Good intentions

The Verona project, part XXII

A long-suspended project revived! Two "to be fair" notes: (1) seeing a Rotten Tomatoes rating in the 20s, and having disliked the majority of versions I've seen, I didn't carry much enthusiasm with me to the theater. And (2) in actual movie-theater darkness, it's lot harder to take the extensive notes I usually take; I'm not sure I can even find them all, much less decipher them. Still, I think it's fair to say that this was not very good.

Who (how old), when, how long? Douglas Booth (19) and Hailee Steinfeld (15, and yes, you have heard that name before), 2013, 2 hours.

What sort of R&J? A pair more pure than passionate, as if both know what is going to have to be done on the wedding night, but they're more comfortable making goo-goo eyes at each other. Booth is adequate to the part (which casts Romeo as a sculptor, incidentally), but Steinfeld, whom I loved in True Grit, delivers at least 75% of her lines in a wooden high-school-kid-reading-Shakespeare-in-English-class galumph.   

Seriocomic scale for first scene? scale of 1 (silly) to 10 (ominous).The film starts getting odd in the opening scene, as we begin with the prologue as writ, but then suddenly are told that the Prince has ordered a joust for Montagues and Capulets to slake their violent tendencies. And so we have Mercutio winning the ring (I dunno: check the jousting rulebook) at Tybalt's expense. So you think that ultraserious opening is in lieu of I.i, but no: later, after meeting both R & J, we get that scene, which clocks in at a full 10, with no dialogue for servants.

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? It's impossible to say: Steinfeld certainly doesn't give any hint of understanding that word, but then "art" and "thou" seem to be just as mysterious to her.   

Carrion flies? Yes! Boy, was I surprised!    

Body count? Five, Lady Montague being spared to look on while hubby shakes hands w/ Capulet.

What (else) is missing? Way too much of WS's language, much of it replaced by silly non-Shakespearean stuff like below.

What (else) is changed? Relative to how many lines are cut overall, some small parts played by good actors are boosted: the Capulets (Damian Lewis [right: Brody on Homeland] and Natascha McElhone), Friar Laurence (Paul Giamatti), and Nurse (Lesley Manville), who here is mostly an eager coconspirator. And because Balthasar is cut altogether, Bevolio has to make the trip to Mantua to take Romeo the bad news about Juliet.

What (else) is odd?

• Benvolio mentioning the possibility of moving in on Rosaline (a speaking part here) now that Hamlet has found his true love; that's the last we hear about it (or her).
• The scene in which Tybalt scolds Juliet for consorting w/ R at the ball.
• The slo-mo sequences: first look at Juliet, Tybalt charging toward the Montagues en route to killing and being killed, . . . hmmm, one other . . . R&J to the altar, maybe? Can't remember.
• Dying Mercutio telling R, re his well-intentioned intervention, that--I am not making this up!--"best intentions pave the way to hell."
• Oh! Almost forgot: after R takes his poison, J awakes, and they vigorously suck face before R dies--which makes nonsensical J's later speculation about whether enough poison remains on R's lips to do her. Then again, she's upset and probably not thinking straight.

On the other hand one unusual element is pretty cool: the film was shot in part in Verona and in Mantua.

End-of-the-play exposition? Not much, but what a weird scene, the Pollyanna Prince saying, "Yet we can take a lesson from their deaths," and Friar Laurence issuing a sort of no-fault declaration that "Their own forbidden love did murder them." Yeesh!  

Trailer

• Pompeii--Man, would I love to see a good film on A.D. 79, but this doesn't look like it.

Teach me to forget

The Verona project, part XXI, Tromeo and Juliet

Mind, I was eager to see this, and annoyed when Netflix repeatedly denied it me, but I never would have imagined it as an appropriate finale to the project. In fact, though, it's among the handful of films among the 21 that I might ever choose to watch again. If you don't know Troma, I should explain that it's a low-budget studio dedicated to making the best gore/softcore shlock comedies around, and this is an apt example: plenty of squirm (let's see: fingers chopped off, at least one eye poked out, a head injury that leaves the skull exposed, an arm and later a head lopped off [same victim], and other assorted mayhem--not to mention an up-close-and-personal consensual piercing [only time I've ever seen a stunt nipple included in the credits]), plenty of flesh (including, surprisingly, a bit of genuine eros), and plenty of laughs (some of them convulsive--and some, of course, in response to the over-the-top violence).

Another surprise was the extent to which the film tracked R&J. Wouldn't want to overstate that, but much of the story is present, and occasionally they even break out a few apt lines from the play. All in all, a very pleasant surprise--and certainly one of the most fetching Juliets I've seen. Fetching: that's a word we should all use more often.

But let's face it: the project has not been remotely as successful as last winter's Elsinore Project. Hamlet is a better play, no question about that--but I wouldn't say it's an easier play to penetrate and present persuasively. I mean, come on: young love doomed by strife--should it be that tough? But with the single exception of the sublime balletic version, nothing I screened transported me, and I handed out more one-star Netflix ratings than I had given to all the films I'd rented in the 5½ previous years.

Without question, the best straight production of the play I saw was the obscure Joan Kemp-Welch-directed PBS version from 1976; easily the worst is William Woodman's wooden 1982 production.

Who (how old), when, how long? Will Keenan (?) and Jane Jensen (28), 1997, 1¾hrs.

What sort of R&J? He, a softcore Manhattan punk; she, a surprisingly well-adjusted victim of paternal terror.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There's no direct equivalent, but the scene in which Murray (Mercutio) whacks two of Sammy Capulet's (no equivalent) fingers in a paper cutter is pretty droll; 5?

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? No, and the line is delivered by Tromeo's father, Monty Que.

Carrion flies? No.

Body count? Well, two or three among the six who die in the play: Murray and Tyrone Capulet for sure, and London (get it? major European capital?) Arbuckle a defenestrated probable. There is no Mrs. Que, but if I tell you why, you'd probably guess the big surprise ending. Also, Cappy Capulet gets his fatal comeuppance, as does another Capulet henchman. I may be missing somebody, but you get the idea. The titular two survive to make babies in Jersey.

What (else) is missing? Oh, let's just . . .

What (else) is changed? . . . leave these . . .

What (else) is odd? . . . alone.

End-of-the-play exposition? Well, yes, but it improves on WS's in that it's not recapitulation (recapuletation?) of what you've already seen or heard. Though you're pretty dense if you haven't guessed.

A dog of the house of Montague

The Verona project, part XX, Nyócker! (The district!)

This film is every bit the treat for eyes and ears (honest to god, next time I think I'll just turn the subtitles off) that it was when I first saw it, but the R&J aspect is more thematic than plot-related, unless there's something I'm not remembering in the play about going back in a time machine to kill and bury mastodons so that your community can reap oil profits millennia later. There is a sweet balcony scene, though--and also a very rough episode of verbal abuse of Julika by her father. Also drugs (provided by a sort of panhistoric combination of Friar Laurence and the Apothecary), but none to produce or counterfeit death.

Who (how old), when, how long? The animated Ricsi and Julika are voiced by L. L. Junior (22) and Andrea Roatis (?), 2004, 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Roma and Magyar, respectively, so as in other spins on the story, the conflict is between ethnic groups rather than families--or rather between families as ethnic representatives.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There are actually a couple of equivalent scenes, one between a pair of adults, the other a sort of hip-hop dance-off between Ricsi and Julika's brother Simon; both scenes are quite comic, probably 2 to 3 on the scale, but not silly.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Does not apply.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Lots of fighting, no fatalities.

