Beautiful!

Do You Hear The People Sing

I've had a love affair with Les Miserables since I was 9 years old.  I have the play memorized.  At nights my sister and I would listen to the play and follow along reading the lyrics.  I'd ask question after question for things I didn't understand (usually something the Thenardiers said).  I wish I could remember how Heather responded, because I'm sure she had no idea what they were talking about either.  I have the entire play memorized.  I've read the unabridged book.  The book was not sad at all to me.  It was such a religious story of hope and faith.  A good friend of mine told me years ago, that her college professor taught a course on Les Miserables and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I thought about that a lot while I read the book.  I wished I could have taken his class.  That alone was almost enough to tempt me into going to BYU.  

The more I listen to the soundtrack the more symbolism and parallels I've drawn from the lyrics.  Needless to say, I've never liked any of the movies.  The Liam Neeson version portrayed Jean Val Jean as something so far from what he was, and the movie ended long before the best part.  The whole point of the story is the ending.  With regards to the play, I've seen it 4 times.  I saw it twice in London in the same day, and once at Gammage, only a local production and of course the original cast when I was little.  

I was excited for the movie.  

I was disappointed in the movie.  

Changes always must be made with movies and are expected.  Vocals are never perfect and that's to be expected.  But there were too many scenes cut in half and combined with others.  Too many songs with the lyrics changed.  So for those of you who loved the movie, I say to you that you loved it because you didn't know the play.  Anyone who caught all of the changes couldn't possibly have enjoyed it.  The changes were too much.  I feel like a lot of the emotion that I feel for the story was lost.

So for those of you out there who loved the movie, here's what your are missing.  Here's what the movie was missing.  Probably one of the most powerful poems in the whole play, the lyrics that tie the whole thing together, the beautiful words that they took out.  Perhaps it was too religious for them to keep in the movie.  This is what the cast normally sings at the end of the play, and what should have been sung at the end of the movie.


Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
who are climbing to the light.
For the wretched of the earth
there is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
and the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom
in the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the ploughshare;
they will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
and all men will have their reward.

Grâce à Youtube!

1. It's weird seeing Quasimodo without his makeup and costume.

 2. The french people and their kisses.

3. Thanks to Youtube so I can stay connected with this BEAUTIFUL play.

Semester Review

This semester I decided to double up on classes.  I am sooooo glad that is over! (Almost)  Never again.  

Now that I am able to breath again, I thought I'd share some funny moments of the semester.

Funny moment #1:  
My teacher tried to look up "nuque" (nape) on google images and got distracted during the middle and left out the "qu", spelling "nue" (naked).  After clicking "search" she continued talking, not bothering to look at the screen.  Needless to say for a split second she probably thought whatever she was saying was interesting because the class went into complete silence.  I think we were all a little too shocked by the images on the screen to say anything.  Whoops!

Funny moment #2: 
 One of my teachers doesn't speak English very well at all.  She wanted to make sure we understood the word "gratte-ciel" and so she looked at the footnote to read the word in English, like I said, she doesn't know English very well, she had to look it up herself.  The word that came out of her mouth was "sky crapper".  She continued with her lecture and I'm sure she had no idea why the entire class was silently shaking in their seats.  Bad uncontrollable case of the giggles.  It wasn't really THAT funny but when one person can't control their laughter in an awkwardly silent class... well... it was all downhill from there.  In case any of you are slow, she meant to say "skyscraper".

Funny moment #3:  
I'm not sure that this one is that funny, more like annoying.  I had a few hours to kill so I put my headphones in my phone and sat out enjoying the sunshine talking to my friend Tera.  

A guy walks up to me, literally, right in my face, stops, and stares at me.  I tell Tera to hang on and I free up one ear and say "hi."  He apologizes for interrupting (he thought I was listening to music) and said that he just wanted to tell me he was having an awesome day and that nothing was going to get in his way.  Nothing could change his mind.  

He went on for about 30 seconds on how happy he was. 

 I really wanted to say "can you just get to the point!?" because I figured he was trying to sell me "Jesus".  

There are a lot of those on campus.  

Then he tells me about his weekend for about a minute and a half, and a bunch of other things I won't bore you with, because I'm bored out of my mind thinking about all this useless information he shared with me.  

Then he politely says, "I'll let you get back to your phone call, because I'm really considerate like that.  (5 minutes too late for being considerate)  I'm so excited for this weekend, have a great day!"  

Tera got more of a kick out of it than I did.  I felt bad for the guy, but it was seriously weird....

Danse Mon Esmeralda

The french may not have the Happily Ever After thing down, but that's what makes their stories (and music) so beautiful. Thank you Victor Hugo for inspiring my two absolute favorite musicals of all time!      

This is what I listened to on repeat while taking a math quiz. And yes, I got 100%!

Here's a video of the song with subtitles for anyone who reads this blog that I rarely get on. Enjoy!

Finals

Perfect song for finals week :)

Happy Thanksgiving!