That Salon review is a rave indeed. She states that she didn't like the BBC mini though, which makes me go, hmmm. Can't quite imagine how Keira Knightley (whom I find to be a fairly limited actress, although with a pleasant-enough screen presence) would be a better Elizabeth than Jennifer Ehle, but I guess I'll have to see for myself. Of course, it won't open here for another couple of weeks and I seemed to have agreed to being dragged to see "Jarhead" tonight. Bah.
Hey, if it means I don't have to read any more, woo and, might I add, a big hoo.
Xander ,'Sleeper'
Buffista Movies 4: Straight to Video
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Vonnie K - Nov 11, 2005 6:27:23 am PST #8636 of 10002
Kiss me, my girl, before I'm sick.
sumi - Nov 11, 2005 6:30:16 am PST #8637 of 10002
Art Crawl!!!
Stan Lee is doing a cameo in XMen 3.
Ash - Nov 11, 2005 6:30:20 am PST #8638 of 10002
I see... I was thinking someone was saying it was the band Collide... never heard of Howie.
Someone not liking the BBC production? Does this mean I can have Colin Firth?
Nutty - Nov 11, 2005 6:32:39 am PST #8639 of 10002
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."
Stephen Holden in the Times liked it, although he also seems to think Keira Knightley is the bee's knees. Which I doubt massively.
Nobody has yet topped Anthony Lane's hilarious disdain in the New Yorker. It was the sort of review that makes you want to watch the movie for a good laugh, and allows you to forgive yourself for liking a bit of claptrap. Everybody wins! Except keira Knightley, whose underbite he compares to the queen's from Aliens.
In other Times review news, Manohla Dargis has got it bad for Clive Owen. She dully recites how much she hated Derailed, and Jennifer Aniston, and the rest of the cast, and then has a whole paragraph about how wonderful Clive Owen is and how he could wipe the floor (and his nose) with Vincent Cassel. It was pretty funny.
alienprayer - Nov 11, 2005 6:42:50 am PST #8640 of 10002
Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -Bierce
So she's never seen the nazi kickboxing scene in Crimson Rivers then.
Vonnie K - Nov 11, 2005 6:44:48 am PST #8641 of 10002
Kiss me, my girl, before I'm sick.
Just went and read Holden's review of the new P&P, and... OK.
When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her. Her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine Elizabeth would be anyone's second choice.
That's almost in the Roger Ebert-drooling over-Angelina Jolie territory. Favorable and fair review in other ways though, so that's cautiously encouraging.
sumi - Nov 11, 2005 6:48:36 am PST #8642 of 10002
Art Crawl!!!
Terry Gilliam may be able to to get his Don Quixote movie back in production.
Gris - Nov 11, 2005 7:28:13 am PST #8643 of 10002
Hey. New board.
Wow, so, after 31 reviews, P&P has an 83 on Metacritic. As a serious metacritic follower, I can tell you that that is ridiculously high. I'm actually very, very surprised, as I expected this movie to fail at being good, but, well, maybe not.
ETA: That makes it the 5th highest score currently on metacritic, behind Wallace and Grommit, Capote, Grizzly Man, and tied with Corpse Bride (but with fewer reviews).
bon bon - Nov 11, 2005 7:29:24 am PST #8644 of 10002
It's five thousand for kissing, ten thousand for snuggling... End of list.
Nobody has yet topped Anthony Lane's hilarious disdain in the New Yorker.
His review seemed remarkably positive, to me. The thing that bothered me was this observation:
The question is not whether the director was justified in that transmutation but whether he had the choice; whether any of us, as moviemakers, viewers, or readers, retain the ability—not so much the scholarly equipment as the imaginative clairvoyance—to see Austen clearly. Maybe we are doomed to view her through the smoked glass of the intervening centuries, during which the spirit of romance, and the role of the body within it, have evolved out of all recognition.
Implying that Austen's book was typical of contemporaneous books; that novels were all comedies of manners until the Brontes came in and blew us all away with the very first overheated romances. Which is ahistorical horseshit that fundamentally misconceives the inherent satire in P&P as an irony that's only developed recently.
Nutty - Nov 11, 2005 8:19:36 am PST #8645 of 10002
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."
Implying that [...] novels were all comedies of manners until the Brontes came in and blew us all away with the very first overheated romances.
I didn't infer the same way you did; but you're right, that is an ahistorical horseshit thesis. I was quite surprised when I read Sir Walter Scott (whom Austen read plenty) and found that he was a total beach read. Like Alexandre Dumas, except several decades previous.
Actually, not to leap wildly over into Literary or anything, but it's long surprised me that romance readers, who tend to go wild for Austen, do not seem to have any interest in the emotional fulminations of Scott or Dumas. Is it the plot they have to wade through, to get to the tearful confessions of worship? I suppose Dumas' own wordiness might be a check to the ordinary romance reader as well.