Threaded Order Chronological Order
| Fully Agree | |
| Last Edit: mamaleh 12:03 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| Posted by: mamaleh 12:02 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| In reply to: Revisiting the Les Miz film 8 years later; only a my 2nd viewing - Delvino 09:13 am EST 02/06/22 | |
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| I fully agree with your take on LES MIZ. AMPAS doesn't nominate mediocre performances, not with so many outstanding ones to consider each year. I have long thought Hugh Jackman's stellar Valjean was unduly nitpicked by armchair social media "critics." Hooper didn't feel it necessary to lower the key for "Bring Him Home"; so be it. That was his decision. Those who criticize HJ's singing, especially in that song, seem to prefer the "park and bark" stance that works much better on stage. The camera is an intimate thing; so should be the performances. | |
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| re: Fully Agree | |
| Last Edit: jo 07:00 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| Posted by: jo 06:57 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| In reply to: Fully Agree - mamaleh 12:02 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| The AMPAS did nominate the movie for a Best Picture Oscar. Presumably, it passed the cinematic objectives and focus for films. Anne and the Sound Design won Oscars. Hugh was nominated for an Oscar. Apart from the Valjean Soliloquy, the other musical number which was, hands down, so much better than the stage musical was The Confrontation. Also interesting to note that in the original stage musical (staged in Paris in 1980, compared to the English Mackintosh adaptation five years later, the role of Valjean was written for and actually performed by a baritone ( which probably made more sense when portraying a longtime hardened convict with peasant roots). It was only when Colm Wilkinson was chosen for the role of Valjean (despite his golden tenor voice) because Nunn thought he had the right persona for the role that the vocal range was transposed to suit him. Bring Him Home was written with him in mind. Details on the original English staging are found in Edward Behr's book on the stage project. For the film casting, the audition group included Hooper, Mackintosh, Boublil, Schonberg. Eric Fellner for Working Title ( the subsidiary of Universal Studios), and casting director Nina Gold. It was about a 4-hour audition for Jackman as he was supposed to have been asked to sing the full score and to discuss the role of Valjean. According to Nina Gold, it was when they heard Jackman that she felt they had finally found their Valjean. During filming, Boublil &Schonberg, Mackintosh & his music director ( who supervised the music) were present all throughout filming. I knew about all these because there was a very active IMDB group which was monitoring filming regularly. The Sound Designer ( who won an Oscar) Simon Hayes even joined the group for a while. Some cast members were very active on social media, notably Russell Crowe ( very funny), Samantha Barks and the Barricade Boys ( who were all cast from West End productions of Les Mis) shared the details of daily filming, including how many takes would be needed for each key song. Notably, Hooper also put Do You Hear the People Sing as the thematic music for the film adaptation ( which was its original place in the Paris original score), in contrast to the emphasis on One Day More in Nunn's staging. Another key change was the presence of the Bishop in the finale ( Valjean's dying scene) as against the presence of Eponine ( which did not make too much sense) in the Nunn musical staging. Bring Him Home ( which was Valjean's plea for Marius safety) became Bring Me Home in the movie's dying scene. |
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| re: Fully Agree | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 11:03 am EST 02/09/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 10:47 am EST 02/09/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Fully Agree - jo 06:57 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| I don't buy for a single moment that Hooper and the studio, producers, and casting director didn't have Hugh Jackman FIRMLY in mind as Valjean before his audition. This is an international movie star with legit stage musical credits who had showcased his singing voice on talk shows, in a Tony winning performance as the huge lead in the musical Boy From Oz, and in the film revival of Oklahoma singing some of Broadway's most famous songs ever and making people melt... he was surely at the top of their list (assuming financing wasn't tied to hiring a star like him in the first place). There is almost no one else out there who checks both boxes of being an actual box office draw as a movie star AND having a voice at the level to handle a musical role like this (whether it was specifically well suited to every part of this score or not). Sure they might have found a movie star with a sensational voice the world or the music world or the musical theater world didn't know about yet (unlikely and rare to be that famous and sing that well and never have used your singing anywhere, but hey, it's possible), and they may surely have considered how to go forward with the movie without a name actor in the lead role... but for a huge musical with a smaller budget than they may have wanted to execute this film, international sales and the box office pull of the main cast was surely an enormously key factor on their minds. I would really think it was Hugh's role to lose. I have to assume this was a big big reason Russell Crowe got Javert. | |
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| Valjean's journey & Bring Him Home | |
