Les un-Miserables

Look Down

Saturday night, my mom and 2 of my sisters and I ran away to see Les Miserables.  I intended to leave the Dear Husband with happy children who had already eaten dinner.  Instead, when I dashed out the door, dinner was smoking on the stove, 2 children were howling their heads off, and there were a couple extra kids in the house that we don't even own.

We all giggled like school girls as we watched the previews and stuffed our faces with popcorn (so we could get a refill before the movie actually started.)

I mentioned in a post before that I have past emotional scars connected to the story of Les Miserables.  Anytime anybody would mention "Les Mis"  I would growl in my head and be like, "Stupid Movie, we hates it." It was Susan Boyle whose heartfelt rendition of I Dreamed a Dream on Brittain's Got Talent (2009) finally broke through to me and I heard the beauty of the music for the first time.  Thanks, Susan.  Music makes everything better.

The movie was glorious.  Eddie Redmayne made us all cry.  Amanda denies that she cried, but we all know better.

Look at all those delectible freckles!  It's about time we had a hero with freckles.  It's pretty great that a red-head has the last name of red mane, also.  And I haven't even told you about his voice yet.  swoon.  His singing tore the tears right out of our eyes. In a featurette about singing live during the filming, Eddie talks about hearing Anne singing: "That song which I thought I knew pretty well, suddenly I listened to the lyrics for the first time, afresh."  This is exactly how I felt about Eddie's singing.  No one has ever brought out the unspeakable grief like he did.

Samantha Barks & Anne Hathaway were heartbreaking.  We all agreed that Fantine should have had long hair when she came back as an angel.  Duh! Angels get to be beautiful.  They do not have shaved heads.

My only complaint about the movie was that Hugh Jackman sounded like he was singing through his nose the whole time.  It was awful.

Sunday afternoon while I was working on Primary stuffs, I listened to all the other men who have been prisoner 24601 on youtube.  My favorite is Alfie Boe.




I also like John Owen Jones.  He's almost as good as Alfie.  Colm Wilkinson is maybe a little too Broadway for me. (Or maybe a little too grey for me, Ah Snap.)  He is the bishop in the new movie, so that's a fun nod to the original Broadway cast.   However, after listening to 4 or 5 different professional Broadway singers, I went back to Amazon and listened to Hugh again.  Wow! He can't be beat for raw, real feeling coming through the song.  Now I'm repenting of all the complaining I did.  Mary was right.  He was good.  I think for enjoying the purity of the music, I'd pick Alfie Boe, but Hugh Jackman was right for the movie, though like Amanda, I'm wondering how our phantom would have been as Jean Valjean.  (John Owen Jones has played the phantom as well.  So it's a completely logical idea.)

All in all, I think I will be getting the soundtrack from the movie because of Eddie and probably another soundtrack so I can have Alfie, too.  I probably won't get a copy of the movie because definitely PG-big people and my kids will want to see it if we have it.

P.S.  Dear Dad:  If you are reading this, all of the blue words in my posts are links.  So if you want to hear Colm Wilkinson singing, or watch the featurette I was talking about, click on the blue words and the magical thing that is the internet will take you there.  Perhaps you've already figured this out, but just in case....because I know technology is not your native language....