Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray]

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray]

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray]
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DVD details

Actor: Alan Rickman, Edward Sanders, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Timothy Spall
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
Cinematographer: Dariusz Wolski
Composer: Stephen Sondheim
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Dreamworks Video

DVD Reviews of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray]

DVD Review: Fast, faster and fastest (is that a word?)
Summary: 5 Stars

This movie and the music therein is soooooo good. I highly recommend this seller, too. They were super cool and groovy!

DVD Review: Not for the Squeamish
Summary: 4 Stars

Not to everyone's taste - especially if you are squeamish - is this Grand Guignol song-story of revenge, murder and the worst meat-pies in London, splashed with blood the color of Chanel lipstick and dark humor. In fact the humor is pitch black, only slightly darker than grim and grimy London in some slightly pre-Victorian age. What Tim Burton has made of it may not be quite what this revengers' tragedy was on stage and at full length. But it is original and lives up to what we have come to expect of any collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp... even if (as has been noted in other reviews) a large portion of Stephen Sondheim's literate and witty lyrical numbers were sacrificed to the demands of a movie with a running time of about half the length of the full stage production.

The plot is whisper-thin, an urban legend or a melancholy ballad about a young man who once had a happy home, with a beautiful wife and a baby daughter. But a wicked and corrupt judge sentences him on false charges to transportation to Australia, and when he returns fifteen years later, it appears that his wife is dead, and his daughter is the ward of the judge. Set on revenge, he sets up shop as a barber in his old home, upstairs from the cheerfully larcenous Mrs. Lovett. There is a small sub-plot, regarding his daughter Joanna, kept captive by the wicked judge - and a young sailor and shipboard comrade of Sweeney Todd's - but mostly it is about Sweeney Todd's implacable quest for vengeance. The bodies pile up through-out, dumped through a trapdoor into the cellar and efficiently transformed into meat pies by Mrs. Lovett... and there you have the most of it; almost too Edward Gorey-comical to be a horror movie, but almost too gory to fit into the musical comedy bracket. I would not allow pre-teens to watch this, by the way; it's fairly guaranteed to be productive of screaming nightmares for those children sensitive to video violence.

Of the extras included on this disc, the most interesting of them was an examination of the origins of the `Sweeney Todd - Demon Barber of Fleet Street'; it appears that he was an urban legend, a creation of a writer for the most sensational 19th century broadsheets, somewhat akin to the stories of the hook-handed man who was supposed to haunt lovers lanes in the US.

DVD Review: Well worth it!!
Summary: 5 Stars

I was hesitant to purchase this movie online, at first . But I am so glad I did! Not only was the DVD in perfect condition when I got it but it came in 2 business days. The movie itself was beyond amazing! I was so impressed with both Johnny and Helena's singing. The rest of the cast was as talented and wonderful as they could be. A must buy!

DVD Review: Okay, so it isn't Broadway!
Summary: 4 Stars

I saw Sweeney Todd in March of 1979 in preview on Broadway. I sat in the second row-so I got to see all the gore up close. I was mesmorized and couldn't get it out of my head for months. The only problem was that Angela Lansbury clearing wasn't up to the part in terms of the singing requirements of the role-but I loved her anyway. Victor Garber played Anthony in a stiff manner, and the girl who played Joanna was such a dear thing you wanted to choke her. I kept waiting for her to "get it" from "Dad". I still LOVED the show. Now the movie: okay, HB Carter CANNOT sing, although she has a goth creepiness to her that Angela didn't. The latter was way more cockney and much funnier in the part--loony funny. I give this only 4 stars because of Bonham-Carter. Johnny was a much better S.T. than Len Cariou, who looked like an a-hole with that wig on-(he also had problems vocally) but Johnny is the perfect Sweeney. Not that his voice is all that great either but he simply has the sex appeal that the other schlub lacked and thus provided a rationale why Mrs. Lovett was so crazy about him. He also looks terrific with his makeup and that white streak in the hair. A few problems: the "God That's Good" number-which opened the second act was much better on the stage-and was more interesting in that this was the moment when the barber chair arrived and was tested. And unfortunately the ending of the movie is weak--where the hell is "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" which opened and closed the play? This ending is too abrupt and drab (the film would have grossed 10 million more with the stage ending)-did Tim Burton think it was too "theatrical"--but what's more theatrical that this show?

Additionally I loved the voice of the kid who played Toby--he was better than Ken Jennings' stage Toby and much younger and more workhouse convincing. The stage Toby was portrayed as retarded and was a lot older. I loved the astonishing production design of the film and the marvellous costumes and of course let's not forget Borat himself as Pirelli-just marvelous in this small part.

DVD Review: Just not a Soundheim fan, I guess
Summary: 2 Stars

Great performances, and a great look. However, with a musical it is all about the songs, and I hated them all! I guess I'm just not a Stephen Soundheim fan, because there wasn't a single number that I liked, and most of them I wanted to mute (except I couldn't, because just about all the dialogue was sung). 4-stars for acting and production design, but two stars for the movie over all. (And I like musicals! 'Hairspray' was one of the only movies that I have four stars to last year!)

Description of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray]

Bluray Disc
After years of rumors, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humor of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others--but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole--with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood--also looks and feels right.

The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi

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