| Posted by: jo 11:53 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Fully Agree - jo 06:57 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| Many stage musical fans focus on Bring Him Home as Valjean's most memorable song. And since original Valjean Colm Wilkinson sang it beautifully as a prayer for Marius's deliverance, it became the song people associated with the character in the context of the stage musical. But if one were to relate it to the classic novel by Victor Hugo, Valjean's two key epiphanies were in the first part -- the first one was the grace of redemption through the kind Bishop and the second one was his discovery of love thru the child Cosette. In the film adaptation, the epiphany of redemption was dramatically presented in "Valjean's Soliloquy" ( such intense acting from Jackman of Valjean's realization of what happened to him) and the path to the life with Cosette was first internalized by Valjean in "Suddenly". Notably missing in the stage musical was the intervening period when Valjean escaped with his new ward to the convent ( which explains how they spent those many years and why Cosette was gently reared). Re his relationship with Marius, in the novel, Valjean nurtured strong feelings of jealousy when Marius started expressing feelings for Cosette( Marius actually saw her from when Cosette was still a young teenager). Valjean was still feeling jealous that Marius might take away his daughter when the time comes. In the film adaptation, there was a hint of such jealousy when Valjean received the note from Marius to Cosette delivered by Gavroche. But Valjean decided to go to the barricade to see if the man was worthy of his daughter, while at the same time wondering if there was a great risk to Marius's life that would mean a devastating loss for her . Presumably, when Jackman interpreted BRING HIM HOME, it was initially with mixed feelings about Marius...but then as he thought about the consequences of his loss to his daughter , he realized that Cosette's happiness is the most important thing to him. Hence, he began to pray to God that Marius be spared. That is the context in which I appreciated Hugh Jackman's delivery of Bring Him Home. But it does not end there -- in the finale scene, as he lay dying, Valjean asks God for His mercy and prays to "Bring ME Home" (which I thought was such a beautiful touch - a man realizing his earthly mortality). That was the moment when Valjean makes the song truly his own! I thought Hooper gave film audiences a more fully-realized portrait of the man Jean Valjean! He has always said that his cinematic vision was to focus on the drama, with singing as the means of expressing the language but, foremost, complementing the acting choices. |
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| re: Valjean's journey & Bring Him Home | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 11:07 am EST 02/09/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 10:59 am EST 02/09/22 | |
| In reply to: Valjean's journey & Bring Him Home - jo 11:53 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| For what it's worth I always felt Bring Him Home was as much a prayer for Marius as for Valjean himself, and that he was thinking of his own earthly mortality during it (and singing of it). And directors love to hide behind "focused on the drama" or "the acting", or in revivals "on the text" (to excuse having a disappointing/"spare" set, in that case) ... to that I say f*ck off, it's a musical, find a cast and a way of directing it that *utilizes* the score as a *musical* text and way of expressing things. In a musical characters sing to express emotion and both inner-thought and outer-thought. It's so disrespectful and misguided and insulting to the form of the musical when a director decides that you don't need good singers because they're prioritizing the acting. In a musical you need to do both, that's the design, the character's text and the acting need to be done IN their singing and in conjunction/harmony with the music. Not always, not for all songs and all characters, but for Valjean, yes. For Javert, yes. For Fantine, yes. For Les Miserables, yes. This isn't a Sondheim show. This is an epic musical with big songs and big singing and we have had it treated this way for decades in London, Broadway, touring, and around the world, in as many (or more?) cast recordings as any other musical has ever had, including two major filmed staged concerts. You cannot write a score like this, condition the world to hear it at certain levels for 20 years, and then when the film finally comes, say "well we want to focus on the acting this time, the singing will be secondary, and if it sounds bad that just means it's real." |
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| re: Fully Agree | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 12:27 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| In reply to: Fully Agree - mamaleh 12:02 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| Hooper didn't feel it necessary to lower the key for "Bring Him Home"; so be it. It's not his job to do that, nor his call. |
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| re: Fully Agree | |
| Posted by: Unhookthestars 01:48 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Fully Agree - Chromolume 12:27 pm EST 02/06/22 | |
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| Andrew Garfield as Valjean. Hmmm… He’s already had a lot of practice playing saintly men and looked like a young Valjean as a Jesuit priest in Scorsese’s “Silence.” Andrew has said he would like to take a crack at “Sunday in the Park with George” one day. I’d actually really like to see this happen. |
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