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The defiant lyrics to the classic Les Misérables track are reverberating through uprisings in Hong Kong and China I t has soared during an airport sit-in, united street protests and drowned out the Chinese national anthem at a school assembly. Do You Hear the People Sing?, the defiant chorus from the musical Les Misérables, has become a song of protest in Hong Kong and, more recently, mainland China. Explicit references to Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor censured for his warnings about the coronavirus outbreak, and to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, are stamped upon – but lines from the song slip...

<p>If you were adapting a story that has already been turned into a colossus of a stage musical and a triple-Oscar-winning Hollywood film, you might be expected to be slightly overawed by the task.</p> <p>The actors and producers of the latest iteration of Les Miserables – a six-part BBC take on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel – are suitably diplomatic about the stage show seen by 70 million people in 51 countries, giving verdicts that range from “perfectly good” to “brilliant”.</p>

PBS’ Masterpiece has released the first trailer for Les Misérables, the upcoming six-part event adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel, set for premiere on Masterpiece in 2019. A co-production from Lookout Point and BBC Studios, the drama stars Dominic West as Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo as Javert, Lily Collins as Fantine and Adeel Akhtar and Olivia Colman as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier.

Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).

20-year-old Tom Billodeaux pulled gun during screening of Oscar-nominated movie, but witnesses said he never threatened to shoot anyone. Cops arrived and stopped the movie as others ducked and fled. Moviegoers at a San Diego theater ducked for cover as officers stormed in during a film screening and shot and critically wounded a gunman hiding in their midst. No one else was hurt in the shooting Saturday inside Reading Cinemas Carmel Mountain in northern San Diego, officer David Stafford said. The gunman, identified as 20-year-old Tom Billodeaux of Escondido, was taken to a hospital after being shot in the arm...

"Argo" was the best drama winner at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, beating out the Civil War epic "Lincoln," which had emerged as an awards-season favorite. The Iran hostage thriller also claimed the directing prize for Ben Affleck, a prize that normally bodes well for an Academy Award win -- except he missed out on an Oscar nomination this time. Affleck is now in an unusual position during Hollywood's long awards season, taking home the top filmmaking trophy at the second-highest film honors knowing he does not have a shot at an Oscar. 48 PHOTOS Golden Globes 2013 show highlights And...

Scant days ago, in that chilly time after Christmas, I strolled into our local theatre in the expectation of being entertained by an established well-loved musical that had just been rendered to film. I had no idea I would emerge from the darkness three hours later a scarlet-eyed blubbering wreck. Having bargained for diversion, I instead reaped a bounty of cinematic moral lessons wherein intense human ugliness runs headlong into the arms of sublime beauty and breaks our aching hearts in a fair exchange. Welcome to the spectacle of Les Miserables. In retrospect, one could not ask for a more...

The release of the film Les Misérables is a remarkable achievement, not only for its ambitious cinematic scope but also for its inspired cast and stunning dramatic and musical performances. A key driver of the ongoing popularity of the musical play over the better part of the last three decades is the source material’s deep moral and spiritual seriousness. The narrative focuses in large part on the transformation of Jean Valjean, who after nineteen years of hard labor as a violent criminal is released on parole to see “what this new world” might bring. The dynamics of sin and salvation,...

I take my political debates into the movie theatre with me. Suspend disbelief? That I can do. Suspend political/cultural/religious debate? Never. It’s probably a good idea to let go once in a while, but just because that’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.So, here is what I read on National Review Online before going in to see Les Miserables, and what was in my mind the whole time:“All decent people have a measure of sympathy for those who, driven by desperation, come illegally to the United States seeking work to provide for themselves and their families. That they so frequently work...

The nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards have been revealed in Los Angeles. Find out who is in the running for the main prizes below. This page will be updated shortly with a full list of nominees. Best film Amour Argo Beasts Of The Southern Wild Django Unchained Les Miserables Lincoln Life Of Pi Silver Linings Playbook Zero Dark Thirty Best actress Jessica Chastain - Zero Dark Thirty Jennifer Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook Emmanuelle Riva - Amour Quvenzhane Wallis - Beasts of the Southern Wild Naomi Watts - The Impossible

The "Les Miserables" soundtrack album jumps to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week with 92,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It's the first No. 1 soundtrack on the Billboard 200 since the "Hunger Games" album opened atop the April 7, 2012, list. The last musical film soundtrack to the lead the chart was the "Hannah Montana: The Movie" album on May 2, 2009. The last stage musical-turned-movie musical whose companion album reached No. 1 was "Mamma Mia!" in 2008. "Les Miserables" declined 32% in sales in the week ending Jan. 6, but that didn't prevent it from...

