I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich.

Well, not really, but I thought that was a clever line from 27 Dresses, which I saw last night.

Not, I’ll have to be honest. I didn’t expect much, because I’m been keeping up with the movie reviews lately, as it’s Oscar season. A.O. Scott has given it a horrible review, as did many of the other big-time critics. I pretty much got what I expected, but there’s more to it.

I’ll explain.

Jane (Katie Heigl) has always been a bridesmaid, but never a bride. She’s never said no to the question “Will you be my maid of honor?” The film opens up as she is simultaneously maid-of-honoring two different weddings, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I thought that it was a clever way to start the movie, and a good way to set up the story, in the biggest way. Jane is also in love with her charming boss, to whom she is his assistant. Her snarky friend, played by the ever-snarky Judy Greer, tells her to go tell him how she feels, but he ends up falling in love with her younger, and supposedly more beautiful sister, although I don’t think that it was incredibly fitting to have Katherine Heigl play the gawky, less desirable sister, but whatever. Eventually, George, her boss, proposes to Jane’s sister Tess, all the while Tess is lying about almost everything about her. Then Tess asks Jane to be the maid of honor, she says yes, a cute writer from the “New York Journal” interviews Jane about her sister’s wedding, his story turns into an expose about Jane’s 27 dresses, they fall in love, his article get printed without her knowing, she slaps him, Jane gets fed up with Tess’s lying, slaps Tess, ruins the wedding, but then everyone lives happily ever after, miraculously.

Okay, so I probably shouldn’t have given away the entire plot, but I had to prove the point that it really did take only that much space to write the synopsis.

I could have written this movie. Seriously. It’s pretty much the most cliched storyline, with the most predictable characters, and the most predictable story devices. I could have written the character of the bitchy, egomaniac sister who steals Jane’s almost, lover Boss. Really, I hated her sister. But all in all, I actually liked the movie.

Seriously.

The main reason–Katie Heigl.

Now, I’m not saying that this was anywhere near the comedic genius of Knocked Up, but it was a romantic comedy. One can’t really expect to be floored with something Oscar-worthy. But Heigl has the potential to carry any kind of comedy. I’ve always been a fan since Grey’s Anatomy started, and now that the writer’s strike is still going strong, she may be able to pursue more comedic movie roles in films that have already been written. Heigl has very good comedic timing for someone who’s been the most whiny character recently on the most down-and-out number one shows to come along in years. Who would have thought that Izzie Stevens could deliver a line like “but then I remember that I get to have hot hate sex with total strangers and I feel so much better” and keep a straight face? Brava Katie!

Pretty much my favorite scene in the entire movie was where Jane and the cute writer, Kevin go through all her 27 dresses. All the hideous, poofy, themed bridesmaids dresses. And as some divine miracle, Heigl looked gorgeous in every, single one of the colorful disasters. She and Kevin, played by James Marsden, were so cutesy, that it would have made even a cynic laugh at all a ridiculousness.

Oh, that’s another reason–James Marsden.

Finally, he’s getting his big break. Marsden has been around for a few years now, after appearing in the X-Men movies and The Notebook, he’s always played second fiddle. But in the last year, he’s gotten some pretty good roles if you ask me. First, it was Corny Collins in Hairspray, then Prince Edward in the Disney satire, Enchanted. But this was the first movie where he actually got a really notably large part. And he’s just so cute. You have to love his face, it makes you smile.

And that’s what the whole purpose of 27 Dresses was, to put a smile on your face and make you feel all fuzzy inside, not to bring tears to your eyes with amazement. Then it wouldn’t be considered a comedy. That’s the key word here–comedy. It’s supposed to make you laugh. It’s supposed to make a group of college girls giddy for an hour after seeing the movie. So if you laugh at this film, even at the almost sickeningly cliched scene with Heigl and Marsden dancing on the bar, singing to “Bennie and the Jets,” then pat yourself on the back. You just gave into the power of the movies.

❤ Abby

I was novelling…

But I feel like I can’t leave these whole last few days out.

Sunday sucked…y’all know that.

Monday sucked for half the day…ask me later about as to why.

Yesterday sucked on other terms.

