Reviews - Movies and a Novel

Actually went out to see Sweeny Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street over the weekend. While having a superb cast and superb use of green screening to recreate Victorian Britain . . . ultimately unsatisfying. While, it turns out, everyone is the cast was competent or better as a singer, the songs were not that good. I am willing to bet my eyeteeth that Danny Elfman's Sweeny Todd would still have me singing, but this is not Sondheim's best work. Further, the movie was drab, grays mostly, I suppose to counterpoint the very bright red of the blood (which there was much of, never looking quite right). Ultimately disappointing. My Grade: C-

Watched Paprika, an anime movie from Madhouse. As is usual for their works, visually stunning, using the medium to its best advantage. The plot involves a device that allows the wearers to enter into dreams and things rapid spiral out of hand when a set of them are stolen. The action moves seamlessly between the real world and the dream world, and the plot rather implodes at the end but still well worth seeing. My Grade: C+/B-

And finished reading The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers. His first published work and it shows. However, it also look to highlight a lot of the themes he will return to later in his fantasy works. Many good concepts and throw away images, an unlikable protagonist and a rather unsatisfactory conclusion, so much like the other Powers book I read. My Grade: C