Here’s a sneak peek of Hugh Jackman’s singing chops for those who haven’t had the opportunity to see his Broadway shows. Les Misérables might be the closest thing to hearing him perform on stage, because all of the actors in the film sing live.
Like what you see? Share your favorite clips from the movie music to win a copy of the original motion picture soundtrack.
AndrewIB
Is he (Hugh Huge Jackman) ever going to come out..! This straight/married ferago has gone on quite long enough, he and Gerrard Butler made such a handsome couple frollicking in the breakers on the shore 🙂 No offence intended to Hugh or any close personal/intimate friends of his..we all love him, gay or straight..preferably gay but we don’t want to harp on about it..Love Les Miserable..wonderful show..shall wait to see what the entire movie is like rather than just a preview..I am sure it’s quite wonderful..
Wayne_in_NYC
To see my review of LES MISERABLES, see my blog.
http://bearchub4u.com/thebigpicture/2012/11/30/my-review-les-miserables-the-movie/
MikeE
Well, I think Les Mis is a terrible musical, pure crap, even if it does have a couple of nice songs in it. That said, I’m actually looking forward to seeing it despite the pitiful quality of the musical… I just want to see those actors sing.
Kaze
@AndrewIB: Don’t convert in the usual fusty gossip something that is your own personal wishful thinking. Is not a matter of offense, but deadly bore, broken records are boring…
Kaze
@MikeE: Actually, ‘Les Misérables’ was seen and appreciated by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 languages around the globe and still breaking box-office records everywhere in its 27th year, but the play and the the motion-picture adaptation are two totally different things and it’s with this in mind that must be watched and judged, comparisons with the Broadway version don’t make sense. Anyway, all previews were a great success, getting rave reviews and standing ovations, this movie will be one of the big contenders at the Academy Awards 2013, Jackman and Hathaway are most likely going to win an Oscar. Jackman got a Golden Globe nomination and 2 SAG Awards nominations.
queerty1958
Looking forward to seeing the film. Hugh Jackman has done an amazing job!
MikeE
@Kaze: you do know that “actually” popularity and quality are not synonyms, right?
Cats was a huge success both on Broadway and in London, yet it’s also musically garbage, with entire songs lifted from the pages of other composers’ music.
Meanwhile, something like Sunday in the Park with George, which was NOT popular in 42 countries, did manage to win a Pulitzer prize, and be recognized as one of the great masterpieces of musical theatre.
Les Mis has a couple of catchy tunes, but otherwise is trite and simplistic, is actually very poorly written musically, and has some of the most painfully inept lyrics and book ever written for the stage.
balehead
People need to grow lives!! Stop online bullying!!
Wayne_in_NYC
@Kaze: Reading MikeE’s comment, you just have to remember the old adage, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. His opinion is more valuable and meaningful than the opinions of 60 MILLION OTHER PEOPLE in 42 countries who have liked and enjoyed Les Mis on stage. The film adaptation of Mamma Mia broke all box office records of all time for a musical, and Les Mis has the potential to surpass it, but MikeE probably didn’t like Mamma Mia either. Les Mis has already been nominated for Golden Globe awards and received the NY Film Critics award as well as Oscar buzz. Pretty good for being trite and simplistic.
gayjim1969
@MikeE: I do have to agree with you about Cats and Sunday in the Park with George. I couldn’t finish sitting through Cats, but that was my own opinion and many people raved about it. I thought Les Miserable was loooooong, and overly sentimental, but I have to admit, I had tears in my eyes a couple of times, especially at the end.
It might not be great literature, but for huge numbers of people, it speaks to their hearts, and it entertains. It’s an escape, which is why most people go to the theatre. I minored in Theatre in college and was a founding member of a community theatre company, and have experience in all facets of the theatre, from playwriting, to directing, so the days of just sitting down and letting myself be taken away by the fantasy is over. Probably like you, I’m always thinking of plot, characterization, pacing of the action, dialog, staging, etc. I always think, “That was nice how they did that,” or “That was a horrible line.” Most people don’t do that. They just enjoy it. Sometimes I wish I could just…enjoy it.
Lefty
@Wayne_in_NYC: “Reading MikeE’s comment, you just have to remember the old adage, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. His opinion is more valuable and meaningful than the opinions of 60 MILLION OTHER PEOPLE…”
But those 60million other people are not one homogenous mass, they’re all individuals too with individual opinions, so that’s a logical fallacy. It’s truer to say that MikeE’s opinion is just as valid as any one of those 60million people’s opinions.
There are 7billion people in the world, so the logical extension of your argument is that Les Miserables is crap because 6,940,000,000 people in the world haven’t seen it.
Of course, there are people who like to demonstrate their immunity from popular taste, but recognising that that which is popular is often mediocre and that some of the greatest works of art are not popular isn’t always a result of snobbery and does have a lot of truth in it.