People were fighting with their boyfriends, Grandparents died, and Heath Ledger died.

I feel like talking about Heath Ledger though, because it isn’t so personal. But it’s still sad.

He was 28, not 27 like other talented people’s whose careers were cut short (Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain). As soon as I heard, I instantly thought “Oh god, it’s the 27-year curse.” But he missed the mark by about 9 months. Heath was really talented, and I was really excited to see the new Batman movie on July, but I think that if I do, I might just cry.

It made me think about my life. How things can get cut so short, and how you aren’t able to do everything that you want. How you miss everything that you would have gotten to see if you had grown old. It made me want to embrace my life more as a now than as a future, because one day, I may not have a future. Heath had a future on monday. Yesterday, he was history.

Here’s a quote that he said, and was reported in the New York Times today about him having a child:

“You’re forced into, kind of, respecting yourself more,” he said. “You learn more about yourself through your child, I guess. I think you also look at death differently. It’s like a Catch-22: I feel good about dying now because I feel like I’m alive in her, you know, but at the same hand, you don’t want to die because you want to be around for the rest of her life.”

I don’t think that 10 Things I Hate About You will ever be the same, Brokeback Mountain. or A Knight’s Tale, or Casanova, or the Patriot. But the Patriot seems too unconventionally foreshadowing right now. And please tell me that you aren’t making Brokeback jokes, I’ve have enough of that shit today.

I’ll admit that I read Perezhilton.com. It’s addicting how much he actually knows about all this shit. Like, does he just take his computer with him everywhere and watch people? It doesn’t make sense sometimes, but I found something quite interesting, and also quite disturbing earlier today. Perez reported that members of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas will protest Heath’s funeral, because he was a “pervert” and “should burn in hell” for his role in Brokeback Mountain.

Seriously people?

He’s dead.

Their website is called Godhatesf**s.com. I can’t even write it without being disgusted. There’s been enough with that word already, what with all the Isaiah Washington/TR Knight shit last year. But anyway, back to my point. These ignorant gay-bashing hatemongers are actually planning on going to his funeral to picket because he played a gay man in a movie. I wish I could say that this wasn’t true, but it is. The horrible bastards even went as far as to use Bible verses to support their cause. And they honestly said this on their flier advertising their protest–“God hates the sordid, tacky bucket of slime seasoned with vomit known as ‘Brokeback Mountain.'” Really? Does he? I’m not one for reading the Bible, but from what I know, God doesn’t hate anyone, and if these people’s God hates gays, then he sure as hell isn’t my God.

I know that it’s bad to hate, but how can any sane person honestly not hate people like this with all the fire in their being?

I know that I do.

❤ Abby

I should really be doing homework

But I’m not.

So I’ll tell you about our CRAZY night in Seattle. It wasn’t that crazy compared to other people’s I’m sure, but it was pretty crazy for me.

Christina, her boyfriend Chris, Aimee, Amanda and I went to Club One3One. The club itself was kind of lame..actually…really lame. The floor tiles were coming up in the bathroom, the music was moderately crappy, and the there were tons of slutty Avril wannabes in pigtails and studded belts. But the ride there was the funnest part. Not that Christina’s a bad driver, she’s just a fast driver and not the best at following directions. So we basically made a complete loop around the Seattle center and beyond, all the while Aimee and Christina were about to pee their pants. My GPS kept fucking up and freezing, so it showed that we were in the same place for about a mile, so that didn’t work really well.

Yeah, so we got lost.

And on the way there, I made the best mix. It was pretty awesome, I’d have to say so. It was everything from the Killers remix to Gnarls Barkley to NSYNC to the Good Charlotte. Oh, and Sandstorm. Sandstorm was pretty boss.

And then we found ourselves. Right on time too.

We got in line at like 9:55, and it was cold. Really cold, we all happened to be wearing short pants or skirts and no jacket, excluding Amanda who was smart enough to wear long sleeves and jeans, and Chris, who wore his jacket inside the place. Well, it was smart at first, before we got in the door. But once we got in the door, we all got frisked, and Chris got extra frisked–twice. We were the first ones there, I swear. The next people to arrive were the slutty Avril wannabes and this REALLY drunk guy who was falling all over himself and break-dancing in the middle of the floor, very clumsily I might add.

