Roman
Scoring Assistant
Quick tip: Never let a werewolf drive your car.
Posts: 114
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Post by Roman on Aug 15, 2013 11:17:02 GMT -8
So we revistied Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" last night, and it held up really well. Doyles score is a perfect fit for the film, and really helps accent the emotional ups and downs of the film. I'm guessing it was a bit easier to write this score than the more moody "Hamlet".
What struck me was how the 1990s were really a great time to be a film fan and a fan of the Bard. Lots of great and interesting adaptations were brought to the screen. I think "Much Ado" is probably my favorite from that era, but "Othello" was also really good, and the version of "Midsummer Night's Dream" with Kevin Kline impressed me as well.
Do you have a favorite adaptation from this time? What is your favorite Shakespeare score?
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Post by christopher on Aug 16, 2013 8:12:36 GMT -8
I think Branagh's HAMLET is a great film. MUCH ADO was hillariou in parts, but that play is a weird mixture of despair and comedy. I had a hard time liking it as much as HAMLET it for that reason. I haven't seen many other 90s Shakespeare adaptations, actually. I tried Gisbon's HAMLET, but that was awful.
For best score, I'll go with HENRY V.
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Roman
Scoring Assistant
Quick tip: Never let a werewolf drive your car.
Posts: 114
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Post by Roman on Aug 16, 2013 10:23:03 GMT -8
I think Branagh's HAMLET is a great film. MUCH ADO was hillariou in parts, but that play is a weird mixture of despair and comedy. I had a hard time liking it as much as HAMLET it for that reason. I haven't seen many other 90s Shakespeare adaptations, actually. I tried Gisbon's HAMLET, but that was awful. Branagh's Hamlet is a visual feast. He does so many great things with the camera in that movie and really does a good job accenting the dialogue and themes using the framing, lighting and setting. I also think that Derek Jacobi is amazing as Claudius. He just makes the part feel like a real person. Other things don't work quite as well. The whole ghost sequence is too much and feels like it came from another movie. And the sheer length of the film actually slows things down a bit too much. it's an amazing achievement overall, but more at a technical level for me. It's not one I return to frequently. I didn't dislike Gibson/Zafferelli's "Hamlet" as much as others do. I think Zafferelli did a really excellent job with the visuals. His ghost scene is creepy and disturbing, a perfect fit for the film. In many ways this version is a straight up interpretation of the play (if you can ignore the heavily edited and rearranged tex). It's a entertaining version of the play. Gibson's performance worked for me, but was definitely nothing to write home about. The one scene that struck me as off (and I've seen other productions use a similar approach, and I didn't like it then either) was the whole Hamlet/Gertrude confrontation scene. Just went way too far with the mamma's boy take. The one film I still haven't seen from this era that falls on a lot of top ten lists is "Titus". I always think this was released in 2001 for some reason, so I never include it in this era, but it was done in 1999.
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