"To love another person is to see the face of God."
Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), Les Miserables.
Les Miz is in leading in my best picture poll.
What movie has your vote as the creme de la creme of 2012?
Showing posts with label Les Miserables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Les Miserables. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 February 2013
Cast a vote for your favorite movie in my Oscar poll.
There's still lots of time to vote for your favorite before the Academy Awards airs on February 23rd. I'm curious to see how our votes line up with the Academy's. As of now, Les Miserables is out front. It's my favorite movie of the year, in a year of extraordinary films. Last night at the DGA Awards Stephen Spielberg noted he wished it were a little less extraordinary! Speilberg went on to lose the Best Director nod from the Director's Guild which went to Ben Affleck for Argo. Affleck can't win the Academy Award for Best Director because he was (stupidly) not nominated by the Academy. But his movie could win Best Picture. Ironically, Argo which has been winning awards left right and center hasn't received any votes in my little poll.
Ready to vote?
The poll is in the sidebar on the top right.
PS Happy Super Bowl Sunday!
Sunday, 27 January 2013
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| Awesome graphic: One Movie Five Views |
Thanks for reading this post and if you like, casting your vote in the sidebar. I've just posted a poll asking you lovely readers to vote for Best Picture of the year.
I'm not asking what you think will win the coveted Academy Award, rather what film you feel should win, iyho. That's in your humble opinion, know what I mean? Which movie - of the films you've seen - do you hold in your head and heart as the creme de la creme in what has been a rather extraordinary year in film?
The Producers Guild of America made its choice Saturday, crowning Ben Affleck's Argo as their numero uno and awarding it the Darryl F. Zanuck trophy. And that puts the odds in Ben Affleck's favor for Argo to be the big winner at the Oscars on February 24th. The last five Oscar winners were PGA winners too; in fact in the past 24 years only 7 Darryl F. Zanuck winners have not gone on to win the Academy Best Picture prize.
Sooooo things are looking good for good looking Ben Affleck even if the Academy did ignore him.
I loved Argo - it's fast, suspenseful and is easier to applaud (for many Americans anyway) than the more challenging and difficult to digest, Zero Dark Thirty rife with the torture controversy. Les Miserables is still my choice for movie of the year because it moved me so but Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi were also extraordinary achievements. Any one of these fine films could win as could Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild. In fact, while a win by Amour would be as initially surprising as its' nomination, it would also make sense if you listen to David Edelstein's logic. Edelstein on CBS Sunday, saying he 'was gobsmacked' by the nomination, puts part of the Academy's love for Amour down to the Academy's aging membership. He also called it one hell of a movie; I still can't decide because it is such a stark intimate look at this couple's coping with the wife's illness that I felt like a voyeur, and as helpless as the couple's grown up daughter. I quite liked Beasts, it was fresh and revealing and the young actress is luminous but it didn't hold me riveted quite like the others did.
But this isn't about what I think, it's about your choices. So, tell me if you please, what is your favorite movie of the year? I'd love to hear all about it and why. And I'd love to see your vote in the sidebar. Don't worry, your vote won't reveal your identity, or mess with your privacy. I'm going to cast the first vote now ...
Go to the poll and vote for Best Picture of the Year!
Thursday, 27 December 2012
"....and to me the great theme of the film is what we will sacrifice for love, what we will do for love. You have Fantine, who’s willing to lose everything, her body, her life, to try to save her child. You’ve got Valjean, who changes everything for love. You’ve got Eponine, who actually sacrifices herself physically for love. It makes it resonate with the beauty of what people will do in the name of love."This quote from Tom Hooper comes from an IndieWire interview with Jay Fernandez in which Hooper explains many of his directorial choices in Les Miserables - some of which have the critics chirping but most audiences cheering (as far as I can see!). Take a look inside Hooper's head here
and take a look at Samantha Barks as Eponine singing On My Own here.
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Still stuck on my Les Miserables obsession, the classic book and upcoming movie musical I know many (MOST?) of you are as excited about as I am.
She's not well known enough here in the States to have her own poster - I imagine the marketing in the UK is quite different! UK readers please let me know!
Barks was at the screening of Les Miserables I attended last Saturday and took part in the Q&A with director Tom Hooper and Eddie Redmayne (Marius) and Amanda Seyfried (Cosette). At 22, she oozed friendly energy - the kind of person who greets you on first meeting as though she knows you already. Sitting next to her, Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) in her mid 20's and modelling since she was eleven years old, came off as the more nervous and insecure.
Hooper told us one of the wonderful things about Les Miserables is that there is something for everyone - children can relate to and thrill to Gavroche's bravery. Parents look at the loss and think of their own children. Young men and women fall in love. There is great tragedy. The fight for justice. Freedom. And love. Samantha Barks shared how she looked out to the audience during one performance and saw what was clearly
" a girl, her mum, and her nana. And they were all three sitting looking up, mouths open, clearly enjoyin' what they were seeing but you knew each one was seeing something different. Each one was seeing it through her eyes."
That may be it, why Les Miserables seems to speak to us, to move us so profoundly. The story, the powerful music speak to each of us, no matter our role in life.
Samantha Barks first caught her big break when she finished in the top three of I’d Do Anything, a realty show produced by Les Miserables producer, Cameron Mackintosh, to find the actress who would play Nancy in the play Oliver! That was four years ago when she was a mere 18. At 22 she's not going to be stopped. The picture below from the Daily Mail is pretty neat. That's Cameron Mackintosh taking to the stage in a Manchester theater where Barks was playing Nancy in Oliver. The Les Miserables producer took that moment to announce to Barks and the world that Hooper had chosen her!
Taking to the stage at the end of Oliver! on Tuesday night, Mackinotsh told the audience: 'For the last few months in Hollywood, Broadway and London, we've been searching for Eponine and you in Manchester are going to be the first people to find who it is...'And now our director Tom Hooper has chosen her for the movie.'A shocked Barks threw her hands to her face as her Oliver! castmates and the audience erupted into cheers. Credit: Daily Mail
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
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| Isabelle Allen is the young Cosentine, Amanda Seyfried plays the grown up version. |
All I want for Christmas is to see this one! Okay, that's not exactly true but I am really, very, super, totally jazzed.
Monday, 18 June 2012
According to Vulture magazine, Anne Hathaway is happy with how she looks with a very closely cropped head of hair as Fantine in Les Miserables.
She also said she was incredibly nervous to sing Les Misérables's "iconic" song 'I Dreamed A Dream', which has been covered in the past by Elaine Paige and Susan Boyle.
"That's actually the thing we talked about when I first came in to film. I apparently looked like I was ready to face the guillotines," she joked.
"They just kept telling me and the cast to ignore the iconic nature of Les Mis and of the song. I had to sing it as if it had never been sung or heard before."
Well I don't blame her for being nervous. But the studio obviously likes her rendition since they hammered together a first trailer with the song running through its entirety. In a couple of parts, I think its a bit of a reach, and sounds a touch operatic, and just misses that heartbreaking tone by a hair.
Still, the pictures and the trailer reveal what looks like an authentic retelling of both the book and the musical. Unlike the trailer for The Great Gatsby which looks like Baz Luhrman is doing to the Jazz Age - in terms of the music anyway - what he did in Moulin Rouge. But I digress ...
In case you missed, I'm going to post the trailer for Les Miserables separately. The only thing that makes me truly unhappy is Eddie 'thick lips' Redmayne as Marius. Ugh. The release date is set for December 14.
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