Link!

[selenak]

No, I'm not envious you lot watched the Alias season 4 premiere and I didn't. Not at all. I'm satisfying my inner goth girl instead. If you, like me, have a secret or not so secret soft spot for any incarnation of the Phantom of the Opera tale, here's the ideal belated Christmas gift:

ERIK: An Owner's Guide and Instruction

Note I: It helps to have read either the Leroux or Kay novel to get some of the jokes, but it's amusing in any case.
Note II, to souls who only know the ALW musical: Yes, his name is Erik. But Leroux predates the X-Men by several decades with creating a morally ambiguous guy named Erik with a traumatic background, a penchant for grandiose declarations and ruthless acts, so deal.

Comments

[penknife.livejournal.com]

But Leroux predates the X-Men by several decades with creating a morally ambiguous guy named Erik with a traumatic background, a penchant for grandiose declarations and ruthless acts, so deal.

Although some of these could apply quite well to other morally ambiguous men named Erik. Do not expose your ERIK to fire, strong magnetic fields, electricity, or excessive humidity., for example.

And I loved Susan Kay's Phantom in all it's angsty glory, and have a secret soft spot for the musical as well.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

True, true, and so with you on the Susan Kay.

Hm... too bad your backstory (which makes complete sense) has Charles & Erik break up in the early 80s. Otherwise, I'd wonder whether Charles ever teased him by playing POTO tunes on the piano.

For all I know...

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

...Fabian Nicieza (who created the "Erik Lehnsherr" name) may have been thinking of Erik from Phantom of the Opera. :-)

The name turns up for the first time in a story where Magneto accidentally kills a guy who is trying to kill him at the grave of his wife, and the guy's brother has this insane hatred of Magneto, and tracks him to his wife's grave, and then remembers how his brother's death *really* happened. It's pretty much full of Magneto as dark tragic brooding figure.

Re: For all I know...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, if Fabian Nicieza is still around among the living, maybe one could ask him?*g*

[equustel.livejournal.com]

Erik is teh HOT. In all his incarnations. But especially Kay.

I do love the new film, though. I thought all three leads did an admirable job - I'm glad they went with relative unknowns, it brings a bit more... authenticity to the characters for some reason - that they're not faces we've seen over and over again in other movies.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I have only two nitpicks for the new movie, neither of which stopped me from basically enjoying it, but I can't deny them, either. Firstly, Schumacher chickened out with the Phantom makeup. ALW already made it easer for him by inventing the half-mask instead of the full-mask, but if you don't go for some serious facial disfigurement, the pathos of the story fails.

Secondly, Antonio Banderas as Che in Evita not being exactly opera material is one thing; he's playing an Everyman voice there, a symbolic character. But Erik and Christine as characters are supposed to have trained, glorious and exceptional voices, hers so good that Paris is at her feet after the soiree, his so beautiful that she accepts it as the voice of an angel. And Rossum and Butler, while by no means bad, fall short of this.

This being said, there is some good physical acting, especially by Butler, I've never seen the Point of No Return scene hotter, and I agree that three relative unknowns were better than three stars. I just wish the singing would match.