Les Misérables II: Starring Honey Boo Boo as Cosette

[shooter_mcgavin]

It's something the musical simply doesn't have time to develop, but makes more sense in the context of the source: in the novel, Hugo describes how the Thenardiers, once they ruin themselves, loose everything and end up as beggars/thieves in Paris, they degrade as much as a person can, and totally stop caring about their children (the little kid, Gavroche, is also their son, so they loose two children in the barricade, but in the novel they have three more, one that is already dead when we meet them again in Paris and two that they abandon when they're children and grow up as street urchins, and Gavroche meets and saves once without knowing they're his little brothers). They never care about Eponine, and Hugo spends a lot of time in the novel meditating on how misery can turn somoene into monsters like the Thenardiers, and still in the same misery and from those parents you can find someone as generous as Eponine. But really, when we see them in the musical, they're already totally estranged. Eponine works in her father's band of burglars/thieves, but is mostly independent and does what she wants. Her father just uses her for robberies and doesn't care much about her.

Thanks for the info, I'd figure the book from Victor Hugo would have explained this more. I liked Eponine in Les Mis but the movie didn't give the time to give her character enough time to provide a perspective specially how much you are caught off guard with her parents (since they did seem to treasure her so much as a young girl).

[Blasty]

LMAO I can't believe this is real! I really must see this soon!

[erikdean]

I'm pretty sure that was one of my drinking game moments: every time Tveit and Redmayne make gay googly eyes at each other, take a shot.

[Aurelius]

I bet you were drunk before they mounted, ehm, the barricades.

[erikdean]

I bet you were drunk before they mounted, ehm, the barricades.

[steve4922]

Not to mention Crowe and Jackman's S&M relationship, which would certainly explain why Javert follows Valjean all over France.

[crazyfists3600]

Not to mention Crowe and Jackman's S&M relationship, which would certainly explain why Javert follows Valjean all over France.

[City Lights]

Not to mention Crowe and Jackman's S&M relationship, which would certainly explain why Javert follows Valjean all over France.

[RayB]

"He knows his way in the dark..."
"I have only know one other who can do what you have done"
"How can now I allow this man, to hold dominion over me?"

[erikdean]

"He knows his way in the dark..."
"I have only know one other who can do what you have done"
"How can now I allow this man, to hold dominion over me?"

This is like a glory hole theme song.

[siowafc]

Ugh, I need to rewatch this immediately.



Now that I've gotten all the hate I have for it out of my system, I'm sure it will be fun.

[steve4922]

This is like a glory hole theme song.

Well, you would know that if anyone would . . . .

[steve4922]

From a piece in the NY times about Les Miz:

“Les Misérables” defeats irony by not allowing the distance it requires. If you’re looking right down the throats of the characters, there is no space between them and you; their perspective is your perspective; their emotions are your emotions; you can’t frame what you are literally inside of. Moreover, the effect — and it is an effect even if its intention is to trade effect for immediacy — is enhanced by the fact that the faces you are pushed up against fill the screen; there is no dimension to the side of them or behind them; it is all very big and very flat, without depth. The camera almost never pulls back, and when it does so, it is only for an instant.

* * * *

Endless high passion and basic human emotions indulged in without respite are what “Les Misérables” offers in its refusal to afford the distance that enables irony. Those who call the movie flat, shallow, sentimental and emotionally manipulative are not wrong; they just fail to see that what appear to them to be bad cinematic choices (in addition to prosaic lyrics that repel aesthetic appreciation, and multiple reprises of simple musical themes) are designed to achieve exactly the result they lament — an almost unbearable proximity to raw, un-ironized experience. They just can’t go with it. And why should they? After all, the critic, and especially the critic who perches in high journalistic places, needs to have a space in which he can insert himself and do the explicatory work he offers to a world presumed to be in need of it. “Les Misérables,” taken on its own terms, leaves critics with nothing to do except join the rhythms of rapt silence, crying and applause, and it is understandable that they want nothing to do with it.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-and-irony/?hp

I don't necessarily agree with what he says, but I still think it's an interesting read.

