Originally published December 20, 1996, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1205
Some recent movie-going experiences:
I took Gwen to see the new version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—which is kind of like saying William Shakespeare’s West Side Story, because, although the basic elements are there, the film bears as much resemblance to a real staging of Romeo and Juliet as Kiss Me, Kate does to Taming of the Shrew. Actually, now that I think about it, there was probably more actual Shakespearean dialogue in Kiss Me, Kate.
The West Side Story comparison is apt, since director Baz Luhrmann has set the story in modern day, with the Montagues and the Capulets as warring corporations and the squabbling youngsters tooling around in hot sports cars, shooting at each other and blowing up gas stations. It stars the kid-friendly pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
I must admit I have no intrinsic problem with even a gutted version of Shakespeare. Anything that has a scintilla of a chance at getting even one kid per audience genuinely interested in the Bard is something I heartily support. Bottom line is, we went to an afternoon showing and the place was packed with teenagers. Teens watching something purporting to be Shakespeare: Hey, at least it’s something. How many of them would have been inclined to see anything that even hinted of Shakespeare if it didn’t look like an extended MTV video and feature familiar young actors?
So to a certain extent it doesn’t matter that Danes is, at most, adequate; that DiCaprio, despite all his efforts, never manages to wrap himself around the dialogue. He says his lines, he’s prettier than Juliet, he doesn’t bump into the furniture, and he’s rather effective screaming, “I am fortune’s fool!” at the top of his lungs. But that’s about it. And the actor playing Benvolio is on par with the jock who auditions for the High School of Performing Arts in Fame by stumbling through Juliet’s part in the balcony scene.
But this isn’t intended as a commentary on the film. Rather, it was the audience that I found intriguing—to be specific, the audience as the film moved to its climax.
And no, I’m not going to put a spoiler warning, because as I will shortly make clear, that’s the whole point.
There is Juliet, laid out in the crypt, apparently dead. There’s Romeo, crying his eyes out, about to down poison so he could join his love in death.
And I hear audience members muttering all around me, “Watch. She’ll wake up just in time.”
I couldn’t believe it. I glanced around the audience, saw them smiling, confident that everything would work out. And that’s when I realized they didn’t know how it ended. I was in an audience full of people who were utterly clueless as to what was about to happen. They figured it was going to have a happy resolution. They didn’t know Romeo and Juliet both end up dead.
I was astounded. This goes beyond not knowing, say, the significance of “Rosebud.” The average school system doesn’t teach Citizen Kane. But how could they never have been exposed to one of Shakespeare’s most renowned plays?
Not to mention that it went beyond cultural and/or scholastic ineptitude (and here’s why I don’t want to insult the intelligence of CBG readers with a spoiler warning). I couldn’t comprehend why they didn’t know the fate of the lovers because it’s said right at the top of the film.
In one of the movie’s cleverest bits of business, the famed prologue is delivered via a news anchor as if she were reporting the 11 o’clock news. Dutifully describing the feuding households of Verona, the newscaster says:
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
And just to make sure that the point is not lost on anyone, the prologue is immediately repeated, with the dialogue printed on the screen. You would have thought that key phrases such as “take their life” and “death” would have tipped the audience off.
But no, the viewers remained oblivious of the star-crossed lovers’ fate. There were startled faces all through the theater as Romeo, with a final kiss, died. Then Juliet picked up Romeo’s gun, to complete the “take their life” part of the prologue. And the audience, watching in confusion, muttered, “She’s going to shoot him, too?”
I can’t wait to see that group at the four-hour version of Hamlet.
***
As Star Trek celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, who would have thought we’d actually have some fun stuff to see as a result of it? Granted, when I watched the Deep Space Nine episode, “Trial and Tribble-lations,” I was amused that it took five writers to produce a rehash of a script that previously took one writer—and that one writer’s name didn’t even show up until the closing credits, which I consider a shocking and insulting omission.
And I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who was waiting to see Forest Gump, or perhaps Zelig, go wandering through the fight scene in the bar, as that same technology dropped DS9 characters into the original series episode. Indeed, I think it would be kind of cool if they released a new edition of the original episode, with the revised DS9 scenes replacing the previous ones.
