The Last Movie You Saw On DVD or VHS or TV.

HMMMM, Im gonna check Netflix and see whether or not they can deliver MS3000 for downloaders.

Wow! I have been missing the winking emoticon!

Either I am going to find it a hoot or I will shut it off quickly! Thanks for the tip!

Just finished watching the 1996 film of Twelfth Night, directed by Trevor Nunn. Terrific! Beautiful scenery. Great acting. Many beautiful faces. Score by Shaun Davey. Starring Ben Kingsley, Imelda Stauton, Helena Bonham Carter. Imogen Stubbs and Steven Mackintosh played the twins, Viola and Sebastian. I hadn't heard of either Stubbs or Mackintosh. Toby Stephens, the son of Maggie Smith, who played Mr. Rochester in that rather dreadful Jane Eyre broadcast on PBS in 2006, was the easily led Count Orsino. He looked like Freddie Mercury in this film.

I watched another version of Twelfth Night, this one directed by Kenneth Branagh, a few years before the Trevor Nunn motion picture was produced. This is a filmed play: it was produced on stage then presented on television.

Branagh lacked the budget Nunn had and it shows. There is something a tad cheesey about the sets, which would have been fine live but don't translate well even to the small screen of my computer. But Branagh had one big plus that Nunn lacked: Richard Briars as Malvolio. Briars is a veteran British actor who played in the set-in-Scotland television comedy Monarch of the Glen. Early in his career, he starred in another Britcom, Good Neighbors. Seeing Briars smoothly present Shakespearean English was a treat.

Branagh cut less from the play than Nunn did, which was a plus. With a little more script, the characters had better motivation and were more easily understood. In fact, under Branagh's hands, it was obvious that the play is a satire rather than the souffle Nunn made of it. In fact, Branagh's production brought Jane Austen to mind. I can imagine Will and Jane in some sort of authorial heaven, popping corn and watching the DVD while discussing characterization.

In general, the male actors were slightly stronger in Branagh's version. That said, both Sir Toby Belches did very well. And while the man who played Feste the Fool in the Branagh production was good, he was undone by a weird hairdo. It is also hard to beat Ben Kingsley as anything. His magnetism is overwhelming. While Toby Stephens, the son of Maggie Smith, should have good acting genes, I haven't been pleased with the roles I've seen him play.

The women fared better under Nunn's direction. Or, perhaps, the women in Nunn's production are better actresses. Branagh's Olivia was borderline repellant. She was wooden, shrill and actressy. While it is almost impossible not to . . . as John Cleese said years ago about The Taming of the Shrew . . . "twinkle" when playing Shakespearean comedy, Helena Bonham Carter brought warmth to Olivia. Critics felt imogen Stubbs was insufficiently "masculine" in the Cesario side of her lead but I liked her subtle interpretation. How much reverse drag should a woman do to play a man? The star of Branagh's production, Frances Barber, was obviously competent but there was something too modern about her persona. And, if Imogen Stubbs's portrayal lacked masculinity, then so did Barber's. She seemed more like a business woman from the 1980s, "dressed for success" than a shipwrecked woman trying to earn her keep by disguising herself as a man.

Wisely, both directors set their productions in the 19th C.

I would recommend seeing both DVDs.

I watched "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" last night. A pleasure as always. But I never quite picked up on how much the Stella Stevens character looked like Little Annie Fannie from the Playboy comic strip. The only difference was her hair color.

Just finished Sir Larry's Hamlet. While I love black and white movies and wish more were in b&w, those costumes from the 1940s were awful. The women's costumes were worse than the men's.

It was nice to see a very young Jean Simmons and Stanley Holloway was hardly recognizable as the gravedigger. There were things about the movie I liked. I thought rendering some of the soliloquies as voice overs worked very well.

But Sir Larry was far and away too old to play Hamlet and his upright posture after he had been poisoned was a little too much. Better than I expected. Better than his Henry V.

I watched State of Play last night.