MikeE
I don’t dispute Les Mis’ popularity.
And no, I rather enjoyed Mama Mia (I’m sort of a closet ABBA fan).
As for my opinion on Les Mis and its objective (yes, you CAN have objective criteria on something like this) value as art, it’s my professional opinion. Sure, it’s my “opinion”, but at least I have something to back it up other than “I liked it”.
My opinion of Les Mis being garbage has nothing to do with its popularity, however. Don’t make that mistake in evaluating my comments. I more than likely knew Les Misérables considerably before any of the people in this thread did, as I knew it before it was a Broadway show and before it was translated into English.
As I DID say earlier, there are some catchy tunes in the show. Except the music itself is poorly developed. It may be “popular music”, but it does not even take advantage of popular music conventions for creating interest within its framework (skipping out on potential modulations, for example).
I’m not hating on Les Mis just to hate. Like many millions of others, I teared up watching Susan Boyle sing “On my Own”… despite that song having what I consider a glaring error in harmony near the end.
I’ve always found the tune for “Do you hear the people sing?” wonderful.. except everything that surrounds that song is dreadful.
My major complaints of Les Misérables are:
1) lovely tunes, surrounded by incredible amounts of insipid and dull material.
2) a complete lack of invention in the harmony, resorting to banal and predictable progressions at almost every turn, and missing out on chances to do simple, yet considerably more effective things (there’s a reason for this, and it’s because Claude-Michel Schoenberg has no formal musical training… he reinvents the wheel at every turn instead of KNOWING what he should do, and rather than choosing the most effective turn in the harmony or melody, he chooses the EASIEST, which is almost always the most banal)
3) some of the WORST treatment of lyrics I’ve ever seen in any musical, with a complete disregard for tonic accents or natural linguistic rhythm
And while the following in no way colours my evaluation of the musical itself, for truth’s sake I will admit to having a chip on my shoulder regarding the composer of this musical: He regularly tells singers preparing for a production that he is “like Sondheim, entirely self-taught”. Sondheim was not entirely self-taught, he’s not even partially self-taught. He studied with Milton Babbitt.
And once more, because this tends to go right over so many peoples’ heads:
Popularity =/= quality
If so, then Transformers and Twilight would have raked in every Oscar, Palme d’Or, César, Golden Globe, etc…
Did they? No.
So repeat after me: popularity does not equal quality.
MikeE
@Wayne_in_NYC: So the fact that hundreds of scientists believe that the Big Bang happened, is outweighed by the fact that millions of people don’t believe in it?
By your logic, Evolution – believed by a significantly SMALLER portion of the population – doesn’t count, because FAR more people do NOT believe in Evolution?
If I told you that just about every single formally trained composer on the planet would likely agree with my evaluation of Les Misérables, would that give credence to that evaluation? Or would you still insist that the only thing that matter is that millions of people who don’t know an Asp from an Oboe “liked it”?
pscheck2
I for one, go to movies to be entertained not to be edified. Some of the posts both pro and con are almost dissertations for a doctorate degree in philosophy!. Bottom line here is if you like it or dislike it, this is your choice even if it runs counter to thoes who deign themselves to be the arbitrators of taste! Just say’en.
Lefty
@MikeE: “If so, then Transformers and Twilight would have raked in every Oscar, Palme d’Or, César, Golden Globe, etc…
Did they? No.”
But then there are plenty of great films that were never recognised by receiving any of those awards.
And there’s a great deal of politics involved in who does and doesn’t win those awards, not to mention the amount of money some film companies plough into ensuring their films get the most coverage amongst voters (and almost certainly all sorts of incentives for voting).
So even that is no reliable indicator of a film’s true merits.
If one person likes a film/book/play etc and everyone else doesn’t I sincerely don’t think that proves the work must therefore be bad and that one fan is therefore deluded.
It’s all subjective, in my opinion…
Brian
Hugh always comes across as a camp tragic to me.
RomanHans
@Kaze:
@Wayne_in_NYC: Sigh; somebody called in sick to Logic class. You say Les Miz was “seen and appreciated by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 languages.” Dude, just because somebody bought tickets for it doesn’t mean they “appreciated” it. I know I didn’t. And frankly, I don’t have high hopes for Les Miz the Movie: Anne’s hair is brutally sheared — into a cute pixie cut. Hugh is so starving he has to steal bread — but has muscles Schwarzenegger would die for.
As for the Golden Globes, well, Les Miz’s nomination puts it right up there with Patch Adams. They might select Anne as best actress, just like Pia Zadora. And “Oscar buzz”? That means the film has a publicist. Judging from how miserable the trailers look, it’d better be a good one.
dykeventura
Despite Rosie ODonnell…and even Ellen, not all of us dykes fancy musicals…especially when done to classic tales as this.