sovay: (Psholtii: in a bad mood)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2013-10-11 05:11 pm

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep

So there was this version of Romeo and Juliet Julian Fellowes was adapting. In his own words. [livejournal.com profile] nineweaving and [livejournal.com profile] derspatchel had something to say about that. Now that it's out, the A.V. Club just bypassed the language issue and wasted it on technical merits alone:

Though shot on location in Verona (in the dead of winter, if the actors' visible breath is any indication), Romeo & Juliet looks chintzy. The Capulets' masked balls is designed in Pier 1 Imports colors and texture, the lovers' secret marriage is performed in front of a green screen, and when Romeo goes up to Juliet's balcony, he climbs a plastic vine with cloth leaves. Walk-and-talk Steadicam shots abound; along with the hurried pacing (Juliet is dead for barely 10 seconds before the next scene starts dissolving in), they give the impression that the viewer is watching a hacky TV movie on the big screen, the sort of stuff that gives Masterpiece Theatre a bad name.

And I am sorry, because there are certain kinds of bad art I find absolutely brilliant, and then there's bad art that's just upsetting. Like bad food, when you expected at least something edible. It's a sloppy kind of cruelty; it wastes people's time. Not to mention whatever hope those two kids had of a career in Shakespearean drama, in which I assume they must have been at least faintly interested or they wouldn't have taken the parts.

This, on the other hand, actually angers the fuck out of me:

Speaking with the BBC, Mr. Fellowes ("Downton Abbey") has waved away criticisms of his alterations because "to see the original in its absolutely unchanged form, you require a kind of Shakespearean scholarship and you need to understand the language and analyze it and so on." With tongue presumably in cheek or perhaps just a foot deep in mouth, he added that he could do this kind of heavy interpretive lifting "because I had a very expensive education—I went to Cambridge." Recognizing that not everyone enjoys such advantages, he said, "There are plenty of perfectly intelligent people out there who have not been trained in Shakespeare's language choices."

NEWS FLASH, MR. ENTITLEMENT. YOU DO NOT NEED A DEGREE FROM CAMBRIDGE TO ENJOY SHAKESPEARE. OR PERFORM IT. OR PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT IT, REALLY. THE VERY GREAT NUMBER AND VARIETY OF HIGH SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY PRODUCTIONS OF SHAKESPEARE PERFORMED AND ATTENDED BY PEOPLE WITHOUT EXPENSIVE EDUCATIONS SHOULD PERHAPS STAND AS EVIDENCE. OR DO YOU THINK THEY'RE JUST WATCHING THE PRETTY PEOPLE'S LIPS MOVE?

Seriously, why are we still having this argument? All it does is make some people sound like even more snobbish idiots than they probably are. And it annoys the pig.

(One bright thought to be salvaged from the NY Times review. Whenever they get around to casting that Hiddleston Much Ado About Nothing, someone look up Damian Lewis for Leonato. Right around the time the Brattle premiered Whedon's version, I ran into a review that called Clark Gregg's Leonato "everything you want in a father." Yeah, right up to the point where he disowns you for a whore and falls off the misogyny cliff with your fiancé.)

[identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 09:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, ffuck you, Mr. ffellowes. Shakespeare did not have your expensive education, and he managed to write the plays just fine.

Pthbbbbt!

Nine

[identity profile] strange-selkie.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Except the ones Mary Sidney wrote! /legitimate scholarship

[identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
I do bite my thumb, sir.

Not at all.

Nine
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (WTF?)

[personal profile] larryhammer 2013-10-11 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Sisters and brothers, can I hear a *FACEPALM*?

Hallelujah!

---L.
Edited 2013-10-11 22:24 (UTC)

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 02:59 pm (UTC)(link)
(actually laughed out loud reading this comment)
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)

[personal profile] larryhammer 2013-10-12 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
This the most depressing tent revival I've ever been to.

Heh.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, for crying out loud, the whole thing about Shakespeare--Shakespeare with the original language--is that it DOES reach people--high school kids, people in Appalachian villages, people in the centers of big cities, people in jail. JUST AS IT IS THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 02:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes! There is a dispensation for translations.

[identity profile] kenjari.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 02:23 pm (UTC)(link)
And apparently, also cowboys in the old west. Shakespeare was very popular in frontier towns in late 19th century America. There were traveling theater troupes who did Shakespeare all over.
spatch: (Spike Dancing The Hula)

[personal profile] spatch 2013-10-11 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
COME ON OF COURSE SHAKESPEARE'S IMPENETRABLE, THE DUDE LIVED LIKE OVER A THOUSAND YEARS AGO AND PUT EXTRA ES IN WORDS IF HE'S SO SMART HOW COME HE MISSPELLED THE EASY STUFF AND ANYWAY DO YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THE PRETTY PEOPLE ARE SAYING WHEN THEIR LIPS MOVE NOPE I'M WATCHING THIS FILM FOR GOWNS WITH LOW NECKLINES AND HOMOEROTIC SUBTEXT IN SWORDFIGHTING

[identity profile] strange-selkie.livejournal.com 2013-10-11 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)
But... Shakespeare's ur-stories shrouded in dick jokes. For God's fluffy sake.
gwynnega: (Four OMG silvernatasha)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2013-10-12 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
I guess this idiot thinks only people with Oxbridge degrees watched and enjoyed Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

[identity profile] papersky.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
Bastard.

Biting my thumbs isn't enough because he has probably scared people off. And enough people are scared off already, dammit, dammit.

So when Z was 6, the movie version of Midsummer with Kevin Kline as Bottom came out, and we went to see it. Actually we went to see it twice in a weekend because we loved it so much. And when we mentioned this to my aunt, she said "There's educational!" and Z said "No, what are you talking about, it wasn't educational it was fun!" Because he was 6 and he was my kid and he hadn't run into any of this crap yet that said it was difficult. And because it is fun.

Western culture. It is this awesome fun thing. And you can learn what you need to know to truly appreciate it by poking around enjoying it.

I shall never watch Downton Abbey now. And he may have spoiled my enjoyment of Gosford Park. There's lots of art out there that wasn't produced by elitist philistine jerks. Romeo and Julirt for instance.

[identity profile] ashlyme.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 12:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't have enough thumbs to bite at this jerk.

[identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 01:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Once long ago Julian Fellowes hosted a tv panel game about punctuation. Which ought to have been a guilty pleasure for me, but I watched 10 minutes and turned off, having taken an instant dislike to Mr F.

I cannot tell you how much time this has saved me.

[identity profile] rinue.livejournal.com 2013-10-12 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Avoiding this movie, obviously. If you haven't already heard, this is the first movie outing for Swarovski, the "rhinestones and ugly glass knicknacks but our rhinestones are expensive you don't understand" people. They're the ones who funded it and production designed it, through their new film division.

In other words, it's not really a movie; it's an ad for shitty jewelry. Shitty jewelry which is almost entirely bought by and for teenagers who think they're high-taste romantics. In that sense, it accomplishes what it wants to accomplish perfectly.

[identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com 2013-10-13 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
This review just starts Tragedy.

Nine