2nd Les Mis Trip

Omg seriously!!!! My trip to see Les Miserables again on Wednesday was soooooooooooo awesome! The show was brilliant and i had great seats in the stalls, I've never been in the stalls in my life, my view was amazing!!

All the performers were great in my opinion, but I was especially impressed by the woman playing Fantine (Celinde Schoenmaker). She was one of the best Fantines I've ever seen, i was really convinced by her portrayal. I hope to see her in Les Mis again, or to be honest any show because i thought she was awesome!

I got me two nifty souvenirs on this trip too a massive mug, and a fridge magnet. (Too bad i don't actually have a fridge).

You know, people say Les Miserables is long, but to me it's not long enough, it always seems to be over far too quickly :( Why cant i just live in the theatre, then i could see Les Miserables every day!

(By the way I do have a fridge, I was joking, who doesn't have a fridge!!)

Les Mis live.....again!

Hello fellow Les Mis fans! Guess what i'm doing again in two weeks? No not "that" get your minds out of the gutter! Well....maybe "that" we'll see how it goes.

I'm actually going to London again to see Les Miserables live for the second time in my life :D

That's my ticket, yeah, check out that bad boy!! If you're reading it correctly you'll notice that i'll be in the stalls this time. I've never sat in the stalls in the theatre in my entire life! I dont care if i get there and human giraffe sits down in front of me, at least for once i can say that i wasnt in the cheap seats.

Les Merchandise

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, like I've said before the problem with having a blog devoted to one subject is that you run out of things to talk about very quickly.

Anyway, for a lack of anything better I just thought I'd share with you all my collection of Les Mis merchandise I've collected so far.

 

First off is this cool canvas print I found on Ebay all the way from Australia, it currently hangs in pride of place in my living room. (By the way yes, my living room is painted purple. It's my favourite colour, don't judge me!)

 

This is a generic poster from the movie i also found on Ebay, not as cool as the canvas print, but still pretty nice i reckon.

This was a really cool find, i have a friend who works in my local cinema and she recently found this in thier storage and immediately thought of me. It's one of the promotional posters only sent to cinemas so it's a really rare piece of merchandise I'm glad to have. Unfortunately it's a little creased and battered on the top left which is a shame. I really want to get a frame for it, but it's a lot larger than a regular poster that I've yet to find a big enough frame for it.

And here's the rest of my collection...
Top Row: Les Miserables from Stage to screen book. Mug, Rosette, Badge, T-Shirt. The sequel novel Cosette (Uggh!) Original London cast soundtrack.
Middle Row: Souvenir photo book from when i saw it live last year, Keyring, programme from the same show, Two copies of the novel. (Why do i have two? Because they're different translations, that's why!) Highlights from the movie soundtrack, Deluxe Edition of the movie soundtrack.
Bottom Row: DVD of the movie, Blu-Ray of the movie, 10th anniversary concert, 25th Anniversary concert, Cosettes Fate PC Game.

Have you ever seen so many images of one persons face in one go!!! Cant they just once use someone elses face!!!

Top 5 Moronic Marius Moments

(I was so pleased when I came up with the title of this post, aren’t alliterations awesome!)

Have I mentioned before on this blog that I hate Marius Pontmercy? I think it’s come up…. Anyway,  just In case I haven’t made it clear how much I dislike him I thought I’d compile a list of the five biggest moments in Les Miserables (Novel and musical) that I thought Marius acted like a complete moron. It was really hard cutting it down to just five moments, but good God if I listed every moment where he acted like a moron I’d be here all night! I don’t think there’s enough time in the world for that!!!

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(I have a handy key now to illustrate when I’m talking about Les Mis the novel or Les Mis the musical or both, since it’s been brought to my attention that I don’t always make myself clear)

5: Pretending to be poor when he’s not (Novelverse)

So….for all the times that I’ve mentioned that I hate Marius I can kind of understand his conflict with his grandfather. Yeah, the man pretty much stole him from his father and lied to him throughout his entire childhood, that sucks. However I don’t agree with how Marius behaved when he found out the truth.

There was no need for him to run away from his home and pretend to be poor. At that point in the book his grandfather was like 90 years old, all he needed to do was to just suck it up and deal with it because the odds are he wouldn't have to live with it much longer anyway.

There was no need for him to act like a twat and pretend to be something he’s not; in fact I think that’s what bothers me most about Marius as a character. In the novel there’s a whole big section of the story devoted to Marius’s “suffering” but to me he never suffered like some of the other characters did, like Fantine for example. All he ever needed to do was swallow his pride for once in his life and go home and be a bourgeois again, and to me that isn’t suffering, that’s just moronic.