Here is a thing it is difficult to remember in the midst of its box office tidal wave: Les Misérables owes its birth to a debate over public arts funding. We think of blockbusters as antithetical to the high arts that public funding might typically support, but in Les Miz’s case at least, the relationship was symbiotic. Some might say parasitic, of course, but the story reveals that we don’t quite know who was leeching off of who. Les Misérables was originally staged, in 1985, under the auspices of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a large portion of whose budget was...

The groundbreaking new film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Les Misérables" features desperate people suffering under soul-shattering unemployment, naive university students decrying the rich and stoking the flames of socialist revolution, unyielding government official interested not in right and wrong but in following his government's rules and one heroic individual who follows his faith in God to guide him from one success to another all the while truly helping others by using his own private wealth rather than through the ineffective and neglectful government. In short, it is the perfect allegory for Americans living in the Age of Obama. In...

I first caught the musical “Les Misérables” back in 1987, when it made its U.S. debut on Broadway. My lasting memory of the Tony Award winning production, which enjoyed the third-longest run on the Great White Way after “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera,” is that much of the audience wept through Act II. As “Les Miserables” appears this holiday season on movie screens throughout the country, featuring the vocal talents of actors Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway and Amanda Seyfried, among others, I now think the musical decidedly spiritual entertainment. It’s not that “Les Miz” has changed since...

The Perfect Depiction of Christian Love in Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean "Religions pass away but God remains..." Victor Hugo. It should be no surprise that the great French novelist Victor Hugo was a passionate believer in God and in the power of prayer for this powerfully comes across in his wonderful and inspiring novel Les Miserables, now, of course, also a successful Broadway and West End musical, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer and music by Claude-Michel Schonberg (original French lyrics by Alain Boubil)... Unfortunately, Victor Hugo has rarely been credited as being a Christian writer - partly because of his...

Even if you walked away from the holidays this year with the Red Ryder BB Gun you always dreamed of, you weren't the big winner this Christmas season: that distinction belongs to "Les Miserables," the long-awaited adaptation of the award-winning musical, directed by Tom Hooper. Deadline.com reports that "Les Mis" opened with close to $18 million on Christmas day (December 25), making it the decisive "Master of the House" at the box office. Hooper's adaptation of the beloved musical stars Hugh Jackman as fugitive Jean Valjean, a bread thief on the run from the vengeful lawman Javert (Russell Crowe). Valjean's...

PARIS: Victor Hugo was a miserly money-grubber, poet Rimbaud "a monstrosity", and Verlaine "a worthless human being" - such are the verdicts on 19th-century French literary lions found in long-forgotten police files recently published in Paris. Even more startling than the unflattering portraits, says Bruno Fuligni, an employee at the National Assembly, or French parliament, who discovered the dust-covered files and compiled them into a book, is the vigour and thoroughness with which the most revered writers of that era were spied upon by snitches and secret police. "Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists....

Has any one seen Django or Les Mis? I am thinking about going to the movies this weekend. I know Les Mis is a musical but I was thinking that the theatre might be full of single women. I like the music in Django, but I am not a fan of any of thr Obamatrons in the film. any insight to either movie?

Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe sing -- and wage a Sisyphean battle against musical diarrhea -- in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the stage sensation. A gallery of stellar performers wages a Sisyphean battle against musical diarrhea and a laboriously repetitive visual approach in the big-screen version of the stage sensation Les Miserables. Victor Hugo's monumental 1862 novel about a decades-long manhunt, social inequality, family disruption, injustice and redemption started its musical life onstage in 1980 and has been around ever since, a history of success that bodes well for this lavish, star-laden film. But director Tom Hooper has...

Les Mis is back! Deadline reports that Universal has won the bidding war to develop a "full-blown musical adaptation" of Les Miserables, based on Victor Hugo's seminal classic published in 1862, with Oscar winning British director Tom Hooper of The King's Speech looking to direct. While anything could happen with the director over these next few months, since he is getting offers left and right now, Deadline states "this is the first film he's begun negotiations on since winning the Oscar" but were told "it would definitively be his next film." From King's Speech to Les Mis! Cameron Mackintosh, who...