Note: Every once in a while, Infuzemag.com will provide a second opinion on a noteworthy movie. This time around, Josh and Emily Pardy (or "Team Pardy" as we call 'em around here) have offered their own take on Tim Burton's interpretation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd. Enjoy! -- Ed.

 

The dark, dynamic duo has done it again! Sweeny Todd is the highly anticipated film spawned from the collaborative genius of director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Taking on the macabre musical originally created by Stephen Sondheim, this truly legendary tale takes on a whole new life. Thanks to this re-envisioning of the story, the viewer doesn't have to be familiar with either the Broadway production or the English legend in order to enjoy this adaptation to the silver screen.

The story is simple enough to follow: Sweeny Todd (Depp), formerly the barber Benjamin Barker, has returned to London a wronged man after serving a 15-year sentence for a crime he didn't do. The man responsible, the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), engineered Barker's demise because Turpin craved his beautiful wife. With nothing left to live for, Todd seeks vengeance against Judge Turpin. With the help of poverty-row baker Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), Todd quickly resumes his occupation, enabling him to come razor-close to those he seeks revenge against.

The horror/scary movie genre has seen better times. Hollywood still likes to pop a few out every year, and the draw of the genre remains an argumentative topic. Cheap thrills always score high, whether they're found in amusement parks or captured on celluloid. Once in a while, the genre allows for a terse and sometimes profound examination of deeper matters. But there are few remaining original scares among the current crop, many of which amount to poor remakes billed solely on the gross-out factor. Others, however, have turned toward the assortment of material popular in Japan, like One Missed Call.

As Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon, The Holiday, Dirt) counsels her friend Leann through a recent break-up, an odd ring tone chirps from the Leann's cell phone. "One missed call," the phone's display reads, bearing the next day's date. They listen to the message, and hear the eerie sounds of the Leann's final words just before she dies. The next evening, creeped out by odd visions of bugs and distorted faces, Leann dials Beth, who races to meet her friend and walk her home. But Beth is too late -- and over the phone, she hears the very same events heard on the voicemail from the previous night.

Here's a movie I never thought anyone would make: a biopic about Ian Curtis, the short-lived songwriter and lead singer of one of the most storied bands to come out of the immediate post-punk era, Joy Division. But if anyone were to make that movie, it would have to be Anton Corbijn, the photographer who shot the band (and so many others) for British music weeklies and many other publications.

Control is Corbijn's first film, but it shows the studied eye of an experienced helmsman. That he is so intimate with the subject matter, and relied on someone even more so -- Curtis' wife, Deborah, and her biographical book about her tormented husband and their marriage, Touching from a Distance -- reveals itself, ironically, in the distance that surrounds Curtis (Sam Riley, a gifted newcomer) throughout this film.

If you're still at "who?" at this point, let me explain: Joy Division put Manchester's scene and then-nascent Factory Records on the map. The band released only two studio albums, riding a meteoric rise to stardom in the UK and Europe leading to the inevitable American tour, which never happened. Ian Curtis, the band's epileptic lead singer, killed himself on the evening before the band was scheduled to fly across the Atlantic. Exit Joy Division; enter Joy Division's far-reaching legend, as well as the band that arose from JD's ashes, the far-better-known New Order. (All together now: "Oh!")

David Fincher's movies are among those few that truly cry out for the extended treatment. With the release of the Two-Disc Director's Cut package of his most recent film, Zodiac, fans of the film and its director are in for a real treat: a DVD release that, unlike its predecessor, is worthy of the film.

I sincerely hope you didn't buy the initial release. Paramount did a disservice to its customers with that barebones package and poor-quality transfer; the film looked bad on a regular TV, and downright awful on a decent home theater setup. I rented it, and was suitably disappointed -- all the more so given how much I enjoyed the film in the theater. Didn't even finish it.

This is the edition to own. The transfer is just right this time; the non-HD release looked and sounded terrific on my home theater setup.

The film itself represents a bit of a departure for Fincher, who is known for his intensely violent (and sometimes brutal) action sequences and sparse dialogue. Based on Robert Graysmith's books on the real-life case of the Zodiac killer (still unsolved to this day), Zodiac traces the murders, the investigation, and the fallout from that, all from Graysmith's point of view.

I know, I know: Does the world really need one more documentary about the Kennedy assassination? I don't know that producer/writer/director Robert Stone asked himself that question specifically, but he certainly found his answer with Oswald's Ghost: in this case, a very qualified yes.

Originally broadcast as part of PBS's long-running (and generally excellent) American Experience series, Oswald's Ghost focuses not so much on the assassination itself, the single greatest source of conspiracy theories ever. Rather, Stone takes a mostly historiographic approach to the subject, examining how journalists, historians, writers, and researchers, as well as the general public, responded to the event, the Warren Commission report, and the countervailing conspiracy theories that emerged in the wake of those watershed 20th century events.

Stone traces the impact of these events through their twisted aftermath, including New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison's notorious grandstanding in prosecuting businessman Clay Shaw, the public debate that occasionally cropped up on TV news programs, the reenactments and congressional committees, and so on. Stone's broad perspective could've been broader, though; aside from Norman Mailer, defenders of the lone gunman position are not heard from.  

