Les Miz Movie Rambling

I'm fine; the bullet bounced off my corset.

So the Les Miserables movie musical finally came out, and to deservedly mixed reviews. The songs were pretty chopped up (most noticeable and damaging in "Confrontation," "Master of the House," "Look Down," "Plumet Attack," and "One Day More," in my opinion), but the sets looked great. Honestly, there was never any way crowds weren't going to come out en masse for this, and it was perfect for a Christmas pastime. Was it an instant classic? No. Did I cry? Yes. Multiple times? Yes.

Should have gotten Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel to coach this scene.

To get this out of the way: yes, Anne Hathaway was good. I wasn't in the "Anne Hathaway = best Catwoman ever!" camp, but man, did she give a great performance here. While I agree with a lot of Mick LaSalle's criticism regarding what happens when they make the showstopping songs intimate and whispered, I disagree with what he says about Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream." When she got to "but there are dreams that cannot be,/ and there are storms we cannot weather," you could hear the entire theater scrounging around for their Kleenex.

I thought Samantha Barks's "On My Own" was near perfect: belted, passionate...and still on a scale that worked for the film. But then, girl knows what she's doing. (I think the grit that Lea Salonga brings to Eponine still makes hers my favorite, though.) BTW, love this quotation from Barks from this interview: "I can't believe I actually spat in Ali G's face!"

When Eponine says "don't rob the house," don't rob the fucking house.

I love ethereal siren/angel/ghost-creature Amanda Seyfried, but there's not much to do with the role of Cosette. Ditto for ultimate trustafarian Marius. I told my mom immediately after the movie ended that I thought Eddie Redmayne sounded like Kermit, and she thought I was crazy. All the reviews seemed to love him, and I thought maybe I was just biased, but then...validation!

Congrats to Mrs. Lovett for finding a husband who's far more cheery than Sweeney Todd yet has the exact same morals and fashion sense. Seriously, never eat anything Helena Bonham Carter has cooked.

One day Tim Burton is going to wake and find that Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Alan Rickman, and Johnny Depp have all left him for Tom Hooper.

When Javert started throwing punches at the ABC guys, all I could think was, "fightin' 'round the world!"

Sure, Tugger could have saved him from the Seine, but we
know how Tugger feels about Russell Crowe's singing.

Javert putting the medal on Gavroche's corpse was sort of maudlin and didn't really feel true to where his character was at the point (still cried, though). It also annoyed me a little bit since Eponine's corpse was right there, and in the novel she's the dead person he recognizes in a quick flash of humanity, and hey, if you're going to go back to the book and have Fantine's teeth ripped out... But I guess in the context of the musical/movie Javert and Eponine haven't really had any interaction, while Javert and Gavroche have.

Even with Hugo's lengthy history of the Parisian sewers and ruminations on how much it blows to drown in poop, I was somehow not prepared for the OH MY GOD THEY'RE IN POOP scene where Valjean rescues Marius. Valjean needs a "world's best dad" mug, 'cause carrying your daughter's boyfriend through rivers of poop to get him to safety is really above and beyond.

As annoying as I find the Marius/Cosette nuptials, I loved in the novel how Marius's grandpa and Valjean get so, so, so into wedding planning. If Marius's grandpa had grabbed Cosette's hands and squealed, "DRESS SHOPPING!!!" it would have taken the movie into Mamma Mia! territory, but it also would have been pretty true to the book.

Joker and Harley Quinn's biggest rivals at Villain Prom.

Yeah, they're terrible people, but when Thenardier led his wife away by the hand after they were kicked out of the rich kids wedding, it made me sad to think that in the novel, Madame Thenardier has died in prison by that scene.

Eponine's part in the "Come to Me" reprise was axed. What gives? I mean, yeah, it's kind of weird for a dying man to be visited by the spirit of the girl who had a crush on his son-in-law, but still.

Heaven = being in an Occupy Paris camp? Forever? I hope they get to stroll around the Luxembourg and have some pain au chocolat at some point.

Notre-Dame de Paris Pity Party

A movie musical? Oh, like Mamma Mia? That's cute, I guess.

Everyone* is super psyched about the movie adaptation of the Les Miserables stage musical that's coming out on Christmas. I'm psyched. I've been psyched for a while. I am crying right now because I am not currently watching Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter perform "Master of the House." There is even an advent calendar!

*Correction: Grumpy Cat is not psyched about Les Miserables.

But as excited as I am, I can't help feeling a little sad for other Victor Hugo novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, aka The Hunchback of Notre Dame, of which I am also a huge fan. Everyone's freaking out over Les Miz, and there's Notre-Dame just sitting there abandoned like Quasimodo in the church's free baby bin while no one makes advent calendars for it.

