I'M NOT DEAD (YET)
Saturday, 9. February 2008, 17:17:16
It has been a long time since I put anything in this blog. But this is the blog saying "I'm not dead!". I have been trying to write in English, both academic things, and other stuff for the Dead Prose Writers Society of Turnberry Road (a zombie-like mutation from the former philosophical society of Kelvinhaugh Street). But I realise that I really need to try harder. For that reason, I am starting to write again in this blog more regularily. That is why the blog is raising its voice from the grave to haunt the living.To continue with the ghostly mood, I will comment a ghostly musical (is that posible? yes, it is) and some other worthless subjects.
By the way, it would be unfair not to mention the kind reminding from Frank, the German Retriever, the inmediate reason for resuming my English blogging.
This blog can't help but spare some sympathy for the demon barber of Fleet Street, depicted in the image (taken from SFGate.com). The blog is not, of course, blinded by hate and full of homicidal drive, but it was once a happy and cheerful blog, and is now half-dead because of the hard reality taking its author away and locking him into the insanity of productivity. Just like the demon barber... Am I spoiling the movie? No, I don't think so: the first minutes tell a good amount of the story. I know that it is a rather silly analogy, but, well, I am just writing to write. Like, in a musical, everybody sings just because.
Besides the bad analogy that I use to rationalise the sympathy for Sweeney Todd, I should also say that the movie makes you sympathetic of all characters; there is, of course, the wicked judge, but I ended up feeling some compassion even for him. And the evil, but funny, subordinate of the judge, he had some kind of charm too.
I liked "Sweeney Todd": it is a very light-hearted tragedy. The songs are not all terrific, but the movie is fun. I have the feeling, however, that the rest of the audience were not as amused: some of them seemed to ignore that it was a musical, and were somewhere between suprise and disappointment.
The movie is an old-fashioned musical. And when I write old-fashioned, I do not mean that it was a picturesque, postmodern and naïvely nostalgic product for the contemporary consumer: No. I mean that it is a musical so difficult to see as a musical from the fifties. Appart from the obvious burtonesque elements, the movie is quite faithful to the format of old musicals. Have you, dear reader, tried to see "west side story"? In a silver screen? It is not easy, specially if you are not as venerably old as I am. To the contemporary public, there is "Moulin Rouge" and "Evita".
About the audience, at first I thought the following: the regular audience of Tim Burton's movies is, if you allow me the prejudice, comprised mainly of vaguely somber, thin and glamorous teenagers, whom a wii can help to forget easily that the world is utterly senseless and that society opresses their exquisite sensibility. Perhaps they could have appreciatied even a grown-up film like "Big Fish", with all that special-effects-aided fantasy, but Sweeney Todd could have been too much for some of them, I guess.
As it usually happens with prejudices, this one led me to wrong conclussions. I looked in the web for the complains of the light goths, but found nothing. I even found about some reasonable success, and even some prices (Oscar nominations, Golden Globes and useless things like that).
What I find is the expected whinning of the fans of the original on-stage version, but no consensus at all.
Defeated, then, by the facts, I retreat, again, to citing. So, here is a suitable Monty Python scene:
CART MASTER: Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out your dead! [cough cough...] [clang] [...cough cough]
Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out your dead! Ninepence. [clang]
Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out your dead! [clang]
Bring out... [rewr!] ...your dead! [rewr!] [clang]
Bring out your dead!
CUSTOMER: Here's one.
Ninepence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
What?
CUSTOMER: Nothing. Here's your ninepence.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead!
'Ere. He says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER: Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON: I'm not!
He isn't?
CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.
DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER: No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.
Oh, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
DEAD PERSON: I don't want to go on the cart!
CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby.
I can't take him.
DEAD PERSON: I feel fine!
CUSTOMER: Well, do us a favour.
I can't.
CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
No, I've got to go to the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
CUSTOMER: Well, when's your next round?
Thursday.
DEAD PERSON: I think I'll go for a walk.
CUSTOMER: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn't there something you can do? (handles him more coins)
DEAD PERSON: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy. [whop] (gets hitten in the head by the cart master)
CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much.