Once people started to arrive, at around 10:30ish, the dance floor got going, but once we all got out there, it was really weird that all these guys just stood around the perimeter of the dance floor, like vultures, waiting to hone in on their prey. It happened a couple times to Amanda, from the same guy, and she denied him. And then to me, and as ridiculous as I was, I basically scurried through our little group of 5 to avoid the guy. I didn’t want some random guy feeling up on me. Thank you very much. But Aimee found a cool guy to dance with, she never found out his name, but they were pretty good dancers.

They had poles and cages.

Seriously.

And I saw a girl that I knew from high school, who happened to me a mother of a 3-year-old. I recognized her from across the room, and then she recognized me and came over and told Amanda “she looks familiar” and pointed to me. I told her who I was, and she was like “oh my god!” and she gave me a hug. The only thing that I could think of was, “you smell like booze and where the fuck is your child?” But of all the clubs in Seattle, it was weird.

We left at like, 12:20, because Christina really started to get dehydrated, and we were getting a little bored. The music was pretty much all the same. All the same beat, just with different words. It was fun to dance to, but Chris and I both agreed that the music was crap.

We got home at like…1:30, not so bad actually for a Seattle drive, but it was nice to get to sleep.

Sister and Laura are coming up tonight. Wizard.

❤ Abby

I’m gonna get political

I’m using this as a warm-up for my journalism assignment for my advanced class.

So Hillary got Nevada.

Fuck.

(That won’t be in my article, really)

Hillary won Nevada. That’s Hillary-3, Barack-1. It’s not a good sign, but the one thing that Barack has that Hillary doesn’t have is the youth vote. She has no way won over those first-time voters, and I’m one of them. Honestly, never before do I think that there has been a more hardcore primary. Not even in 2004, because then, it was just a bunch of grey-haired white dudes. Now, either way, there’s going to be a big change.

I’m not excluding John Edwards, who I supported from the beginning, but it just seems to be a lost cause. Personally, I think that he will be the best now to unite the country. He’s plenty progressive, but still cool, calm and collected. Plus, he won’t turn off those ignorant racist sexist voters, because he’s a handsome middle-aged white man. I’m still an Edwards fan at heart, but now that he’s basically out of the race, I’m totally rooting for Barack Obama.

The 18-24 demographic is the largest demographic in the country, and yet it has the lowest percentage of registered voted out of all the demographics. From what I hear, the 18-24 age range is completely for Barack Obama, but as the primaries show, those college students haven’t been showing up at the polls. I know that I’m more informed now, not just because I obsessively watch the news every time there’s a primary or caucus, but because of something that most parents think is a bad thing–social networking sites, particularly Facebook.

Ever since the election started gaining momentum, their have been a plethora of groups on Facebook supporting different candidates, including humorous political pundit, Stephen Colbert. His group, in fact, gained 1,000,000 members within 10 days, the fastest growing group to date in the site’s 4 year run. It turned out that Colbert couldn’t run in legally anyway, since he received sponsorship from Doritos, but still, it shows that the college students of this country carry a lot of weight in power.

Since the primaries started, the first thing that any user saw when they signed onto the Facebook homepage was a large advertisement for “Rock the Vote,” encouraging users to register to vote in time for the primaries. Almost as useful as the link to register was the link to the U.S. Politics Application, where users could react live to the New Hampshire debates and take surveys about their favorite and least favorite candidates.

Not that Myspace hasn’t taken part in the system as well–they held their own primaries on the 1st and 2nd of January, before any of the states’ official primaries. The winners in those primaries were Barack Obama for the democrats and Ron Paul for the republicans.

The problem with the core users of Facebook and Myspace, they’re too lazy to go out and use their power. They obviously aren’t so apathetic about the issues, because next to the CNN logo on the back of Charles Gibson’s desk at the New Hampshire debates was the Facebook logo, and periodically in the newscast of the debates, a reporter would check in with the polls on Facebook to hear what the young people were saying.

