Romeo and Juliet

[lupercal]

the day is saved and the young lovers are reunited in this wonderful retelling of the ageless tale of love and prejudice

...and tragic death, and suicide. But this is with seals, and a kissing fish. And everyone knows they don't drink poison.

Aren't this the same crowd who did 'Julius Caeser' with carrots, and in the last act JC's friends don't stab him to death, but say "Gosh, Julius, you're such a rotter!" ?

Loop

[athena]

a rotter? good grief. :yuck:


how can a filmmaker take supposed pride in teaching kids about Shakespeare if they take out the key elements that make a story what it's supposed to be...

Although really, they are hardly the first... Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid"--she dies... Victor Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame"--everyone dies...

[MonkeyFunk]

Okay, part of me doesn't want to be too harsh towards a feature film that somebody spent five years making with Flash. But really... couldn't they have picked a comedy?

[athena]

somebody spent five years making with Flash.
ouch... now there's a definition for masochism if I've ever heard one...

[starlac]

Looks good for flash, at least the trailer does, which is kind of the idea I suppose.

Which of Shakespeare’s plays were supposed to be the comedies again?

Well the creator's past credits include directing American Tail 2 and as an animation director for Roger Rabbit, hardly the stuff of nightmares: (though he was the director of We’re Back, which IMO is rather weak, so who knows).

To be honest, good luck to him: of course he alreadly finished it so saying that is a little redundant. I wish I had the ability to make a full length feature all by myself and then get it released cinematically.

That part of the synopsis does sounds like the blur on the back of the Titanic animation box…

"CHILD-FRIENDLY ENDING ASSURES EVERYONE IS RESCUED AND LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER!"

Though to be fair the version (of Titanic) that I’ve got omits this note, maybe the new distributor found it erroneous. I'll add and review it after I can muster up the courage/boredom to watch it (less someone else wants to).

Well I going to watch both films first before making any final judgements about them, although Titanic got it work cut out straight away after reading Monkeyfunk’s little review about it on his website.

It is a fact that a lot of movies based on books have changed at least something in the transition, wither it be small irrelevant details, character deaths. Or in some cases, changing all (or most of) the characters into animals; like that has ever worked in the past when concerning classic literature.

[MonkeyFunk]

Re: adaptations of classic literature with animals. There was an absolute gem I saw years ago and I wondered if anyone else had seen it...

It was based on David Copperfield and starred a bunch of talking animals in period dress, and shirtly into the film it departed from then ovel radically, with David being forced to work at a cheese factory. It reaches its nadir when David finds a group of slimy purple creatures living in the cellar, and someone says "they're called Mouldies - some say they used to look like us".

And it wasn't a parody or anything, it was actually billed as "Charles Dickens' David Copperfield". It was... incredible.

Looks good for flash, at least the trailer does, which is kind of the idea I suppose.

Which of Shakespeare’s plays were supposed to be the comedies again?

A Midsummer Night's Dream springs to mind - it would adapt pretty well to animation.

Granted, it's alrady been done (a stop motion movie by Jiri Trnka), but then... Lion King 2 already did Romeo and Juliet with talking animals and a happy ending.

[starlac]

It's like Loop said, without a smiley people will think you're being serious, with one and the jokes gone. I meant that last part (after the semi-colon) as a ironic joke.

As for the David Copperfield: I think I saw a billing for that once, but wasn't in a hurry to follow through.

The Shakespeare question was real though...

[Lucky_Bob]

You gotta respect the guy for writing and animating the whole thing himself. 5 years is a LOOOONG time and a lot of money to devote to a one man animated feature.

And to get it distributed and everything *whew*. That's what I call devotion.

And the character animation itself looks great. It doesn't look like a Flash project (which it is), it looks hand drawn.

[athena]

You gotta respect the guy for writing and animating the whole thing himself. 5 years is a LOOOONG time and a lot of money to devote to a one man animated feature.
oh believe me, I respect the act... I mean, my grad project was only a minute and a half and it effectively took 9 months... build characters, build the sets, animate (hopefully not too terribly)... but 77 minutes solo... *shudder*

I suppose the thing I find so unbelievable is that if I had the option to make ANYTHING... which to me is the most wonderful part of doing a completely solo project... would I really have chosen to make Romeo and Juliet with seals?


However, now that I've found out that this thing is actually an animator's labour of love, I'm going to have to hunt down a copy to watch...

[starlac]

would I really have chosen to make Romeo and Juliet with seals?

Well Seals are easy to draw I suppose.

Anyway the copy I ordered has arrived, so I'll be watching this 'labor of love' later and seeing what I make of it.

Yet after watching Titanic: the animated movie, it won't have to work that hard to get on my good side. To be honest I got to the end of the scene with the rapping dog before I had to turn the thing of.

[lupercal]

Well Seals are easy to draw I suppose.



Oblongs are even easier. Why didn't they make it with oblongs? And their best friend, the crudely drawn circle?

Shakespeare comedies;

All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Love's Labour's Lost
The Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Winter's Tale
Measure For Measure

and a few others which I've forgotten, and a few which IMO verge on serious - minus a few serious ones which are also funny (for example, Henry IV which has Falstaff in it)

(Sorry, I did about 8 units of Elizabethan/medieval drama at uni, and about 5 units of Shakespeare, and got high distinctions for them all, except one, because the lecturer and I didn't like each other. Might not be much use at anything useful, but I can write my a** off about him or Christopher Marlowe or any of that crowd


Loop