Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: vyper on March 19, 2005, 06:39:19 pm
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I'm currently watching Baz Lurmans Romeo & Juliet. I was wondering what everyone thinks of these modernized versions?
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Tales for the l33t is the best remake of Romeo and Juliet. It surpasses the original.
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The problem with Shakespeare is that many filmmakers seem to see his thematic universality as an excuse to rape his plays and make retarded movies. So, there are some good ones and some god-awful ones. The best one I've ever seen is the 1993 movie of "Much Ado about Nothing". "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Rupert Everett was also decent. I never saw that "Romeo and Juliet" but it looked damn ****ty.
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hrm, I remember Hamlet (with Ethan Hawke) not being too shabby.
I actually think that modern remakes of Shakespeare are a good idea, cause all the supposedly great messages get lost on the audience when you see people running around in tights and having swordfights.
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
rape his plays and make retarded movies.
That went through my mind when I saw the title.
For his time, the man was brilliant, but they're really ****ing him up the ass, because they are fecating all over his work by putting out **** that...isn't what he wrote really.
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I've been meaning to watch Kurosawa's Throne of Blood at some point. It's MacBeth in feudal Japan, but Kurosawa made excellent movies. Expensive DVDs, though. 40 USD for The Seven Samurai when I bought it.
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The Lion King was good.
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Originally posted by Grey Wolf
I've been meaning to watch Kurosawa's Throne of Blood at some point. It's MacBeth in feudal Japan, but Kurosawa made excellent movies. Expensive DVDs, though. 40 USD for The Seven Samurai when I bought it.
Kurosawa made _some of the best movies EVER_ though my Seven Samurai copy didn't cost me anything.
Uhh.....yeah.....anyway, Throne of Blood is something I've still yet to see. I can safely persume it's a very good movie though.
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Originally posted by Carl
The Lion King was good.
No version of a Shakespeare play can compare with the original without using Shakespeare's actual verse. His language was what made his plays masterpieces.
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Yeah, but the Lion King rocked...
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I assume by "rocked" you mean "was lame and ****ty like all Disney cartoons".
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No, I mean that it was unlike all other Disney movies, asshat.
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Oh.... I've never heard it defined that way. Anyway, yeah, I liked Disney movies as a kid but now they just rub me the wrong way. They're just so corny to me-- they have no bite to them. (I'm not counting the Disney/Pixar films, which are usually excellent.) And The Lion King was no exception. (It certainly has about zero to do with Shakespeare.)
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I didn't say it did... ;)
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I know, that was just a side comment, asshat!
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:p
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Originally posted by Ford Prefect
I liked Disney movies as a kid but now they just rub me the wrong way. They're just so corny to me-- they have no bite to them.
I like them more now than i did when i was a kid. i understand them better. most of the classics from the 90's are some of the best movies ever made, animated or otherwise.
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Loin king was the only good movie Disney ever made.
there were some parts that I wish were diferent, but it's Disney.
it was based on hamlet. but everyone knows that.
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actually, if you watch the Lion King, and then read hamlet, you will find more than a few corellations. That said, i do not like modernizing shakespear's works. When i was in high school i played Hamlet, and we had a bare minimum set, i do mean bare, but to be honest, that was how it was written, it was how things were done back then, so i enjoy the memory.
That said, in film making, while i don't mind if we make movies of shakespear's works, i do mind when we have two rival gangs in LA speaking shakespear, i think it's ridiculous and an afront to history. Filming his works n location is a great thing, low riders and 9mm barettas is stupid. I have always loved west side story as a great adaptation of romeo and juliet, and i have always thought that an adaptation of Hamlet set in the mafia underworld of new york in the 40's would be good. I just wish that more film makers would stay true to Shakespear, and curb the artistic liscence that they take with his work. An adaptation is flattery, if you are not creating an adaptation, then stay the hell away from his works.
Just my two cents on the subject
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I'm sorry, but if you take away the Shakespearean verse, you take away Shakespeare. The wit, the asides, the sexual innuendos, the gallows humor, the puns-- all of it disappears when the original laguage is taken away.
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Meh, he was good for his time. But a puddle looks like an ocean in the middle of the desert, so...
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I could not disagree more. He was one of a very few artists in human history who communicated the nature of the human condition with such poignancy that their work feels eternally relevant.
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The movie version with Mel Gibson as Hamlet and Ian Holm as Polonius was pretty good, at least in my opinion. I remember seeing another version set in 19th century Europe, which was, to say the least, very strange, even if it was the original dialogue. :p As for that abomination of Romeo and Juliet with pretty-boy Leo, I wouldn't touch it with a 39 1/2 foot pole.
Rictor, you have no taste. :p
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The Reduced Shakespeare Company, that has to be the best. All plays in 93 minutes.
All of them.
