekend before it hits North America on Christmas Day. The studio said it grossed $1M at 348 dates in Japan as the #1 Hollywood film. That’s well ahead of the competition The Hobbit (now in its second week of release abroad) and #3 Skyfall (in its 3rd week of release abroad). Les Miz is #2 overall in Japan behind a local animated film. Universal boasts the musical’s opening day grosses there are at the same level as the opening day of Mamma Mia! which was a worldwide blockbuster with $465.7M internatonal. Les Miz is also beating The Hobbit in Korea which is holding paid previews this weekend. The first four days will outgross the first five days of Mamma Mia!. Les Miz opens in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Spain on Christmas Day, followed by Australia on Boxing Day, and Hungary on December 27th. The rest of the international markets will release in 2013 including the UK and Ireland on January 11th. Meanwhile, iTunes and Amazon report that first day of sales jumped Les Miz to the #1 soundtrack and the #3 album in iTunes. “I Dreamed A Dream” is the #1 Soundtrack Song and #1 “Movers & Shakers” on Amazon.
Click to expand...
http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/les...nal-run-by-beating-the-hobbit-in-japan-korea/
 
Ok, ok, I just listened to the "look down" (I allowed this to myself, because that isn't that special song), and it sure is somewhat different in the film? I mean, Javert's part can't possibly come that soon. And only one line of chorus!

I saw "Argo" yesterday. It's quite, quite excellent. I can easily imagine it winning Best Picture, but I wouldn't say it's "on sight" winner. Les Mis with its grandiosity definitely has a chance .... "Life of Pi" And that silver linings thing can only hope for nominations, however.
 
Earthland said:
Ok, ok, I just listened to the "look down" (I allowed this to myself, because that isn't that special song), and it sure is somewhat different in the film? I mean, Javert's part can't possibly come that soon. And only one line of chorus!
Click to expand...
I haven't seen the film yet, but someone at IMDB says
that the convicts do sing, so that's not the whole thing.
I guess that's why the soundtrack is called "highlights."
 
Yeah, that aspect of the soundtrack bugs me. I understands it's a highlights album in that we only have a selection of songs from the film, but the fact that a lot of the songs are highlights of the songs themselves is disappointing.

Look Down, The Bishop, At The End of the Day, In My Life, and the Epilogue are all copped up on the soundtrack.
 
Please do not send me out alone
Not in the darkness on my own

:(​
 
And there are some glaring song omissions, even for a highlights album.
 
so when do you think they will release the full soundtrack?
 
Hugh, Anne and Hooper are going to be on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS tonight.
 
Just came back from seeing it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (I liked it better than the musical) although I have a few major issues with the film, which IMO, if fixed could have made this my favorite musical film of all time. Here are my thoughts:

The Great:
- The Orchestrations were simply brilliant in this, my favorite of all the versions. Given the challenges of recording live on set, the sound mixing and editing in this was splendid. All of the actors sounded like they were recorded in a sound studio; Simon Hayes deserves that Oscar.
- The live singing is not a gimmick, that gamble has pretty much produced some of the best scenes in musical film history– Valjean's Soliloquy, I Dreamed a Dream, Empty Chairs and Empty Tables and Valjean's Epilogue should all go into the Hall of Fame.
- Anne Hathaway is totally out of this world. I went in with sky high expectations, and I was still blown away by her performance in the film. It takes a lot for me to tear up watching movies, and I shed a few of them here. All of her scenes from Lovely Ladies to Come to Me were simply top-notch.

The Good:
- Hugh Jackman carries the film. Although he stumbles one or two steps along the way, I don't recall any recent lead actor that is that serviceable, both acting and singing-wise.
- This is easily the best ensemble cast in a musical in a LONG time. Even though there are weak links (*cough* Russel Crowe), there wasn't a single person who made want to stab my eardrums out. In an ideal world, this cast deserves to win best ensemble at SAG and AMPAS nominations should be given out to Jackman, Hathaway and Redmayne.
- The production design, costumes and makeup were all well-done.

