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Much has been made of the gore in Tim Burton???s film version of Sweeney Todd, which seems to me to be a bit hysteric. If you???ve seen one contemporary cinematic blood bath, you???ve seen them all, and if you produced mathematical proof that there???s more blood here per minute of running time than in, say, Hostel II (from which Burton, actually rather worryingly, borrows the device of spurting corpse-as-shower), I???d be surprised. In fact, blood doesn???t make an appearance until fairly far into the film, and at least initially, the focus is not on the wounds of the victim, but on the assailant???s rage.

Like Atonement, this season???s other high-profile adaptation of a highbrow contemporary text once thought to be unadaptable, Burton???s crack at Sweeney Todd works best when it serves to support the inherent perversity of its source. The director’s mashup of Steven Sondheim???s musical with his own, patented, teenage Goth sketchbook aesthetic may play like German Expressionists-do-Torture Porn, but the brutality is mostly farce. As in Sondheim, Burton’s Sweeney Todd is most disturbing when it???s talking about love.

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Under discussion:

The Dark Knight  (2008)

At the Guardian’s film blog, Sean Dodson erroneously paints WB’s release of the their six-minute Dark Knight prequel on IMAX prints of I Am Legend as an “accident”:

Holy bungled distribution Batman! The wrong trailer has been sent out! Or was it? Audiences in America who turned up to see an Imax preview of I am Legend this week have been treated to an apparent accidental taster of the forthcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, which is not due to arrive until July next year. Six minutes of the film were “accidentally” screened in Imax cinemas and the bootleg quickly leaked on to the internet.

Dodson doesn’t site any sources, so it’s hard to say why he reads this as “an accident”??????beyond the fact that I guess he didn’t read this story, or this story, or this one, all of which indicate that Warner Brothers had made their intention to run the six minutes public as far back as October. But then, in a stunning feat of blog cliche, he cynically spins this non-accident as a devious conspiracy devised by evil marketing geniuses:

But although Warner pulled the bootleg preview from YouTube earlier today, you can’t help but wonder if this was accident or design…All those who saw it reported that the six minutes of raw action didn’t half leave them panting for more. The Joker couldn’t have planned it better.

So, to recap: Warner Brothers said they were going to show a six minute Joker short before I Am Legend. Then they showed a six minute Joker short before I Am Legend. When a camcorder bootleg of this footage ended up on YouTube, Warner Brothers had it removed, in an attempt to protect their copyright and further bolster ticket sales for I Am Legend. Then a blogger accused Warner Brothers of intentionally leaking the short but deviously making it look like an accident.

I get it now. This is why they hate us.

Under discussion:

The Simpsons Movie  (2007)

• The WGA has refused to grant waivers to allow guild members to script the Golden Globe and Academy Awards during the strike. Unless the strike miraculously ends by the end of January–or the producers of the shows manage to negotiate with the WGA as independent contractors–this will effectively make any star who attends either award show a picket-line crossing rat. The guild has also denied the Academy the right to use clips involving the work of their writers during the telecast.
• United Artists has pushed the release of Valkyrie, the controversial WWII drama directed by Bryan Singer and starring Tom Cruise, from July 4th weekend to October 2008. Such a move from a normal studio might indicate plans to push the film as an awards contender rather than as a summer blockbuster; in this case, it appears that Singer just hasn’t finished shooting.
• Fox is “Simpsonizing” Manhattan today, as part of a marketing blitz to promote the DVD release of The Simpsons Movie. There will be a Simpsons on Ice show at Bryant Park today, the Empire State Building will be illuminated in yellow tonight, and “giant inflatable Homers” will be sprinkled through out the city.
• Nicole Holofcener will once again team with Catherine Keener for a still-untitled dramedy about “life, death and real estate” in New York City.