Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I liked it, I didn't love it. I kind of feel guilty for not loving it because I know how much some other people would have liked to go see it, but I just didn't.

Basically, the feeling I had throughout most of it was that I would have really liked it if I hadn't seen the movie.

The play was exactly the same plotwise, (except for one small thing they took out in the movie), but it was executed in an incredibly different way.

The play was very minimalist. There were ten cast members (about), and no orchestra. When not acting, the characters would go sit in chairs on the side of the stage and play instruments, in clear view. They do stay in character though. Sometimes the characters would play their instruments while acting and having scenes and stuff. Tobias sometimes hides behind his violin, Mrs. Lovett took out a tuba and started playing at one point. And there were were no set changes. The set was a coffin, some chairs, a pedestal, and a big shelf that held stuff. They would sometimes move the coffin to reseble things, from a judges pedestal thing to a door. When they were showing that they were upstairs, some people would just stand on a ladder.

And the deaths were nothing like they were in the movie. Sweeney would just movie his razor past their throat, and then they would freeze, every light on stage would turn red, and somebody would start pouring a bucket of blood into another bucket somewhere else. Then the dead person would stand up, and a woman would come over and hand him a lab coat with dried blood on it.

It was very different. I didn't really love that they did it this way. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was more literal. Also it was a bit confusing I felt. Sometimes sweeney would carry around this white casket which after a while I realized was supposed to resemble random things, like his wife, the barber chair, a person he was shaving. The problem was sense I had already seen it in such a literal way, instead of enjoying it as it was I just kept thinking about where they were in relation to the movie. I think that was the biggest problem for me.

Tim Burton really changed the play a lot when he made it into a movie. It worked either way I think, but I wish I had seen the play first.

Also, one thing that wasn't in the movie. The play started out with a person in a straight-jacket gagged and twitching and moving his fingers a bit. Then a woman came out and took off the straight jacket. He then stood up and took up a violin and began singing "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" with the rest of the cast (another song Tim Burton took out). He didn't show up for a while, but he acted fairly crazy throughout the show (even though he wasn't in the scene really, he was just watching being an instrument person). He freaked out when Sweeney took out his razors and stuff like that. Later on he became Tobias (who is played by an adult on stage which annoyed me). Then at the end of the show, after he *HUGE GIGANTIC SPOILER STOP READING SKIP REST OF PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVN'T WATCHED MOVIE YET* kills Sweeney the woman came back and put the straight jacket on and she gagged him and he kept mumbling things like "put the meat through 3 times so it's extra tender". That was incredibly creepy, I liked that part of Tobias. Also the woman who gagged him and stuff was the one who would bring out the bloody coats for people when they were dead, and she was also Perelli. That was one thing I really liked that Tim Burton took out.

And here is my feelings on the preformances in short.

Sweeney: Eh, not great. He was not a very good singer usually, and his acting was not great. For a while it seemed like he was trying not to smile, and I don't know if it was on purpose or not but it didn't come off as creepy, it just came off as weird.

Mrs. Lovett: Very very good. She was the standout of the play (It seems like Mrs. Lovett is always a stand out, shes just a really good character.

Anthony: Pretty good. Not a stand out, but there was nothing wrong with his preformance.

Johanna: Also pretty good. She had pretty dark hair though, which drove me crazy because her having "yellow hair" is constantly mentioned and actually a important point in the plot.

Beggar Woman: Very good

Tobias: Pretty good

Nobody else stood out to me.

Also, one last thing. There were mike malfunctions. It was very distracting, Sweeney's mike stopped working for like half a song. I imagine it must have been awful for everyone else sense it was bad for me and I was in the third row.

Oh one more thing I just remembered, *SPOILER* at the end when he kills Mrs. Lovett he didn't throw her into a fernace! He slit her throat, and it was a lot more clear he was going to do it, with a slower build up. I prefered it when in one instant he just threw her into the fernace.

So overall, it was a very good production but, but due to my knowing the plot very well and having already seen the movie, I didn't love it.

Production: 8.5 or 9 crazy barbers out of 10

My opinion: 6.5 or 7 human meat pies of out of 10

Lord Of The Flies

I'm assuming everyone who would read this has already read the book, but here is my opinion *MASSIVE SPOILERS*

Well Lord of the Flies is one of the most famous books ever written, and rightfully so. It provides a complicated view on the evils of humanity by creating a microcosm of our world, filled with symbolism, metaphors, and even allusions to the bible.

Now that's all well and dandy, but is it any good? Yes, it is.

The basic plot of the book is just that there are a bunch of boys trapped on an island and they become progressively more savage as time goes on.

This is a really cool concept, and it works really well. Overall, it really was a great book, but that isn't going to stop me from complaining about every tiny little imperfection, because otherwise what fun would this be?