The other big anniversary release is, of course, Star Trek: First Contact. My favorite of the films remains Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and this one—like Wrath—is something of a sequel. Actually, it’s a sequel and a prequel (not to mention a floor wax and a dessert topping). First Contact follows up the two part “Best of Both Worlds,” largely ignoring most of the subsequent Borg scripts (fortunately enough), while serving as a prequel to the Original Series episode “Metamorphosis,” which introduced Zefram Cochrane (Glenn Corbett), the creator of warp drive.
In First Contact, the Borg have narrowly lost a major battle with the Federation. How many Borg actually exist remains unclear; apparently they never attack in more than one ship at a time. For a race that supposedly learns quickly, you’d think they’d have realized by now that, if sending one ship causes them to almost win, then sending two ships would pretty much seal the deal.
And then it turns out that the Borg possess time travel capabilities. By catapulting into the past, they change Earth’s history, and the entire world is populated by nine billion beings, all Borg.
This of course begs the question as to why the Borg would ever bother with a frontal assault. Just go back to a time when a target planet hasn’t the technology to mount a defense and assimilate it.
But if one dwells on such matters too long, one isn’t going to be able to get past the first reel of the film. Time travel stories demand that we backburner such considerations in order to accept them. This we should be willing to do, provided the story is diverting and entertaining enough (which Generations, offering similar time travel paradoxes and plot holes, was not).
In this case, First Contact most definitely is worth suspending disbelief for. Two storylines rapidly unfurl, one involving the Borg (in best Aliens style) taking over the Enterprise. Meantime, on planet Earth, an away team tries to guide Zefram Cochrane (now played by James Cromwell, who just doesn’t look right without a runt pig next to him) to a destiny that will result in a first contact scenario which, in turn, leads to the formation of the Federation. (After thirty years, it’s nice to finally get some hint of its origins. It’s only the linchpin of the entire Star Trek universe, after all.)
Also along for the ride is Alfre Woodard as Cochrane’s assistant, who is inadvertently brought up to the Enterprise and sucked into the battle for survival.
As opposed to the lethargy that seemed to have taken hold in the previous entry, the cast seems crackling and ready to go in this film. This time out Jonathan Frakes (Riker) is at the directorial helm. I’ve been a fan of Frakes-as-director ever since a ST:TNG episode entitled “Cause and Effect”—probably the laziest episode ever written, since the entire first act was repeated several times throughout the episode as the Enterprise found itself stuck in a time loop. Frakes, by inventively reinterpreting identical scenes, saved the episode.
Here he’s got a lot more to work with and he does an excellent job with it—whether we’re seeing Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) getting completely blotto in a drinking bout, or watching Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) leading armed troops through the corridors of the Enterprise in search of the enemy.
Sometimes the mood shifts rattle the viewer, since the bug-hunt sequences are so tense while the earthbound storyline is practically bucolic. They’re linked thematically as we have Picard and Cochrane, both men of destiny who are seized by compulsions that threaten to destroy them, but the thematic links aren’t quite enough to completely shake the feeling of hitting dramatic speed bumps every time we cut away from the ship.
Fine, sure, Cochrane’s upset and getting drunk and doesn’t want to be idolized, but the hëll with that, Data’s been captured by the Borg! What’s up with that?! If you’re doing parallel storylines, they should each have some degree of dramatic tension. You don’t want your audience murmuring, “Oh God, not again,” when you go to your B-plot.
And there are some occasional dramatic misfires. At one point (as has been shown in various trailers) the notion is floated that the Enterprise should be evacuated and blown up, thereby handily ending the Borg menace. Picard resists the notion. In an incendiary scene with Woodard, Picard refuses—not because it would effectively strand them, which seems reasonable—but because “a line must be drawn here!”
A great scene, as noted, which is undercut on three levels. First, one wishes it had been between Picard and a character we had some emotional stake in—Dr. Crusher, for example, whose major contribution to the script is to set up an amusing cameo for someone else. Second, the prospect of blowing up the Enterprise carries no emotional punch. We saw Kirk blow up the original, and the immediate predecessor went nova the previous film. And we’ve never seen this version of the Enterprise before we got into the theater. Fine, blow up the Enterprise E. Who gives a dámņ? And third, on an issue of such dramatic importance to him, we see Picard reverse himself faster than you can say “Bill Clinton.”
But for every moment that doesn’t quite click, there are others that succeed far better than one could have hoped, such as the over-the-top seduction scenes with Data and the Borg hive queen (Alice Krige), the hottest babe with a bolted-on head since the Bride of Frankenstein.