The news is telling us that we matter, but obviously enough of us aren’t getting out to the polls, or Ron Paul would be higher in the running, more even with the likes of John McCain. Ron Paul and Barack appeal to the youth, and since Obama already is in a close second place to Hillary currently, it isn’t the easiest to tell if the young democrat voters are voting or not. But there is an overwhelming margin of approval for Ron Paul, that it’s obvious that those supporters aren’t actually voting.

Along with the overwhelming support, there is also overwhelming disapproval for certain candidates with the Facebook audience. 69% of the Politics Application users said that they absolutely don’t want Hillary Clinton to get the nomination, and 45% said that they absolutely don’t want Mike Huckabee to the the nomination. There are most republicans than democrats on the primary ballots, so the numbers were more spread out, but still. Even if someone isn’t so sure about who they want to be president, they should go vote to make sure that the person that they don’t want gets the nomination.

Now, it may sound like I am totally against Hillary, I’m not. I’m all for a woman president, her positions on the issues I care about are pretty much in line with what I believe, but she’s not charismatic. Her husband was way more personable than she was, and I don’t think that she will be the person to bring this country together. She’s a polarizing character, and I’m worried that if she does get the nomination, there will be enough people on the fence that absolutely won’t vote for her. My 78-year-old racist grandfather said that he’d rather vote “for that n***** before Hillary Clinton.” I think that Barack Obama will bring this country together, and that’s why I think that most of the young people want him to win.

The question whether or not they’ll go out and vote is what may keep him from the White House.

❤ Abby

Dingy String

So, I totally changed the beginning of my novel. My friends have started calling it “novelling” when I sit down at my computer for hours on end, writing and rewriting. The beginning I posted before is so far from what it is now, that I can’t even believe that I started with such a lame beginning. It’s so much better now, and so much more focused and crafted. I’m not sure if crafted is the right word, but I have the ending already basically done. When I first started the other version, I had no direction, and no idea as to where I was heading. Now, I even have a theme in mind. I really do. And I’m excited. So I have the beginning and the end, but now I need about 200 pages of the middle.

The structure is a little different. I have the protagonist as first person, speaking mostly past tense, but the beginning of each chapter is just a little glimpse into what the end will be. And it doesn’t have the classic novel movement, where there’s the beginning, the build-up to the climax, and the cool-down after the climax, and everything resolves itself. The climax of the story comes very late in the story, and the ending in a way resolves everything, but in a hanging way. It’s kind of a cliffhanger, but everyone would know what it means. If I elaborated on the ending and the resolution, it would be really cliched.

I really don’t want it to be cliched. I honestly feel so good about it that if I worked on it for a couple of years, I can picture myself trying to get it published.

Seriously.

And Dingy String is the name of the first chapter.

I’m really glad to be back at school.

Oh, the Colbert Report is on, gotta go.

❤ Abby

But Mons!

I ❤ Strangers with Candy. It’s my new quotable movie.

I think that I’ve made my mind up about school. I think that my day at UW really helped me decide.

I’ll explain.

It got to Heidi’s apartment at like, 8:30 on wednesday. Dad had to go around the block a couple times to get his big fat truck in the right place. Heidi had to actually buzz me up twice, because when she pushed the button to open the door, the door made a noise like it was being charged with electricity. It buzzed. And I didn’t want to get electrocuted, so I tried to open it after the buzzing stopped. That didn’t work, so I had to click the room number again. Heidi was right in saying that her apartment was ghetto, but just a little ghetto. When I walked in, Heidi, Tara, Mary Rose and Camilla were watching the Janice Dickinson Modeling academy. I felt a little awkward at first, but after awhile, I warmed up to everyone. Heidi’s roommates, Ryan and Tara, are pretty cool. They had dirty magnetic poetry on the fridge, and Mary Rose messed around with the letters to make a pretty dirty one, but you could put any letters together and they’d sound dirty, even if they didn’t make sense. The she sent a picture to Patrick.

Like I mentioned before, we watching Strangers with Candy, or at least parts of it, after they got back from the IMA, which is the humungous workout building. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the hell they were talking about when they said, “We’re going to the IMA,” before they actually changed into workout clothes.

When everyone left, Heidi showed me everything on the UW website, and told me about what classes are like, which dorms I should avoid, and about competitive majors. The classes actually aren’t all held in huge auditoriums; how I’d gotten that impression, I don’t know. It’s about half and half, the smaller ones about the same size as the larger classes at my school.