1. Dialogue. The author does the dialogue in a really weird way, he does something like this.

Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Samneric all gathered around the campfire.
"What should we do?" Ralph said.
"I don't know," Piggy responded.
"Maybe we should go to the huts?"
"But that's how my father died."
"I am so sorry"
"It's no problem"
"You guys! I was just seriously hurt!"
"Oh no, let me help you"
"I'm leaving you guys, I hate this tribe!"

WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?!?! He actually does stuff like that, and it drove me crazy because I would have no idea who said anything!

2. Chapters. At the beginning of almost every single chapter, we would be taken out of the action for some 2 page long boring thing. It was awful because you would have some really intense ending to a chapter, like this.

"The forrest echoed with the sounds of the screams of the childs pain."

And then instead of telling you what actually happened, the author would spend two pages with some boring unrelated thing.

3. Alright, I think most people agree with me, but the ending was lame. Sure it had some nice symbolism, and implied some stuff about society, but it was so anticlimactic and unsatisfying! Every person on the island has turned savage except one and they are about to kill him when..........

A huge crazy coincidence happens and he runs into a sailor who saves them the end. And it was kind of predictable. I think he could have thought of a more creative thing to end it with.

4. This is nonspecific, but there were a lot of blah areas. Towards the middle there were 2 or 3 chapters that just weren't very interesting.

So, with these four big faults, is it still worth reading? Yes, by a lot. With the intense sections like when Simon talks to the Lord of the Flies and is killed, to the thought provoking ones like the meetings, it is overall a great book.

I give lord of the flies 8 1/2 severed pig heads out of 10.

Slumdog Millionaire

I will be careful to mark all the spoiler parts, but if you plan on seeing it and want to be completely surprised by everything (including the super clever framing device), then just don't read this.

The movie started out with us finding out that the main character, Jamal, is under suspect for cheating because he got to 10 million rupees (the equivalent to about 500,000) on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?". The police watch the episode of the show Jamal is on, and Jamal tells his life story to the police, each story having in it the answer to a question. It is really clever, and may sound a bit contrived, but it works really well and is believable when you see it.

The beginning 20ish minutes of the movie are really hard to watch. You see some of the horrible things that happen to children. SPOILER: He sees his mother killed, is tortured, beaten, and there are some even worse things that happen to some of the children, like being blinded with a hot spoon so they can get more money when they beg on the street.

Throughout his memories, there are 2 main reoccurring characters, Jamal's brother Salim, and his love interest Latika. Everyone in the movie is very great, but there were no standout fantastic performances in my opinion.

After we see how Jamal got to this point in his life, that is, being in the police station being interrogated, the story continues in a regular format, and I don't want to ruin the ending for you or any of the great scenes so I won't say anything more.

The first half hour was a bit slow, but from there on the movie really found it's stride, and during some of the last moments I was really hoping that everything would work out for the characters.

Overall, the movie was very good. My only two complaints were that the camera work was not fantastic (it overused the diagonal angle a bit), and that they dragged out the moment when we find out if Jamal won the game or not a bit to much, and it lost some of the excitement.

I highly recommend it, and I definitely think you should see it. It will probably win the best picture Oscar, and I would not be disappointed if it did. Hopefully I will see Doubt and Milk before the Oscars, and I can have an opinion on which is best (I'm not really interested in Benjamin Button, it seems kind of Oscar grubbing and contrived).

I give this movie 9 million rupees out of 10

The Office: Stress Relief

First review! Well there's not a lot to say. This was a really good episode, one of the better ones so far this season. The plot was kind of all over the place, but it was just really funny so that more than made up for it.

The episode started out with Dwight starting a fire to teach the Office about fire safety. Everyone became completely hysterical, and it was really funny. This set off a chain of events which ended with the entire office having a "roast" for Michael that was just lots of insults.

There was also a side-plot about Pam's parents marriage falling apart, which may have been due to something Jim said. This played out well, and led to one of the Office's occasional sincere moments. They rarely measure up to how funny the show is, but it was still pretty good.

The only bad part was a small subplot that involved Andy watching a bootlegged movie on his computer. It was completely unrelated to the plot, only a little bit funny, and was noticeably just a stunt to get guest stars on the show.

Overall, I'd give that episode a 9/10.

Hopefully the next thing I review will be god awful, and more entertaining. I'll try and find some terrible stuff to teach you about. Until next time

DELICIOUS REVIEWS, OUT!

James Will Review Random Stuff

Hi! Welcome to my other blog! I generally get really into entertainment stuff, so I will be using this blog to say my opinions on books, plays, movies, shows, games, and all things entertaining.

I don't actually have anything right now, but some that you can expect in the near future are

Saturday Night Live
Lord of the Flies
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Burn After Reading

And yeah! So, be excited.