Overall, it’s a film that’s solid, diverting and crowd-pleasing—presuming it’s a crowd of Star Trek fans. “Civilians” will basically feel that they’ve seen it done bigger and better in other films, and they won’t be far wrong.
***
Critics are busy trashing Jingle All the Way, in which we find Ah-nuld cast as a desperate father trying to find a much-sought-after toy for his son. As the critics busily compare it unfavorably to True Lies, Terminator and other Arnold action fare, they neglect to note two things.
First, any parent who’s ever found himself in a similar predicament around the holidays (myself included) can empathize. And second—it’s a kids’ movie. This is simply not a grown-up film. It’s goofy, it’s silly, and it becomes increasingly absurd. It could run on Nickelodeon. The only reason it’s PG is that there’s a sequence where a child is depicted in mortal danger (an automatic PG). Otherwise, this is a G movie. Arnold went and made a film that he could take his own kids to see without feeling uncomfortable, and I say good for him. The hëll with the critics. I saw it in a theater packed with kids and they had a ball.
And I bet not one of them knew how Romeo and Juliet ended.
***
This is to note the passing of Mark Lenard, a wonderful actor and charming guy who died of cancer much too young. We had the opportunity of having dinner once with Mark and his lovely daughter, and had a great time. And Mark once recorded a message for my answering machine in which he intoned, “This is Ambassador Sarek. Peter David cannot take your call right now.” The first time that played on my machine, one person (whom I will mercifully not identify) said with all sincerity, “Peter, that is the worst Sarek impression I’ve ever heard.”
Mark brought dignity and humor to whatever roles he played, and taught acting as well. He will be missed.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., P.O. Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)
• 
So far, I think my favorite “Shakespeare Inspired” version of a movie (of Taming of the Sherw, actually) is “10 Things I Hate About You.” Very well done. It had great little snippets of the actual Shakesperian diaglue thrown in here and there.
I think that my favorite WS adaptation is still “West Side Story.” It’s not to everybody’s taste, but there’s an awful lot of good singing and dancing in that film, and some very good current social commentary in a Shakespearean story (which might have been the original intent of R&J, come to think of it…)
It also has what may be the single greatest WTF in movie history. It’s the middle of the night, Tony is running down the streets of Spanish Harlem, shouting “MARIA!” at the top of his lungs… and only ONE girl answers. Hmm…
I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
x<]:o){
The Bad Clown
But how could they never have been exposed to one of Shakespeare’s most renowned plays?
Well, for anybody who attended a public school in this country, they probably were. Whether they remembered anything or not is another matter.
Or, perhaps just as likely, they expected Hollywood to do it’s thing: butcher the source material.
I remember liking First Contact when it came out. But in the end all of TNG films simply felt like polished (to make them shiny, not necessarily better) 2-part TV episodes.
I’ve also always been a much bigger fan of TOS movies than TOS show. Yet, appearances by those from TOS in TNG are among my favorite episodes, including “Sarek”.
Craig, everybody, what I’m about to say is in NO WAY meant to start an arguement or anything. People use the two-hour episode line an awful lot when talking about Trek movies. My response is always, well, usually, well, sometimes, “You liked the episodes on TV, right? So what’s the problem?” Other than having to watch them in something besides your jammies and having to pay for them, that is.
If anyone’s counting or keeping track or anything, my favorite Shakespeare interpretation is still Strange Brew.
But there’s a big difference between a movie and a TV show. We have lower standards and expectations for the latter, because it’s an inferior medium.
That said, I do think “The Best of Both Worlds” is better than FIRST CONTACT.
Sean: People use the two-hour episode line an awful lot when talking about Trek movies. My response is always, well, usually, well, sometimes, “You liked the episodes on TV, right? So what’s the problem?” Other than having to watch them in something besides your jammies and having to pay for them…
Luigi Novi: As if either of those things has ever stopped me….
Been out of town…
Robert’s right: it’s a matter of expectation. Being on the big screen means bigger expectations.
And TNG films generally failed in those expectations, where as TOS generally succeeded.
I remember a critic saying that Serenity didn’t show us anything that couldn’t have been an episode of Firefly.
