{"id":1052,"date":"2008-03-16T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/~frers\/cgi-bin\/blosxom.cgi\/reviews\/movies\/sweeney-todd.html"},"modified":"2010-01-22T17:18:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T16:18:42","slug":"sweeney-todd-%e2%80%93-the-demon-barber-of-fleet-street-%e2%80%93-dance-the-razor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/?p=1052","title":{"rendered":"<em>Sweeney Todd \u2013 The Demon Barber of Fleet Street<\/em> \u2013 Dance the razor."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am definitely enchanted by <a title=\"IMDb entry for the director\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000318\/\">Tim Burton<\/a>\u2019s movies. They seem to be like children\u2019s movies \u2013 colorful, funny, full of strange things that want to be discovered and explored. But this is only a fleeting suggestion, because his movies are more movies told from the perspective of a child than they are children\u2019s movies. This in itself does not say much about his style, because it still misses out on the thing that Tim Burton does scaringly well: he embraces the cruelty that is part of children\u2019s life and of their attitude towards the world. Long-term consequences, careful planning and intrigues \u2013 this is not what steers his characters. It is the delight of the moment, both in pleasure and in cruelty, that guides his characters, that makes his characters so fascinating and so horrible.<br \/>\nSweeney Todd\u2019s tale is a classic tale that has been told many times. One of the most successful versions was a Broadway musical. This movie is based on the musical, it is itself a musical. I did not know this about the movie before I went into the cinema and I liked this aspect very much. Those of you who know me better are aware that I am a huge <a title=\"Wikipedia entry for the TV series\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_%28TV_series%29\">Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/a> fan \u2013 and one of my favorite episodes is episode 7, season 6: <em>Once more with feelings.<\/em> An excellent 45-minute musical that brings the season\u2019s plot forward on many different levels while still being completely entertaining. Tim Burton offers a bow to the Buffy musical by guest starring one of the main actors of the Buffy series, <a title=\"IMDb entry for the actor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0372117\/\">Anthony Steward Head<\/a> (<abbr title=\"also known as\">a.k.a.<\/abbr> Giles). This gesture alone would have me reconciled with any possible shortcomings of the movie, but even without it, it was a good movie. You should be warned though: it is the bloodiest Tim Burton movie that I have seen so far. That should be no surprise though: a barber uses a razor, and it is not difficult to guess what a <em>demon barber<\/em> will do with a razor. However, even if this is a good movie, for me, it is not one of the best Tim Burton movies \u2013 I was not as much involved emotionally as I usually am in his movies. (I think I almost cried <em>during the first five minutes<\/em> of <a title=\"IMDb link for the movie\" href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0367594\/\">Charlie and the Chocolate Factory<\/a>, something which never happened to me before.)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0408236\/\"><abbr title=\"Internet Movie Database\">IMDb<\/abbr> entry<\/a> | <a title=\"QuickTime plugin required\" href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/trailers\/dreamworks\/sweeneytodd\/\">Trailer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am definitely enchanted by Tim Burton\u2019s movies. They seem to be like children\u2019s movies \u2013 colorful, funny, full of strange things that want to be discovered and explored. But this is only a fleeting suggestion, because his movies are more movies told from the perspective of a child than they are children\u2019s movies. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[131],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-review","tag-tim-burton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/2115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userpage.fu-berlin.de\/frers\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}