Resolved: There are enough reviews of The Great Debaters that begin with the word "resolved." And for those who haven't seen the movie, the word appears only a handful of times in a limited number of scenes, as the introduction to each formal debate. So instead, like the movie, I will argue the affirmative by focusing less on the debates, and more on the painfully obvious dichotomy that drives the film, one that nearly destroyed twentieth-century America: white/black.

In 1935, there was a bloody line between white and black, one that linked the two races as much as it affirmed their mutual exclusion. The Great Debaters explores the lives of those who tried to cross the line, erase the line, or simply pretend it did not exist. Scripted by Robert Eisele, directed by Denzel Washington, and produced by Oprah Winfrey, Debaters tells the true story of a small-town, African-American debate team that rose to challenge one of America's greatest (and whitest) universities. Though we need only reference history to see how the story ends, the film delivers a realistic and riveting experience that few books could convey.

It is amazing that a story as dark as Sweeney Todd's (in its various incarnations) has survived for more than 200 years. Its origins are uncertain, but its enduring popularity isn't. In repeated tellings, publications, stagings, old Sweeney has variously been a greedy, bloodthirsty butcher in the guise of a barber, or, in Christopher Bond's 1973 drama, a falsely imprisoned man seeking revenge on the powerful judge who wronged him.

That's the version that Stephen Sondheim crafted into a celebrated (if remarkably dark, even given the source material) musical in 1979, which originally starred Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. "Murder, She Baked," I guess you could call it.

You could call Sweeney Todd -- Tim Burton's stylish bloodbath version -- "Murder, They Sang, and Kept on Singing." Burton's film is a visual achievement, from the lushly oppressive sets to the nearly sepia-toned cinematography, and the rich, brilliantly textured music (to say nothing of the wickedly funny, and at times winsome, lyrics) of Sondheim.

 

It's in the execution of all these elements that things don't quite gel the way I had hoped they would, even though there are breathtaking moments.

Admittedly, I'm a huge fan of the original National Treasure movie. It is standard fare at our house and we've watched it dozens of times. It's considered absolute comfort food at the end of a hard week at work, or just fun family fare.

The just-released two-disc Collector's Edition DVD promised new deleted scenes plus four new featurettes, a treasure trove for a fan. I eagerly looked forward to exploring the new features, having already delved deep into the previous "treasure hunt" offerings in the original DVD, which included commentary, alternate endings, deleted scenes, three decoding puzzles, and a documentary on the Knights Templar, those crusading favorites of conspiracy theories most recently made famous by The Da Vinci Code.

The new bonus features on the two-disc DVD include a documentary, "Ciphers, Codes, & Codebreakers," and on-set, behind-the-scenes featurettes "On the Set of American History," "To Steal a National Treasure," and "Exploding Charlotte." While these were interesting to watch, they didn't include much in the way of cast interviews, delving instead into the technical aspects of the movie.

“D’Oh!” Or “Woo-Hoo?”

Which would be the assessment when the long-awaited Simpsons Movie finally reached the big screen? Clearly. “Woo-Hoo!”

The movie is a home run. It was created by the geniuses who have been doing the hit television show for the past 20 years, including co-creators Matt Groening and James L. Brooks. The writing was handled by a committee of some of the best writers in the show’s long run, and their deft touch is on display throughout. The characterizations are dead-on accurate, and the story feels big enough to be in theaters. The humor is laugh-out-loud funny, and the movie just makes you wish a sequel were around the corner.

The Simpsons Movie starts with a concert featuring Green Day speaking to the residents of Springfield about the dangers of pollution. Spoofing An Inconvenient Truth, Lisa finally gets through to them, and the townsfolk change their ways. All except for Homer, that is. Homer’s lazy streak brings him to destroy the environment, forcing the government to crack down on Springfield once and for all. Homer and the family escape (to the wonderland of Alaska!) but finally decide to go save the day back home. Being the Simpsons, though, there is much, much more to the story than that basic plot outline.

My family owns the DVD of the first National Treasure movie. We've watched it so many times, we know the dialogue and yet, it still thrills. It's the testosterone equivalent of The Princess Bride at our house. Its intelligence, comedy, dialogue, exotic locations, and incredibly entertaining cast set the bar very high for its sequel in our eyes.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets does not disappoint, I am delighted to say. It stays true to the ethos and action of discovering those clever, quirky clues that led us through U.S. history in the first movie, and still manages to improve upon its predecessor in two distinct ways: it supplies us with a more complicated villain and provides us with more reasons to laugh, relax, and just enjoy the ride without thinking too much -- a great holiday recipe!

The dialogue and situational comedy are spot on, and for fans of the original National Treasure, the sequel pure joy through being reunited with old friends (Nick Cage, Diane Kruge, Justin Bartha, Jon Voigt, and Harvey Keitel reprising their roles) and being introduced to new (Helen Mirren, Ed Harris). Indeed, the performances of Mirren and Harris raised the bar for this stellar ensemble cast.