The Bad:
- The bads from the musical are still in the movie– the annoying Thenardiers are still here and the mass influx of secondary characters in the second act (without a clear explanation) could confuse first-time viewers. Some of these "gaps" were fixed in the released screenplay, but for some reason they weren't in the final cut?
- Russell Crowe, who plays the antagonist simply doesn't have the voice for Javert. He does an okay job for some ensemble numbers and talk-sing scenes, but his two big solo-numbers were very underwhelming. He plays it too conservatively and his voice lacks emotion (especially in [BLACKOUT]Javert's Suicide[/BLACKOUT]). Although he doesn't go off-key, it sounds very karaokish.

The Ugly:
- Some of the film editing is simply horrendous. [BLACKOUT] For example, in the opening scene, right after Valjean drops the flag, it abruptly cuts to "Now Bring me Prisoner 24601...".[/BLACKOUT] It's very jarring and amateurish, particularly when it's a musical and the number starts completely out of the blue. For a huge production like this, it feels like shoddy work.
- The Camera work in this is just WTF at times. I don't really have a huge problem with Hooper's off-center shots, his constant close-ups or him using his wide-lens for literally everything. His ultimate sin is to use some of the craziest Dutch angles at some of the most inappropriate times. I'll admit that Dutch angles were used effectively in some scenes of the movie, such as in Lovely Ladies and Master of the House but that's because those two scenes made for Dutch angles. But when you're filming emotionally and intimate moments, such use of Dutch angles is absolutely baffling– and what's worse is that Hooper uses them to the extreme. I swear there is like a near 45 degree Dutch angle in Empty Chairs and Empty Tables that nearly ruined it for me.
 
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Glad you liked it. :)


Seems like the backlash to the backlash is starting. More positive reviews are coming in on RT.
 
Clip of "Red and Black" - plus Aaron Tveit interview.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/24/les-miserables-red-and-black-aaron-tveit/

'Les Miserables': Enjolras actor Aaron Tveit on filming 'Red and Black' -- EXCLUSIVE CLIP

Before every great battle there is a rallying of the troops, a rousing speech. In Les Misérables that speech is “Red and Black,” sung by the students-turned-revolutionaries on the eve of the Paris Uprising of 1832.

The musical number centers on the revolutionaries’ leader, Enjolras, as he reminds his friends what they are fighting for. In the film adaptation of the beloved musical, set to hit theaters tomorrow, stage and film actor Aaron Tveit plays Enjolras. Les Mis is Tveit’s first movie musical, but he came to the project with many Broadway productions under his belt, including Hairspray, Wicked and Catch Me If You Can.

Check out an exclusive clip from “Red and Black” below, then read on for Tveit’s memories from shooting the musical number.

The Music
As has been the subject of much buzz surrounding the film, Les Misérables director Tom Hooper made the unconventional choice to record the movie’s vocals on set (rather than the typical approach of recording in a studio a few months before production begins and having the actors lip-sync to a playback of the music). For Tveit, that made his first movie musical much closer to his experiences onstage.

“The stamina we needed on a daily basis was much like what you would need to perform a show live onstage,” Tveit said.

For “Red and Black,” that meant over a day’s worth of shooting the song that takes place in the revolutionaries’ gathering place, the ABC Café. But unlike performing onstage, Tveit and his co-stars were missing one element that feeds any theater musical actor’s energy: the orchestra.

“We had to imagine that we were singing over what you hear now [in the completed film], which is this lush, 60-piece orchestra,” Tveit said.

In place of the orchestra’s part that was recorded later, the actors had a pianist playing live on the opposite side of the Pinewood Studios soundstage where the café set was built. The actors could hear the piano via in-ear monitors, but everyone else on set was serenaded by what sounded to them like an a cappella rendition of Les Mis songs – an especially “surreal” sound when the song was the stirring, ensemble “Red and Black,” Tveit said.

Tveit got the chance to see and hear “Red and Black” a cappella when he watched taped rehearsals of the scene. The rehearsal was captured on camera because “Red and Black” was one of the songs used to test out the sound equipment for the live-on-set approach to the movie, but Tveit also used the rehearsal footage to help gauge how loud he could be with his performance.

Also keeping him on track vocally were those in-ear monitors – the actors had the choice of what mix to hear: the piano, the other actors, their own voice, or any combination of the three. Whenever possible, Tveit opted for the piano and his own voice, a mix that was closest to what he is accustomed to onstage.

