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

[Schlosser85]

I agree with PR on just about everything. I actually rather liked Crowe's "Stars".

 

[danoyse]

And the part about the Jesus Christ Superstar movie being any good.

Hugh was definitely straining in Bring Him Home, but anything he lacked in that song he made up in What Have I Done. Holy hell, that scene...

 

[sueb1863]

Loved the movie but agree about BHH. Not sure why Hooper didn't have him sing it quietly, it's supposed to be a prayer. Especially since the students are all asleep! Valjean's lucky someone doesn't chuck a shoe at his head...

 

[Pink Ranger]

Hugh was definitely straining in Bring Him Home, but anything he lacked in that song he made up in What Have I Done. Holy hell, that scene...

Funny enough, if Bring Him Home was beyond Hugh's range, I'd actually forgive him for that. But he proved he could sing the song the way it's supposed to sound during the reprise.

I don't think he was straining on that song (except maybe the high note at the end, but that would have been okay). I think he was trying to "brightman" all over that song; you know, using a showstopping number to practice your vocal tricks instead of just singing the goddamn thing normally.

What Have I Done was good, but it's an expository book number song, it's not the one that has to be near perfect.

 

[DACrowe]

- A good movie, but not the best musical movie I've seen. I'd put Chicago and Jesus Christ Superstar over this one, but Phantom of the Opera is leagues behind.

For me it is the third best of the "modern" movie musical (2001-onwards). Moulin Rouge! and Sweeney Todd, I think are still the only recent musical masterpieces. But I'll take Les Mis over Chicago, Rent, Phantom, The Producers, Dreamgirls, Mamma Mia!, Nine, Rock of Ages and all the rest.

I do agree that the Hooper camera angles while annoying did not hurt the film.

 

[Pink Ranger]

I do agree that the Hooper camera angles while annoying did not hurt the film.

Hooper should make a Japanese horror movie and just get it all out of his system.

 

[JP]

I wish Hugh brought what he brought to the Soliloquy and Who Am I to Bring Him Home.

 

[Kansiov]

I wish Hugh brought what he brought to the Soliloquy and Who Am I to Bring Him Home.

IMO he should have sang the whole song (or at least most of it) in falsetto. I thought Redmayne's use of his falsetto on the third stanza of ECAET was f-ing genius.

 

[mclay18]

Thank God someone else doesn't like Chicago. I've watched it once, and its appeal mystifies me. I've never even had the will to watch it all the way through, it was that boring.

 

[JP]

Chicago, boring?

 

[narrows101]

I wish Hugh brought what he brought to the Soliloquy and Who Am I to Bring Him Home.

I dunno, the barricade boys seemed to love it, going by their tweets after filming (they are all on the West End and Peters is a vocal coach):

Andy Coxon @andycoxon1
Hugh Jackman singing 'bring him home' 14 times in 2 hours. #musicaltheatrehistory and I was there #lesmisfilm

Olivia O'Shea @oliviaoshea1@andycoxon1
was he good?! Xx

Andy Coxon @andycoxon1@oliviaoshea1
phenomenal!!! Xx

Chris Milford @Chrismilf
Spent the afternoon/evening listening to @RealHughJackman sing Bring Him Home. #beautifulstuff #lesmisfilm

Iwan Lewis @IwyLewis (Bahorel)
Pretty chilled out day on the #lesmismovie set. Sleeping on a barricade all day listening to Hugh Jackman sing Bring Him Home. #awesome

Joseph Peters @Joeypetes22
Hugh jackman singing Bring him home is spectacular. The world is in for a treat!

Alistair Brammer @alistairbrammer (Jean Prouvaire)
@RealHughJackman bravo sir. Top job today. And now sleep!

 

[JP]

I dunno, the barricade boys seemed to love it, going by their tweets after filming (they are all on the West End and Peters is a vocal coach):

That's all well and good. Still, for my own personal ears that's the one low light in the entire film. Jackman sounds incredible on the soliloquy. Likely because that was one of the first things filmed. His Bring Him Home is painful, and the visual of him straining to croke it out doesn't help.

