The 2004 movie (ALW version)

Callie Daae wrote:https://2img.net/h/i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/LittleLotte15/Hannibal-alws-phanto.jpg

I was thinking about this costume and I thought wouldn't this be considered risque for the 1800s???? I coundn't see girls back then wearing this in an opera. I would think back then people would have considered the costume indecent exposure or something like that.

Phantomlove wrote:

operafantomet wrote:

EarlFan wrote:

operafantomet wrote:Gerard Butler was in Oslo yesterday, to promote his newest movie. I missed him. Oh no.

Oh no, hope it didn't make you to sad that you missed him.

I'll survive.... somehow...

How is that even possible? I admire you...

Scorp wrote:Maybe the dream's a warning...in which case, did I ever say how much I just LOVE this film?

phantomgirl110 wrote:I have to say, it's oddly comforting to know that I'm not the only one here who literally has nightmares related to this film. I had one a couple of years ago in which I was at a movie phan convention (I have no idea why), and Gerry and Emmy were there. While they were being fawned over by preteen phangirls, I started making derogatory remarks to my parents off to the side. Emmy overhead me and confronted me, and the two of us ended up in a screaming match. ("I SANG OPERA WHEN I WAS SEVEN!!" "OH YEAH, SO WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH??") Suddenly, in the middle of this argument, Emmy screamed angrily that she really loved my sweater, and I (still screaming) thanked her and offered to make one for her. I returned later that day with a sweater I'd made for her, but when I arrived at her dressing room she shouted that she didn't want to see anyone who didn't think she was a good Christine, so I shoved the sweater under the door and stormed off.

phantomgirl110 wrote:I have to say, it's oddly comforting to know that I'm not the only one here who literally has nightmares related to this film. I had one a couple of years ago in which I was at a movie phan convention (I have no idea why), and Gerry and Emmy were there. While they were being fawned over by preteen phangirls, I started making derogatory remarks to my parents off to the side. Emmy overhead me and confronted me, and the two of us ended up in a screaming match. ("I SANG OPERA WHEN I WAS SEVEN!!" "OH YEAH, SO WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH??") Suddenly, in the middle of this argument, Emmy screamed angrily that she really loved my sweater, and I (still screaming) thanked her and offered to make one for her. I returned later that day with a sweater I'd made for her, but when I arrived at her dressing room she shouted that she didn't want to see anyone who didn't think she was a good Christine, so I shoved the sweater under the door and stormed off.

Callie Daae wrote:

Anyway, to get to the point..... erm, picture...



I've forgotten all references for that painting, sorry! It's French, from the mid 19th century, depicting.... Delilah? I think it served as inspiration for the movie slavegirl costume.

Elisabetta611 wrote:

operafantomet wrote:

I've forgotten all references for that painting, sorry! It's French, from the mid 19th century, depicting.... Delilah? I think it served as inspiration for the movie slavegirl costume.

Not Delilah, Cleopatra. Being a Cleo-Phile, I'd recognize that thing anywhere. The whole painting is supposed to be her after being rolled out of the carpet by Caesar.

operafantomet wrote:

Elisabetta611 wrote:

operafantomet wrote:

I've forgotten all references for that painting, sorry! It's French, from the mid 19th century, depicting.... Delilah? I think it served as inspiration for the movie slavegirl costume.

Not Delilah, Cleopatra. Being a Cleo-Phile, I'd recognize that thing anywhere. The whole painting is supposed to be her after being rolled out of the carpet by Caesar.

Thank you! Do you remember who painted it?

Madame Giry wrote:One of the costumes from the 2004 film's Hannibal scene is up for grabs on eBay for what I suppose would be a reasonable price, if I was at all interested in owning a movie costume, lol:

http://cgi.ebay.com/PHANTOM-OF-THE-OPERA-Carlottas-maid-costume-Hannibal_W0QQitemZ330392076301QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4cece7000d

lili wrote:gerry izzz ssososososoo HAUWT!
why do u guys hzzt him?

kat097 wrote:although i like to think that they pale in light of the LND travesty