Les Miz is close to my heart, and for me conjures memories of escaping by reading in gardens and cafes during a difficult time. I saw the musical afterwards and have the soundtrack on my iPod. Notre-Dame is a far more recent read for me, and I was surprised by how much it grabbed me. I love them both. However, as much as I love Les Miz, it can kinda be subtitled "How many people have to die so Cosette and Marius can have their boring, bougie wedding?" Spoiler alert: a lot.

I was trying to take a thoughtful picture but it turned out like porn.

Audiences generally want some sort of happy ending, preferably romance-related. Even though almost all of everybody's favorites get killed before the end of Les Miz, Cosette and Marius survive to register at Williams & Sonoma which makes Valjean happy, so...mission accomplished? Meanwhile, Notre-Dame's just like, "yeah, everyone died..." The last few chapters are like Disneyland's Small World ride, except instead of passing by different idyllic but stereotypical scenes of kids holding hands, you pass by scenes of people getting their brains knocked out, dying from shock, being hanged, getting tossed off cathedrals, starving to death in a pile of corpses, etc. It is basically Joss Whedon's fondest dream.

So Les Miz has a supposedly happy ending and advent calendars and Grumpy Cat memes and Anne Hathaway method acting by dying of TB, but does it have a scene where a guy and a girl are having a sex in a hotel room and the girl's pet goat is also in the hotel room and then a second guy whom the first guy allowed to watch the sex stabs the first guy during the sex? Spoiler alert: it does not.

Obviously the choice centerpiece scene for Auguste Couder's 1833
Scenes tirees de Notre-Dame de Paris.

Notre-Dame also has the most beautiful man/goat relationship ever written (same goat as above). While struggling writer Pierre Gringoire's fake marriage to Esmeralda doesn't net him any sex, it does gain him custody of the little white trick-performing goat, Djali. The goat becomes Gringoire's dearest friend (not that high a bar - Frollo was his only friend previously) and he is certain she shares his feelings. Like Esmeralda, Quasimodo, and Frollo, Djali too is accused of being the devil (man, the 1400s were rough), but survives and gets the story's sole happy ending: a daring escape and new life with Gringoire.

Yeah, Phoebus and Fleur-de-Lys get married, but that happens off-scene and everyone knows he's going to cheat on her anyways (he was the stabee in the hotel sex scene).

FYI, Esmeralda is not generally topless.
Also her necklace is supposed to have a shoe on it.

Notre-Dame also has Jehan Frollo du Moulin in its corner. Jehan is Frollo's spoiled little brother/"other" kid, who always gets cut out of adaptations, which is too bad, because he is hilarious. Jehan is nothing like the rest of his family. While Frollo and Quasimodo are content to stay inside the cathedral to do their alchemy/bell-ringing, Jehan is a loud, obnoxious extrovert. His main activities are drinking, bullying, and hitting up a frustrated but enabling Frollo for money. When the gypsies rise up to take Esmeralda from Notre-Dame, he joins the fight on a whim and is promptly killed by his adopted brother Quasimodo. But hey, at least unlike Les Miz's Grantaire, he manages to not be passed out drunk through his book's central uprising. This is actually a pretty huge accomplishment for Jehan.

Jehan just being Jehan.

See? Notre-Dame de Paris has lots of cool stuff, Les Miserables. It doesn't need your star-studded premieres or forthcoming Oscar statuettes. In fact, once Frollo cracks the riddle of alchemy, they can have all the solid gold Oscar statuettes they want!

And to be honest, Notre-Dame being the forgotten sibling to Les Miz seems to be an American/British (or just English-speaking?) issue. Notre-Dame, from what I could see during my trips to France, is a bigger BFD in France. The Maison de Victor Hugo is scant on Les Miz artifacts, but full of awesome Notre-Dame stuff like the above Couder panel, early editions, and this poster:

It was in a stairwell and also I am a terrible photographer, ok?
Quasi's at the top, then we've got Frollo, Djali, Esmeralda, Phoebus,
and Jehan being drunk in the background.

The big reason Les Miz is so popular in America is definitely the musical (you think all the people psyched for Les Miz have slogged through Hugo's Waterloo and sewer lectures?). It's a great musical. And it's in English. Notre-Dame became a record-breaking, wildly popular (and more modern) musical in 1998, but it's in French, so we don't get much of it here. Maybe if a subtitled movie musical is made of that musical, we can get some Notre-Dame fever stateside. There is a subtitled DVD (je ne comprends pas bien francais?) I'm trying to track down, but fortunately some of it, like any recorded thing, is on Youtube. Here is the signature song, "Belle," in which Quasimodo, Frollo, and Phoebus creep on Esmeralda while sounding amazing:




So obviously Notre-Dame is doing just fine in its home country. And hey, Notre-Dame de Paris is the novel of outcasts! While Fantine is raiding Lady Gaga's prop room for premiere press is the perfect time for Notre-Dame to be tragically relegated in the secure yet cold embrace of the cathedral's walls.