I really enjoyed this well done thriller, with a scruffy Russell Crowe and good supporting cast, for the first 3/4 of the film. The final home stretch of the plot, unfortunately, veered off-track, leaving me feeling let-down, confused, and somewhat annoyed when the movie ended. It's a shame when a final plot twist detracts from an otherwise good movie. They should have quit when they were ahead. This movie deserved a better ending.

They have the movie but under which conditions, I don't know. I don't feel I can afford Netflix at this time, so I did not pursue the matter.

Don't you just hate it when the ending doesn't work? Or when a good cast gives it all to a meh story?

It's not that the ending of State of Play just doesn't work, it's almost disconected from the rest of the movie. I hadn't read any reviews of this film before I saw it, but I did read several afterwards, just to try to understand that ending. I found out I wasn't alone in what I was feeling. This review captured it for me:



I feel a good film should leave me feeling satisfied with the experience I have just been through. State of Play offered a great deal of satisfaction, on many levels, and then, just when it should have come to an illuminating or thought provoking conclusion, the culmination of my satisfaction, it suddenly kicked sand in my face. I did feel robbed.

The last movie that I saw was "A Dogs Breakfast"

Interesting. "Dr. Rodney McKay" directs his first and only film and its straight to DVD. How did you manage to end up watching this folly Victor? Did you know someone in the production?

Mars the dog deserves a shot at the big time!! Will somebody give him a lead role in a Ridley Scott film?

I am still watching Branagh's four hour Hamlet as part of my Shakespeare project.

I approached it with great trepidation. It is so much better than I thought it would be and I appreciate the full play. The characters are so much more easily understood.

I do not appreciate Branagh's attempts to beautify himself with the platinum hair or to amplify that beautification with the nude flashback love scenes between himself as Hamlet and Kate Winslet as Ophelia.

That said, Derek Jacobi as Claudius and the all too often overlooked Richard Briers as Polonius made this version of Hamlet as great as it is. As one reviewer said, Briers gave us a Polonius who is not a fool, as he is largely played today. Briers, best known for his comic television roles, presents a wily, robust and masculine Polonius. Jacobi's Claudius is more well rounded than most. You believe him when he prays . . . you feel that this is a man who is beginning to realize that his villainy had gone too far.

Now, some of Branagh's soliloquies don't work. However, I like the energy he puts into his Hamlet. I winced when he threw Julie Christie as Gertrude onto her bed. Actually, I bet she did as well.

Although I hated the nude love scene flashbacks . . .a widely made criticism . . .there is chemistry between Winslet and Branagh. In fact, Branagh makes you feel that just as Claudius seems to realize that he has gone too far, there is in Branagh's Hamlet regret for having pushed Ophelia beyond endurance.

Speaking of Winslet, the thing about her is she is a woman and not an ingenue. (On another track: Helen Mirren was never an ingenue and I suspect that neither was Judi Dench.) When the young Jean Simmons played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet, she was an ingenue. Coupled with Simmons' delicate beauty, Ophelia's complete overwhelm makes sense as she unravels but the intense sorrow of an Ophelia who is a woman is a little more difficult to comprehend. However, coupled with Branagh's seeming realization that he should not have treated her as he did, eases the watcher's discomfort a bit.

A note on Gertrude, a character that has haunted me for 16 years: I have never been a Julie Christie fan but she is effective as Gertrude, particularly since she is old enough to be Branagh's mother but not too old as some Gerties have been. Also, Branagh and Christie do not play the Gertie's closet scene as an Oedipal festival. This is a Hamlet who is angry at his mother, not lusting for her.

Gerard Depardieu has a small role and here he is an actor and not a movie star. He had far too much talent to take on movie star roles and play them as a movie star. Another surprise was Charlton Heston who acquitted himself well as the player king. No hamball here.

The cameos . . . the little piece within . . . that feature Judi Dench as Hecuba and John Gielgud as Priam . . . are fun. We all love Judi and John. The close ups of Branagh's or Brian Blessed's angry eyes are not. Blessed is a tad hammy as the ghost until the Gertie's closet scene when he breaks your heart with his sorrowful looks.

