I’m just doing my job… it’s not my fault if I Lovett.

I’ll be honest: I’d have been skeptical if someone had told me a week ago that I’d soon be in love with a razor-wielding maniac. That was before I saw Sweeney Todd. Good lord, but I’m sure a psychopath shouldn’t be quite that attractive. All of a sudden I find myself questioning my previous disdain for those freakish American women who marry notorious serial killers on death row. Though it must be remembered that their homicidal hubbies generally don’t look even half as fine as Johnny Depp, or sport dashingly tailored leatherwear like it’s a second skin that’s been marinated in sweaty revenge. He can slit my throat and throw me in the incinerator any day of the week - it would totally be worth it for the physical contact.
Not sure how all this affects the clause in my current will that on death my body should be rendered in a hair product manufacturing plant and sent to David Tennant under the guise of the latest word in gel for the discerning Timelord who likes to use that bit too much product. Feel I’ve betrayed David in some way, sigh.
Enough of this macabre speculation! Disturbing lust aside, how was Sweeney Todd as a film? Even leaving Mr Depp out of the equation, I was incredibly impressed. I disagree with a review which maintained that Helena Bonham Carter can’t sing - it’s more that she’s not a trained pro, and thus her vocals express a bit of humanity and character: perfect for Mrs Lovett, who must surely take her place in the great pantheon of movie villains who are completely amoral - in the true sense of that word. Her genius is far removed from the cackling schadenfreude of folk who take pleasure in their victim’s pain; she’s simply spied an unmissable business opportunity, augmented in its efficacy by her passion for the demon barber and the fact that it solves his problems too. Respect.
I could write at length about the supporting cast, but of course Alan Rickman is beautifully wrong, and of course Timothy Spall is splendidly unctuous - no surprises there. Sacha Baron Cohen is fabulous too, although to say why would slightly spoil his plotline.
As an adaptation, it’s flawless: they’ve cut three hours of stage-time down to two hours of screen-time, and it actually feels like barely an hour and a half. Oh, just go see it, why don’t you? Even if you normally hate musicals - Sondheim’s songs flow seamlessly into the plot, rather like opera - there are no off-putting “Here is the dialogue. And now… [turn to camera] we sing!” moments. Top notch.

Carry On Cardiff

Still giggling over the demented but brilliant fan fiction that is Torchwood.

God, it was great. Really great. Although I could equally understand the viewpoint of someone who thought it was terrible.

The whole thing was precisely like someone told an over-excitable Buffy/Who fan who’d been watching a lot of Carry On films to outline their ideal episode. The result:

“Ok, so SPIKE comes through a mystical portal and there’s all this ROCK MUSIC, because he’s the COOLEST, OMG, and he does something evil and COOL, and yet AMBIGUOUS, like chucking a mugger off a multi-storey car-park, then he goes to a bar and has GUNS, haha lol@ bar clientele. [insert: fanboy pleasing but quite funny Star Wars ref]
Ok, so, then ANGEL CAPTAIN JACK comes in, all masterful and hott and his coat is BILLOWING and they walk towards each other, like, forever, with all this music, and you think they’re going to fight, but, no even better, they KISS, like, FOREVER, and THEN THEY FIGHT! And kiss, and fight. And then they have a drink, and fight, and kiss, and kiss, and drink and banter and fight, fight, gay banter, kiss, fight.
Then some other shit happens with the fringey lady and characters I don’t really care about, only with Captain Spike and Captain Angel making much innuendo, lolcore, and they are both totally gay for a mystical diamond or something, and they kiss, then there is peril of some kind, STILL MORE innuendo, KISSING, and SPIKE THROWS JACK OFF A BUILDING, OMG, but WAIT he is NOT dead, ahahaaaa and Spike is all oh noez, then more peril, more innuendo, something about a gay diamond trap bomb that might explode the world, but the mystical hellmouth rift thinger eats the bomb and saves Cardiff woo yay, then kissing, more fighting, more innuendo, and kissing, and SOME EMOTIONAL REVEAL OF JACK’S DARK PAST that means nothing as yet, but aha, you will tune in to find out, only not really, because it’s all about the SEXYSEXY SEX and no-one gives a monkey’s about the plot and probably Kenneth Williams will star as an alien orgy choreographer in the next episode because that is the only place left to go. Fin.”

If you did not watch it, it probably sounds like I am exaggerating, but this is not one word of a lie.

In the real world I would give it 6/10 (maybe 7) because it really is quite silly, but for sheer enjoyment I give the full Tufnel, 11/10, and in Torchwood world I’d GIVE IT ONE (hur hur hur, it sounds like she means sexy sex, hur hur, sex).

My only real beef was that they used Blur’s Song 2 for a fight scene - which is just not something that has come full circle yet (the last time it was remotely acceptable - and even then not really - was in the Charlie’s Angels remake, with Drew Barrymore deftly avoiding implied gang rape by Sam Rockwell’s boyband army with her awesome chair-fighting skillz). The time for irony will come, but for now this song in any action sequence is still just lazy cliche.