The Greatest Movie Ever Prelims: Pool D

[GLaDOS]

Spaceballs?!? SPACEBALLS?!?!

Oh shit, there goes the planet.

[GalvaTRION]

So... many... good... movies...

North by North West: My favorite Hitchcock movie, my favorite Carry Grant movie, and if anyone ever tries to remake it I'll use railroad ties to nail their feet to the ground.
The Big Sleep: Assuming this is the Bogart version.
Ghostbusters: Just one of those few movies that feels like it was meant to be- a perfect harmony of all it's various and usually completely incompatible parts.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Possibly the best action film ever made, possibly the best effects film ever made, and definitely James Cameron's best film so far (which is saying a damn lot). You think I'm exaggerating out of some fanboy weirdness, go back and take a look at it again. It is as if each frame is painted.
Pink Floyd's The Wall: Admittedly massively flawed, strange, overly emotional, and so very, very not for everyone. I just love the animation so damn much. Call this a personal choice.
National Lampoon's Animal House: One of the funniest films ever made. One of those films you can watch over and over again and laugh over and over again.
Dr. Strangelove: A perfect movie. Period.
Duck Soup: Again, one of the greatest comedies, ever. Watch it over and over- it doesn't matter, you'll laugh, and you'll discover stuff you missed last time because you were to busy laughing.
Grindhouse: Another personal choice. Saw it three times in the theater, and after each showing, the audience erupted with applause. That didn't even happen each time I saw Episode 1-3 in theaters. Apart, the films are not anywhere near as good as they are merged together, as was intended. 

[Tripe]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

As adaptations of Shakespeare go, it's pretty good. However the Olivia Hussy starring version was the origin of one of the greatest comic grotesques ever: Withnail's Uncle Monty.

For that alone I'd vote for it had it been on the list.

[RoninFox]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

If I run out of vomit, can I have some of yours? </servo>

[anais.jude]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

As adaptations of Shakespeare go, it's pretty good.

I completely disagree. They took out too many important lines and scenes (mostly the ones that made Romeo look like a douche) and the main acting was sub par (although the supporting players were really good). The only interesting thing about the film was the updated setting, but i always prefer the original time and place to new fangled ones. I mean, it was better than that Josh Harnett Othello movie (called "O") but i would put it low at the scale of shakespeare adaptations.

[Dim of the Yard]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

As adaptations of Shakespeare go, it's pretty good.

I completely disagree. They took out too many important lines and scenes (mostly the ones that made Romeo look like a douche) and the main acting was sub par (although the supporting players were really good). The only interesting thing about the film was the updated setting, but i always prefer the original time and place to new fangled ones. I mean, it was better than that Josh Harnett Othello movie (called "O") but i would put it low at the scale of shakespeare adaptations.

On the plus side, the inclusion of Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes makes it the preferred version to show to high schoolers with short attention spans.

[anais.jude]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

As adaptations of Shakespeare go, it's pretty good.

I completely disagree. They took out too many important lines and scenes (mostly the ones that made Romeo look like a douche) and the main acting was sub par (although the supporting players were really good). The only interesting thing about the film was the updated setting, but i always prefer the original time and place to new fangled ones. I mean, it was better than that Josh Harnett Othello movie (called "O") but i would put it low at the scale of shakespeare adaptations.

On the plus side, the inclusion of Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes makes it the preferred version to show to high schoolers with short attention spans.

should we really be promoting short attention spans. Those students should be hit with rods! (unless its a chemical thing. a REAL chemical thing, not mommy and daddy not wanting to parent their child)

[Tripe]

Which Romeo and Juliet?

(and if you don't think that's important, pretend it's Hamlet)

The Leo DiCap one.

I just threw up in my mouth a little

As adaptations of Shakespeare go, it's pretty good.

I completely disagree. They took out too many important lines and scenes (mostly the ones that made Romeo look like a douche) and the main acting was sub par (although the supporting players were really good). The only interesting thing about the film was the updated setting, but i always prefer the original time and place to new fangled ones. I mean, it was better than that Josh Harnett Othello movie (called "O") but i would put it low at the scale of shakespeare adaptations.

It's not one of his better plays, and he changed lines all the time. Honestly you'll have a closer approximation to actually watching one of Will's plays by seeing Romeo + Juliet than in a proscenium arch theatre.

And bear in mind that Shakespeare did his plays in Modern Dress, it just happens that his modern was the 17th century.

[Dim of the Yard]

On the plus side, the inclusion of Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes makes it the preferred version to show to high schoolers with short attention spans.

should we really be promoting short attention spans. Those students should be hit with rods! (unless its a chemical thing. a REAL chemical thing, not mommy and daddy not wanting to parent their child)

I concur, don't get me wrong.  Teachers shouldn't promote short attention spans.  But if Di'Caprio and Danes rolling around under bedsheets can get a bunch of kids to pay attention to a story they otherwise not only not give a crap about, but would avidly protest studying this story during class for no other reason than they don't like the style and think Shakespeare is a stuffy bastard and should shove his story up his ass, then I say put the damn movie on and give the professor a break!

(I... didn't have a good class experience when we were studying Romeo and Juliet.  Can you tell?)

I completely disagree. They took out too many important lines and scenes (mostly the ones that made Romeo look like a douche) and the main acting was sub par (although the supporting players were really good). The only interesting thing about the film was the updated setting, but i always prefer the original time and place to new fangled ones. I mean, it was better than that Josh Harnett Othello movie (called "O") but i would put it low at the scale of shakespeare adaptations.

It's not one of his better plays, and he changed lines all the time. Honestly you'll have a closer approximation to actually watching one of Will's plays by seeing Romeo + Juliet than in a proscenium arch theatre.

And bear in mind that Shakespeare did his plays in Modern Dress, it just happens that his modern was the 17th century.

Hey, it could be worse.  They could have given the story a happy ending.  I've read about this sort of thing happening with Hamlet, of all plays.  Trust me, when it comes down to Tybalt and Mercutio shooting at each other and Hamlet and Ophelia running away together at the end of Hamlet and living happily ever after, please pass the handguns.

[Tripe]

Yeah the was a happy ending to Hamlet for a while, and another version of Lear in which all is restored and Cordelia is triumphant.

The "Southwark Ending" predated the "Hollywood Ending" by a few centuries.

Actually my least favorite R&J is the opera, so Juliet wakes up in time to stop Romeo from topping himself but he still convinces her they both should die. 

[Dim of the Yard]

Actually my least favorite R&J is the opera, so Juliet wakes up in time to stop Romeo from topping himself but he still convinces her they both should die. 

... Bzuh?

My favorite version of R&J had to be the one in the movie Hot Fuzz, but I almost feel bad about admitting it.

[Tripe]

I rather like Men of Respect.

See I grew up in a town that had three theatres and no cinema (and even now just has two tiny screens) so I really like Shakes and his contemporaries, and all the fun you can have with productions of them.

[Tripe]

But Star Wars is a film. Films have a significantly less fluid nature than theatre.

Everytime a production is put on it's different that the last. And really Thees and Thous are really found more in The Bible than Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.  The thing that distinguishes the English of those plays tends to be more noun and verb based than pronouns though obviously general flow of speech is different but it's stylised which as a classicist you have to come across all the time.

They are from the same period of English but they're not terribly similar when you really look at them

[Tripe]

And that's fine too, I've seen some good prooductions doiing that.

God i wish Detroit had a good theatre (the Hilberry doesn't count as it does shit plays for the most part)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Is Thing from Another World the original, or the Jon Carpenter remake?