To me, that’s just a compliment for the TV show. The standards of good TV shows really aren’t always that much lower than movies. Sometimes they are. When I see a “city” in a Next Generation episode that is represented by a couple dozen people, sure, I have to accept that as the best they can do. However, there was nothing like that in the Trek movies, so I never had the feeling that I was getting a diminished experience.
I had never even seen Firefly when I saw Serenity, and I still felt like I was watching a TV show. It’s not just the production values that are different. It’s also the way TV shows are structured narratively and the way they’re directed that sets them apart from movies. Serenity and the last two Next Generation movies both had that “TV feel” to me. Worse, Serenity actually felt like two or three TV episodes strung together (and not even the FIRST two or three episodes of a TV series).
There’s an expectation when it comes to TV-to-movie transfers. If you’re just making an episode of a TV show and putting it on the big screen, what’s the point? So we can watch a new episode of the show, only bigger? For most people, there needs to be more of a justification than that.
Insurrection and Nemesis would actually only be average episodes of ST:TNG (the higher budgets notwithstanding). As movies, they’re below average. A movie should be an event, with a story that’s both pertinent to the overall film series (if applicable) and dramatically weighty as a stand-alone film. The best of the original cast Star Trek films, II and IV… those are MOVIES. It’s an elusive quality, this cinematic sense, one that we really only think about when we find it lacking.
I’m really not sure what you’re talking about Robert. Movies are 1) higher resolution (or they were – HDTVs are roughly equal now, for the *average* viewer (not the videophile who explain in detail the difference in artifacting between the various RealPlayer codecs), 2) Without commercials, 3) A bit longer than most TV shows – but roughly the same as a made-for-TV 2 hour (slotted) movie, 4) not as sensitive to advertiser complaints, so often a bit edgier (and not subject to the FCC, which again allows them to get away with more) and 5) Bigger budgeted.
Your comments on “narrative structure” and “direction” make little sense to me. I loved the first Star Trek movie, found #2 utterly bog standard – two guys fighting, eh, seen that – and found #4 wonderful. Sure, they could have *ALL* been done as TV episodes – they could have been done as stage plays, and they were all novelized, at some point. There was *ONE* good scene in ST2:TWOK – the scene in the asteroid where they’re discussing Kirk’s solution to the Kobiyashi Maru. The rest of it? Bad-guy rant, good-guy rant, bad guy attack, good guy attack. Oh, and sappy tragic ending.
Otherwise, the only real reason to see movies in the theater at this point is to see the special effects in their highest resolution. And really – how many explosions do you *really* need to see? Nobody really talked that much about the weighty themes in Avatar, or the skillful performances of the actors – it was all about the oooh pretties and Oooh 3D! Personally, I want to see Fantasia 2000 on IMAX more than I want to see Avatar on IMAX 3D.
“I’m really not sure what you’re talking about Robert. Movies are 1) higher resolution (or they were – HDTVs are roughly equal now, for the *average* viewer (not the videophile who explain in detail the difference in artifacting between the various RealPlayer codecs), 2) Without commercials, 3) A bit longer than most TV shows – but roughly the same as a made-for-TV 2 hour (slotted) movie, 4) not as sensitive to advertiser complaints, so often a bit edgier (and not subject to the FCC, which again allows them to get away with more) and 5) Bigger budgeted.”
I’m not really sure what your point is. Yes, Insurrection is longer and bigger budgeted and has better resolution than a TV episode, and it doesn’t have commercials. But that doesn’t address any of the reasons I or or any of its other critics feel that it was like a TV episode.
Imagine if the TV show didn’t exist, that ST was just a series of movies. Why would Insurrection even be made? It doesn’t push any overall plots forward (compared to any entry in the Star Wars, Matrix, Back to the Future, or any other sci-fi film series). It doesn’t develop the characters. It doesn’t add anything new to the concept. It’s not exciting or “well made” or artistic or sumptuous, any of the things we look for in a movie. It just sits there, harmlessly, like something you’d see in the middle of a television season and quickly forget about.
As for the rest of your post, I’m honestly not sure what you’re arguing. Are you saying that the only difference between a movie and a TV show is the higher resolution (and higher budget, etc.)? I don’t think that’s true. If you took the script for a two-part episode of Grey’s Anatomy and made it with a movie-sized budget and put it on the big screen, yeah, it would technically be a movie. But would it be a “movie” in the sense we’ve come to understand the term? Not really. Like I said, it’s an elusive difference, but it’s there.
