“I think we discussed this a bit during 10 Things I Hate About You that I have a strange relationship with Shakespeare. Huh. Okay, just skimmed that write up and didnt find what Im thinking about. I’ll explain.
Poetry doesnt do shit for me. I hear verse, and my brain shuts down. I can’t follow it for the life of me. However, I have nothing but mad respect for Shakespeare. His stories are fantastic, and the lines here and there that I am able to catch on are brilliant. For that reason, I tend to really like the modernizations that crop up in Hollywood every so often (10 Things, “”O””, etc). However, this movie is so carefuly crafted, that I am able to not only follow the verse, but drink up and crave every word of it. I remember holding my Talk Girl up to the tv and recording bits of dialogue, then playing it back over and over until it was memorized. Even now Im quoting along, and getting continually distracted as I wanna check the subtitles to be sure I’ve got all the words right.
Much of the credit for that goes to Baz Luhrmann. I \m/ love the world that he created for this film, and there’s so much to love:
-the bright colors
-the present day setting
-the beautiful scenery
-the vivacious cast
-the guns with sword names
-the music
-the quick scenes and georgeous cinematography
Please dont make me choose a favorite scene. Its a multiway tie between so many of them: the prologue, the gas station fight, the kiss in the elevator, the swimming pool “”balcony”” scene, Friar Lawrence with his Hawaiian shirt, the fight by the beach, the shootout in the rain, the wedding night, the death scene.
Top notch cast as well. We’ll start with the obvious, Leonardo Dicaprio. While much of the world fell in love with him during Titanic, R+J had me swooning long before. I’ll admit the Titanic hype did turn me off of him for a while, but I do truly adore the boy. You could not have cast a more perfect Romeo: he gorgeous, and sweet, and sincere, and intense, and gentle, and tough, and gorgeous. Shout outs to John Leguizamo (in one of his best roles ever), Harold Perrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Rudd, Claire Danes, holy \m/ that’s Jamie Kennedy?!
I also wanna take a quick moment to point out this page that I just added. Its a list (with links) of all of my Expletive Dleted write ups. I didnt include any of the old