Liam Neeson had the part originally and I was deeply disappointed when he dropped out, but there's no way Day-Lewis can not nail this.

I don't think it's "Mormon propaganda" as much as plain vanilla religious people propaganda.  There's nothing uniquely Mormon about it—not the tiniest hint of anything related to Joseph Smith or polygamy or anything.  For some reason people seem to assume that the Mormons are the only people that don't support…

Sondheim has said it's the most satisfying movie adaptation of any of his work, but I think the atmosphere is way too depressed.  Sweeney Todd is a very, very funny show, and the movie is almost humorless.

@avclub-bd5f681bd75c522cb7cbd88d22af16d5:disqus  The guy who played Tony also had his singing dubbed.

Marni Nixon sang for almost everyone in movie musicals.  Now we're just supposed to accept that stars of movie musicals, e.g. Johnny Depp, can't sing to save their own lives.

Manohla Dargis compared the movie to Cronenberg too.  Official confirmation that it's all gone to hell.

State of Play!

I agree.  I don't get evangelical atheism—how can you be 100% certain there's no god?  They're sometimes just as bad as fundamentalists.

I only clicked on this link because of its title…well done, Sean, well done.

Nice to see Remus Lupin getting some steady work in between this and Anonymous.  I hope he's able to do better movies though…

What's Eating Howard's End?

Jeremy Irons!

If you have the same birthday as Andrew Lloyd Webber, you have the same birthday as Stephen Sondheim.  That's something to be delighted about.

So excited for this.  It looks like the ultimate Anglophilia autofellatio.

Is it redundant to say that she has always been and will always be McGonagall to me?

Harold Bloom was also weirdly obsessed with hating on Harry Potter.

I think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy gets a free pass because the title comes from a fairly common nursery rhyme.  Or at least, fairly common to the English landed gentry in the seventies.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Ben Brantley wrote a post in the Times Arts Beat blog saying pretty much the same thing.

Um, Tolkien never went to Middle Earth but he could still write about it pretty effectively.