4: “Cosettes” Handkerchief (Novelverse)

This was actually only a minor moment in the book, but I find it so hilariously moronic that I have to mention it.

In case you don’t remember about the handkerchief basically at one point during his stalking of Cosette Marius finds a handkerchief left on the bench she usually sits on in the Luxembourg gardens, with the initials U.F sewn onto them, naturally Marius assumes it must be hers and that Cosettes name must be Ursule because it’s the only girls name beginning with U. He then goes onto covet the damn thing like it’s the only piece of Cosette he can hang onto in life since he doesn’t know where she lives.

Awww, well that’s kinda sweet right? WRONG!! Because the handkerchief actually belongs to Valjean! U.F was the initials of the fake name he was using when he was living with Cosette in the convent. Marius has totally been fawning over an elderly mans handkerchief for months, that’s both gross and kind of hilarious at the same time!

I would have really loved to have seen his reaction when he found out whose handkerchief it really was, it would have been so awesomely horrifying for him because you know he was totally whacking off into that thing every night. I know Victor Hugo wrote Marius and Cosette as personality free innocent beings, but come on; he was totally jackin’ himself onto that thing on a nightly basis and you know it.

I hope Cosette knows about the handkerchief and uses it against him for the rest of his life, I really do. I hope she’ll save that little piece of information for the first time she has a fight with him; I want her to whip it out as ammo whenever she’s pissed off at him and say “Oh by the way, you were whacking off into my dad’s handkerchief for months you moron!”

3: Banishing Valjean (Both)

Whilst I think this moment was also a moronic act on Valjeans part too I think Marius acted the worst out of the two of them when he found out about Valjean being an ex-con. I still don’t think Valjean should have said anything, but at the same time I don’t think Marius had any right to decide to essentially banish him from his home.

It continues to boggle my mind as to why Marius thought he had the right to banish Valjean after he revealed his criminal past, I guess I just find it really hard to see how he thought he could take the moral high ground with Valjean considering Marius himself is guilty of treason, I know Marius had his reasons for being at the barricades (as stupid as those reasons were) but to be honest, I think treason is a worse crime than theft, so Marius should have just shut his damn mouth.

2: Trying to blow himself up at the barricade (Both, but mostly musical)

Oh yes, you know I’ve brought this up before my fellow readers!

I was actually quite pleased when this moment showed up in the recent movie musical, because it just proved how big a moron he really is. Did Marius really have nothing else in his life that he was willing to kill himself because of the loss of a girl he barely knew? He sings about how his life would be nothing without Cosette, yet his entire life up until that point had been without her and he seemed to be doing fine. Didn’t it occur to him at any point to look for Cosette? She couldn’t have left the country in that short amount of time! Even in the novel it had only been two days since he’d last seen her, she couldn’t have gotten to England in that time, there was no reason for him to overreact like he did. Young love is so annoying.

I think Marius must be one of the most overemotional men I’ve ever encountered in fiction; there are much better ways of dealing with the loss of your “girlfriend” than by trying to blow yourself up. I really felt like Marius made a mockery out of the cause the other students were fighting for when he finally joined their rebellion, he wasn’t really that enthusiastic about the cause anyway and when he did join his friends it was because his stupid heart was broken. That is the act of an utter moron!

And yet I don’t think it’s the number one moronic moment, for I feel there is another even more moronic moment to take the top spot.

And the number one moment in Les Miserables where Marius acted like a moron is……

1: Failing to stop The Thenardiers from robbing and nearly murdering Valjean (Novelverse)

This was actually a major plot point that is omitted completely from the musical, but it shows just how moronic Marius really is.

Basically, at one point The Thenardiers have lured Valjean into their flat with the intent on robbing him (and possibly killing him too) and Marius, who is living next door to them, had made a deal with Javert to sound the alarm when it all goes down. However when Marius finds out that it’s the same Thenardier who “saved” his father he decides not to do anything about it because he made a promise to one day find Thenardier and to help him in any way he could, thus honouring his dead father at the same time.

Yeah I know that all sounds complicated when I say it like that, but believe me it all makes sense if you’ve read the book.

What makes Marius the most moronic here (wow, that was fun to say!) is the fact that he wouldn’t do anything to save Valjean when he was clearly in danger. Just the fact that he even hesitated to do anything makes him a moron, Yeah I know he had an allegiance to his dead father, but he clearly could see that Thenardier was planning to hurt Valjean (and by extension Cosette) so why he even thought this was a dilemma is beyond me.