“When you’re onstage and you have your mic on, there’s speakers right onstage that are throwing your own voice back to you,” Tveit said. “Singing for stage, if you don’t hear yourself, that’s when you push, and that’s when you can hurt your voice sometimes. So if I can hear myself in my ear, it really helps me to find that balance of how loud I needed to be singing.”

“Red and Black” was the second musical number Tveit shot (after “Do You Hear the People Sing?”). The production schedule had scenes being filmed in nearly the same order they appear in the film – Tveit was grateful for that considering what was coming up for him: Four weeks of shooting the climatic scenes of the revolutionaries’ fight at their barricade, where he had “a lot of screaming to do. The fact that I got to do [‘Red and Black’ and ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’] before my voice had to go through all that screaming everyday was a real gift.”

The cast of Les Misérables have continually raved about singing live on set: Eddie Redmayne, who also has a key part in “Red and Black” as Marius, pointed out that it gave them the freedom to make their acting choices on set, not three months earlier in the recording studio; Tveit said “there’s such an immediacy to the story because of it.” It remains to be seen whether Hooper’s Les Misérables will influence how future musicals are shot — Tveit hopes it will.

“I don’t think I would want to do one any other way after doing this,” he said.

The Story
“Red and Black” is an ensemble number, sung by a group of young men. Enjolras is revving up all of the students, reminding them of their ideals, that this isn’t just a game. But it’s ultimately about a clash between two men, Enjolras and his friend Marius (Eddie Redmayne), who has just met and fallen in love with Cosette (Amanda Seyfried).

“Marius, who’s been right there with him the whole time – all the sudden his head is in the clouds,” Tveit explained. “Enjolras is saying, ‘Listen, man, I’m really happy for you, but you gotta come back here because there’s big, big things going on, and there’s people’s lives depending on it, so wake up.’ We wanted to make sure this was at the focal point of the song.”

Aside from his vocal preparation for the film, Tveit also devoted some time to seeing the stage production on the West End (he had seen it once before when he was in high school) and to reading the inspiration for the play, Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. He said reading the unabridged version was “a task but well worth it.” The novel provides more details about Enjolras’ and Marius’ political beliefs and the events leading up to the rebellion. Reading it “really helps to create this complete world,” Tveit said.

Tveit found it helpful to keep the novel in mind as well as the real young revolutionaries who put their lives on the line for their anti-monarchist ideals. Tveit says he also got into the headspace of a revolutionary leader on the brink of a grassroots uprising by thinking about contemporary activists.

“The only reason to re-tell stories is when they’re really timely, and I think this is a really timely story even today from stuff going on on Wall Street and all of the rioting in Europe last year,” Tveit said. “So there are still these feelings of the anguish and unsettledness all over our world today. I did have that in the back of my mind.”

Period costumes and hair (Tveit said with a laugh that he had “the joy of wearing a glorious wig”), plus the frenzy of activity on the café set helped create this world for Tveit: During “Red and Black” the actors playing revolutionaries (many of whom had played Enjolras or Marius on the West End) had props like a Paris map to pore over, pamphlets listing the their ideals and materials to make bullets.

“Red and Black” is a song Tveit had heard dozens of times before working on the film – he pointed out that even for people who haven’t seen a production of Les Misérables, these are songs that most people in the U.S. and the U.K. have heard at some point because they’re so ingrained in our culture. But Tveit says he’ll never again be able to hear the music in the same way he heard it before signing onto Les Mis: “When I hear these songs I’ll forever think of these great guys and this amazing time we had in this café and on this barricade.”

Les Misérables opens in theaters on Tuesday, Christmas Day. The soundtrack is now available to purchase online and in stores.
Click to expand...
 
JP said:
Seems like the backlash to the backlash is starting. More positive reviews are coming in on RT.
Click to expand...

Yeah IDK what is with the complaints about the constant close-ups. I went in expecting it to be really bad, but I found it similar to what it was in TKS and TKS's cinematography was raved? :huh:
 
Variety:
'Les Mis' looks to lead holiday box office

Tuner looks to outpace 'Django Unchained,' 'Parental Guidance'
By Andrew Stewart

The box office gifts from Christmas Day moviegoing will be led by Universal's "Les Miserables," which is tracking to earn roughly $8 million on Tuesday, with three-day weekend expectations in the low teens. The film should hit $30 million-plus through New Year's Day.

