Lizzie Borden Society Forum

I just got back from seeing the new Johnny Depp version of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

It was a fabulous movie.

In the early eighties I saw George Hearn and Angela Lansbury in Sweeney in Boston, and I played the original cast album (Len Cariou and Angela Lansubury) hundreds of times probably.

Johnny Depp doesn't have a powerful singing voice, and some of the songs have been trimmed. (And notably, the Ballad of Sweeney Todd is gone altogether.) But I do not think that anyone could have made a better Sweeney Todd film than this.

I don't gush about stuff, but this is really, really great.

If you don't know the story at all, there is some blood. . . And it's not a very uplifting story. . .

If you know and like Sweeney Todd, by all means see this if you can. My sister and sister-in-law, both of whom have seen several incarnations of the show with various casts and staging, wanted to stay at the theater for the next showing. My sister is most likely going to see it again tomorrow.

I wish I could, too.

I think that was my sister's favorite show. She played in it as well. I have an old photo of her in her get-up.
I've not seen it, myself. Why would they premiere it at Christmas?

I can't wait to see this movie. I saw it in Boston also, that was after I listened to the album. I really enjoyed the stage version. Kat I also questioned why at Christmas, it just seems an odd time for this type of movie.

Am going to see it tomorrow. The Fall River Little Theatre produced it this past autumn.

For those of you who get the ION channel there will be an apparently made-for-TV movie (1998) on tonight at 9pm Eastern time, "Tale of Sweeney Todd".

The description says it stars Ben Kingsley, Joanna Lumley and Campbell Scott and is 2 hours long.

"An insurance investigator finds human corpses hanging in a woman's meat-pie shop next to that of a London barber."

Harry @ Sat Jan 05, 2008 7:42 am wrote:For those of you who get the ION channel there will be an apparently made-for-TV movie (1998) on tonight at 9pm Eastern time, "Tale of Sweeney Todd".

The description says it stars Ben Kingsley, Joanna Lumley and Campbell Scott and is 2 hours long.

"An insurance investigator finds human corpses hanging in a woman's meat-pie shop next to that of a London barber."

Yeah, I saw some of it last night and I really have to say that the new Burton version is a thousand times better.There is a startlingly different portrayal of Mrs. Lovette in the '98 version and it's outright....well, it shocked me. Such terrible teeth! Anyway, the Burton-Depp version is nice and gloomy, though differing from the musical by Sondheim. Burton put his own little dramatic touch to the story and of course, he shows the extraordinary things of dark places like only he can. Depp does wonderfully though I wish Rickman had more to do. He makes such a lovely villain

It was ghastly fun - loved it!