What (else) is missing? Da-da,

What (else) is changed? da-da,

What (else) is odd? da-da.

End-of-the-play exposition? Wonderful end-of-the-film punch line.

You kiss by the book

The Verona project, part XIXa, My Shakespeare (2005)

Not an R&J per se, but a documentary about the director Paterson Joseph's effort, with satellite moral and philosophical support from Baz Luhrmann, to stage the play with a cast with zero acting experience from the hardscrabble suburban London community of Harlesden.

A close cousin to Shakespeare Behind Bars--not quite at that mind-blowing level, but possessed of the same sorts of small victories and inevitable defeats. And one huge triumph, as an Afghan refugee whose family won't approve of her being on the stage at all, forget about kissing her Romeo, blossoms suddenly into a trouper.

Put thy rapier up

The Verona project, part XIX, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

When this film was new, it may have been the first I ever pronounced "more interesting than good," though pretty good; I'll stand by that assessment on second screening. It is quintessential Baz Luhrmann, which is to say its virtues and its faults, its audacity and its rashness, are sometimes indistinguishable.

Baz's boldest move is to preserve (well, mostly) Shakespeare's language in a modern setting, with rival gangs--sort of West Side Story without music and dance, but also without the weak book. In that respect, it set the stage (as it were) for the more successful 2000 Hamlet of Michael Almereyda. Unfortunately, scarcely anyone here (Pete Postlethwaite as Friar Laurence is an unsurprising exception) seems comfortable with the Bard's words. Certainly not DiCaprio, and if your Romeo isn't comfortable w/ Shakespearean language, it doesn't much matter how good he looks (and he does). Danes, a year or so past her amazing performance in the short-lived My So-Called Life, is better than Leo, but inconsistent.

Still, given the low bar I've discovered these past two months, I can't but rate this one of the best--and certainly the ballsiest.

Who (how old), when, how long? Leonardo DiCaprio (21) and Claire Danes (16), 1996, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Cusp-of-21st-century. One strength of Danes--as it was in her TV series--is her ability to negotiate about a decade's worth of age and experience with a twitch of her face, and if her readings are not always perfect, her look is, her costumes accentuating her boyish slenderness (OK, flat-chestedness). One reading I haven't encountered before: in observing that Romeo's hated surname "is nor hand nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face," she gives a schoolgirl-suggestive spin to "nor any other part / Belonging to a man."

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 2, about as silly as can be.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Yes.

Carrion flies? No.

Body count? 4: Mrs. Montague is visibly alive in the final scene, and in one of the oddest of many odd Luhrmann lurches from the text, Romeo arrives at the crypt pursued by police; instead of encountering and killing Paris, he meets a departing priest and takes him hostage briefly to secure his entrance, warning the cops to "tempt not a desperate man."

What (else) is missing? Oh, much, much--some whole scenes are lopped, but perhaps more disconcerting are some weird truncations of scenes, like leaping from the Nurse's arrival in II.iv almost directly to "If ye should lead her into a fool's paradise . . . " and so bypassing almost all of Mercutio's and Benvolio's teasing. Or having R&J in their wedding bed debate whether it's morning or night . . . without any mention of lark or nightingale.

What (else) is changed? Oh, much, much. Probably the most radical, of course, is that the blades of the play all become various handguns (bearing brand names like Sword and Rapier). Now this is obviously something Luhrmann felt necessary to bring the story into modern times, but it causes some serious problems. First, it's impossible to stage a one-on-one gun battle with the suspense and tension of a swordfight; there's no athletic lunging and parrying in a gunfight, and the first shot has a pretty good chance of ending it. So to avoid instantaneous mortality, we have comically bad shooting (which, to be fair, works pretty well in the opening [comic] scene); or inexplicable shifts to fisticuffs (Mercutio vs. Tybalt), ended with a slash of broken glass; or a high-speed car chase (Romeo vs. Tybalt) ending in a rollover and a race for the loose hand cannon. Worst, we have Juliet, with no happy dagger to provide with a sheath, simply blowing her brains out. Yes, a gun is phallic, too, but it's not penetrative, and in that scene, penetration is called for.

What (else) is odd? Oh, much. Very cool: Mercutio's first appearance--dressed, remember, for the masque--is in full-throttle drag, which sets up an unusual hint of homoerotic yearning toward Romeo, which makes a hell of a lot of sense if you think about it.

Pretty cool: the crucial letter from Friar L to Romeo is sent by a FedEx-type courier, whose notice of attempted delivery (R is a just a few steps away, fungoing rocks with a hunk of rotten wood) fails to stick to the door, and his return the next day is a moment too late, as R and Balthasar are peeling out toward Verona Beach and disaster.

Not nearly as cool or as effective as a similar device in the operatic version I saw: Juliet begins to wake before Romeo doses himself, but he's too self-centered and self-pitying to notice. She seems him drink, and berates him for not leaving her a drop, "haply yet some poison . . . " thus preceding his "Thus with a kiss I die." She, deprived of the dagger/sheath line, says no more.

Not cool at all, just ignorant: police Captain Prince, who has lost just Mercutio to the feud, Paris having been spared, nonetheless claims to have lost "a brace of kinsmen."

End-of-the-play exposition? No, just the Prince's scolding, the final lines of which (like the first lines of the Chorus in I.i) are spoken by a TV anchorwoman.

For a hand and a foot, . . . they are past compare

The Verona project, part XVIII, Romeo Must Die

Who (how old), when, how long? Jet Li (36) and Aaliyah (20), 2000, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Did you not read the previous answer?

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Some humor seems inevitable in martial arts fights, but still, 8 or so.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Hard to correlate all the characters, but certainly R&J (Han and Trish) survive; Han's mother is dead long before the action begins; Mac, who's as close as there is to a Paris--an ally of Trish's father and her unwelcome suitor--is snuffed, but by Trish, not Han; Po, Han's brother and roughly a Mercutio figure, is killed under mysterious circumstances (his father's call, it is ultimately revealed); and Colin, Trish's kinsman (brother), is killed in apparent retaliation for Po's death, but ultimately we learn that it was his people who did him in. So call the body count per the play's central figures 4, I guess, but all in un-Shakespearean circumstances--everybody but the young lovers.

What (else) is missing? It's another very rough approximation of R&J, so the question doesn't really apply.

What (else) is changed? Ditto.

What (else) is odd? What is spectacular is some of the fight sequences, natch, like when Han uses Trish's body to parry as attack by a female would-be assassin, since it's against his principles to "hit a girl"; or when he uses a firehose (operative and then not) against a horde of unfriendlies; or . . . well, you get the idea.

End-of-the-play exposition? Not all at once, but yeah, we get a lot of talking to clear up all the mysteries that aren't really all that mysterious.

Come, death, and welcome

The Verona project, part XVII, West Side Story

Who (how old), when, how long? Richard Beymer (22) and Natalie Wood (22), 1961, 2½hrs.

What sort of R&J? He's more convincing as a dancer than as a romancer, and her deficiencies of accent, voice, and dance have been catalogued at length, but they can still be an affecting pair at times, and Wood's love-addled-schoolgirl performance on "I Feel Pretty," notwithstanding the looped Marnie Nixon on the soundtrack, is indeed alarmingly charming.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 6 or 7--comedy is understated but present.

