The First ‘Les Misérables’ Teaser Washes All My Fears Away
I cannot being to tell you how much I love Les Misérables. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best novel ever written, and it also inspired the greatest musical I’ve ever seen and listened to. When I heard Tom Hooper, the director of The King’s Speech, was going to be adapting the musical to the screen I had some serious concerns. The casting only furthered my concerns. Was Hooper going to go for celebrity and prestige over actual quality?
Since then I’ve come around a bit. The casting of Samantha Barks as Eponine went a long way, as did learning that Hooper was planning on recording as much of the singing as possible live on set. That’s a tricky thing to do, but if done right it can bring so much more depth and emotion to the performances even when the singing isn’t 100% note perfect.
Judging from this first trailer, that is exactly what Hooper has been able to accomplish. Anne Hathaway is a pretty great singer, but she’s no Lea Salonga or anything. But Hooper, by recording live and valuing the acting over the actual voice has coaxed true beauty out of his Fantine. Between the crushingly emotional rendition of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, and the stunning, bleak visuals, I no longer have any serious reservations. Of course, it could end up not working, but in terms of my anticipation, all my worries are gone. Move over, Dark Knight Rises, I’ve got a new most anticipated movie of 2012: Les Misérables.
What are your thoughts on the trailer? Are you turned off by the more “actor-ly” singing style? Are you as excited as I am? Let me know in the comments.
Oh my god, you guys! I fucking love Wes Anderson. I don’t give a shit about the fact that he’s super quirky, or that his style hardly changes for any of his films. I love Wes Anderson and I love his movies. Yes, all of them. Including The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited. They are all great films, and I watch them constantly. My favourite film of his is Rushmore, maybe followed by Bottle Rocket.
Anderson has always found as many ways as possible to reference the French New Wave, but Moonrise Kingdom appears to have taken that penchant to new heights. Have the actors speak French and I swear you could sell this as some sort of long lost Truffaut/Godard collaboration. It’s great. Reminds me of last year’s British film, Submarine, which in turn got compared to Wes Anderson’s work quite a lot.
This year, I got to participate in a critics group list. Well, not technically a real critics group, but it’s fun to look at it that way. CAST stands for Cinema Appreciation Society of Toronto. Basically, it’s a collection of bloggers and film lovers from around Toronto, organized by James McNally of 