That was reassuring.

Heidi told me all about her insane roommate from last year, and how she was a pathological liar. And she cut her finger on a shard of glass embedded into the carpet. They don’t have a vacuum.

And I thought having one vacuum on the floor was bad. They just didn’t have one.

Thankfully I wore thick socks.

I slept on the incredibly cushy couch–I almost felt like I was sinking when I laid down to sleep. I was half awake when Ryan left for his class at, because he had an early class at 8:30. But I didn’t even realize that his boyfriend had come in at about 2:30. I woke up, and the clock said 8:45. I sat up for awhile, turned on the tv, and checked my email. At about 9:30, I decided to get up and start getting ready. But once 10:15 came, I thought, “they’re not up yet, don’t we have to leave at 11 for the 11:30 class? How much time do they need?” I disregarded the clock for a little bit, then Tara woke up and made her coffee. I didn’t mention the time, wondering what was actually going on. Heidi got up at about 10:45, or that’s what the clock said.

“I’m awake!”

“This clock isn’t right is it?”

“Oh no, it’s an hour ahead.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, I was an hour ahead of everyone else. I felt like an idiot. After Heidi and Tara made their coffee and I made myself scrambled eggs, a guy wandered from the back room. It was Allee, Ryan’s boyfriend.

We finally left when the clock said noon. I’m such an idiot. It took us about 15 minutes to actually get to campus, and then 5 more minutes to get to Heidi’s linguistics class. Linguistics, I know. It was all about words and speech. Pretty cool huh? And the teacher totally looked like the main girl from the Babysitter’s Club. This class was actually in a dorm building, I think she said that it was Haggett. Not sure, but it was tall. Linguistics was 50 minutes, along with English, which I think was called Histories of the Novel. By the end of Linguistics, I was really hungry.

The Histories of the Novel section was taught by a grad student, same as Linguistics, and it was located in a building called Sieg. I think that will be the only issue I’ll have at the beginning of next year, not getting lost with all the buildings. I’ll desperately need a map. I’m used to having all my classes in one building, on one of two floors. This will be interesting.

English ended at 1:20, and my stomach was at the stage where it started to eat itself.

And we still had Comm lecture.

This was the 400+ person auditorium class, and the teacher actually noticed when people weren’t paying attention. She was pretty cool, Mary Rose didn’t think so, but Heidi liked her too. I wasn’t so sure how exactly what she was talking about pertained to Communications, but it was only the second day, so I’m guessing that it makes more sense later.

I couldn’t keep my stomach from rumbling all through lecture.

Seriously, it sounded like something was living in me, trying to get out. I was SO hungry.

Mary Rose came back with us to Heidi’s apartment, and as we walked back to the “Ghetto” apartment, I didn’t speak much, mostly just observing everything around me. I realized that I needed something like this to grow up. I’ve been in the same place for my whole life, and Lacey’s not opening my eyes to new things. Olympia’s a little better, but I’m not in Olympia. St. Martin’s is just like high school, but it’s more expensive, and you live there. I belong in Seattle. That’s where I need to be to experience new things. I need to be at a big school to be able to be on my own. I don’t feel like an adult at St. Martins, and that’s what I need to feel.

We made bagel bites and frozen chimichangas back at the apartment. And I’d never been so happy to see a frozen tray of Costco goodness.

We didn’t really do much the rest of the day, except Mary Rose and Heidi got an email about the sex offenders near campus, in the wake of that girl getting beat up by Greek row. Apparently, two of the guys are Mary Rose’s neighbors, and she sees them regularly.

Very comforting.

That’s what my mom worries about. She’s afraid of what I need. I need to experience the real world. UW is located in the real world. The city world. And the city world is where I’m going to need to work to actually get a good job.

We drove Mary Rose back to ZTA on Greek row. She gave me a tour of on the way there. OMG. All of the houses were mansions. Seriously. Gigantic, beautiful houses. That would be one reason to join a sorority, to get out of the dorms. I’m so glad that Mary Rose set me straight about her sorority, because everything that I’d gotten the impression of from other sources and my school was bad. I’d over-generalized, and I was wrong. It’s only our school with a shitty Greek system.

