saturday night

....I never knew I could feel like this..... like I have never seen the sky.... want to be inside your kiss.... every day I am loving you more and more.... listen to my heart... can you hear it sing.... come back to me... and forgive everything... seasons may change, winter turn to spring..... I will love you to the end of time.....

....Come what may...

...I will love you until my dying breath....

.....and my eyes are filling up with tears. I am such a cry baby when I am not even loving the movie. Not really. But I adore Baz Luhrmann's tricky play with old songs, revamped and then new words. The scene with Roxanne that turns into a "three scenes at the same time with very big intensity that is scaring" is especially beautifully made. His other movie Romeo+Juliet is one of my absolute faves though. Especially when Mercutio dies - "A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me" and "If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking and you beat love down". The use of the "swords" but they are guns... and the Capulets with John Leguizamo as Tybalt - "Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford no better term than this: Thou art a villain" and all the other good actresses and actors that are there. A very good movie indeed. Don't get scared by Leo and his young face. Or Claire Danes, they are shining and it is good to see young people play young, innocent love like that.

This brings me to remember "Titus" by Julie Taymor. A truly great movie too. (So, I like Shakespeare... maybe even having a slight obsession, ok... the secret is out!) Jessica Lange is .... I lack words.... great? amazing? And Alan Cumming makes his case as the Emperor of Rome. Hopkins is good too, but there are many good ones in this - a group effort to make a slightly strange play into a different movie. The scene with Lavinia (if you know the play, you know which one I mean) as the start of the true terror is breathtaking, with a swamp and the evil brothers circling like hawks on an innocent dove with a damaged wing.

I figuered I will give my list of Shakespeare movies that I have watched a bit too many times (and by no means are the ones made in black and white before 1970 bad - I just have a thing for these since they are slightly different). Nothing beats Laurence Olivier's Hamlet from 1948. The man was a genius.

The list>
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh directs and stars, together with Emma Thompson, Derek Jacobi and Brian Blessed. A very young Christian Bale is seen as the "boy" and the battle of Agincourt is one of the best done as far I as know.)
Much ado about nothing (Kenneth Branagh and a whole heap of the lovely ones... Brian Blessed, Richard Briars, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton and many others... this is actually a happy one)
Othello (Laurence Fishburne pairs up with Mr Branagh as Iago. A marvellous performance and Ms Jacob is good as Desdemona but really, you need to be very innocent - not too much more. Nathaniel Parker is good as Cassio, especially funny since I seem him now as "Lord Lynley")
Romeo+Juliet (as I spoke about higher up)
Titus (Jessica Lange, Anthony Hopkins, Alan Cumming and Colm Feore)

and.... Richard III (Ian McKellen teams up with Annette Bening, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas and a heap of good actors in an "almost WWII Richard" that has paranoia everywhere.)

There are many others of course.... but if I had to pick and choose for people to realise why I love Shakespeare and the dramas I think I would choose those ones.

And if one could show one play it would be Macbeth, in London with Rufus Sewell. It was absolutely fab! Very toned down decor and many things that just were based on him and the dear Lady. She is truly the woman behind the man, the woman who instigates the lot of it. An interesting character indeed. Reminds me a lot about Iago, the other one who might not commit crime by themselves but creates the crimes....

With this I will go back to my Saturday night and see if I can find a good movie to watch. (Somehow I think I might end up with an episode of True Blood since I still haven't seen them and would like to know if it really is what all say it is.)