PHANTOM: For the Ladies

This is for all the lady friends out there.......







Don't worry lads......you'll get your turn.....

REVIEW: Hollywood-Elsewhere

**SPOILERS AT LINK**

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/
http://www.phantomfans.net/index.php?showtopic=4259

I've been saying snide and dismissive things about the idea of The Phantom of the Opera being the strongest Best Picture candidate around right now, and because of this I feel I ought to say what I now believe, having seen it a couple of nights ago:

It ain't my particular cup of tea, but Phantom delivers a big wham, regular folks are going for it, and it will almost certainly make the cut as a Best Picture nominee. Hell, it might even go all the way.

I'd rather not see that happen, being a Sideways man all the way, and (who knows?) maybe a Spanglish convert waiting to happen, as well as a Motorcycle Diaries) admirer, a worshipper of Maria Full of Grace, a Fahrenheit 9/11 protest-the-election-of-Bush guy and a devout believer in Collateral, not to mention Touching the Void.

If Phantom wins I will not be in pain, like I was when Chicago won two years ago. I will not agree, but I will understand.

Why EW.com can't wait for Phantom

RELEASE DATE Dec. 22

WHY WE CAN'T WAIT Well, we've already been waiting 16 years for a screen adaptation of the swoony musical.

THE PREMISE Disfigured-but-debonair composer, naïve ingenue, romantic rival, falling chandelier — you know the drill.

SOURCE Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, based in turn on the Gaston Leroux novel and several previous movie retellings

THE BACK STORY Lloyd Webber has wanted director Joel Schumacher to be the one to bring Phantom's mix of goth and camp to the screen ever since seeing The Lost Boys in 1987. Busy lives kept them from teaming up to make the film until now. ''It's so shamelessly romantic that you won't think I made it,'' says the Phone Booth director.

BURNING QUESTION Given the movie's lack of star power — it stars Gerard Butler as the Phantom, Emmy Rossum as Christine, and Patrick Wilson as Raoul — can the musical's built-in fan base still make it a Chicago-sized hit?

COME FOR The muuusic of the niiiight

STAY FOR The closing credits, featuring a brand new Lloyd Webber ballad

NEW POSTER: El Fantasma de la Opera




PHANTOM: Companion Book

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

Yes...we had fun yesterday didn't we? Tell me about the timezone difficulties! You're even a good two hours behind me here in NZ. But, I suffer from chronic insomnia..so sometimes I get to talk to others usually in the wee hours!

Hope Australian Idol turned out well for you..lol...I barely watch any programmes any more on the telly!

22 Days and counting.....



'Masquerade!
Leering satyrs,
peering eyes ...
Masquerade!
Run and hide -
but a face will
still pursue you!
What a night,
What a crowd!
Makes you glad!
Makes you proud!
All the creme
de la creme!
Watching us watching them
And all our fears
are in the past!'

The finals is on Sunday.....and its pretty close this year i think......do you have a NZ Idol...??? :?

Somebody posted over at my BOM Phantom thread that they are worried about Phantom because a scene like Masquerade is suppose to have more color and such........etc....... :?

Oh and it's actually 21 DAYS: To Go .....Dec 10th.....the same date as the UK/Australian release of the EE DVD......i wonder if the EE DVD might cut into Phantom's business in the UK....... :wink:

More information on the "Phantom" window displays for Bloomingdale's from WB:

http://www.phantomfans.net/index.php?showtopic=4264

Bloomingdale's will use the Lexington Ave. and 3rd Ave. windows of their flagship store on 59th St. in New York to have THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA kick off their Holiday Windows from mid-November through the first week of January. The unveiling of the windows will begin with an event including the cast members. The windows will be works of art with moving parts, fog on the sidewalk and the soundtrack piped throughout. They will also create THE PHANTOM OF THE OEPRA Holiday Shops in five locations: Lenox Square, Atlanta, 59th Street (New York), Soho (New York), Beverly Center (Los Angeles), and North Michigan (Chicago). This will include items “inspired” by the film. They will also create a Phantom/Bloomingdale’s t-shirt to be sold at these locations. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Costume Windows will also be created in the following markets: Bergen County, NJ; Aventura, FL; Huntington, NY; Stamford, Palo Alto; King of Prussia, PA; North Michigan, Chicago; Sherman Oaks, CA.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA will also be included in the Bloomingdale’s Holiday Catalogue in home mid-November.

PICTURES: Variety Screening

http://www.phantomfans.net/index.php?showtopic=4290









Talk about HOT!!........Emma is going to be a superstar.......she's my favourite of the new girls, and i think she looks much better than Kiera Knightley...

Yes..yes...we meants to say 21 preciousss...very sorry about that my precious...my love!