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? Not directly applicable, but the lovers waste little time fretting the star-crossedness of their love.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Three: Riff/Mercutio, Bernardo/Tybalt, and Tony/Romeo; Chino/Paris (whose correspondence is less exact than the others') kills Tony and survives, Maria/Juliet survives, and Tony's mother/Lady Montague is only an offscreen presence, though to be fair, she will not hear about her son's death until after the action of the film ends, so at best things will be unpleasant for her.

What (else) is missing, changed, odd? See below for a wrap-up of these issues.

End-of-the-play exposition? No exposition, but a too long, too obvious sermon on the Wages of Hate.

I've seen this a few times before but have never watched it from this perspective: just how R&J is it, exactly? It's far from a great film (and I wasn't around for the original stage version), but it's pretty darned close to great in terms of adapting Shakespeare. Most of the key characters and narrative elements have equivalents ranging from thematically akin (say, Doc for Friar Laurence, or Anita's tormented lie about Maria's death for the miscommunication of the play) to nearly exact (the officious peacekeeper Lieutenant Schrank for the Prince, the fire escape for the balcony). It's about as complete an adaptation of the source material as can be imagined. Unfortunately, what's missing is the language. Sondheim's lyrics are very good, but the book is mostly pedestrian. And with all due respect to Leonard Bernstein's music and Jerome Robbins's choreography, without the language, you may have a fine musical, but you ain't got Shakespeare.

A cold and drowsy humour

I'm reminded of the days when I used to screen films for a festival. This is like so many entries we received: well meaning, ill written, overacted, and barely directed at all. Somehow the filmmakers always managed to attach a few B-list and/or has-been actors (like, say, Paul Sorvino, Lainie Kazan, Dick Van Patten, Connie Stevens, and Abe Vigoda) and maybe one youngster at the start of what will be a real career (see below). But what the filmmakers fail to grasp is the slightest notion how to make a film entertaining, smart, engaging, or meaningful.

The Verona project, part XVI, Love Is All There Is

Who (how old), when, how long? Nathaniel Marston (20) and Angelina Jolie (20, and saddled with a world-class bad Tuscan accent), 1996, 1¾hrs, which was the most pleasant surprise about the film, which was listed as an even 2.

What sort of R&J? Second- and first-generation, respectively, immigrant (his family coarse Sicilians, hers pretentious Florentines).

Seriocomic scale for first scene? No analog.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? No.

Carrion flies? No, but oddly, Rosario (who has just played Romeo opposite his Gina) paraphrases the lines just before about more cuddly animals.

Body count? No one dies, though it's touch and go for a dove at one point.

What (else) is missing? See above.

What (else) is changed? See above.

What (else) is odd? It's odd that so many filmmakers so ineptly riff on material that would seem so fecund.

End-of-the-play exposition? Actually, yeah, there is, though less than in the play.

It's a sad commentary to have to admit that Underworld was the highlight of this weekend's Verona triple. (Oh, and by the way: three from Netflix again because they gave me that one-disc bonus for the third time.)

Purple fountains

Two things I'll bet no one else renting this this weekend wondered during the opening sequence:

1. Who's supposed to be "Romeo"?
2. Are they saying "lycan" or "lichen"?

Was it Wikipedia, Netflix, or perhaps an actual human interface event that led me to believe that this is an R&J modernization? Well, there is an ages-old war between "families" (vampyres and lycans [werewolves, as vampiric lycan-killing specialist Selene explains to recently-bitten-and-thus-lycanembryonic Michael, exactly at the moment we expect her to]), and across those forbidden lines Selene and Michael share a love demanded by nothing but the script, but that's pretty much as far as it goes. Which I wouldn't mind, except that it's a pretty lame film, too. I will say this: Kate Beckinsale is more convincing as a ballsy para-animal-control agent than she is in roles that actually call for acting. Oh, and another thing: regardless of the special effects and the makeup, you're not fooling anyone: Bill Nighy is Bill Nighy.

The Verona project, part XV, Underworld

Who (how old), when, how long? Ostensibly Scott Speedman (27) and Kate Beckinsale (29), but it turns out that there was a more R&Jish relationship centuries ago (and the R in that version is played by Michael Sheen, resembling neither Tony Blair nor David Frost); 2003, 2hrs.

What sort of R&J? Hunky & lycra-clad, respectively.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? There actually is a fair analog of that scene, and it's all for blood. (In fact, a hint of a sense of humor would have helped the whole film immeasurably. I'm trying to think of a single moment that suggests anything but an earnest insistence that we take all the goofiness 100% seriously; coming up empty.)

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? Oh, golly--in terms of WS's play, NA; but in the film, countless dozens.

What (else) is missing? Any sense of Shakespeare--or of recognizable drama, for that matter.

What (else) is changed? NA.

What (else) is odd? Uh . . .

End-of-the-play exposition? NA.

The demesnes that there adjacent lie

OK, seriously: next time I think it would be "fun" to include a softcore porn example in a thematic project, will someone please remind me that two of the dozen or fewer Netflix rentals I've rated one star were this and the Chinese soccer flick I watched during the run-up to the World Cup? Only my residual academic curiosity and commitment could compel me to stay to the 96th minute.

The Verona project, part XIV, Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet

Who (how old), when, how long? Forman Shane (porn actors don't have ages) and Deirdre Nelson, 1969 (OK, I guess the many Laugh In allusions, including far too many sock it to me's and beautiful downtown Veronas, are not the anachronisms I thought), 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Active and indiscriminate.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Well, it's clearly supposed to be really funny . . .

"Wherefore": do the straight-to-videomakers know what it means? Nope, and they make it clear twice.

Carrion flies? Well, metaphorically and critically, it's swarming with 'em, but no.

Body count? This is kinda funny/interesting: I wouldn't want to go so far as to suggest that the "film" makers had any interest in adhering to Shakespeare's plot, but at some point it occurred to them that it would be useful to have Romeo banished (not banishèd), so we're told that he has (off-camera) suddenly killed Tybalt, who is never seen or otherwise heard of. Nobody else dies, though the titular (!) characters end the flick together in a closed casket, both having drunk Friar Laurence's potion, but now waking up and . . . oh, you get the idea.

What (else) is missing? Please.

What (else) is changed? Please, please.

What (else) is odd? Nothing so odd than that I watched the damn thing.

End-of-the-play exposition? No, I guess that's the best thing about it.

Oh, I am Netflix's fool

OK, so look: I don't have to tell you how much I love Netflix, how much I depend on them. (Yes, I are a edditer, but yes, I am going to refer to Nf as a plural entity.) But sometimes even their generosity can be a burden.

Two weeks ago, in reparation for a trifling delay in shipment of a disc, they sent me an extra disc, a third on my two-at-a-time-unlimited plan. So I watched three R&Js the weekend after Xmas, no prob. Two woulda been fine, but three, no prob--nice of them in any case.

But when you get one of these ad hoc extra discs, the way it works, to get you back onto your plan's regular level, is that they wait until they get two discs back from you before they send the next one. Well, something went awry and they sent me one for each of the three I returned. So this past weekend I again had 3 R&Js to watch. ("You could just hold onto one for a week," someone told me. Yeah, right. And I could, in theory, just close up the bag of Fritos and put the rest in the cupboard for another time, couldn't I?)