I will finish the movie tonight or tomorrow.

Updated the following prose-poem after watching
Superman Returns on Australian TV 19 June 2010
---------------------------
SUPERMAN

Superman’s seventy-two-year history(1938-2010) shows us that comic books were its central texts in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by the George Reeves’ 1950 television serials and then the late 1970s and 1980s Christopher Reeve films which rewired the entire Superman canon. The Lois and Clark television series of the 1990s was framed as another central text, but the Crisis on Infinite Earths (Wolfman, Pérez et al 2001) and The Man of Steel (1986) comic book series rebooted the entire Superman-mythos again, framing a range of sources, and further extended by Superman Returns as Singer informs us in 2006.

In 2001, the Smallville television series was launched, focusing on the adventures of Clark Kent as a teenager before he doned the mantle of Superman. Adaptation to various media depends on a dialogue or oscillation between those media. If I engaged in a cross-media study of Superman, I could look back at the three-quarters of a century genesis of this transmedia dialogue. But that is not my purpose in this brief prose-poem.

Superman was first conceived in January 1932 and was arguably western civilization’s the first superhero. Superman was first portrayed as a villain named Bill Dunn who was later revisioned into a good guy for more popular appeal. Originally Superman was produced as a syndicated newspaper strip which ran from June 1938 until May 1966 before being revived between 1977 and 1983. Until the 1980s comic books had largely been ignored by media theorists, except as scapegoats in media effects debates. But comic books are on the cards for analysis in this new millennium. -Ron Price with thanks to Richard Berger, “Are There Any More at Home Like You?” in the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Volume 1 Number 2, 2008.

Why he’s been around since the Plan
began in the 1930s and 1940s. But....
no one had any idea that the two went
together: some superhero, some super-
Plan that would in time take the world
by storm and Superman certainly did..

Why, I remember those comic books
and the TV programs way back in the
1950s when I was knee-high to those
grasshoppers and the Baha’is were in
that Ten Year program that took this
new Faith to where it is today in some
200 countries—the second most spread
religion on the planet they tell me.........

Ron Price
14 July 2009
Updated after watching
Superman Returns on Australian TV 19 June 2010

Just watched Eregon. Not recommended.

just watched the not-well reviewed 2000 Hamlet with Ethan Hawke which I liked. I am not in the dress-Shakespeare-in-modern-clothes mode that I was in during my undergrad days and I was convinced that Billy S doesn't work if the actors are dressed in costumes later than the Victorian Era.

First of all, a round of applause for Julia Stiles who I felt was the best Ophelia I have ever seen. She is a small and delicate looking woman but in modern dress, Ophelia as a pawn becomes more apparent than it does in historic costumes. Despite her youth - - Stiles was only 19 when this film was made - - Stiles comes across as strong but torn by the unrealistic demands made upon her. Her acting is without hysteria which makes Ophelia's self-destruction more realistic.

Second, I loved Sam Shepherd as the Ghost. When Shepherd embraced Hawke as Hamlet, the scene was deeply moving.

Finally, modern technology was used imaginatively.

I would own both the Branagh and this version. In some ways, this modern dress Hamlet is better than Branagh's . . . in some ways.

I actually liked the modern twist of the Ethan Hawke's Hamlet. But I wouldn't go so far as to say it was better then Branagh's version.

1. Hamlet (1996) with Kenneth Branagh;
2. Hamlet (1948) with Laurence Olivier;
3. Hamlet (2000) with Ethan Hawke.

I qualified my liking with an "in some ways." I thought Hawke was better than some critics gave him credit for being. He was also closer to Hamlet's real age than other actors who played the part. I thought Julia Stiles was terrific. Yeah, I liked the modern twist as well. I think wiring Ophelia showed how much her own father used her. In fact, they used technology extremely well. I thought Hamlet faxing Claudius was a nice touch.

Just watched Seven Pounds with Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. Wow. When did Will learn how to play such a sad and tortured man? He damn near broke my heart.