Lol..for some reason I was thinking 21, but my fingers wrote 22! Odd :?
The brain and the body are not in league! I am in need of another adventure (lol..really a holiday) I reckon!!

P.S. We do have a NZ Idol programme, but I have never watched it!

I am so ready for this..... oh god it looks good! Wouldn't it ROCK if it won Best Picture? *gushes*

Yes that happens all the time my precious......for example writing "right" instead of "write"...

Now it's only 20 days to go.......i wonder how it will open against the 3rd weekend of Incredibles and the 2nd weekend of Polar Express....i'm expecting an opening in the UK of around $4-5m and super legs.....

It will be hard but yes, it would ROCK!!!!

Buzz is starting to build gradually with many columns putting Phantom as one of the favourites to get a nomination.......and i think it just might.

I honestly am not predicting a win but if it gets a nomination and dominates in the technical categories than i'll be very happy.

Alexander's demise gives Phantom a stronger footing....as there are only 3 big favourites left in contention, The Aviator, Alexander and Phantom.....the rest are small indies.

VOGUE MAGAZINE: Talks Phantom

http://homepage.mac.com/leonardo.ubeda/ ... Movie.html



Ben Franklin once joked that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. These days we might add a third: The Phantom of the Opera. No matter where you've gone over the last three years, from Seattle to Stockholm, you've been likely to find a production of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's gaudy crowd pleaser about the doomed romance between an opera singer, Christine, and her mysterious masked mentor. This musical has become so familiar that when Joel Schumacher agreed to make the screen version, he insisted on taking it in a radically new direction. "I said I'd only do it with a very, very young cast who are beautiful and sexy. If the person playing Christine is not a teenager, I can't make it work, because her character is so innocent. If she's 35 years old, I just want to smack her and say, 'Grow Up'."

Enter Emmy Rossum, then sixteen, who boasted an ethereal aura to match her talent. "I really wanted this role," she says. "The character was so different from me. This is a girl who's tortured, emotional, and very, very spiritual. I'm a happy, sociable, rational person." Plunging into the role, Rossum squeezed herself into the tight, corseted costumes of Alexandra Byrne and even turned up, unidentified, at a seance in London's Belgravia district and was startled when the medium began telling her things about her dead grandmother that only she and her mother knew. "It was very frightening and upsetting," she admits, "but it's what I needed. I had to put myself through everything Christine went through. It was kind of like going down a rabbit hole--you don't see the light for a while."

Not that there's anything confused about Rossum: This is one young actress who knows precisely where she's heading. After following in Gwynth Paltrow's footsteps at Manhattan's elite Spence School, Rossum has made herself a hightoned counterpoint to brassy teen troupers like Lindsay Lohan. Who else has acted for Clint Eastwood (She played Sean Penn's murdered daughter in Mystic River), dashed off to Milan to help her friend Ralph Lauren launch a new store, and sung with the Metropolitan Opera (which she began doing at the age of seven)?

Of course, with Rossum cast as Christine, it was no longer possible to have the Phantom played by a 60-something actor like Michael Crawford. "You can't have a teenage girl with somebody that old," cracks Schumacher. "It would be Lolita, 1870." Instead, he found a dashing new Phantom in Gerard Butler, a 35-year-old Glasgow native who came to performing late--he'd originally spent years studying law. Luckily there is nothing dusty about Butler's dark, libidinous, slightly sinister charisma. Still, would Butler's singing be good enough for the exacting Sir Andrew? "Gerry had to audition in a little room at Andrew's town house in London," Schumacher recalls. "I was terrified for him. But after he sang, there was no other Phantom."

Although the movie is a musical, playing the Phantom actually proved far more demanding than Butler's previous work as Attila the Hun, Dracula, or even Lara Croft's rootin'-tootin' ex-boyfriend in the second Tomb Raider. "I don't know that I'll ever do anything harder than Phantom," the affable Butler says.

"Hours and hours of prosthetics every morning--and then having to wear them! But it was worth it. Once you've sung, 'Music of the Night', you know you want that role. Joel takes the musical to a whole new level. It's beautiful, it's moving, it's romantic, and" --here he gives the easy laugh of one who can sense stardom impending-- "it's a great roller-coaster ride."

By John Powers

Wow ....I must admit that I am a bit shocked that they would reveal a still pic of the Phantom unmasked in the presence of his Christine? I would have imagined that they should have kept that little morsel for the film!

Oh well...

Can one not see the anguish, the shame, the desire to be loved in return all displayed in the Phantom's face in this picture clip? I know the story so well that it actually pains me somewhat to look upon this and know the outcome!

Source: MTV

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera: A recent interview over at MTV has actress Minnie Driver talking about her upcoming role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Here's a taste...