OK, 3 R&Js, 3 nights in the weekend. In what order? Well, one is a pretty much full-length stage production listed as 167 minutes--it's not going to be the Sunday screening, 'cause that's a school night, right? But the other 2 are very short: a modern Brazilian spinoff of the story listed at 90m and an operatic version listed at a scant 75. So which have DVD extras I can steal for a workout or three? The modernization only. Fine: that's Friday night, the long one is Saturday, and the short opera is Sunday night, so's I can get to bed nice and early and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the start of the first five-day workweek in almost a month.

Except . . . well, see below. It's about 6p.m. now, and I'm going downstairs to watch the rest. I'm at about 2¼ hours now, and we've just gotten to Juliet refusing to marry Paris after her husband has skedaddled. Clearly, as in the play, mistakes were made.

The Verona project, part XIII, Roméo et Juliette

Who (how old), when, how long? Aha! I've figured out the source of the confusion. Per Netflix, this is a 2001 production of the Charles Gounod opera that runs 75m and stars Roberto Alagna (then 37) as Romeo. IMDb confirms the existence of such a production, though it lists it as 2002 and 80m. But the Juliet in that production was Angela Gheorghiu (35, and Alagna's wife); what Netflix gets right is that it is Gounod, Alagna is indeed Romeo, and his Juliet is Leontina Vaduva, which makes this the 1994 production, when she was 33 and he 30. Oh, and that also makes it 3hrs.

What sort of R&J? She's a lot more sopranoish than girlish, if you take my meaning, but she is beautiful, and they make, if you will, beautiful music together.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 10: a totally unfunny bloodbath.

"Wherefore": do the operamakers know what it means? Yes, though the libretto is in French and the word's never used: the balcony scene was the first time I started to feel comfortable with the Shakespeare-ness of the opera, the first time they really seem to have found the Bard's spirit.

Carrion flies? No--in fact, we don't have that whole scene of Romeo pissing and moaning about his fate.

Body count? 4: Mercutio, Tybalt, and the young lovers. The crypt scene includes only R&J, so no Paris to be killed by R, no Montague to report his new status as a widower. That final scene is pretty astonishing, about which more below.

What (else) is missing? In something that riffs in a whole different genre, it's almost as interesting to point out the unexpected things that survive, like Capulet's telling the young revelers what a party maniac he used to be: what an odd thing to leave in (though admittedly, much odder when I thought the whole thing was going to be over in less time than a soccer match). Likewise, Juliet has her vision of Tybalt's ghost, lines that are often cut from productions of the play and which arguably detract from her will-I-or-won't-I-down-the-draught focus.

After the opening fight, the chorus provides even more of a plot summary than does WS's, whereupon we cut straight to the masque, which is where we first see Romeo (and where Paris--and Romeo, and we--first sees Juliet).

There's much condensation of scenes, which I suppose could constitute either "missing" or "changed": only one visit is made to Friar Laurence's cell; Juliet shows up after Friar L has scolded Romeo, and they are married. We cut straight from Tybalt's death to the bridal suite, postcoital, and after R escapes, Friar L is summoned to comfort J, basically making a sleeping-potion housecall. That's the last we see of Friar L, who, it occurred to me this time, is essentially the Wizard of Oz of the play: he makes great promises, but he comes up way short in delivering. In this version we never know why Romeo hasn't gotten the message, only that he hasn't, and as I've said, the Friar doesn't even make a too-late appearance at the crypt. What a loser.

What (else) is changed? Juliet utters the line about a coffin being her wedding bed only after she learns who Romeo is, not, per the play, as a conditional based only on the stranger's as yet unknown marital status.

Weirdly, the Nurse must have a name, and the name she is given is Gertrude, which has some pretty heavily dissonant Shakespearean associations, n'est-ce pas? Equally odd, perhaps, is that she is the object of Tybalt's flirtation.

The central fight begins not with Mercutio but with Romeo's page (here for some reason named Stephano rather than Balthasar, and played by a cute-as-a-Veronese-bug young woman, Anna Maria Panzarella), throwing around some ill-advised testosterone in the presence of Capulets (actually, now that I think of it, sort of a substitute for the unemployed comic element in the play's opening scene). Mercutio comes to the boy's much needed aid, and then things follow per the play--except that Tybalt dies in Capulet's arms and whispers to him his dying wish, which only later do we learn is that Juliet should marry Paris. Oh, and there's no Prince; the civil honcho, who first appears after Tybalt dies, is "the Duke." Don't ax me why.

What (else) is odd? How about this: although Mercutio asks Romeo, per the play, why he came between Mercutio and Tybalt at the moment of the fatal stab, in fact the way the scene is blocked Romeo is nowhere near the action when that happens. Weird.

Much of the opera's final action is odd and extratextual, and yet that is the work's strongest section, often precisely because of the changes, which are almost all dramatically intelligent. To wit: Juliet finally drinks her potion, but it is so slow-acting that we then move to the house's chapel, where J kneels and her attendants prepare her for her wedding. As she becomes progressively less steady, the guests, the 'rents, the groom, and the bishop (no mere Franciscan to perform these society nuptials) arrive. Finally she collapses in her fathers arms, and after a lot more singing than is strictly necessary, the act ends and we move to the crypt for the big finale.

For that, Romeo arrives (how he knows part of what has happened and why he doesn't know the whole story you just have to use your knowledge of the play for--and in fact, for a while there's some ambiguity about exactly how much he does know, but it turns out to be exactly the textually fatal amount), looks at and sings to the "dead" Juliet for a while, then downs his fatal draught. But pace the play's "O true apothecary! / Thy drugs are quick!" this is another slow-acting potion, which allows R to live long enough for J to wake and for them to sing a triumphant duet until that pesky little detail R has allowed himself to forget for a moment asserts itself. One really nice moment: he reprises the lark/nightingale debate from the wedding-bed scene, the lark here representing the day of their continuing love, the nightingale the undeniable night of his death. So she stabs herself--he's still not dead, mind--and when you're assuming that R's as yet unsung famous dying word will now be sung in unison, they sing not "Thus with a kiss, we die" but instead a plea in unison for God's forgiveness--a legitimately Elizabethan ontological concern, yes, given that suicide was a sure ticket to hell, but a really disorienting conclusion here.

End-of-the-play exposition? Nope, just a long curtain call.

I dunno--maybe I live another 55 years I'll get some culture, and I do admit I liked the part of this I watched tonight a lot better than most of what I watched last night, but opera is still a once-a-year sort of taste for me. I lack the critical sense and vocabulary to assess it fairly, but I also lack any ambition to acquire that sensibility and vocabulary. This was OK, take it all around--but geez, it was long!

So light a foot will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint

The Verona project, part XII

Who (how old), when, how long? Patrick Ryecart (25), Rebecca Saire (14! and looks it! and sounds it!), 1978, 2¾hrs.

What sort of R&J? He: bland; she: so very young. This entry from the Beeb's Bard-o-copia is one of only 3 R&Js I'd seen before the project, and though (because?) that was nearly 30 years ago, when I was in grad school, I would have made it the front-runner for the best of the bunch. Sadly, though, it's mostly just ordinary, certainly no better than the other BBC one inexplicably made only a bit earlier. But what makes this notable is its breaking through the midteen barrier for Juliet; I wouldn't have thought that could make such a huge difference, but it really changes everything. Saire's acting is generally in the B- range (though in the III.ii exchange when the Nurse brings the [at first confusing] news of Tybalt's demise, she raises her game to A level), but that adolescent face and carriage and that little girl's voice all raise the stakes--particularly, say, at the start of that same III.ii, when married-but-virginal Juliet, unaware that anything is awry, urges night to come asap, "And learn me how to lose a winning match, / Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods." She speaks the lines earnestly, but it's clearly academic and quite mysterious--as it would be, wouldn't it? As young as Olivia Hussey was when she played Juliet, and as well as she carries off the role, the balance of her inexperience with her sexual eagerness is never altogether convincing. With Saire, it can't help but be. And that makes a mostly B- performance about as affecting as any performance can be. Unfortunately, there's no indication that her Romeo is worth the candle. But then that would be true to a 13-year-old in first-love, too, wouldn't it?