There’s a huge difference between movies and TV shows, and it’s also hard to qualify. But it’s certainly there, besides what Robert has said, that I also agree with.
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There is a particular way to shooting the scenes, to light the settings, to write the scripts, that is all very typical of TV, I suppose. I lack the technical knowledge to verbalize all of that, but when I see a movie from a director/producer/writer that is very used to the language of TV, there is that TV-feel to the movie.
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It’s like, even if now they don’t need to cut corners to account for the smaller budget, the breakneck pacing of the shooting, etc. they still can’t quite shake their TV roots.
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One of the way I notice it mostly is by the way the camera hovers closer to the actors, showing only their faces a lot, when the director is too used to television.
“It’s also the way TV shows are structured narratively and the way they’re directed that sets them apart from movies”
I don’t see it. Sure, Serenity had some baggage going in, but that’s also true of The Two Towers, The Empire Strikes Back, and any other sequel that builds on the history of the movies that went before it.
Serenity had a major conflict, a complete story that was resolved by the end of the movie, and major turning points that affected the characters greatly and drove them to do things during the story that they wouldn’t have done (such as character deaths).
These are the kinds of things movies have. I really think that people looking at Serenity as a TV movie are biased by the fact that they already knew it was a TV show and that these stuff would have played out in the show if the show had continued. However, it definitely would have played out *differently* in that case. It would not have been 2 or 3 episodes, it would have been an entire season, with tons of other sub plots and side adventures. It would have used existing characters like the men with hands of blue instead of inventing the Operative, a character who specifically served the purposes of that 2 hour ride.
As far as lighting and shooting goes, the cinematographer for Serenity had previously done a ton of movies, including some very good ones like Unforgiven, without anyone saying that they looked like TV shows.
Jason –
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I didn’t watch Firefly or Serenity. But I probably would have liked them, as I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, and I liked everything else he’s done. And I wasn’t refering specifically to them.
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There have been other movies made by TV people, particularly here in Brazil, and plenty of them have that undefinable TV feel.
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But I don’t believe a good TV show is necessarily inferior to a good movie. But there ARE differences.
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I feel that For one, I feel TV shows are more geared towards giving us a sense of greater intimacy with those characters and settings. if anything, good TV is still like bringing those old friends to your home for a cozy evening. While good movies are more like travelling to a glorious foreign country to meet new people and have new experiences.
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One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but they feel like different experiences.
Well, it’s been seven years since I saw Serenity, so I can’t really remember specifics, but the movie felt episodic in the way television does. Plus the acting was wooden by everyone except Adam Baldwin and Chiwetel Ejiofor, in a way reminiscent of television. Most of the movie just seemed amateurish to me. Trust me, I knew nothing about this movie going in, I hadn’t even heard of Firefly until just before the movie came out, so I had no biases or preconceived notions.
I completely disagree. I didn’t feel as if “Serenity” felt like a TV episode, and I’ve SEEN films that I felt were. If anything, it felt like basically a low budget independent film. But not TV. It had scope, ambition, and it didn’t have TV directing.
Part of what gives a movie that TV program feeling is lack of imagination for your visualization. TV is often done with an emphasis on speed, speed, speed. You don’t have time for composition. You nail the actor to his mark, do your master shot, film a couple of over-the-shoulders for your coverage, say, “Moving on” and off you go. I simply didn’t see that sort of limited direction in the film, nor do I agree with the assessment of “wooden acting.” How anyone can lump “Serenity” in with, say, any George Lucas-directed “Star Wars” movie, where the acting was so wooden that at night they had to pick splinters out of the actors’ hair, is beyond me. “Serenity” sure felt like a big screen, honest-to-gosh movie to me. And I’ve sure seen some big-screen “Star Trek” films that didn’t.
PAD
Yes, that is it. I couldn’t articulate it, but what PAD said. TV-style is very noticeable.
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One of the biggest examples I’ve seen is a Brazilian movie by a guy used to directing TV soap operas. The movie had a big budget and the story was ambitious enough (the real life story of the Jewish wife of a famous Brazilian communist politician and rebel in the 1940s, who is sent to Nazi Germany by the Brazilian government in relatiation to her husband).
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But the movie had that feeling. It should have been grandiose, but the guy was too used to the same camera angle showing too people talking in some non-descript, banal room.
