Les Misérables – thoughts on the movie

OMGOMGOMG. (Emotional breakdown in progress, please hold.) Okay… hopefully I’ll be able to calm down enough to write this… Deep breaths…

I’ve been anticipating this movie ever since I saw the musical at the Orpheum about a year or so ago, and found out what I had been missing all my life. I’m a Broadway fanatic: Wicked, Phantom, Lion King, Joseph, Beauty and the Beast… love ‘em all. And Les Mis turned out to be just as good as any of the others, if not better.

The movie was released Christmas day, and for the past month I had been looking forward to it much more than the holiday. And it did not disappoint. I went to the second-earliest show on Christmas day and the theater was packed in a way that almost rivals Avatar (my benchmark for crowded movie theaters). There was a burst of spontaneous applause at the end, and the women on either side of me were crying throughout—one being my own mom, the other just some lady with a lot of Kleenex.

Everyone was cast perfectly with the unfortunate exception of Russell Crowe as Javert. He looked the part perfectly; you couldn’t have found anyone who looked more like Javert, but I think they forgot how big of a role it was when they cast him. He has two solo songs, and his voice simply wasn’t strong enough to pull that off. They should have at least let him record those two songs (Stars, and Javert’s Suicide (uh, spoiler alert…?)) in the studio instead of live on set so he could focus on making his voice stronger or deeper. Or they should’ve cast someone else. Just pull somebody off of Broadway, make him star! Or if they wanted another big name to put on posters, Gerard Butler probably would’ve done well in that role. I liked him as the Phantom, anyway. His voice is certainly deep and powerful enough.

See what I mean? He is Javert. Too bad he can't sing.

 Everyone else was wonderful, and the idea of having the actors sing live on set is still genius. If anything, it’s a small trade of perfect vocal quality for raw emotion, which is well worth it.

The complex plot makes loads more sense in movie format than it ever could on stage, although the sewer scene is decidedly more difficult to stomach. Ick.

So, I’m looking forward to going again tomorrow for my birthday. I think I’ll cry more this time, since the first time I was more interested in seeing how they’d do everything and constantly thinking about how cute Eddie Redmayne is:

Gaaah he's adorable. And he was amazing as Marius.
"Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" will make you cry.

Tomorrow I’ll probably just be bawling nonstop. Happy birthday to me…

Give this movie a chance, even if you’re not a Broadway person. I mean, where else are you going to see Hugh Jackman coated in sewage, and Anne Hathaway getting her hair hacked off and her teeth yanked out? Oh, yes. There’s a reason why it’s called ‘The Miserable Ones.’

Gun Control

I’ve been wanting to write about gun control for a while now. I was going to do this after Aurora. Then after the more recent mall shooting. Now there’s been another one just yesterday at an elementary school in Connecticut.

People often say that it’s not appropriate to have these types of conversations after such tragedies. Well, then when is it appropriate? The fact is that it doesn’t just seem like shootings are happening more often that they used to—they are happening more often.

 People love the argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Let me tell you what’s crap about this. First of all, yes—guns don’t act of their own accord. Someone has to pull the trigger. But there has to be a trigger to pull. I mean, really—hasn’t anyone ever played Clue? The three parts are the suspect, the location and the weapon. The weapon is one-third of the crime! Without the candlestick, Colonel Mustard wouldn’t have been able to commit the murder. Likewise, without (completely legal) access to powerful assault weapons James Holmes wouldn’t have been able to shoot 70 people in Aurora, killing 12. These kinds of guns used to be illegal until 2004. And maybe this ban didn’t spur a huge decrease in gun violence (although I think the above graph is pretty compelling) and maybe renewing it won’t make a huge difference. After all, people could still illegally obtain these guns and people of course will continue to do terrible things. But I don’t think it could make things worse than they already are.

These types of guns are not for defense. So don’t say that you need semi-automatic rifles to protect yourself from burglary. Because if you pull out a gun every time you hear a sound at night, you’re more likely to shoot your own granddaughter, as happened this past week in Minnesota. If the man had used something even more powerful, it’s likely she wouldn’t have survived.

So, I’m not saying we should violate anyone’s second-amendment rights here—but personal freedoms are limited all the time for the safety of society. Drunk-driving is illegal, and even though plenty of people still do it I don’t hear anyone arguing to stop trying to prevent alcohol-related car accidents. On average, 33 people are killed by guns every day in the U.S. Considering those numbers, we hear about gun related deaths very little. Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal, but I think it’s time we do something about this.

Ray Wise is in Every TV Show Ever

Alright, I’ve had two somewhat relevant, timely posts… I think I deserve to move onto the second part of my blog’s title (i.e. other things that don’t matter). Namely, a recent observation I made.

*This entry will also be a shocking testament to my chronic Netflix Addiction*

I used to never watch TV. Literally. Then… Netflix. Making up for lost time, I suppose, I’ve already plowed through dozens of seasons of several shows, and—according to my mom—taken years off my life in the process. Eh. One of these shows is the classic Twin Peaks from 1990. It’s a dark, quirky, super intense murder mystery series starring an adorable Kyle MacLachlan as Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dale Cooper. (For a while, I carried around a little tape recorder, telling ‘Diane’ about what I had for breakfast. And I made this picture.)

I feel like no one appreciates how awesome I am.

Ray Wise played Leeland Palmer, the (*SPOILER ALERT*) murderer. And he is so—unbelievably—CREEPY.  

Case in point. (If he looks familiar, that's because you've watched TV before.

Anyway, Twin Peaks is amazing until the murder is solved and then it takes an unforgivable plunge in quality as they try to force subplots into becoming main plots and it’s cringingly bad. It did not get a third season.

So I moved onto other shows! Like Burn Notice. In the first episode, who do I see? Leeland-freaking-Palmer. Playing the bad guy (of course) in the pilot. So that’s interesting. Then I watch Psych: Leeland Palmer. Then I watch Bones: Leeland Palmer. Then I watch How I Met Your Mother: Leeland Palmer shoving Robin out of a helicopter.

According to Wikipedia, he’s also appeared in 24, Mad Men, Star Trek, Law and Order… and, well, like I said: every TV show ever. And every time he pops up, I can only think of this:

So this was a very media-heavy and pointless post. Hopefully I'll have something to say about politics or current events in the near future, but I had way more fun writing this... ;)