But the single most painful, awful thing that doesn't work begins here, and we're never going to escape it: the soundtrack. I share the managers' confusion when Madame Giry insists that Christine could sing Carlotta's role (after all, she's not even a soloist in this version - she's a ballet dancer, who presumably doesn't even sing much), but once she started singing, they lost me, because were I a manager I would have smiled politely and said in the nicest terms I could come up with that thank you, but no thank you. Rossum has a very pretty voice, but it is obviously both immature and not fully trained, and the effect is pretty tooth-grating. Her issues run the full gamut: tone production is spotty, evenness and breath support wander in and out with painful inconsistency, power simply isn't there, and she has serious intonation issues, usually tending to go sharp (sometimes very sharp). Yikes. The voice is certainly appropriate for a young girl; I'd be vastly surprised if most young girls didn't sound like that, because their voices won't be physically mature for some time and singing is hard work and difficult to learn, but for a character whose voice is supposed to be effortlessly beautiful and a replacement for a big-name star to boot, it is completely unacceptable. The poor girl would have been laughed off the stage with issues like that, assuming that the managers were desperate and tone-deaf enough to let her onto it in a leading operatic role in the first place. She clearly doesn't have the singing stamina to take on a 3+-act opera, either, even if she could have faked it for a little while; Rossum's voice audibly tires near the end of most of her numbers. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, and I can handle a lot of cultural silliness and caricaturing and dramatic hyperbole, but in a story that hinges so centrally on opera and on the sublime performances of its main characters, having a less-than-stellar singer take on the role is an instant killer. Rossum's performances in this film wouldn't be up to snuff for most professional theatre of any kind, let alone grand opera, and there is absolutely no way to stack her up against Preece's soprano without making her sound very tiny, very tinny, and very inadequate.

But these sillinesses aside, it's time for the Phantom's grand entrance, and for the grand exit of the remainder of my hopes for this film. If Rossum is difficult to listen to, Butler is downright terrible; if Rossum is unable to sing her part, Butler puts his through a meat grinder and then stomps on it. I have no idea if he actually has a pleasant voice or not (I hear he sings pop music a bit in the later film P.S. I Love You, but I haven't seen it) because of the horrible things he's doing to it just to try to sing a score that he clearly doesn't have the ability for. Unlike Wilson, who has performed professionally, or Rossum, who is young and undeveloped but who has had some vocal training, Butler has no musical background and he is frankly painful to listen to. He has no tone, his breath support is atrocious, his intonation is all over the map, and even his pronunciation suffers, as though the effort of trying to get the notes out warps the words as well ("I am your Eengel of Music!"). I want to find whoever was pretending to be his vocal coach for this film and slap them, because just listening to him makes my throat ache, and I can't imagine it was a lot more fun for him. Like Rossum, he doesn't have the range or the power to sing his part (in fact, he's pretty easily identifiable as a baritone, an issue when he's singing a tenor part that, while occasionally played by very versatile baritones, is definitely no picnic), and the result is even more painful, especially since half the time he sounds like he has a head cold (I have no idea what is causing him to sing in his nose like that, but the effect is miserable). Christine being a poor singer hurts the film badly; she doesn't make a positive contrast with Carlotta and it's difficult to imagine all the furor over her as a performer, but that pales in comparison to the Phantom being a poor singer. For the Angel of Music to be anything less than sublime irreparably damages the character, axing the symbolism of his transcendent voice, removing any credibility in its hypnotic power, and totally destroying its oft-vaunted, haunting beauty. Butler, who despite being shoehorned into a role that wants him to do a lot of things he isn't good at and ignore the things he is still manages to pull off a few genuinely emotive and compelling scenes, is simply not a singer - or, if he is a singer in other genres, he is totally and unequivocally not a singer of opera or even musical theatre. Again, my agonized cry goes out: why, oh why, Schumacher, did you not dub him with someone who could sing the role? By all means, let Butler run around and be manful in the role, if that's what you're shooting for, but why wouldn't you want the Angel of Music to sound like he could actually sing? It's just beyond my scope of understanding.

And I really don't want to think about the fact that this has been mixed and prepared for soundtrack before I ever heard it, either. If Rossum and Butler sound this inadequate for their roles after the recording has been tweaked, they were either catastrophic to begin with or everyone who worked on sound mixing for this film needs to be fired. I really dislike the modern convention of auto-tuning the hell out of bad singing voices to make them sound better (Glee, I'm looking at you), but I like it better than just letting them be bad. I like pretty much anything better than that.

LiQuiD DiAmOnD wrote:just a question - is phantomphans.net archived at ALL? (i think that was the web address?) i'd love to see some of the very first reactions to the movie/soundtrack. i'm sure reading my posts now will make me die of embarrassment, but something i'd still like to "re-live" in a sense. i think when i first heard the soundtrack, i posted how i wanted to throw my computer out the window. then i turned into an obsessive gerry-phan girl. and now... i think the movie is...meh. it's hard to believe that was what, almost 6 years ago!

lili wrote:gerry izzz ssososososoo HAUWT!
why do u guys hzzt him?