There were people who were surprised the boat sank in “Titanic” so why wouldn’t there be kids who don’t know the plot of “Romeo and Juliet”?
And while the prologue does spell out the ending, it is also a story convention to subvert prophecies about characters’ fates. Perhaps they were expecting some loophole to be found, or some statement about destiny vs free will.
Or the third, more likely possibility is that they simply weren’t paying any attention.
PAD
Well, sure, but you had already covered that option and there didn’t seem much more to explore on that front.
I actually *LIKED* that version of R&J – they *did* stick very close to the original Shakespearean dialog, while matching elements nicely with modern-day equivalents. But the reactions of the audience – sad, very sad.
On the other hand, I found ST:TNG:First Contact weak. I much preferred (though it wasn’t out at the time of this column’s original posting) ST:TNG:Insurrection. To me, it captured the real essence of Star Trek much better than any of the rest.
On the gripping hand, regarding the audience’s intelligence – Spider Robinson wrote of an incident in which he found scrawled in fresh concrete – “Tood + Janey”. He found it unbelievable that parents would actually name their child Tood – and that “Tood” would be of an age to be interested in “Janey” that way, and yet unable to spell his own name. I hate to tell him, though – these days, Tood very well *MIGHT* be the right spelling for the child’s name. It would surprise me no more than the 8 or 10 different ways of spelling Laiken, or the 20+ ways of spelling Brittany that I’ve seen in my work.
Yeah, I’m disappointed about the Kiss Me Kate joke. It’s fine that you didn’t care for the film, but the script used the original (or as original as you can get when multiple folios are involved) text. The dialogue is along the lines of Zeffirelli instead of 10 Things I Hate About You.
It is not remotely comparable to the Zeffirelli. Zeffirelli trimmed stuff, sure, but most of the dialogue was there intact. I’m not saying Luhrmann changed the dialogue. I’m saying it was the Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations edition of the Shakespeare: enough individual lines that you know the source material, but that’s about it.
PAD
I think we’re just going to have to disagree here. I took a Shakespeare and Film course and we studied the two films in relation to the play; dialogue’s close to the Shakespeare’s text (not to mention that the only films discussed in the class were adaptations that heavily used Shakespeare’s dialogue).
Heh. You said “gripping hand.” I saw what you did there. To the coalsack with you!
I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
x<]:o){
The Bad Clown
I had the same reaction to Romeo + Juliet as I did to Moulin Rouge: loved it for about twenty minutes, then got increasingly sick of it until I just wanted to slap Baz Luhrmann. There’s a guy who needs to take some downers, or something. Also, nobody in that movie except Pete Postlethwaite knew how to speak the Shakespearean dialogue, which was annoying.
I think my favorite modernized Shakespeare was a staged version of Venus and Adonis I once saw. Adonis was portrayed as a computer nerd, and instead of always hunting the boar, he was obsessed with a video game called B.O.A.R. It was a very interesting take, and the modernization was much more meaningful and relevant than that of R+J.
A friend of mine was the same at Romeo and Juliet. He had no clue.
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We were in a pub afterwards, the lot of us discussing the movie and Michael was very quiet. We prodded him as to why, and he said he didn’t know they both died in the movie and he was still stunned.
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We laughed a lot, and my brother said “Hey, do you know that Darth Vader is Luke’s father?” and brought on another round of laughter.
“Have you seen Passion of the Christ yet? Here’s a spoiler: Jesus dies.”
Great! Thanks a lot Michael! I was gonna watch that this weekend…Sheesh! 😉
Yeah, but, like an X-man, He got better.
Be careful about comparing Jesus to the X-Men. Someone might suggest a cross-over.
I really loved Mercutio’s speech in Romeo and Juliet and hated the rest of the movie. I’m very glad that Harold Perrineau went on to be in other things that I liked.
First Contact was the best of the Next Generation movies, IMHO.
You know who I think would be an intriguing Mercutio? Peter Dinklage.
PAD
Nice. Been a fan of his since The Station Agent. He would be perfect.
TAC
Nice. Been a fan of his since The Station Agent. He would be perfect.
TAC
Some thoughts:
Mark Lenard: Talented Actor, of course. But also a _really_ nice guy, even when interacting with people not as famous as PAD.
