Judging from a raucously well-received �New York screening of Les Mis�rables�on Friday afternooon,�the most exciting aspect of the 2013 Oscar race will be �a contest between the precision of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln and the passion of Tom Hooper's epic musical. An enthusiastic audience that included Anne Hathaway's actress mother Kathleen Ann (she gave her daughter a big thumb's up from the crowd), applauded and sniffled its way through the two-hour-39-minute feature and a post-screening at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall.�
Hooper was kidding when, during the Q&A session that also featured cast members,�Amanda Seyfried,�Samantha Barks,��Eddie Redmayne� and Hathaway, he told the audience that he put "a lot of gaps in the edit" to allow for applause. And yet, the picture had the audience ? which seemed to be packed with Broadway aficionados ? cheering at the end of each musical number, weeping during the tear-jerking final scenes and delivering a standing ovation at film's end.
Based on their applause, Hugh Jackman, who anchors the film as the ex-con Jean Valjean, and Hathaway, who plays the doomed grisette Fantine, are shoo-ins for Best Actor and Supporting Actress nominations, despite the latter actor's much-too-brief screen time. (Thank you, Jamie, for setting the record straight.)
One reason there aren't a lot of musicals on the big screen these days is that they're hard to take seriously in a world where Saturday Night Live has come to rely on half-baked musical parody as a weekly crutch ? Les Miz got the treatment when Hathaway hosted two weekends ago ? and Trey Parker and Matt Stone are doing both musicals and musical parody better than anyone. ( Charisma Carpenter Charli Baltimore Charlies Angels Charlize Theron Chelsea Handler Cheryl Burke China Chow Chloë Sevigny
No comments:
Post a Comment