I need to start reading Shakespeare, and seeing a couple of serious plays, but I don't have the time right now. I did see that Romeo&Juliet movie with that idiot Leonardo in it. Ugh. :ick: Only watched it because some idiot in English class tought it'd be a good idea.
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Forbidden Planet rocked though.
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Funnily enough, all word-to-word adaptations of Shakespeare on the big screen, set in modern times, or otherwise, look really, really artificial. For one, screen actors (with the notable exception of Kenneth Branagh) usually cannot recite Shakespeare's text, as if it were real speech, as if they were carrying real discussions, or monologues for that matter. Most notable example: Mel Gibson (then again, he wasn't that much of an actor to start with). Forbidden Planet, and Ran are masterpieces, no doubt about that, but stuff like Hamlet with Ethan Hawke, or Romeo+Juliet with Leo DiCaprio..... ugh, cringeworthy stuff.
Shakespeare is still the best on stage. But then again, I've always felt that stage plays often are much more powerful than movies, so sue me.
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i liked lion king but when the daddy lion died it was sad but at least the meerkat and the pig were funny :)
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Um lets see like every other episode of Star Trek TOS was based on The Bard... That's why it's timeless, and it also made Shakespear FUN! (it's t'was noTribble at all Captain!)
LOL!
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I remember watching Shakespeare in Love in grade nine (censored by the teacher) it was meh. That was only last year and we have to Romeo and Juliet again this year...I hate the education system.
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That's nothing. I've read Romeo and Juliet at least 3, maybe 4, times during my years in the education system. I swear, I knew every word by heart. And that's in additon to reading A Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth and watching no less than 4 Shakespeare related movies.
I am now an empty shell of the man I once was.
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I never saw the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet, but I understand it was clunky and drawn-out because it used all of Shakespeare's original text, word for word. Not a good idea when making a movie. I also I heard that the invading army at the end comes crashing through the windows, which sounds stupid.
As Mongoose said, however, the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet was very good. It wasn't a modernization, though.
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Oh yeah, that's right. Make that 5 movies.
And it true, it was very long and drawn out. I remember it being around 4 hours or so.
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I hate Shakespeare.
In fact, I long for the day when a time machine is invented, so I can go back and slap him silly.
I definately don't see why studying any of his plays is useful in English classes, especially when they're not even written in modern English.
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Well, the thing in my English class was only because the entire friggin group was clamouring about watching a movie.
And in the IB English class I'm taking we're doing Language and Culture, where Shakespeare actually has some function.
That, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company is bloody hilarious.
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Only if you're studying language and culture from several centuries ago.......
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Originally posted by aldo_14
I hate Shakespeare.
In fact, I long for the day when a time machine is invented, so I can go back and slap him silly.
I definately don't see why studying any of his plays is useful in English classes, especially when they're not even written in modern English.
Do you have any idea how much literature you're brushing off by that criterion?
First of all, Elizabethan English is technically modern English; it's perfectly understandable. Take a look at Chaucer and Shakespeare will look like Dick and Jane.
Second, what do you mean by "useful"? Shakespeare addressed aspects of the human psyche that will be relevant for as long as we are what we are, and he did it with elegance and subtle humor. If you don't like it, you're perfectly entitled, but there's no way you can argue that Shakespeare doesn't belong in an English class. Shakespeare is an icon of his language.
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I found all shakespear I was taught completely and utterly useless and without any relevance to my then-current and future education. I can say I did not learn a single thing from Shakespeares prose, and anything I did learn came from indirect explanation of the historical context...
( Shakespeares english, incidentally, is about as different from modern English as Scots is - and Scots is classed as a seperate language entirely)
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I think you were taught Shakespeare badly, then. Also, it's really best to see Shakespeare's plays acted out, because, well, they're plays and it's easier to catch some things when they're performed.
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I think it - he's - just ****. I can find things interesting (and in an academic way) perfectly well without having to be taught them, y'know.
I read two (I think) of his plays (Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice; I think I also maybe read some or all of Midsummer Nights Dream), and I found them to be completely without merit as entertainment or education. Simple as that.
I did see a video/film version (a faithful one to the book) of one of the plays, though. Did turn down the chance to go to a theatre trip, because I'd rather have had open-bowel surgery in the woods with a blunt stick.
But, hey, each to their own.
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Aldo, read Hamlet. At least do yourself that favor. I wasn't the hugest fan of Romeo and Juliet, but Hamlet, and to a somewhat lesser extend Macbeth, are two of my favorite classical works, and I'm not exactly a huge classics buff. Hamlet is one of the greatest works of English literature of all time; you should at least give it a chance.
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The thing is, I can appreciate Shakespeare on a theoretical level, as in: he was a significant force in Western literature, but I don't personally see the merits, enough to justify the hype anyway. Pretty much the same was I feel about Van Gogh, Picasso etc.