Seriocomic scale for first scene? Unfortunately, though the comic lines are mostly present, they're not played comically, so, oh, 7.

"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Not absolutely clear, but given the production company, how could they not? Certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt. Though see below for a rather grotesque failure to understand the text.

Carrion flies? Yes--he even illustrates by snatching one out of the air.

Body count? The full 6.

What (else) is missing? For a nearly 3hr version, there's a lot of streamlining: much of the musicians bit in IV.v (a common cut, but more often hacked completely); the Nurse's revelation to Juliet at the end of III.ii that she knows where to find R, and Juliet's vouchsafing to Nurse of her ring (though when N then turns up at Friar Laurence's, she gives R said ring); R's recollection in V.i of having seen an apothecary shop--instead, he goes straight from "O mischief, thou art swift / To enter in the thoughts of desperate men" to "What, ho! Apothecary!" Swift mischief indeed!

The most disturbing deletion is the line after Juliet tells her mother, "Indeed I never shall be satisfied / With Romeo till I behold him--dead--" Uh, it's kinda important to continue that with "Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed." In other words, "dead," which she means for her mother to read as applying to J's wished-for view of R, in fact applies to "my poor heart [which is] so [much] for a kinsman [her husband, but Mom is to understand it as her cousin] vexed." It's an amazing and vital part of one of my favorite double-entendre-chockablock passages, and its excision suggests a serious failure in the director's reading.

What (else) is changed? A couple of locations are counterintuitive: Benvolio (who has in I.i been humbled and then cut by Tybalt), first finds Romeo in the countryside, so when R says "O me! What fray was here?" he must gesture at Benvolio's bandaged hand rather than, as typically (and sensibly) staged, the mess in the piazza. And after R kills Tybalt (stabbing him repeatedly, with malice aforethought, rather than the single almost accidental poke that seems traditional), III.i shifts from the piazza to the palace for the Prince to solicit Benvolio's testimony and pronounce R's banishment.

What (else) is odd? R & J dance at the masque in I.v, which is not unique to this production, but it seems to me that if you're going to have them dance, then you want to cut the second half of the later line when J asks Nurse, "What's he that follows there, that would not dance?"

Odd in a good way: Friar L palms his vial at an opportune moment after almost everyone has left seeming-dead J's chamber. In one other version I recall seeing J having time to dispose of the vial after drinkings its contents, but mostly it just doesn't seem to be an issue that her people are apt to find an empty medicine flask in the dead girl's bedroom.

Odd in a vile way: the Apothecary (whose "poverty but not [his] will consents" to sell R the outlawed poison--who is, in short, profit-driven) is a hook-nosed, heavily accented Central Casting Eastern European Jew. As, no doubt, he often was in Shakespeare's time, but still.

End-of-the-play exposition? No, this is handled beautifully: Friar L delivers the first five lines of his confession to the Prince outside the crypt, then we go inside with Capulet and wife, who are soon joined by the chiding Prince.

Most familiar faces: John Gielgud as the Chorus (that's a sonnet each at the start of acts I and II, if you're counting), 31yo Alan Rickman as fiery Tybalt, and John Paul as Montague, who I finally figured out played Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in I, Claudius. Oh, and it wouldn't do not to praise the performance of Celia Johnson, the most convincing and engaging Nurse I've seen thus far.

Deny thy father and refuse thy name

The Verona project, part XI, O Casamento de Romeu e Julieta (Romeo and Juliet get married)

Who (how old), when, how long? Marco Ricca (42) and Luana Piovani (28), 2005, 1½hrs.

What sort of R&J? Older, yes, but kept immature by futebol fandom: his "family" supports Corinthians, hers Palmeiras; think Red Sox vs. Yankees raised to the level of Israelis vs. Palestinians.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? After a nice prologue of little Julieta's life in green, a perfect stadium scene to open, establishing the depth of the conflict and allowing sympathy for both houses, just as in the play. This suggests a fairly close hewing to the Shakespearean plot, which, unfortunately, does not materialize.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Does not apply, although there is a nice exchange between the titular characters about how they got their names.

Carrion flies? NA.

Body count? One Palmeiras shirt, microwaved to shreds.

What (else) is missing? Pretty much everything but the basic love story across battle lines. Don't get me wrong: I'm such a sucker for Brazil and futebol that I liked the film a lot. But at the same time I couldn't avoid thinking how good it could have been had it followed either of two paths suggested early on. It could, for one, have carried through a serious feminist theme in which Julieta fights Brazilian paternalism to lead the Palmeiras women's team. (She does get that prize in the end, but without our seeing that she's done much to earn it.) Or it could have tracked R&J closely--not at the cost of humor, and certainly not to a tragic effect, but making much cleverer use of the obvious parallels available and steering clear of the farce and melodrama that are the weakest elements of the film as it stands.

What (else) is changed? Covered.

What (else) is odd? Also pretty much covered.

End-of-the-play exposition? The film ends with the wedding promised in the title, and the ceremony begins with one last fine Shakespearean touch, as the priest recites the first lines of the Prologue (with "fair São Paulo" instead of Verona, of course).

The measure of an unmade grave

The Verona project, part X

Who (how old), when, how long? Clive Francis (18) and Angela Scoular (19), 1965, 1¾hr.

What sort of R&J? A Romeo who is under the impression that he is playing Hamlet; a Juliet who is better than the production.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? In this version the scene begins after the comic lines; some blood is shed, but no fatalities.

"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Yes, though the sequence is delivered with odd cheer, almost giddiness, as if Juliet doesn't really think the Montague issue is that big a deal.

Carrion flies? No.

Body count? The full six.

What (else) is missing? This isn't an interesting production, but it is the one so far for which it would perhaps be most interesting to track line by line what is cut, what included. Since the runtime is but an hour and three-quarters, lots and lots is cut, of course, much with an axe rather than a scalpel, but then unusual things survive, such as the Nurse's repetition of her husband's declaration that Juliet, once she has grown herself some ballast, will fall on her back rather than on her face. Also, the scene in which Capulet reproaches his marriage-resistant daughter plays out at length--but the one before that, where she bandies with her mother over the "revenge" against Tybalt's murderer, is truncated--and the Nurse is excised from the scene altogether. Gone also is the scene in which Romeo tells Nurse of the wedding plans, but only after he and his friends taunt her--and then Nurse doesn't tease Juliet before giving her the news. And on and on: the Mercutio-Tybalt duel scene begins with Benvolio's "By my head, here come the Capulets," and that seems to reflect the general practice: cut the comic exchanges that don't directly advance the plot. Which strategy, of course, drains much of the life from the play, and encourages the melancholy-Veronan stance of R.