[McTeague]

From a piece in the NY times about Les Miz:



http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...-and-irony/?hp

I don't necessarily agree with what he says, but I still think it's an interesting read.

OMG.

I wish I had written that.

But OMG, that piece, and I have found Armond White's review:

Nothing could be less ironic or “smart,” but that’s what makes audiences inevitably weep by the time Hugo’s tale reaches its apogee.

It’s not that they’ve experienced the highest form of art—only art’s basic, often forgotten and essential purpose: Les Misérables’ yearning melodies and rising, rising recitative connect with primal emotional virtues. That is, if—and it’s a major IF—they touch our basic humanity. Most movies, TV shows, video games and blog sites have coarsened the human response. Les Misérables is fascinating due to its overstated tribute to mankind’s nature.

If this movie is the huge hit it deserves to be, it will contravene the bogus sophistication and vain smugness that have overtaken the pop arts for at least the past two decades and soured millennial film culture. (...)

By Jackman’s finale–his intense Rembrandtian visage accumulates real force–the film stays powerfully true to Hugo’s prologue: “So long as ignorance and poverty exist on Earth…Les Miserables cannot fail.” (...)

Hooper’s blunt faux opera is as moving as real opera. To deny this is to prefer the culture’s sarcasm and nihilism.

http://cityarts.info/2012/12/26/working-class-heroism/

OMG, the rehabilitation is starting. Finally some common sense.

And can someone find/post the USA Today piece the guy in the NY Times references in the beginning of his article?

:drrol:

[steve4922]

McT:

This is the USA Today piece.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/m...itics/1839145/

[McTeague]

McT:

This is the USA Today piece.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/m...itics/1839145/

Thanks! That's the lesser of the bunch, but I'm glad some voices are finally raising against the idiotic, ignorant and embarrassing festival of condescendence the Miserables reviews became.

[Aurelius]

By the way, is that pic in your signature from the film? It almost looks like a tilt-shift photo. I think it's beautiful! Makes no sense for the film, but still: beautiful.

[McTeague]

By the way, is that pic in your signature from the film? It almost looks like a tilt-shift photo. I think it's beautiful! Makes no sense for the film, but still: beautiful.

Yeah it’s from the grand finale. You can see Éponine (Barks) in the far right. I guess it doesn’t have high definition because the camera is doing aerial pans in that scene.

[Ciro]

McThenardier, this movie opens tomorrow in Italy. I don't know why, but I feel it's my duty to tell you this.

I'm a huge fan of the show, not on your levels (but then again, who reaches your level of mizinsanity?), but I won't lie, I've been waiting for this movie for 15 years.

It's my name day in a couple of days, and since we celebrate that as a second birthday here, my family is treating me to the movie in its subtitled version, because yes, they actually dubbed the 3 minutes of dialogue here Hopefully by the end of the weekend my heart will be full of love.

I'm dragging them all to see it too, and since the show has never been performed here, this will be their first exposure to it. Hopefully their hearts will be full of love too. If not, get a guestroom ready for me at your house, McT.

[McTeague]

McThenardier, this movie opens tomorrow in Italy. I don't know why, but I feel it's my duty to tell you this.

I'm a huge fan of the show, not on your levels (but then again, who reaches your level of mizinsanity?), but I won't lie, I've been waiting for this movie for 15 years.

It's my name day in a couple of days, and since we celebrate that as a second birthday here, my family is treating me to the movie in its subtitled version, because yes, they actually dubbed the 3 minutes of dialogue here Hopefully by the end of the weekend my heart will be full of love.

I'm dragging them all to see it too, and since the show has never been performed here, this will be their first exposure to it. Hopefully their hearts will be full of love too. If not, get a guestroom ready for me at your house, McT.

You had me at McThenardier, consider that guestroom reserved.