First Contact: I am not a fan of horror, and so I didn’t really like the borg-queen subplot. But I couldn’t even enjoy the “B” plot down on Earth, because it was just wrong. I know, books are not canon… but for me, _Strangers From The Sky_ (by Margaret Wander Bonanno) was such a perfect telling of first contact for Earth and Vulcan that I just couldn’t get into the movie’s first contact story.
Modern movie retelling of Shakespeare: I actually liked _Hamlet 2000_ , setting the play in NY (Hamlet’s father was CEO of the Denmark corporation).
I was a teenager when Romeo & Juliet was released. I remember waiting in anticipation fr this movie because it receive a lot of promotion in my favorite music radio station and MTV. I had seen Zefirelli’s version previously several times and of course knew the ending. I remember thinking that this new version was a masterpiece, so much, that I recently bought the DVD to expose my daughter to R&J and Shakespeare in general with it. 10 minutes later after putting the DVD I changed my mind, of course Zeffirelli’s is superior. I actually own that too.
I thing most teenagers were to the theather for DiCaprio, or for Claire. Of course they were not paying attention to the first scene, they were anxious to see all the kissing and romantic stuff that was promised to them on them in the movie’s promotion (Claire’s eyes and the fish, Claire and Leonardo making out between sheets, etc.).
Needless to say that DiCaprio has been doing excellent movies for the last decade and to me is one of the best actors out there.
My favorite modern retellings of Shakespeare: Throne of Blood (Samurai do the Scottish Play!) and West Side Story (Juliet doesn’t die…in body, anyway).
So, it’s 2012 and Leonardo DiCaprio is a lot more respected as an actor, and has done critically-acclaimed work in THE DEPARTED, INCEPTION, and SHUTTER ISLAND.
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So, what happened? Was he really that bad in the begining of his career and gradually learned how to act? Or is it that most critics (and anyone else trying to look hip) will automatically bash any actor that has a pretty face and plays conventional roles in movies targetted at young females?
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I think option two is correct. DiCaprio, like Tom Cruise before him, was always a good actor, but critics couldn’t praise the same guy that made teenage girls scream their hearts out.
He actually did get a lot of acclaim for his early films (he got an Oscar nomination for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which came before Romeo and Juliet).
I’d say it’s option three: he’s a very uneven actor who can do some roles well, and others, not so much. Shakespeare is clearly one of his weak areas. I also thought he was terrible in Revolutionary Road, which is one of his recent works. On the other hand, he was very good in The Aviator and Shutter Island. Overall I’d say he’s just a so-so actor who occasionally shines, usually when directed by Scorsese.
Apparently, there’s yet another Romeo and Juliet movie coming out soon, with Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet (interesting) and another pretty actor as Romeo. Natascha McElhone (one of my favorite actresses) as Lady Capulet and Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence sounds amazingly awesome. On other hand, ANOTHER Romeo and Juliet? Do these filmmakers really just not get enough of it in high school?
Check out ShakespeaRe-Told… Shakespeare set in a contemporary setting… Much Ado with Damian Lewis and Billie Piper (set in a TV Studio), James MacAvoy in Macbeth (In a resturaunt), Rufus Sewell in The Taming of the Shrew, and Imelda Staunton and others in Midsummers.
Good stuff.
TAC
Peter, speaking of movies, did you read The Hunger Games, and if so, are you looking forward to the film?
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Me, I think that despite the fact that it was entertaining, the fact that half the book was devoted to the pre-arena preparations (even if those scenes provided a good, ominous sense of dread), the arena portion was given the short shrift in terms of depth, something for which I think your work has spoiled.
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For example, Spoiler Warningwhen Katniss returns from the feast to the cave with the hyperdermic needle, I’m sure you would’ve devoted some space to Katniss’ apprehension over whether Peeta was still alive, and how she approached him in the sleeping bag with this in mind. Instead, Collins dryly narrates Katniss making it back to the cave, getting through the entrance rocks, pulling the needle out of the little backpack, and just saying, “Without hesitating, I jam the needle into Peeta’s arm and slowly press down on the plunger.”End Spoiler Warning
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There just seemed to be a sense of depth with some of the pacing and scene descriptions that was missing. I also thought making the muttations or “mutts” what they appeared to be was a lame, inexplicable decision. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed it, and I’m glad I just finished reading it yesterday, in time for when the film comes out Friday.
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What about you? Any thoughts on the book or film?