Anyway, after everyone else got home, I didn’t really talk a lot, at all. Everyone was studying, and I didn’t want to distract them. I’d invaded their apartment for long enough. Mom finally arrived at like, 6:30, much later than I’d planned, but it was okay. I just didn’t want to miss Grey’s Anatomy at 9. Heidi walked me downstairs, wait, accompanied me in the elevator down, and I left. I was glad to go home.

But I was even more glad that I got to go experience real college.

And I never want to end up like Jerri Blank.

❤ Abby

Tonight! Then! Plus! Hey…

Today was a good day. I didn’t accomplish a lot, but it wasn’t so gloomy outside and I wasn’t stressed at all. Overall, nice day. But sadly enough, tonight’s television is what made it great. I know, I’m ridiculous. The critics’ choice awards were on, Project Runway, and the brand new episodes of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Actually for the remaining time until the strike is over, they will be called ‘A’ Daily Show, and the Colbert Report, but actually pronounced like it looks. Pretty funny stuff.

John actually wasn’t as funny as he could have been, which saddened me, because it made me realize that he does need writers. That show really does. There was so Aasif Mandvi or Samantha Bee or Jason Jones. I mean, he was funny, don’t get me wrong, but the show wasn’t the same.

Stephen, on the other hand, could totally hold down his show without writers, because he never really had segments other than him talking about himself anyway. Nothing really had to change. But the best part, gosh this was so clever. My headline for today, the TONIGHT…THEN…PLUS…HEY stuff, was his opening, seriously. He just inserted his transition words without anything to transition to. It was great. And when he went to do the word, he was like, “which brings me to tonight’s word,” and he points to the side of the screen where the word normally appears, and there was no word. No words at all. No teleprompters, no scripts, nothing. The fact that Stephen’s show can self-sustain in this Hollywood crisis, says a lot about his creativity. He should totally win the Emmy next year, it isn’t fair. First Barry Manilow, then Tony Bennett, WTF?

Yeah, so tv brightened my day, what of it?

It will again on thursday, so what?

Ugh, I am ridiculous.

❤ Abby

1 Night, 2 Parties

I just saw the republican debates, and now I’m about to watch the democratic debates.

To be honest, Ron Paul was pretty freaking cool. Gibson was right. And he’s not a democrat, which is what surprised me. Personally, he isn’t hanging with the right crowd. He should be hanging with Barack, Hillary and John. Mitt Romney’s an ass, Rudy Giuliani is an idiot, and Mike Huckabee LOVES JESUS! But Ron Paul is so freaking libertarian, he didn’t seem like he was at the right place at all.

I’m quite excited to see how the democratic debate goes…and I want John Edwards to come out on top. I like Barack…I do, but I think that he’s a little too progressive for right now, and he hasn’t had a lot experience. He would be a great Vice President…but not quite a president yet. Hillary Clinton isn’t charismatic..she isn’t very likable… and honestly, she doesn’t seem womenly enough. I think the reason that she came out on top so quickly was because people knew her name. That’s what I think.

❤ Abby

Freaking car door

Yesterday, I slammed my middle finger in my car door. Now it’s all purple and swollen. I held ice on it for 5 hours last night. It was painful. I’m not sure if I have to go to the doctor or not about it, but I really don’t want it to get infected. That would be very bad. I’m not sure if I’m going to lose my finger nail or not. But I really don’t want it to be swollen anymore. I hope that’s all it is–swollen, not blood built up in my fingertip from the door. Ouchy.

❤ Abby

2008, you’ve got it coming to you…and finally I review Sweeney Todd

It’s the new year. Honestly, I feel like this will be a good year. I’ve figured out what I’m going to do about my education. I’ve gotten my disease on track, and I’m pretty sure that 2008 can be better than 2007. 2007 was um…difficult. Very difficult indeed. I’ve already set my resolutions, and one of them is to starting writing a book. Not to finish it–that will be impossible, but to start one and stay dedicated to it. My other resolution is to a two-part resolution. The first is to eat less, and the second is to move more, because I know that everyone makes that resolution to diet or lose weight, and I swear that from the get go, it’s already jinxed. So none of that.