Yet he sung it beautifully during the Epilogue. It's just strange.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Saw it last night. I liked it a lot. Very moving and emotionally charged.

My only criticisms are the ADD editing at times paired with the frantic camerawork. It was straining my eyes.

But other than that, very good story and very well performed. Anne in particular was incredible. The no cutting with the close up when she sang, "I Dreamed a Dream" was pretty damn powerful stuff. Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination indeed.

I gotta say, when Hugh sang "What Have I Done" it was probably some of Hugh's best acting work I've ever seen.

 

[narrows101]

For those that get the TV station Reelz, there's a show called "Focus On" which is a program about movies behind the scenes. There's a Les Mis episode late night tonight airing 1:30 a.m.-2:00 a.m.

Also, on BBC America in the U.S., Hugh will be on the Graham Norton Show on Jan. 5 with Billy Crystal, among others. Check out these two videos - the second one is a MUST WATCH.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fycqPNwhAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfTcXprD7R0

 

[JP]

May see it for the 3rd time tonight.

 

[danoyse]

We've got snow here, so I'm staying in and watching the Indiana Jones blu-rays I got for Christmas, but making plans to go again tomorrow.

 

[JP]

Yeah, the snow is coming down in the city. Never stopped me before, tho.

 

[danoyse]

For those that get the TV station Reelz, there's a show called "Focus On" which is a program about movies behind the scenes. There's a Les Mis episode late night tonight airing 1:30 a.m.-2:00 a.m.

Also, on BBC America in the U.S., Hugh will be on the Graham Norton Show on Jan. 5 with Billy Crystal, among others. Check out these two videos - the second one is a MUST WATCH.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fycqPNwhAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfTcXprD7R0

Hugh and Billy should host the Oscars together. I loved the opening they did at the Tonys a few years ago.

 

[danoyse]

Yeah, the snow is coming down in the city. Never stopped me before, tho.

In NJ we need to drive!

When I saw the movie on Wednesday, the snow started during the movie, and by the time we left there were a few inches of snow, and an ice storm was starting. My 20-minute drive home took me nearly an hour.

But I turned the radio onto the Sirius Broadway channel and they were interviewing Hugh, so that part worked out.

 

[Pink Ranger]

Lol, I feel bad now, because I live two blocks away from a multiplex. Still, I need to watch Argo and Django still, so I likely won't see Les Miz in theatres again unless one of my ladyfriends needs someone to go with her.

 

[JP]

I need to see Django, Silver Linings, Lincoln, Skyfall...


I'm a mess.

 

[narrows101]

In NJ we need to drive!

When I saw the movie on Wednesday, the snow started during the movie, and by the time we left there were a few inches of snow, and an ice storm was starting. My 20-minute drive home took me nearly an hour.

But I turned the radio onto the Sirius Broadway channel and they were interviewing Hugh, so that part worked out.

I'm in NJ too but my theater is about 5 mins away by car, probably about a 1/2 walk. I also went on Wednesday and it was raining when I got out at 10:00 - it's snowing now and I think I want hubby to drop me off at the theater some time this weekend (he won't go again).

Meanwhile, another Hooper interview where he talks about extended cut/director's cut/deleted scenes. Click on link for whole interview.

I think you might have permanently changed the musical genre based on the way you did this one. I love the way it was live and I agree with everything you just said and I think there is a falseness, you’re exactly right. The actor, when they can do it in the moment, is believable. I spoke to Eric and he said the first cut was four hours.

Hooper: Yeah, the assembly was just under four hours.

Obviously that has to be like “holy eff” when you sit down and you’re saying to yourself “I’ve got a four hour first cut.” Because a four hour first cut, that’s a pretty long movie.

Hooper: [Laughs]

So what was it like? Obviously you get rid of your assembly and you put together your directors cut, how long was your director’s cut?

