"And I will get him back even as he gloats
In the meantime I'll practice on less honourable throats"

Blast from my past recently. So far in the past that it wasn't even registering that this had meant something, yo. After years of waiting, even sending an email through Amazon to the powers-that-be to support its DVD release, they finally released the 1982 production of Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on DVD. I even submitted my only Amazon review for it (my work email indicates I was wasting company time).

It was released Tuesday of last week, I ordered it Tuesday of last week, and it got here on Friday. I watched it Friday evening, and since then I've been watching portions of it over and over again. It is a dark production of a dark subject matter with a complexity and depth that only Stephen Sondheim could have pulled off as musical theater entertainment. Yes, this is musical theater, but without the singing and dancing. Singing and killing is more like it. Yea. Tale of corruption, revenge, and serial killing. Oh yea.

I guess I should leave it at that. It's a niche market. It's mostly musical theater buffs that would have seen this. It's not the sort of thing that parents and people would get concerned about if they see a kid obsessing over it. But, "At last my arm is complete again!", "Not one man, no, not ten men, not a hundred can assuage me", and the last shot of the show never fails to send a shiver down my spine.

My only criticism of the DVD release is that they inexplicably removed the audience noise! Why?! Stupid! Idiotas! There is so much in hearing how the audience reacts, and there are portions where Angela Lansbury is clearly reacting to the audience reaction and you don't get that if you remove the audience noise. Dumkopfs! It's still a great performance, but it has a sterile feel to it without that live interaction.

And to qualify for free shipping, I also got the also-long-awaited DVD release of Genesis - Live at Wembley Stadium. I actually wasn't waiting for this release, I have it on video and I've been a Genesis fan for so long that the DVD release didn't make huge ripples. The video was recorded in such high definition that the DVD isn't a huge leap in quality, but damn, this is when they were still a smoking live band. They even made the "Invisible Touch" material bearable. And this is why Phil Collins is my all-time fave drummer. He screws up his first "solo" in the drum duet, and then after Chester Thompson's rips his solo, he comes back with a lick that I can't figure out how he's doing that, even being able to watch it!