Images:
Etchings: various public domain, both accredited to Gustave Brion thought not sure about the first
Grumpy Cat: all the majesty of the universe and the internets
Statue: Esmeralda and Her Goat by Antonio Rossetti
Painting & poster: my own terrible photos from the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris

9 Months More!

Best Week Ever blogger/Les Miz superfan Michelle Collins made a few critical notes on Hugh Jackman's Jean Valjean get-up, but she missed one important detail.

That isn't facial hair on that beard.

But questionable beard aside, how exciting to have a photo at last, tweeted by Hugh Jackman himself! The movie's coming out December of this year, which seemed much closer until I counted it out on my fingers. At least we're almost down to only eight months. I hope we get more photos soon, especially of the particularly attractive, scene-stealing, and British Thenardier clan they've assembled.

Like the Sopranos, but with petty crime and more singing.

Minus poor Gavroche, who gets the Thenardier name rescinded in the musical (to be fair, he had already moved out at, like, age eight). And minus the younger Thenardier daughter, Azelma, who doesn't make the musical. And then the two youngest kids who don't even get names in the book let alone a musical appearance, whom the Thenardiers sell to a woman for her inheritance scam but then the woman gets arrested and the kids are left homeless. It's a happy family.

Fun fact/spoiler: in the novel, Madame Thenardier also dies, and Thenardier finally ends up taking his one known surviving family member, Azelma, with him to New York, where he invests in the slave trade.

If I wanted to hop on the novel-sized cutesy fanfiction of classic novels bandwagon, I would totally write about Azelma's new life in New York City as the wealthy daughter of a blood-monied tycoon. Obviously she would wear fancy dresses, worry about her family's dark past being discovered, and have to decide between an old-money New Yorker douche and a penniless but passionate abolitionist. Actually, that sounds like $$$. Don't steal Hugo's my idea, Darcy-does-such-and-such people. I'll get to that right after I finish the pilot for my Vautrin and Javert buddy cop series.

Javert & Vautrin: Best Buddy Cop Series Ever

They already have matching hats!
Javert (L, by Gustave Brion) & Vautrin (R, by Honore Daumier)

Sometimes you get an idea that's just genius, you know? Well, it recently hit me: Victor Hugo's Javert from Les Miserables and Honore de Balzac's Vautrin from his Human Comedy series need to be in a buddy cop TV show. They're both policemen, their time periods overlap, and despite both being inspired by real-life criminal-turned-officer Eugene Francois Vidocq, they're perfect foils who would have hilarious (if cliched) buddy cop adventures.

Javert: the no-nonsense, humorless straight-arrow. Dour, but devoted to his work. He cares about justice, dammit. The Starsky. The Special Agent Albert Rosenfield. Definitely playing the Bad Cop in the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine.

Vautrin: the cool badass who's also the comic relief. A master criminal who is now a corrupt officer. The honey badger personified. Gregarious, manly, livin' large, with a weakness for hot guys that's always landing him in hot water. Yes, he's gay. Man, there hasn't been a macho, kick-ass, openly gay main character in a major work of mainstream entertainment since...uh...1835? When Vautrin debuted?

Yet Dumbledore, in the 21st Century, had to be an after-the-fact secret.

How it would pan out: Javert's spotless record is tarnished when he finally gets in trouble with the force (probably for being way too obsessed with something trivial, like a freakin' bread thief). To "rein him in," the boss pairs him up with always-in-trouble-and-doesn't-give-a-shit Vautrin, who is on his last chance. At first they fight all the time! Javert thinks Vautrin is a untrustworthy dunce! Vautrin thinks Javert is an uptight killjoy! But then during a major crime (perhaps a small child is in peril?) they have to work together and end up with grudging admiration for the other's strengths. Pretty much every episode repeats this very important lesson.

And of course there would be guest cameos by other literary characters. Imagine them crossing paths with Notre-Dame de Paris's Clopin! Obviously Javert would be completely appalled by him, while Vautrin would think he's the most awesome ever. Maybe after Clopin saves the day, Javert learns an important lesson about judging people. Or maybe after Vautrin starts neglecting his partnership with Javert for fun illegal times with Clopin, he is betrayed by his new pal, and learns an important lesson about true friendship. So many possibilities!

