I was just looking over the cast list on imdb.com and I noticed two credits that aren't in the stage version:




So, we'll be seeing a doctor attending to the wounded Marius, and Bamatabois will have a valet.... I wonder how those additions will affect the respective scenes?

I know it's incredibly anal and obsessive of me to even make a note of those minute details, but I'm so dang curious about how the movie will be different! Any new information interests me!

Look-wise it seems Hooper and his team went back to the 58 version for inspiration...compare:





Oh btw, Serge Reggiani who played Enjolras in the 58 film was in the French résistance in WW2. Kinda cool to know. Another reason more why I love that version the most.

Someone on IMDB posted this blog post written by an extra in the trial scene at the end of Who Am I. He provides a very detailed recollection of his experience including descriptions of how the scene will play out. MAJOR SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE READ ONLY IF YOU DON'T MIND KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT THE SCENE WILL LOOK LIKE. I personally found it very interesting
http://dontletthewrongonein.tumblr.com

Here's a direct link to that original post, which was copied/pasted to Tumblr. (Do people not understand deep linking?)

http://desertedphans.forumotion.net/t16 ... bles#18969

Two interviews with Anne Hathaway talking about the movie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5NqADcP ... e=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdmYEK-3 ... e=youtu.be

The second interview particularly intrigues me... apparently we'll be seeing Fantine's dead body thrown out of a window and onto a cart! Hoo boy, this movie doesn't seem to be skimping on grittiness!


EDIT: Just got back from lurking on Abaisse, where someone posted some tweets from George Blagden, the film's Grantaire!




Brick quotes, calling his character 'R'... such good signs!!! I've been so concerned that Grantaire's personality might not survive the transfer to film, since it rarely even survives in non-replica stage productions (e.g. all the regionals that treat him like an extra, the Hungarian staging that made him a jaded elderly man). But judging by these tweets, it will be alive and well!

Hello!
One of those tweets makes it sound like they're going for the book version of at the end of the battle....

New Anne Hathaway interview! She talks about Hugh and Russell's singing, and her singing of IDAD, including saying where it's going to be placed in the movie:

http://entertainment.inquirer.net/50859 ... tine-roles

I suppose it was already clear from the trailer, but still, I'm glad she's confirmed the song's new (or rather, return to the original OFC) placement!

I'm so anxious to see how that will work out! On the one hand, her singing the song after becoming a prostitute will certainly give it new meaning and poignancy, particularly the lines "...so different from this hell I'm living" and "Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

Besides, I've always thought that maybe, just maybe, IDAD comes too early in the stage version. I've often suspected that one of the reasons why Éponine is a more popular character than Fantine (besides the identification factor) is the placement of their big songs: OMO, as Éponine's penultimate scene, serves as the climax and summing up of her entire role, while IDAD, at the beginning of Fantine's character arc, may lack the same impact because we don't know her very well yet.

On the other hand, the stage version of IDAD is how we get to know Fantine. It makes us invest in her. I'm concerned that her social descent during "Lovely Ladies" will lack impact without IDAD preceding it. Besides, moving the song will give her less time to look pretty and dignified, which might lessen the impact of her beauty and dignity being stripped away.

*sigh* At least we now have more solid justification of Anne's soft, broken singing in the trailer. She'll be singing at a point where (a) Fantine has socially and emotionally hit rock bottom, and (b) her illness is presumably much worse than when she sings it onstage. And she got the composers' approval!

Flashbacks of Fantine in Paris with Tholomyes, care-free and in love, would show her early promise and tragedy. Do we know if a Tholomyes has been cast?

I'm quite happy with that direction.
Yes, in my opinion, IDAD is more powerfull as it is in the 1980 original Paris production : during her falling down to hell and just before becoming a prostitute.
So that's good news for the movie...

But what Vanessa20 said is very true : We need to see her fall down...
Moving IDAD later on the stage show could end in making her "just" a prostitute.

Don't forget that in the original staging, we get to know her with "La misère" : In that song, it is more about her falling down, about her loosing her naivety (is that correct?), but in "J'avais rêvé" (IDAD), it is more about her hitting rock bottom into the ultimate misery. Hope is gone.
As now "La misère" theme has been given to Eponine, Fantine is missing a song for us to know her. It was quite necessary to move this song forward.