Thenardier was basically planning on murdering Valjean, the father of the girl he claimed to love and he was too much of a moron to realise who he should help! Seriously….what was he going to do? Was he just going to let Valjean get murdered right in front of him? How would he have explained that to Cosette? Was he just going to go back to her garden again later that day and say “Oh sorry I just let your father be murdered because I’m too much of a moron to know any better, but let’s get married anyway!”
Call me crazy but where I come from when you like a girl you don’t stand by and watch her father get stabbed to death by a known criminal!

I understand him wanting to honour his father, but my point is that you can’t protect those who are already gone, he never even knew anything about his father and Thenardier was clearly a despicable human being so I just don’t understand his hesitation one bit. Marius is a moron, and to me he’ll always be a moron.

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I’m sorry to keep picking on him; I just really truly hate Marius Pontmercy. Maybe I’m being unfair to him, I know he has some good points as well………I can’t think of any at the moment though! I know there are people out there who are Les Miserables fans and like Marius, so if you’re one of those people please get in contact with me because I’d really like to know what you see in him.

Why is Cosette the symbol of Les Miserables?

Hello readers! Guess what, it’s that time of year again! If you don’t know what I mean then you’re clearly not as big a Les Mis fan as I am.

It’s Marius and Cosettes 181^st wedding anniversary today! 

Wow, 181 years……. I have no idea what the gift for that would be. My best guess would be copious amounts of alcohol.

I mention this because it brings me neatly around to the title of this post. Why is Cosette the symbol of Les Miserables? It’s a question that I’ve heard a few times since I read Les Miserables, most recently by my favourite online critic Doug Walker Click here for reviewey goodness! who did an epic review of the movie musical recently.

It’s a good question though, I mean think about it, the title of the book and musical is Les Miserables, but is Cosette really the most miserable person in the entire thing? Sure she had a terrible childhood but I think she got a happier ending than most of the other characters. Why is it her face that gets plastered all over the books and musical imagery? Why not Valjean, or Fantine, or Eponine, or even Gavroche? Does Cosette really suffer the most out of all the characters?

Actually, I think she does, and it’s connected to the other point I’ve brought up in this post. I think Cosette suffers the most in Les Mis because for the rest of her life she has to be married to Marius Pontmercy.

And yes I’ve brought up my hatred of Marius before in this blog, and yes I am being kind of facetious when I say this, but I actually do think it would be really hard for Cosette being married to him.

Why do I think this? Well for many reasons, just look at the evidence. First of all I don’t think that boy is mentally stable, remember this is the boy who stalked Cosette for months (possibly even years actually) before he summoned up the balls to talk to her, then when he thought he’d lost her he went all suicidal and tried to blow himself up! Somehow I don’t think a boy like that is going to make a very responsible husband.

There are other reasons too, for starters Marius is guilty of treason and he’s bloody lucky he didn’t get caught at the barricades. That actually doesn’t bother me too much but then there’s also the fact that he’s partly responsible for the death of Cosettes father and I think Cosette just might have a hard time dealing with that when she finds out. In the novel she’s been married to Marius for several months before Valjean dies which I think is actually worse than it is in the musical because Marius knew full well what was going on with Valjean and didn’t tell Cosette anything about where her father was for months on end.

Honestly I think that sucks, I think it would really suck to be married to someone for months and then find out all the things they’d been keeping from you. It’s not like Cosette can even do anything about it either when she finds out, she’s a woman in 1833 it’s not like she can just leave him or even argue with him about all the lies. She’s really screwed actually when you think about it, maybe not forever, but I think she’s gonna be pretty depressed for a while when she realises just what a fuckwit she’s married too.

She has no other family she can turn to either and I’m betting that Marius is probably responsible for all the money her father left her as well. I think her marriage is in a pretty precarious position; every good thing she has is tied to a man who probably hasn’t been honest with her since her wedding night.

And if you’re reading this thinking I’m making too big a deal put of things, well maybe you’re right. I probably am. Cosette is probably going to have a very good life, and it’ll probably be full of love and Marius will probably be very good to her, but I just think when you share your life with someone and you share certain intimacies with someone it can be hard to forgive such betrayals. I think however Cosette has probably got a big enough heart to forgive all the lies she’s been told. She’ll be fine I’m sure, I just feel kind of bad for her.

Honestly I can’t imagine a more insufferable life than spending an eternity with Marius Pontmercy, and that my friends is why I think Cosette deserves to be the symbol of Les Miserables, if she’s spent 181 years with him then I think she’s earned it.

Happy Anniversary!

Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette

A few posts ago I checked out the “video game” adaptation of Les Miserables, (IT SUCKS!!! DON’T PLAY IT) I bring it up again because I thought back then it was the oddest adaptations of Les Miserables I’d come across so far…..I was wrong, because the Japanese made an anime version of the novel in 2007 called “Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette”

(That title actually makes no sense in English. The word “Shoujo” in Japanese translates to “Little”, but the name Cosette in French means “little thing”. So the title of this anime really means “Little little thing).

