Thursday, August 19, 2010

2004 movie soundtrack

Just finished listening to the 2004 movie soundtrack - well I finished hearing it yesterday. The music involves the same songs as the play - but the orchestrations have been modified and a new song learn to be lonely has been added on to use for the movie's ending credits. I love the modified score for this soundtrack - the title song is reminiscent of the original title song score - sung by Steve Harley and Sarah Brightman - released as a music video before the actual play debuted. There is an interesting fairground sequence in this soundtrack that is pretty good as well. The fairground sequence is used to explain how Mme. Giry let the phantom into the Opera House when he was younger. Emmy Rossum is Christine - she is absolutely amazing - her voice is crystal clear and she can reach the high notes very well. However voice wise - Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher most definitely miscast Gerard Butler. His voice is nowhere near the level of the actual phantom - not even close to the genius that is Michael Crawford.

4 comments:

  1. I love this film, and I believe the album is great too... Of course no one will ever be compared to Crawford, I mean, he is... THE Phantom!! But still Buttler and of course Rossum are very good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Agreed that Gerard's voice may lack the fine-tuned quality of Crawford's, yet I was just as touched by his performance as I was by Crawford's, mainly because of the pure, genuine passion and emotion he portrays, which, for me, more than makes up for any lack of experience! I mean, why in the world would we expect the Phantom, who has lived his life mostly in seclusion, to have the polished and perfected voice of an opera singer anyway??

    ReplyDelete
  4. Phantom's lady and Alison - I do enjoy the film - I plan to hopefully watch it again very soon in order to review the actual film for this blog. Gerard's acting was good - but his voice should have been better - the phantom was a musical genius - Leroux says so in the book - so you would expect the actor to have a perfected and polished voice - even though he did live most of his life in seclusion. If you read Kay's Phantom Alison - you will realize he wasn't as secluded as one would think - not until he reached the point where he helped build the opera house

    ReplyDelete