What (else) is changed? Not much changed, apart from truncations: the scene in which Romeo buys his fatal poison, e.g., ends with his first line to the apothecary. Oh, here's something interesting: III.iv, wherein Capulet promises Juliet to Paris, takes place at Tybalt's bier rather than chez Capulet.

What (else) is odd? Much, but the oddest, to me, is that the Romeo-Juliet morning-after-the-wedding-night scene takes place in vertical posture: they're standing on the balcony, never in bed. In fact, everything that suggests that sex will take place or has taken place ("Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds . . . And bring in cloudy night immediately") is missing (as is the Juliet-Nurse interview that follows those lines). Also a little odd: Romeo, after dying with a kiss, falls on Juliet's right boob--but when she wakes, she doesn't notice the weight.

End-of-the-play exposition? No, but the excision is awkward, since the Prince reads Romeo's letter and confirms that it "doth make good the friar's words," which the Friar hasn't actually spoken.

It's a pretty poor production, take it all around--I might in fact judge it even worse had I seen a version this weekend that didn't suck altogether.

West-of-Florida story

The Verona project, part IX, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef

Who (how old), when, how long? Robert Wagner (22) and Terry Moore (23), 1953, 1¾hr.

What sort of R&J? Spongediving, and thoroughly unappealing (and in Wagner's case, about as convincingly Greek as Kirk Douglas a couple of years later in Ulysses).

Seriocomic scale for first scene? No equivalent scene; it's 17 minutes before the conflict is established between Greeks and "Conchs" (i.e., gen-u-wine Americans), another few minutes before the first confrontation, which is not at all comic but not at all threatening.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? N.A.

Body count? One: Mike Petraikis (Gilbert Roland), father of Tony (the Romeo character, Wagner), dies from a serious case of the bends only indirectly attributable to the conflict.

What (else) is missing? Pretty much everything.

What (else) is changed? Pretty much everything, for the drabber.

What (else) is odd? Have you ever seen an octopus in an aquarium? No, you haven't, right? Because they're always hiding, right? Because they're scared shitless of us, right? So what inspires one to attack Tony here?

End-of-the-play exposition? Rather, end-of-the-play reconciliation of everyone w/ everyone else. Oh, golly, it's heartwarming.

There's precisely one thing interesting about this film: in 1953, four years before West Side Story opens on Broadway, we have at least the bare bones of the R&J story played as a turf war between "Americans" and immigrants--and the Romeo character is named Tony (actually Adonis here, Anton in the Laurents/Bernstein/Sondheim version). Oh, and there's a scene here where everyone makes nice when the cops come that is revived in the later incarnation.

Some want of wit

The Verona project, part VIII

Who (how old), when, how long? Alex Hyde-White (22) and Blanche Baker (25), 1982, 2¾hr.

What sort of R&J? Bland, bland, bland; Baker performs like an unpromising high school student. She delivers exactly one line--Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?--with conviction. The rest might as well be silence--much would be better thus.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 5, I suppose: it's not silly at all, but neither is it deadly.

"Wherefore": do the playmakers know what it means? Yes, I'll grant that Baker's wooden reading of the sequence makes it clear that she knows that the "wherefore" leads to the "Deny thy father."

Carrion flies? Yep; but Hyde-White renders the bizarre bit uninteresting.

Body count? This is interesting, for in a nearly complete production, somehow Lady Montague is spared. The other 5 all die, though.

What (else) is missing? Until late in the fourth act, I was under the impression that the production was virtually if not literally complete. But from that point on, there's a lot of truncation: almost all of the musicians' scene sequence that ends the act, e.g., and much of the dialogue (and the presence of Paris's page) from V.iii, the play's final scene.

What (else) is changed? The end of V.i, wherein Romeo visits the apothecary, is presented as a visual flash-forward while he recites the lines describing his earlier impressions of the man (who thus gets to speak no lines, but just hands off the vial).

What (else) is odd? I guess the oddest (and most ominous) thing is that the biggest name in the cast belongs to the woman who plays the Nurse, and that name is . . . Esther Rolle. Her performance is scarcely dy-no-mite. Oh, another odd thing: Romeo's poison is so fast-acting that although he can say "Thus with a kiss I die," he can't actually get his mouth near J's face before expiring.

End-of-the-play exposition? In perhaps the smartest decision in the production, the Prince cuts off Friar "I will be brief" Laurence's long-winded account and leaps straight into his final scolding of Montague and Capulet.

This is about as close to a complete waste of time as Shakespeare gets.

Wherefore

The Verona project, part VII, Rome & Juliet

Who (how old), when, how long? Mylene Dizon (29) and Andrea Del Rosario (about the same, I guess; turns out she's an international model who has appeared on the cover of Maxim, but she's apparently secretive about her age), 2006, 2¼hr.

What sort of R&J?Filipina lesbians. As it turns out, this is scarcely a riff on Shakespeare's play at all. Aside from the names of the protagonists (whose love is not star-crossed, only culture-crossed), the only connections to R&J I noticed were (1) the line, spoken by Rome of Juliet, "She speaks"; (2) a crucially misdirected message of sorts; (3) a late scene in a cemetery; and (4) Juliet in a death-seeming coma near the end.

Seriocomic scale for first scene?As is the case with most of the rote questions, there's no analogue in this film.

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? --

Carrion flies? --

Body count? Juliet's father (Flores, not Capulet--an interesting choice of names, since it's Rome's occupation as a wedding planner [including, of course, flower choices] that sets the plot turning), disabled apparently by a stroke since before the start of the action, suffers a fatal heart attack, apparently in response to the discovery of Juliet's relationship with a woman, or (I'm inclined to see it this way) in response to his wife's hysterical response to that discovery. Nobody else dies, but as suggested above, Juliet flirts w/ death.

What (else) is missing? Let's just wrap everything up here: it would be easy to dismiss this as a badly written parable of intolerance, with grotesquely bad interludes of junior-high-level "poetry" and with sound that sometimes seems to have been recorded on a portable cassette player. That would not be incorrect, but it would be incomplete. For one thing, as bad as the sound is, the camerawork is that good: it has as lush a look as the best indies I've seen. More to the point, if by "badly written" you mean pedestrian language, yes, definitely (and even though it's about 75% subtitled Tagalog, there's enough English for me to feel pretty confident in that assessment). But if you mean badly plotted and predictable, well, not so fast. And if you mean lacking in any sort of intellectual or emotional appeal worth appealing, no, I'd say not. The setting of the story in a weirdly Catholic culture distances the theme of intolerance from 2008 California and Arkansas, say, but in doing do provides a useful perspective. To have a character ask what's so damned wrong with loving whom your heart tells you to love, and why people can't accept that, and why God can't accept that--well, that may seem pretty simplistic, but really, do you have a better way of articulating the question? I didn't love the film, and I doubt I'd ever see it again, but it choked me up once or twice, and that I did not expect.

What (else) is changed? --

What (else) is odd? --

End-of-the-play exposition? --

Give me, give me! O, tell me not of fear!

