The posting of the review of The Phantom of the Opera.

First off, a quick word of explanation about where I found the scary teenspeak POTO reviews I quoted earlier: I was never deeply involved in POTO fandom myself, but back in the mid '90s the Phantom Appreciation Society was "the" big site I knew of; the site I quoted from appears to be a successor of sorts to the PAS so I figured I couldn't go too wrong...but perhaps not.

At any rate, I finally saw the movie last night.

Now, as I've mentioned before, I'm a moderate POTO fan. I saw it on stage once...ulp...ten years ago. I've still got the Playbill somewhere I'm sure, and at some point I'll look up the cast. It was a good strong one--I was particularly taken with Raoul--and on the whole I enjoyed the experience quite a lot. Shortly after, I bought first the OLC Highlights, then the Complete OLC. I also took a listen to the Canadian Cast, and despite having loved both Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine in Les Miz, I preferred the OLC (Caine's voice was a particular disappointment after her impossibly sweet and gentle performance on the Les Miz OLC); and Byron Nease's Raoul sounded more smug than sincere to me. I'd love to hear it again though, and see if 10 years' time has changed my perspective.

The last time I listened to the OLC was probably two years ago. Still, at one point I had listened to it often enough that I knew the whole thing quite well, and it was a pleasant surprise to have it all come back to me as I watched the movie. I had some reservations about seeing the movie itself--I will always prefer a live stage performance to any filmed version of the same, but curiosity got the better of me.

On to the movie. ( Read more... )

The posting of the review of The Phantom of the Opera.

First off, a quick word of explanation about where I found the scary teenspeak POTO reviews I quoted earlier: I was never deeply involved in POTO fandom myself, but back in the mid '90s the Phantom Appreciation Society was "the" big site I knew of; the site I quoted from appears to be a successor of sorts to the PAS so I figured I couldn't go too wrong...but perhaps not.

At any rate, I finally saw the movie last night.

Now, as I've mentioned before, I'm a moderate POTO fan. I saw it on stage once...ulp...ten years ago. I've still got the Playbill somewhere I'm sure, and at some point I'll look up the cast. It was a good strong one--I was particularly taken with Raoul--and on the whole I enjoyed the experience quite a lot. Shortly after, I bought first the OLC Highlights, then the Complete OLC. I also took a listen to the Canadian Cast, and despite having loved both Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine in Les Miz, I preferred the OLC (Caine's voice was a particular disappointment after her impossibly sweet and gentle performance on the Les Miz OLC); and Byron Nease's Raoul sounded more smug than sincere to me. I'd love to hear it again though, and see if 10 years' time has changed my perspective.

The last time I listened to the OLC was probably two years ago. Still, at one point I had listened to it often enough that I knew the whole thing quite well, and it was a pleasant surprise to have it all come back to me as I watched the movie. I had some reservations about seeing the movie itself--I will always prefer a live stage performance to any filmed version of the same, but curiosity got the better of me.

On to the movie. ( Read more... )