"With no disrespect to Renée Zellweger, who has a nice voice, 'Chicago' can be transposed to a place that is much more contemporary," Driver explained. "Andrew Lloyd Webber is ripping off actual operas — Mozart, Wagner — and you're singing in that style. You have to be such an accomplished singer. I could only fake it to a point. I could sing the low stuff. But the high stuff? Forget about it. There's only like 60 women in England who could sing one particular part. It was like glass breaking and dogs start howling when you are singing up there. There was no way."

The movie is, as Driver put it, "a full-blown opera." Yet the actress is convinced it will have the same sort of impact "Chicago" had in 2002.

"It's got this super-charged appeal," she said. "Fifteen million people have seen it worldwide. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the catchiest pop songs. It's 'Moulin Rouge,' but much more classical. It's certainly as big and amazing."

___________________________________________
See the entire interview at the link below

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/148583 ... id_0.jhtml

Crikey!!! I am officially getting a bit too excited about this film! Is that wrong? :? Nayyy!!

________________________________________________________________

Oscar buzz for Phantom

'He who believes he can't be destroyed, destroys himself," writes Bernie Brillstein, Hollywood entrepreneur, in his new book "The Little Stuff Matters Most." You can be sure Michael Ovitz never read this book, but if you aspire to a career in showbiz, you should read it.

And now for something entirely different. I want to talk about a movie that I think will surely be nominated for an Academy Award, whether anyone believes me or not.

When the history of movies has come and gone, I think there'll be more than a footnote about one opening Dec. 6 in London and Dec. 12 in the U.S., plus the worldwide opening on Dec. 22. "The Phantom of the Opera" is going to be an unforgettable hit.

And probably Hollywood is already biting itself in exasperation because it may have to think of a Best Picture Oscar for the film's intrepid producer, Andrew Lloyd Webber of Great Britain. Like Mel Gibson before him, Andrew has personally put up the entire amount of money — $90 million — to make his great stage opus into a magnificent film that La La land cannot possibly ignore. (Mel had to ante up only $20 million to make his controversial and troublesome — to Hollywood — "The Passion of the Christ." But both of these unusual individual mountings of private bankrolls rank way up there in film history as belief in one's own personal vision.)


Andrew is not popular here nor in Great Britain. He is too successful, and he touches a mainstream approval that always unnerves the cognoscenti. But his "Phantom" opened on London's West End stage in 1986 and then came to Broadway in 1988. It is still running in both cities and in many other places around the globe. This incredible musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any mere movie has ever earned!

When Lloyd Webber was a child, his theater-mad auntie took him to see the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein. He experienced film versions of both "Carousel' and "Oklahoma!" which were very unlike their stage creations. Later, Andrew decided if ever his "Phantom" was put on film, he would show moviegoers the same kind of "Phantom" they can see in a legit theater.

And now millions of people who have never been lucky enough to discover this show on a stage, will see the "Phantom" story for the first time. Others will be revisiting its epic thrill. I have seen just 15 minutes of this movie musical spectacle. I didn't have to see more. It is incredibly beautiful, tantalizing, stunning.

If there is an ounce of justice at the Oscars, they'll just give up and hand Lord Andrew the prize. "Phantom of the Opera" is a fabled movie moment coming now and stretching back to Lon Chaney's silent original.

By Liz Smith

source: http://www.nypost.com

20 days.....and so it begins





'What raging fire
shall flood the soul?
What rich desire
unlocks its door?
What sweet seduction
lies before
us . . .?
Past the point
of no return,
the final threshold -
what warm,
unspoken secrets
will we learn?
Beyond the point
of no return'

It's a great little picture is it not.......though it shows him unmasked you still don't know what the other side looks like.......i am totally not sure what's going to happen in the movie despite an inevitable sad ending....

Phantom will surely have the same impact as Chicago if not more......judging by the box office grosses......Chicago was only successful domestically....and of course, it has to do with the nature of the story itself.....

Domestic - $170,687,518 - 55.6%
Overseas - $136,089,214 - 44.4%
Worldwide = $306,776,732

Chicago did well here and there but in most markets it was quite average especially in the key European and Asian countries.

Phantom will be the total opposite....i think we are going to see a bigger swing in favour of Overseas grosses here......this movie will be a much stronger hit in Europe and Latin America compared to Chicago.....

Well no, not really

There are some people on these boards who have said that they are anticipating Phantom......so we are not alone......however, they don't seem to like our little thread here....i don't see them posting.....

But anyway i'm hoping more will participate as we get closer.....

I meant to tell you that since seeing this costume, I have been toying with the idea of putting together a little Old Year's Night/New Year's Eve Masquerade party!

I would love to wear this!



Brilliant!!! :mrgreen:


What would the ladies say or do!!? Grrrrrrr.... :wink:

It is a pretty eye-catching costume.......full red gown/tucks with a killer sword......now that's what i'm talking bout.....

What do you think i should wear......hmmm......