Phantastic Coincidence

So here I am, sitting in the library, trying to decide what to write about in today's blog, listening to Sunday's Elaine Paige show on Radio 2 which celebrates everything Musical related (how manly am I?) when she starts the show by letting me know that today (Tuesday) is the 21st birthday of The Phantom Of the Opera on the West End stage. Perfect, I thought, I shall wax lyrical about it.

Phantom was just one of the shows that began the re-birth of musical theatre. Without it I doubt there would ever be shows such as Wicked or Spamalot today; the spectacle, the rip roaring music, a pretty decent performance from Michael Crawford which really set the tone for big television/movie stars to try their luck on the West End. And yes, I am also a pretty big fan of Joel Schumacher's movie version - again, how masculine does that make me feel?

But the one thing that seems to be lacking these days is the movie musical - it doesn't seem to exist a lot these days. It was obviously huge in the 40s, 50s and 60s. In the 70s it started to die out as an art form, and, though it has made brief comebacks, we are now lucky if we get one movie musical a year.

But at least when we do get one it's a huge event. Last year's was Dreamgirls, and this year we have the long-awaited movie version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, directed by Tim Burton, my absolute favourite director of all time, and starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. The first sneaky peak trailer is out there on the Internet - click on this here link to see it!

Johnny Depp - singing! If that's not a reason to feel excited, I don't know what is - okay, I need to go and drink some beer, look at FHM and lift some weights: manly stuff, grr.

Laters.