Why is it whenever I see a picture of Tim Burton - born on this day in 1958 - I hear theremin music? Seriously, this guy makes my little goth heart flutter - and since he's shacked up with Helena Bonham Carter, the Queen of the Goths herself - even more so. Burton's last cinematic offerings were 2009's animated 9 and the much-anticipated Alice in Wonderland (co-starring Johnny Depp) which debuted in Spring 2010. Next up is Burton's own take on the eerie 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows...
Stephen Sondheim's 1979 stage musical had been begging for a cinematic treatment since its debut, but as usual delayed gratification has been its own reward; having just come from seeing it, I can think of no other director working today whose style suits the story being told like Burton's. Able assistance from veteran production designer Dante Ferretti recreated a vision of Victorian London as macabre as the source material inhabiting it. Squeamish as I am - and this movie offers plenty of squeam - I am simply unable to look away from really good art direction; so there I sat, transfixed, as throat after throat was slit.
Johnny Depp seems to have done the impossible in creating a performance both low-key and bravura, often at the same time; his Sweeney is a man bent on revenge for the wrongs done to him, and since he's already dead inside his crimes don't unsettle his conscience in the least. Nor should they bother those of the audience either; it's not much of a spoiler to say that only the innocent survive in this movie, and they are a very select group indeed.
This may be the best chance Depp has had yet to nab himself an Oscar, and Burton and Bonham Carter as well; given how enthusiastically the Academy has embraced the re-emergent musical genre in recent years, I don't imagine even Sweeney Todd himself would slit my throat for saying so.
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I am interested in everything, especially stuff I've never heard of; I consider it my responsibility as a human to comfort the troubled and my duty as an artist to trouble the comfortable.
You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