The Verona project, part VI

A number of things I hate about this inexplicably much-loved version:

1. The MUsic. Good christ, I don't know whether Nino Rota is to blame, but virtually all the music is too loud, too dramatic, too much. And when the masque grinds to a halt for a vocal of the love theme . . . yuck! The music swells at all the obvious moments: at the first kiss, e.g., and then enough to drown out "My only love, sprung from my only hate"--kinda important line, methinks.
2. The banishment of most of Shakespeare's comedy. Did Zeffirelli not notice that this is often a very funny play? Apparently so--I should check my post on his Hamlet . . . well, no, I don't seem to have said that it was humorless, but I also don't find any mention of any of the humor in that play. Part of the problem is that funny lines are simply cut--see remarks below about the opening scene, e.g. But part of it is that the "humor" that survives seems mostly frantically forced. It's fair to play Mercutio as manic-depressive, but if you play him as simply angry and humorless, you're not doing the play. Even the Queen Mab speech is angry. He gets a laugh or two before his fatal duel w/ Tybalt (an extraordinarily dull swordfight, by the way--and the comparative liveliness of the succeeding Tybalt-Romeo tilt suggests that John McEnery [Mercut.] simply couldn't handle a blade), but all the comedy of his death scene comes from precisely the tragic source: his friends' failure to recognize the gravity of his wounds; for his part, he is simply angry (though he pronounces "A plague on both your houses" only once--or at least three times fewer than Romeo calls himself fortune's fool after poking Tybalt [a grotesquely lush Michael York]) .
3. The pointless changes and omissions. Look, I don't think that every line is necessarily sacred, but why would you cut "It is the East, and Juliet is the sun"--half of what may be Shakespeare's most famous couplet ever? Is it so you can get more of that damned song in the previous scene? Why would you leave Rosaline unmentioned until Friar Laurence chides Romeo for his inconstancy, thus leaving the impression that pre-Juliet, Romeo has simply been in love with . . . love? (This is true, of course, but contrary to what any courtly lover would project--which is to say that his love for R may have been a complete sham, but he still needed a Rosaline as the receptor of his pro forma love rays.) When the Nurse brings tidings of the duel, why would you deny Juliet that excruciating moment of uncertainty about who exactly Nurse is describing as dead? And why would you deny her that moment of cursing her beloved husband before cursing herself for her curse? I mean, c'mon, Zeff: there are things that are important, dig?
4. The overacting, the underacting, the acting acting. There is one actor who pretty consistently merits the Bard's words, and that is the teenage Juliet, who is mostly at least good, and who, once Nurse turns on her, telling her that Romeo is as good as dead and she might as well marry Paris, turns the character into a remarkable independent feminist hero. It's in the text, but it's rarely played, and Zeffirelli deserves some credit for that. On the other hand, he deserves the blame, then, for not leading into that with that wonderful double-entendre banter with her mother at the start of the scene about wanting Romeo close at hand. That sequence--one of my favorites in the play, and one that sets the stage for her feminist rebirth--is cut altogether. Likewise, Friar Laurence offers the sleeping potion without any threat by J of suicide--and worse, she never has a moment of doubt about whether the potion is really a poison.

Who (how old), when, how long? Leonard Whiting (17) and Olivia Hussey (16), 1968, 2¼hrs. Whiting is not as bad as he seems likely to be at the start, when he often seems uncomprehending of his own lines, but he's mostly just a pretty boy.

What sort of R&J? They can't keep their hands and mouths off of each other! But again, this is sort of an easy '60s way to show what the language is perfectly capable of expressing without the over-the-top and culturally inappropriate physicality.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? See above re "lack of comedy": all of the comedy is cut or blunted in this scene, so I'd say 9.

"Wherefore": do the filmmakers know what it means? Absolutely: Hussey reads that sequence beautifully. She accents the second syllable of wherefore, e.g.: nonstandard, but legitimate in context.

Carrion flies? No: that scene is comically hacked, beginning w/ R blubbering on the floor. On the other hand, after Nurse arrives and Romeo feigns suicide, Friar Laurence not only calls him woman and animal but actually pops him one in the face.

Body count? 4: Paris (perhaps the most ludicrously vapid and effeminate Paris ever, incidentally) is a no-show at the crypt, and Lady M survives as well.

What (else) is missing? I've covered the worst. Romeo makes no on-screen trip to the apothecary, but I'd call that a fair omission.

What (else) is changed?

• Capulet calls to Peter when he wants to send his invitations (a conflation made in the Cukor version)--but the scene is cut before the servant arrives, making the text change pointless. Presumably an editing issue.
• When Capulet tells Tybalt to chill after the latter has recognized Romeo at the masque, Zeff bizarrely gives Lady C the lines "You are a princox, go / Be quiet," and even more bizarrely has her deliver them ironically, actually serving as an incitement to Tybalt. Then she continues the speech, but to her husband: "For shame! I'll make you quiet." There's no textual justification I know of for any of that.
• The Romeo-Nurse scene, in which they arrange the marriage logistics, ends in the church, with Romeo throwing a kiss to the icon of the crucified Christ.
• When Romeo leaves Juliet's balcony for the last time, she does not say "Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb," but Hussey's eyes convey that sense beautifully for a moment. (Incidentally, when R rises from bed moments before that, his naked, back-to-the-camera stretch before the window struck me as the obvious source for a similar moment in Life of Brian.)
• OK, this is just sooooooo Hollywood: Friar Laurence sends Friar John with his message for Romeo about the death scam and the escape plan, but John gets locked in a plague house, right? No, in this version what happens is that he sets off on the world's slowest donkey, and when Romeo's servant Balthazar sees Juliet "dead," he hops on his horse and simply overtakes the slow-assed ass. If only Friar L had used DHL . . .

What (else) is odd? My favorite! Notice the head count above. And yet the Prince still says he has "lost a brace of kinsman." Uh, Zeff: "brace" means two, as in Mercutio and Paris. He's lost only one kinsman in this version, dude.

End-of-the-play exposition? Blessedly, no: just a double funeral procession and minimal scolding by the Prince.

Oh, there are some nice moments: Juliet's waking at the crypt is betokened by a close-up on her hand, first moving slightly, then gaining animation; sweet. But mostly it's just soggy, labored. And while this is probably not the fault of anyone on the film crew, the color is horribly muddy in the DVD version; if this is as good as so many deluded people consider it, it deserves a remastered DVD version. Just don't shop it to me.

Worms' meat

The Verona project, parts IV (Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss) and V (Romeo & Juliet: A Monkey's Tale)

Who (how old), when, how long? Animated seals (or sea lions--the filmmakers don't seem to be aware that there's a difference; in fact, mustachioed Montague appears very walrusy, while the Prince resembles nothing more than a manatee), 2006, 1¼hrs; live macaques, 2007 (Animal Planet), 3/4. As for age, it's fair to say early sexual maturity in each case, whenever that might be for the respective species.

What sort of R&J? Pinniped and simian, respectively.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? In the seal pic, the scene relies as much on West Side Story as on Shakespeare's play, with both the comedy and the danger relying on the successively stronger troops mustering on each side. The monkey pic doesn't really have that scene, only "Tybalt," a member of the temple troop in the Thai city of Lapburi, explaining the generations-long enmity between his aristocratic clan and the market moneys in the squalid slums across a nigh-unpassable road: "They did bite their thumbs at us" (shot of market monkey doing just that).

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? Emphatically no: in the seal pic it comes up repeatedly, always as if the word means where; in the monkey pic just once, but ditto.

Carrion flies? No, though the monkey pic probably could have worked it in, what w/ the slum's squalor and all.

Body count? In the seal pic, Mercutio seems actually to have been dispatched, but he returns at the end to prod the drugged young lovers awake; in the monkey pic, a literal plague descends upon both houses, but specific deaths are not delineated.

