Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter hide a dark secret in SWEENEY TODD
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (Tim Burton, 2007)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, January 27, 8:00
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.sweeneytoddmovie.com
Oh yes, there will be blood. Tim Burton’s adaptation of the hit Broadway musical SWEENEY TODD is bloody good fun. After being sent to prison for fifteen years by Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who had designs on his wife (Laura Michelle Kelly), innocent barber Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to nineteenth-century London, reborn as Sweeney Todd, now a dark, ominous figure dead set on gaining his dastardly revenge. He gets back his coveted silver razors, which he considers an extension of his arm, and sets up shop in his old place, above the store where Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) sells meat pies crawling with cockroaches. When Todd begins slicing throats with expert precision, Lovett has a novel way of doing away with the bodies — while increasing business. Burton and screenwriter John Logan (THE AVIATOR, THE LAST SAMURAI) have done a terrific job translating the show onto the big screen, as Depp, Bonham Carter, and the rest of the cast — including Sacha Baron Cohen as a magical elixir salesman, Timothy Spall as the judge’s wingman, and Jayne Wisener as Todd’s daughter, who is doomed to marry the judge — do a wonderful job with such Stephen Sondheim songs as “No Place Like London,” “Poor Thing,” “My Friends,” “Pretty Women,” and “Not While I’m Around.” Depp is marvelous as the demon barber of Fleet Street, wearing a fright wig with a shocking streak of white, singing most of his dialogue with a gentle devilishness, enhanced by his haunting, penetrating eyes. The goth opera not only sounds good but looks even better, courtesy of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Dante Ferretti, and costume designer Colleen Atwood. Burton and Depp, who have previously collaborated on EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, ED WOOD, SLEEPY HOLLOW, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and CORPSE BRIDE, have another winner on their hands.
German Expressionist classic is part of Tim Burton influences film fest
The film is screening at MoMA in conjunction with the wonderful, expansive Tim Burton retrospective, which runs through April 26; also on the schedule are CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (January 27 & February 1), BATMAN RETURNS (January 28), BEETLEJUICE (January 31), BATMAN (February 3), VINCENT and ED WOOD (February 4), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (February 5), FRANKENWEENIE and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (February 7), and PLANET OF THE APES (February 7). In addition, “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters” features works that influenced Burton; coming up are Harold Young’s THE MUMMY’S TOMB (January 28 & February 6), Lew Landers’s THE RAVEN (January 29), Roger Corman’s PIT AND THE PENDULUM (January 29), Jack Arnold’s THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (January 30), Arnold’s REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (January 30 & February 5), Val Guest’s WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (January 30 & February 1), Robert Wiene’s THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (February 4), and Christy Cabanne’s THEMUMMY’S HAND (February 6).
Not to be confused with Li Yang’s 2003 film, BLIND SHAFT (MANG JING), which was also set in a rural Chinese coal-mining town, THE SHAFT (DIXIA DE TIANKONG) is a beautifully shot, mesmerizingly slow-paced debut feature from writer-director Zhang Chi. The story is told in three sections: In the first, Song Daming (Li Chen) overhears that his girlfriend, Ding Jingshui (Zheng Luoqian), might have slept with the boss to get a promotion, forcing him to reconsider their relationship. In the second, Ding Jingsheng (Huang Xuan), Jingshui’s brother, is a lazy slacker who is not smart enough to go to university, refuses to work in the mine, and instead thinks he could become a pop singer. And in the third, Ding Baogen (Luo Deyuan), Jingsheng and Jingshui’s father, has reached retirement age and is not sure what to do with the rest of his life, as the only thing he knows is the mine. THE SHAFT moves at a snail’s pace, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s STRANGER THAN PARADISE but without any humor, a meditative examination of the decaying social and economic structure in rural China. Cinematographer Liu Shumi’s camera lingers on scenes long after they appear to be over, as characters just stand and stare out at the dim gray and black countryside, occasionally saturated in lush blues and reds; out there somewhere is Beijing, more than a dream away, but the big city doesn’t necessarily hold any answers either. Dialogue is kept to a bare minimum, with no musical soundtrack, just natural sound that often borders on complete silence. THE SHAFT, which is screening at MoMA January 21-27 as part of the Global Lens festival, is an intense, rewarding, uneasy experience from an extremely talented young filmmaker.
Longtime Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam is perhaps the most frustrating filmmaker of the last thirty years. A remarkable talent whose works are often mired in controversy, from going way overbudget to having to deal with severe illness and even death on his sets, Gilliam has made such pure gems as TIME BANDITS (1981), BRAZIL (1985), and THE FISHER KING (1991) as well as such disasters as FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998), THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005), and TIDELAND (2005). His last real success was TWELVE MONKEYS (1995), making it nearly fifteen years since he has made a worthwhile movie. His latest adult fairy tale, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, is reminiscent of his 1988 film, THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, a somewhat underrated though hit-or-miss effort that reached lofty heights while flirting with utter ridiculousness. Cowritten by Gilliam and Charles McKeown (who also collaborated on BRAZIL and MUNCHAUSEN), DOCTOR PARNASSUS is built around a Faustian plot in which a monk, Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), who thinks his sect controls the story of the world, makes a deal with Mr. Nick, the devil (Tom Waits), involving Parnassus’s daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole). Valentina is part of the doctor’s traveling sideshow, along with the trusted, all-knowing Percy (Verne Troyer) and assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield), who is in love with Valentina but is unable to express his desire. The ramshackle show offers people the chance to walk through a mirror into their own private fantasy — during which they will eventually face a decision regarding their own potential deal with the devil. When the oddball troupe discovers a man hanging by his neck under a bridge, they welcome the charming, handsome, deeply mysterious stranger (Heath Ledger) into their outfit, but he is hiding a secret that could tear everything apart. PARNASSUS is an up-and-down affair in which a captivating, beautiful scene will be followed by a baffling segment that borders on the incompetent, as if the filmmakers forgot to edit it properly or couldn’t afford more takes to improve it. Fortunately, the last half hour is thrilling, especially how Gilliam and McKeown rework the script to deal with Ledger’s death when several key scenes still needed to be shot.