Oh, now to my Sweeney Todd review…finally.

———————————————-

I think that I saw 5 movies in the month of December, that’s how bored I was. But, above all others, Sweeney Todd was the only that I went home afterwards and downloaded the soundtrack and told my friends, “you have to see this movie,” so that I wouldn’t spoil any of the story for them.

Well, too bad for you. For any real fans of musicals, let alone Sondheim musicals, you should already know the story. There’s Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Sweeney is a vengeful barber of fleet street that slits his customers throats and Mrs. Lovett’s makes a business out of baking the bodies in her meat pies.

Pretty gruesome, I know.

Steven Sondheim is like the Shakespeare of contemporary musicals, and “Sweeney” is a far cry from any of his other musicals, so it took a real creative mind to do the story justice. That’s where Tim Burton came in. And he brought “Sweeney” to the big screen, in a big way. Not only was the filming signature Burton, but he, again, brought in his wife and muse, Helena Bonham Carter to play the sweet, yet sadistic Mrs. Lovett. She sang a cute song about how she and Sweeney could live “By the Sea,” and yet shared a duet with him about baking “A Little Priest” (that one was my favorite on the soundtrack). I really think that she, her husband and Johnny Depp deserve Oscars for their work. Speaking of Johnny Depp…ah, I’ll get to that in a minute.

The music was stupendous, but no one really can give a bad critique to Sondheim classics. But the music was so amazing, not just because of it’s writer, but who sang it. I mean, who’oulda thought that “Borat,” a.k.a. Sacha Baron Cohen could hit a high G? I definitely didn’t. Cohen brought a wittiness to the movie that needed some light-heartedness as Signor Adolfo Pirelli, Sweeney’s rival London barber. His complete narcissism is so refreshing next to Depp’s self-deprecating Sweeney. My favorite part of the movie was the contest between the two of them to see who could give the closest shave, and Pirelli’s ego kept him from winning.

Alan Rickman gave another absolutely creepy performance, just as he does as Professor Snape. It was a little weird that there were three actors from the latest Harry Potter movie, Rickman, Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall, who played Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter and Beadle Bamford in “Sweeney.” But I guess that’s just my observation. As I was saying, Rickman will always be best at playing disgusting characters, I mean, he say a duet with Johnny Depp called “Pretty Women” about his own captive adoptive daughter. It just makes me say ‘yuck.’ But he earned what he got in the end, and that’s all I’ll say about that.

The most surprising part of the cast was the young man who played Toby, Ed Sanders. This was his very first part in a movie, and he’s already received a nomination from the Broadcast Film Critics Association as “best young actor.” He did a terrific job taking on Sondheim songs and measuring up to veterans in the film industry in a film that was very well-received in stage as well. There isn’t much information on Sanders out there, but I’m sure that he will get more acting gigs, most likely in Tim Burton films.

Now, to the coup de grâce of Sweeney Todd–Johnny Depp. Okay, so I can say how wonderful Johnny Depp is, how handsome he is, how his unconventional voice was actually very nice, how much he finally deserves a freaking Oscar for his performance, but I’ll tell you a little story instead. One of my best friends Cassie is, how can I say obsessed but even more extreme? Anyway, she has two tattoos because of him, one huge portrait of Jack Sparrow, and a heart on her arm with “Johnny Depp Forever” written in it. Seriously. We warned her that she’ll regret it in 10 years or so, but she didn’t listen to us after the first one, so she went and got another one for Christmas. We went to go see the movie the day before Christmas Eve, and she was so excited that she could wouldn’t even talk during the movie, which she does frequently. Once the movie was over, she couldn’t speak for about five minutes after the final scene…and she cried. When we got back in the car, and I looked at her tattoo again, and I thought to myself, “if she ever does regret her tattoos in the future, because she’ll grow out of loving Pirates as much as she does, I think that if she watches Sweeney Todd, she won’t anymore.” Yeah, Johnny Depp’s performance was so great, that it will restore one’s faith in a ridiculous, 18-year-old decision.

He’s that good.

And I won’t spoil the end for you, I promise.

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There, I finally wrote it. I feel better too.

❤ Abby