Okay, so actually it would just be every buddy cop series ever...except French! And with a cast of characters that partially reflects sexual diversity among humans! And with snuff and courtesans!

Broadway Eponine & RomCom Lucifer

Lucifer has a case of the dramaz in Gustave Dore's illustration.

Oh, whew. After all the drama surrounding Taylor Swift as Eponine in the upcoming movie adaptation of the musical adaptation of Les Miserables, it looks like Eponine vet Samantha Barks has the role. I'm much happier with this. Barks has reality show roots, but she has done this role many times, is a strong Broadway-style singer, and looks like she could have been birthed by Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter.







Though hopefully she'll be less mascara-y in the movie. BRB, Marius, but now that I've dressed up as a boy I gotta put on my makeup before taking a bullet for you.

In other controversial-movies-that-haven't-started-filming-yet news, Paradise Lost, a big-screen, big-budget adaptation of John Milton's 1667 epic (like 10,000+ lines epic) poem - with Bradley Cooper as Lucifer - is apparently starting filming in June after delays. Now that the shock of this casting has worn off (will Lucifer wear polo shirts and get into a ridiculous shove-fight with Michael?), I'm looking forward to seeing how this project develops.

Does Eponine Have to Cut Someone?

 Gustave Brion's depiction of Eponine

Les Miz fans are probably well aware of the Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) movie musical that's happening. The cast still isn't completely finalized, so rumors abound. However, it's looking pretty final that Taylor Swift will be Eponine. I am not the only one annoyed by this by a long shot (I like Best Week Ever's Michelle Collins's take-down here).

Generally, Taylor Swift doesn't bother me much. I find the "I hate Taylor Swift because she is the virgin in the virgin/whore dichotomy and I think women classified as whores are way superior because I have completely missed the divide-and-conquer tactics of the patriarchy" people more irritating. She just feels so, so, so wrong for the role. She's squeaky clean with little-to-no acting background. Eponine, even in her more romanticized Broadway form, is still ragged and streetwise. Look, she's a career criminal who is going to dress up like a dude and run through a damn battle zone for the guy she loves, not write her fifteenth song about how he's dating someone who's not her as a single tear runs down her bisque porcelain cheek. Actually, Swift would be perfect for pretty and not-quite-bursting-with-personality Cosette, who will most likely be played by Amanda Seyfried. And here's the thing: I'd be really excited if Amanda Seyfried were Eponine! Seyfried we know can act, and has a good range at that. It seems so obvious just to switch these two actresses.

I'd love an Eponine that gets back to the non-fluffy roots. She's one of my favorite Victor Hugo characters. When my mom took me to the musical after I finished Les Miserables, I worried she would be cut completely (if you've read the gargantuan novel, you know why this might be a concern), and was thrilled when she was a major part. She's an interesting character, especially in the book. Wry, clever, a little crazy, very tough. After being presented as spoiled and domineering as a young child earlier in the novel, she adapts when her family's fortunes turn. A valuable member of her father's criminal gang, and assumed to be headed for common-law marriage with fashionable criminal Montparnasse, Eponine still hopes for something more with Marius, even though she's starkly realist. Her speech to Marius on which "On My Own" is based is disturbing and touching, revealing an intelligent if damaged girl who has soldiered on.

At least they didn't cast Nick Jonas as Marius. Yes, Nick Jonas has played Marius on stage. He actually kinda works for book-Marius, because book-Marius is a young douche. But you gotta love this awkward version of "A Little Fall of Rain," where he can barely bring himself to touch talented Samantha Barks's Eponine. Kyle did it better with the Mole in South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. I know it's a concert version, but come on, Michael Ball and Lea Solonga had great chemistry (and shared a mic) in their 10th Anniversary concert. 






That's how you do it.
As for the rest of the cast, the only disappointment I have is that the original rumor was that Geoffrey Rush would be Thenardier, and I would have loved to see him take this role opposite Helena Bonham Carter's Madame Thenardier. However, it looks like the role has gone to Sasha Baron Cohen, whose ability to do over-the-top buffoonery with a hint of malice makes him a good choice as well. Honestly, I can't wait for Bellatrix and Borat to steal the show as Paris's worst parents (not mentioned in the musical, but Gavroche is just one of their several kids they decided they couldn't afford).

Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe having a manly man-off as Valjean and Javert should be fun, although the racially ambiguous Javert could have lent some diversity to the production. Anne Hathaway as Fantine is fine. At least she probably won't sing "he thlept a thummer by my thide," like the otherwise great Daphne Rubin-Vega. Regardless, I know I, and tons of other fans, will definitely see this. And who knows? Maybe Swift will surprise.