Hooper: The director’s cut was about three hours. So I got about an hour out between the assembly and the director’s cut. I got it to about 2:45 and then hit a bit of a wall because there comes a point at which you’ve made a decision about what songs you’re going to keep. What’s fundamentally different about doing this and a normal movie is you can’t take time out anywhere you want like it or not. If you’re editing, say this dialogue that we’re having, you could snip a second out every time I paused, every time you paused take a second out. You could take a sentence of mine out and leave another sentence. You’ve got tremendous control on the pacing of our dialogue that we’re having. If we were singing you can’t just stick your knife in, you can’t take a second out here a second out there a sentence out there because the musical construction falls all over the place. And I realized in the end that the only way I could get it down any more, and I was very committed to getting it down to 2:30, was to try to become more expert at the detail of musical construction so that I could really understand in terms of bars what was possible and what was not possible.

I really thought about it and asked advice from my team and there was a day, in one day on a Sunday I took out twelve minutes in one sitting because I had finally worked out all those musical places where you could cut material out. And a lot of it was hangers to the show, because in a stage show you have to have introduction music to take you in somewhere and exit music to change the set over. And I suddenly started to realize that there was lots of music like that that wasn’t essential to the film that we were hanging on to because of the tradition of where it had come from. I think one of the hugest challenges of this, and any director or editor will know exactly what I mean, is when you musical you surrender a huge amount of the control of pacing because you can’t pace the songs up. “I dreamed a dream”, you can pick your take but you can’t pace it up, so if that section of the film is sagging for any reason you can’t dig in to that place to do it. So when I was shooting I was always trying to work out ways of giving myself different gears or different control of pacing through the way I shot stuff if I knew I couldn’t do it in time terms. It’s a real challenge of the form, pacing something where a lot of it you’re not allowed to touch because of the way music works.

I asked Eric and I’ll ask you, say this film is super successful would you be willing to do an extended cut, because I know what that means and Eric pointed it out, you’d have to really go in and do a huge new score it would be a lot of work, could you ever see yourself doing a longer version of this whether Blu-ray or theatrical?

Hooper: I used to think definitely I would do a longer version, [but] having been through the oil tanker that this thing is, to wrestle it to where we got it, I’m aware that the moment you go, “let’s go back in” it’s not a simple process. But let’s see how it goes and if we feel there’s tremendous demand I’d always consider it. It’s difficult because at the same time I feel that I’ve paced it as I wanted it to be paced and do I want to put out in a world a less well paced version? I’m not sure. If there’s interest in the community of fans of the musical then I would definitely consider it.

Is there anything that you would consider deleted scenes that fans can expect on the Blu-ray?

Hooper: No, because I want to give myself the option of the extended version.

That’s a very honest answer, I appreciate that.

Hooper: Having also said that I might not do an extended version.

Yea, but it’s good for if there is no extended version in ten years you can release the deleted scenes and have everyone be super happy. I am curious though if you did an extended version down the road how much longer do you think it could be based on the footage you have?

Hooper: I’d probably put maybe fifteen, twenty minutes back. I wouldn’t go back to the four hour spectacular.

A lot of people don’t realize that the four hour version is the take from beginning to end.

Hooper: Yeah, and everyone comes through every door and crosses and sits down and does the whole action. I think the battle sequence was about a quarter hour long in the full version.

http://collider.com/tom-hooper-les-miserables-james-bond-interview/220330/#more-220330

 

[Drizzle]

Apparently there was a scene deleted from the movie where [BLACKOUT]Fantine's dead body is thrown from the hospital window on to a cart, as if what she had already gone through wasn't enough for the audience.[/BLACKOUT] It's from the book, but I'm kinda glad that was cut, because there's sad, and then there's just plain morbid.

 

[JP]

Yeah, it was during the very last bit of Confrontation that was cut.

 

[danoyse]

There was also a scene where Gavroche mentions that Eponine was his sister that was cut too.