What (else) is missing? Actually, what's surprising is how much Shakespeare survives, especially in the seal pic. Yes, these are both (particularly the cartoon) essentially for little kids, but a lot of the language of the play works its way into both pieces. The about-to-apparently-die pinniped Mercutio (though most of his Shakespeare in the piece is random quotation from other plays) tells Romeo, "Look for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave . . . seal," and the voice of wisdom (Friar Laurence here, about which more below) tells the two seal tribes (here separated by color: the Capulets are white, the Montagues brown; and oddly, all the other aquatic species share the two groups' prejudice against mixing their blood), "We are all punished."

Much more of the narrative frame is omitted from the monkey pic--after all, they were working with actual animals, so it must have been harder to fit characters. The only named characters are the titular pair and Tybalt. Still, an apt line now and again: "These violent delights have violent ends."

What (else) is changed? In the context of the story involving pinnipeds and fish, it is odd to say that the oddest change is that the Prince (a grotesquely huge seal or sea lion with an even more grotesque schnozz), after warning off the warring parties in the opening scene, becomes a sort of Malvolio: it is he who falls repulsively for Juliet and to whom Capulet agrees to marry her, and so after having dignity in the opening scene, he is an ominous and ridiculous character thereafter. The kids do go to Friar Laurence (no freakin' idea what he's supposed to be: some sort of furry quadruped with a long tail) to get married (he makes some rather audience-inappropriate jokes about their sexual eagerness), and J gets the coma potion from him, but in this version, when Romeo kisses her, she still has enough in her system that it knocks him out too--so they have their seeming tragic death but both get to survive.

The monkey story's happy ending comes when the humans in the town have a big festival of food, which the monkeys from both sides of the street can share in peace. By this time both the titular characters have gone off to make babies elsewhere.

What (else) is odd? Gosh, tough call: the Titanic tribute (don't ask)? The shark chase? The monkey skipping town on a train? Pretty much the whole of each film is pretty odd.

End-of-the-play exposition? Nothing of the overlong and tedious nature that WS gave us, no.

Can't say I'd ever see either of these again, but Sealed is something I wouldn't mind having my 2yo granddaughter see as her introduction to the story (though, of course, she wouldn't get the parts that really rely on it). And it's always fun to see monkeys. In short, not the wasted evening I feared it might be.

If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully

The Verona project, part III

Yes, yes, I did intend to screen everything I'll be blogging this weekend--just not quite so soon; I wanted to view a few more conventional renditions before . . . well, you'll see. But Netflix mistakes were made, and once that happened, I decided to make it a sublime-to-ridiculous weekend.

And good golly, this one is sublime. Look, I know less about ballet even than I do about opera, if that's possible, and I simply chose the top-rated Nf balletic version (there are several) and the top-rated operatic version (there are at least a couple) just so's I could get a little high culcha in the mix--I certainly never expected to like the ballet, and I certainly didn't expect to be transported by it. And frankly, I don't have time for another interest in my life, so it's a little disturbing. But there you are.

Who (how old), when, how long? Wayne Eagling (33 per Wikipedia, and he looks it in close-ups but could be mid-20s from a distance) and Alessandra Ferri (20 but could pass for 13), 1984, 2¼hrs. Royal Ballet, recorded at Covent Garden, music by Sergei Prokofiev.

What sort of R&J? Appropriately passionate. His asking, near the end of the first balcony scene, "Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" would ring pretty false here, because they take pretty much the full serving of satisfaction. Eagling is perfectly OK, but Ferri is absolutely perfect: in her first scene with the Nurse, she is charmingly barely adolescent, simply playing with her lifelong confidante. Then her parents bring in Paris--a useful plot accelerator, given that there are no words--and she suddenly feigns adulthood, in part to flirt, but mostly, one suspects, to be a good daughter by marketing herself well. To achieve this effect, she dances entirely en pointe--until he and the 'rents leave, whereupon she reverts to her childlike danceplay with Nurse. It is one of many wonderful scenes in the ballet. Another, by contrast, is when J first dances for R, at the ball: this time she dances sometimes on her toes, sometimes in the juvenile-coded balls-of-her-feet mode: if when on commercial display for Paris, she consciously and artificially projects herself as something she's not, for Romeo she displays both the girl she still is and the woman she's becoming. Which is, of course, precisely what we (and he) love about her.

Seriocomic scale for first scene? 7ish, I guess, only because there's a stack of a half-dozen corpses at the end, though truth to tell I didn't notice them accumulating, and the swordplay (Romeo is involved in this version) struck me as thoroughly undangerous until Montague and Capulet weighed in against each other--that was ominous, but the Prince arrived almost immediately after. This scene too is much changed to accommodate the narrative needs of a wordless play: it begins with Romeo wooing Rosaline, who is unimpressed and involved with another, who draws on Romeo, cooling his ardor temporarily at least. Then Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio cavort with a trio of strumpets--without question the best addition to the story. It is when Tybalt and his kinsmen arrive in the square and drag the whores away from the good guys that the brawl begins.

"Wherefore": do the film/playmakers know what it means? Not applicable.

Carrion flies? Ditto.

Body count? Five: all but Lady M. (But in truth, the ballet ends when Juliet dies, so there's no mopup scene; who knows whether Lady M has died?)

What (else) is missing? Notwithstanding the loss of all that magnificent language, there is astonishingly little missing from the story that is missed. It's generally not a good idea to edit the Bard, but the cuts here come across as economical, not stinting, and the changes as useful for the narrative and perfectly in keeping with the spirit. One problem is that we see no message sent to Romeo to go awry, which relates to another problem I'll discuss below. We don't see Romeo buy his poison, but when he withdraws the vial from his belt, duh.

What (else) is changed? Well, they dance a lot more. One troublesome change: as I said, much is adapted for the sake of the narrative, and I'd say that the mythical viewer with no knowledge whatsoever of the story would have little trouble knowing precisely what's going on throughout, until . . . "How," I wondered, "does one pantomime 'This is going to make you fall asleep as if dead for 42 hours, whereupon you'll wake and I'll make sure Romeo is there'?" Well, apparently they had no answer: Friar Laurence has the dram waiting for J when she arrives (no need for her to threaten suicide with the dagger to persuade him to provide the potion), and this is one point--a key one, obviously--where if you don't know the story, you're just going to be stumped. Both the previous scene and the following one are played with Paris on hand (again, useful for the narrative), and in the latter she seems caught between resistance and muscular inability to resist, making me think she must already have downed the dram--but no, that's still to come.

Another key change, which mitigates Romeo's blood-guilt: Tybalt's fatal attack on Mercutio is cowardly and unsporting, as he stabs him in the back immediately after M has restored his sword to him rather than pressing his advantage at having disarmed him. Mercutio's death is one of the most magnificent and perfectly textual sequences of the ballet, as he balances jocularity with the grim truth.

What (else) is odd? Perhaps the oddest is the breakneck rush to the finish: the final scene, besides jettisoning the Prince's scolding and the reconciliation of the families, jettisons every character but the 3 who die--and the time between Romeo's appearance and Paris's death at his hands is (I am not kidding--I went back and timed it) 12 seconds. In fact, from R's appearance until J's death is no more than 5 minutes. In that span, though, before Romeo's fatal draught, there is one more fabulous dance, between the star-crossed lovers. Yes, that's right: that requires that she still be as dead, and indeed she is: he tosses and swings her like a rag doll, to heartbreaking effect.

End-of-the-play exposition? Nada.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.