7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 2.3 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.3 |
Cameron Mackintosh presents a brand new 25th anniversary production of Boublil & Schönberg's legendary musical, LES MISÉRABLES, with glorious new staging and spectacular reimagined scenery inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo. This new production has already been acclaimed by critics, fans and new audiences and is breaking box office records across the UK. Cameron Mackintosh is now ‘Bringing her Home’ to play at the Barbican Theatre in London (where it originally premiered in 1985) as part of the show’s 25th Anniversary celebrations. Les Mis will run for 22 performances only between 14 September – 2 October 2010. This will be the first time anywhere in world that two productions of the same musical are playing in the same city, giving London theatre-goers the only chance of seeing this acclaimed new production.
Starring: Lea Salonga, Nick Jonas, Matt Lucas, Samantha Barks, Alfie BoeMusical | 100% |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Cantonese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
We Americans can be a little boorish about our contributions to worldwide arts and culture, springing no doubt from the relative youth of our nation and the insecurities that youth fosters. When you’re up against European societies which have been cranking out inestimable masterpieces in any number of genres for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, it’s easy to get a little sensitive about things. Two items which regularly fall under the “Made in America” column are jazz and musical theater, though of course anyone who’s ever listened to a Mozart cadenza or a Puccini opera may wish to offer alternative theories of these art forms’ geneses. Putting aside jazz for the sake of this review, it’s inarguable, however, that from around the 1920’s on at least, the United States led the way in developing the musical and providing season after season of innovative staging and hit filled scores. From Romberg and Hammerstein to Kern and Hammerstein to the Gershwins to Rodgers and Hart to any number of lesser known writers, American audiences were regularly treated to wonderful pieces that ever more successfully wed songs with libretti. While the commonly accepted theory is that the honest to goodness book musical really took off with 1943’s Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece Oklahoma!, the fact is there are scads of forerunners which pointed the way to this very unique combination of dialogue, song and dance. In the wake of Oklahoma!, America had an almost embarrassment of riches when it came to writings teams who churned out a succession of incredible musicals. In addition to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the 1940’s saw the emergence of Lerner and Loewe, and then the 1950’s introduced us to Adler and Ross (Pajama Game, Damn Yankees) and Bock and Harnick (Fiorello!, Fiddler on the Roof).
Things started to get just a tad dicier in the 1960’s, with Kander and Ebb (Cabaret) the only serious contenders for picking up the Rodgers and Hammerstein torch and moving it forward a generation. But of course Stephen Sondheim was waiting in the wings. After his one-two punch as lyricist for two of the greatest 1950’s musicals, West Side Story and Gypsy, he had seen his career path as both composer-lyricist and lyricist alone embrace both hits (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), financial disappointments (Do I Hear a Waltz?), and outright flops (Anyone Can Whistle). But starting with 1970’s Company, Sondheim established himself as the reigning genius of musical theater, while relative also-rans like another Stephen, Stephen Schwartz, carved out niches for themselves with pieces like Godspell and Pippin. But while the 1970’s were still largely an “American” decade for musicals, there were warning signs, the first of which was probably a little double album which actually came out in 1970, Jesus Christ Superstar. Though it was billed as a “concept album,” this rock opera introduced worldwide audiences to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice (British audiences already knew the pair from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which hadn’t yet reached across the pond to touch the likes of Donny Osmond).
Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Concert is brought home on Blu-ray with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While this is at least an okay looking transfer, it's unfortunately at times not much more than okay, due largely to the softening effects of bright stage lighting. The bright blue and red lighting scheme robs midrange and far range shots of a great deal of fine detail, leaving things murky and muddy looking. The good news is, there's spectacular coverage here, including a wealth of medium close-ups and close-ups which finally get this to true hi-def looking material. The close-ups manage to escape the blooming propensities of the wider range shots, and at last we get wonderfully rich, well saturated color without any bleeding or fuzziness. Fine detail in these shots is very good, to the point you can see the pill on some of the martial suit jackets. Ruddy faces and flyaway hair is also viewable in abundance. The strangest things about this offering is its "thin" video look, despite being delivered in 1080p. There's a textureless look to this presentation that had it been a film would have pointed toward DNR.
If you can get past the omnipresent crowd noise, Les Misérables' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix has a lot to offer. Unfortunately this is one case where the wide spread of the surround mix actually works against the cohesiveness of the overall product, as you simply can't escape the sound of the audience here. Perhaps just as telling, there's simply too much hall ambience at times, giving the orchestra a slightly distant feel. The disappointing thing about this release is that the stereo mix, which could have alleviated some of these problems by giving us a narrower soundfield, is presented in only a lossy standard Dolby Digital 2.0 format. But if you take the 5.1 mix warts and all, you're probably going to be more pleased than displeased. Boe, Lewis, Salonga and several of the major supporting cast (including a luminous Katie Hall as Cosette) sound wonderful, and despite the perhaps too spacious soundfield, the balance between orchestra and singers is artfully handled. Fidelity is excellent here, with the towering orchestrations sounding marvelously grandiose.
A Whiz Thru Miz (4:56), perhaps the most unfortunately titled supplement since Wiz On Down the Road on The Wiz, is a whirlwind trip through the history of the project, with news reports and various statistics of the show's many international productions.
For the legions of Mis-heads worldwide, the most exciting thing about this Blu-ray release is probably going to be the announcement at the end of the concert that a feature film version is on its way (it's currently slated for 2013, but I wouldn't hold my breath). Otherwise, those with a long attachment to the show will probably still want to opt for the 10th Anniversary Dream Cast concert, despite this current release's Blu-ray presentation. This "mega-show" is such a phenomenon that it may be able to break the decades' long curse that most film musicals have withered under. Until then, while completists will no doubt want to have this concert in their collections, it's the 10th Anniversary outing that remains definitive until we see what Universal "brings home" for the feature film release.
25th Anniversary
2011
2012
2012
2012
2000
The Musical
1998
1995
2004
1959
1976
2008
Warner Archive Collection
1943
1980
Warner Archive Collection
1957
1973
1945
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
1999
1963
2005
Michael Flatley Returns
2011