"Les Mis," at 2,804 locations, is outpacing "Sherlock Holmes" -- the previous Christmas leader in advanced ticket sales, according to online ticketing sites Fandango and Movietickets.com. The $61 million-budgeted tuner, from helmer Tom Hooper, has been steadily building momentum with its core adult demo.

The Universal release opens day-and-date with the U.S. in some southeast Asian territories and Spain.

Also opening wide Christmas Day domestically is the Weinstein Co.'s "Django Unchained" and Fox's "Parental Guidance." The Weinstein pic is tracking a tad behind "Les Mis," while "Parental Guidance" likely will start out with $3 million opening day.

Fox dated "Guidance" on Christmas as a family counterprogrammer; "Django" is expected to play best with men.

The previous best Christmas gross when the holiday fell on a Tuesday goes to 2001's "Ali," which earned $10.2 million opening day, for an eight-day total (through New Year's Day) of $40 million domestically. Friday opener "Sherlock Holmes" holds the current Christmas Day record, with $24.6 million in 2009, for an opening weekend take of $62.3 million.
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http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118063946
 
It is really interesting reading some of the reviews for the movie that so many critics love/hate the performances by the actors and actresses.

One will hate Jackman and the next one will love his performance. This is the same with a lot of the performers. There are even some that thought that Amanda Siefried was remarkable when most panned her singing. And some hate the Thenardiers and there are some who really love the humour they bring to a dark and sad tale.

I guess I can regard this as a good sign or omen for the film - controversy is created and that can only be good for box office - AND, as Cameron MacIntosh says, if this film is a success then Miss Saigon is next on the cards.

I am looking forward to that!
 
Kansiov said:
- The bads from the musical are still in the movie– the annoying Thenardiers are still here
Click to expand...
Nothing's wrong with a little comic relief. Without the Thenardiers, you might as well be going to a funeral.
 
Merry Christmas! It's still hard to believe this film is finished, let alone released (in North America, atleast)! When I fell in love with Les Mis in late 2007, I remember reading the fable of the Les Misérables film and being positive it was never going to happen. But it did! For the last year and a half, I have followed every little detail regarding this film, and for about 85% of that, I relied primarily on this thread and it's continuations to fuel my crazy information fire. So thank you guys/gals and merry Christmas!
 
Saw it last night and I really loved it. Although the camera work bugged me at some parts. In one scene Marius's hair is completely in focus while his face is out of focus :huh:
 
Just got back. I really loved it. No complaints whatsoever actually. Although it was a long film. I know there are some who don't like long films.
Jackman and Anne Hathaway were amazing
 
Impossible to go Christmas Eve/Christmas Day because of all the family stuff all day long (Christmas Eve 10 p.m. I would just fall asleep!), and I have stupid work Wednesday, but I'm planning to go to a 7:10 p.m. show, basically get off the train and go right to the theater (note to self, eat a big lunch since there will be no dinner).

Meanwhile, B.O. report:
FIRST BOX OFFICE: #1 ‘Les Misérables’ & #2 ‘Django’ Opening Huge On Christmas Day
By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Tuesday December 25, 2012 @ 5:28pm

TUESDAY 5:20 PM UPDATE: It may be quiet in the malls but it’s busy, busy, busy in the multiplexes around the U.S. and Canada. Based on matinee trends and early evening grosses, my sources say this is turning into a supersized Christmas Day for domestic moviegoing. That’s a great year-end gift for Hollywood. Leading the pack is Working Title/Universal’s Les Misérables debuting in 2,808 theaters and living up to both Fandango’s and MovieTickets’ reports of huge advance online sales. (It was the #1 advance ticket-seller among all Christmas Day releases, surpassing previous record-holder Sherlock Holmes in 2009.) The studio was hoping Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the world-reknown musical would open to $10+M. Well, my insiders say today’s grosses look like a big $15M to $20M — now more like $17.5M — for the PG13 film that runs 2 hours and 37 minutes and stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Russell Crowe. Of course, Christmas Day tends to have higher mix of presales, especially for the openers, so these numbers could change a lot through the day. But as one studio exec analyzes, “Christmas Day has very unique play patterns by genre, region of the country, ethnicity, and target demo. You won’t really know where films are headed until Friday. But that’s a fantastic number for Les Miz.”
Click to expand...
http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/fir...bles’-2-django-opening-huge-on-christmas-day/
 
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