Benedick: Your wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth; it catches.
Margaret: And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but not hurt.
Benedick: A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice: I give thee the bucklers.
Margaret: Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.
Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare
I’ve been watching the Rotten Tomatoes score for The Lone Ranger slowly climb from a rather horrific 17% today, and it’s gotten me thinking about critics and reviews and the movie review industry as a whole. In fact, I read a blurb from one review that stated, “Everyone wants this to be horrible,” and it makes me wonder how much film reviews in the industry are shaped both by what people expect from a movie, what they want to happen to the movie, and what they think people expect and want the reviews to say. So if you’ll excuse the rambling, unorganized and meta nature of this post, here are some of my thoughts. Continue reading
A few weeks ago, when Much Ado About Nothing official premiered, Entertainment Weekly ran a short article about who Joss Whedon should look to for inspiration. They asked his actors from Much Ado and they came up with some interesting suggestions. Alexis Denisof recommended something by Charles Dickens. Reed Diamond and Clark Gregg wanted to do more Shakespeare, specifically Twelfth Night and my personal favorite, The Tempest. Several people brought up Anton Chekhov, perhaps Three Sisters. I’m sure there are many plays that he could adapt in a similar style, in a short period of time with a tiny budget, and I hope that more Shakespeare is in his future.
But I nearly spit water all over my computer screen when I read that Joss, himself, said, “I’m a huge Dickens fan.” Continue reading
(This was movie #4 of my 4 movie marathon day.)
How do I become friends with Joss Whedon? If this is how he spends his vacations, filming Shakespeare adaptations at his absolutely stunning house with a troupe of enormously talented actors and friends, then sign me up. Much Ado About Nothing is damn near perfect, the melding of two brilliant minds across 400 years. It’s clear that both Joss and his cast have a deep understanding both of the subject matter and the Shakespearean dialogue, and I hope we get to see a lot more of this sort of thing from him, once The Avengers 2 is done filming.
Much Ado About Nothing tells the story of two romances that take place as a prince comes to stay with a local governor. Continue reading
Last year for my birthday I had a movie marathon. I saw Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Brave and The Avengers in the theater in one day. Yes I paid for a ticket for every film. I decided to do it partially because it just seemed like a fun idea, but also because I wanted to break my previous record of 3 films in a day in the theater. I picked the day in advance, knowing which films would be available for viewing and waited for the showtimes to be posted. It all worked out, I was able to schedule everything in what I anticipated to be an ascending level of quality (I had already seen The Avengers by this point). Everything went smoothly and I had a great time and some friends even joined me for Brave.
So, naturally, I decided to repeat the event this year, making it an annual birthday tradition. I decided on having it this Saturday at the newly refurbished theater that is the closest to my house (a different theater than the one I went to last year). I chose a range of movies that would give me a variety of styles and hopefully a good scattering of showtimes. Continue reading
Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be endlessly fascinating.
When Joss Whedon announced that he had secretly filmed an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing with his acting troupe at his house as part of a stay-at-home vacation, I freaked out. I wasn’t alone in this either. The idea of Whedon doing Shakespeare is perfectly brilliant. We should have all known it was bound to happen, considering the references to the Bard in his shows and films (“We few, we happy few…” “We band of buggered.”). Take a look at the trailer and read on for my thoughts:
Welcome to “Trailer Tuesday” where I talk about trailers for upcoming movies, since I’ve always found them to be endlessly fascinating.
(Update: A new trailer has been released and you can read my thoughts on it here.) Yes, I realize that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is not a movie and that this is not technically a trailer. But too bad, because I could not be more excited about S.H.I.E.L.D., the expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which continues the story from The Avengers and is being overseen by the incomparable Joss Whedon. Take a look: Continue reading
The Love Pirate 