Thanks to a friend and fellow Les Mis fan I was pointed towards a full copy online ready to watch. Unfortunately what my friend failed to mention beforehand was that this version is comprised of 52 25 minute episodes clocking up to 27 hours in total! Oh yes! I just spent the last three days watching one of the most complete versions of Les Miserables ever made, in Japanese! Thankfully it had English subtitles, because I may be mad for Les Mis but I’m not that mad that I’d watch 27 hours of it in Japanese.

Honestly, I’m not really a fan of anime, or Japanese culture in general so I was really sceptical about this version, I wasn’t expecting very much from it. I was seriously wrong though, this was one of the best adaptations I’ve seen so far! I thought it was brilliant. It may even be the best one in my opinion, and if not the best then it’s definitely the most complete, and that’s something that’s always lacking in any adaptation I’ve seen. There’s always too much taken out of the book to be completely faithful.
For instance this adaptation focused a lot on Cosettes childhood with the Thenardiers, and then a lot more of her convent years which is usually cut out from the many adaptations I’ve seen. It had that stupid stupid graveyard scene though….you know the one; I had a huge rant on it back in the early days of this blog!
 

The biggest thing was that they included the plotline about Monsieur Mabauef and his books, which I was really pleased about, he’s never included in any adaptations! I was so glad they put him in it! And the two young boys who are Gavroches brothers are in it as well, they’re always cut out too. They got a happy ending which is something that was left ambiguous in the book, which kind of sucks because I just knew in the book they were most likely going to starve to death in the streets. I was kind of glad actually that those two boys got a proper ending.

I’m going to provide the link to part one of the series for you because I urge you to see this if you are a true Les mis fan, you won’t regret it! Shoujo Cosette Part 1

I won’t spend this entire post gushing over it though, it wasn’t completely perfect. One of the main stumbling blocks I came across when I began watching it was that I found this to be a very odd clash of cultures at times. The story is still the same as the book so it’s still set in Paris and all the characters are animated to look vaguely European yet they’re all speaking Japanese and I was watching it with English subtitles. At times it was hard to really get into the story with those three things going on at once but the more I watched of it the more I got used to it.

They also made some big changes to the story. (Spoiler alert!) I think this was made for kids, so Fantines prostitution storyline was cut out which I can understand to an extent as that’s probably a bit heavy for kids. Gavroche doesn’t die either, nor does Javert kill himself which was the biggest change. I kind of understand the need to cut out suicide and child murder, but the thing is though they still included the deaths of all the students so I don’t really understand where the line is….. Young students being executed by a firing squad is fine for kids to see, but suicide isn’t?

Also the animation bothered me at times, I’ve never really liked Japanese cartoons, the eyes on everyone are always so big and they never make realistic facial expressions. This wasn’t so bad on most of the characters in this but it made Marius just even more dislikeable for me, his dead eyed blank expression throughout the entire thing just made me want to slap him repeatedly. Also I felt the blank expression of Jean Valjean affected his character too, he’s supposed to be a loving father to Cosette, but he never smiled at all during the entire 27 hours. I suppose one could argue that it’s just part of his character not to smile, but to be honest I just felt it made him seem distant and unemotional. 

Some of the characters were really creepy looking as well, Javert in particular is so weird to look at I found it really off putting, and Thenardier just looks vile…..although he kind of does in every adaptation, so I shouldn’t really complain about that.

Sometimes just the sheer length of this was too much as well, about 6 hours of this was just focused on Cosettes childhood with the Thenardiers, which I know is important to the story but there’s only so many times you can see a child being abused before it starts to get old, and a little disturbing. See again I don’t get where the line is, child abuse is OK for an anime, but not suicide or prostitution! What is your logic Japan!!!

Another small criticism I have is that Cosettes voice doesn’t change from when she’s a child to when she’s an adult, so it was a little creepy having the teenaged Cosette talking about being in love with Marius when she still had the voice of an 8 year old girl, I really don’t see how that would have been hard to change, it would have improved the show significantly as well.

Apart from those small gripes, and the few changes they made to the story I really think this was one of the best adaptations I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot! If you have 27 hours to spare I can’t recommend this enough, I don’t think I have enough words to describe just how good this adaptation is, I think this may now be my second favourite adaptation after the 2013 movie.

I can’t believe the Japanese made this, I’m not trying to sound patronising or racist I’m just genuinely surprised. Seriously, who would have thought the Japanese would make the best adaptation of Les Miserables? Not the British, not the Americans, not even the French, but the Japanese!