In Reply to: 'Bird Man': It's a happening! posted by Billy Wonka on November 14, 2014 at 13:54:45:
and sensationalizing had taken this melodrama into the Land of the Incredulous.
While the film makes a repetitive point of criticizing blockbusters for being so over-the-top, it does the same with its approach (even throwing in some FX, to boot).
The director had the smarts to quote Shakespeare, but obviously never read the Bard's quotation about acting:
"Speak the speech I pray you as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players
do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the
air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the
very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split
the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant — it out-Herods Herod.
Pray you avoid it.
First Player: I warrant your honour.
Hamlet: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your
tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,
and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now
this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the
which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of
others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having
the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably."
Hamlet
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Follow Ups
- I loved the first half. By the final act, however, it had become a ridiculous story and the constant screaming - tinear 18:29:18 11/14/14 (7)
- It was a black comedy, Einstein, and one of the year's best . . . - Billy Wonka 19:06:11 11/14/14 (6)
- SPOILER: Bohr, you can't have it both ways: hyper-realism - tinear 08:43:18 11/15/14 (5)
- No more arguments from me, you just want to see the opposite. . . . - Billy Wonka 20:12:59 11/15/14 (4)
- Hey, no need to take it personally. Local reviewer saw it about the same as I. nt - tinear 07:24:31 11/16/14 (3)
- The only Eugene review I could find said this..... - Billy Wonka 12:37:24 11/16/14 (2)
- Here you go, it's our weekly counter-culture paper I was - tinear 19:15:15 11/16/14 (0)
- You had me at "...raw, hard...". It's on the Monday old fart matinee list^ - Road Warrior 15:27:56 11/16/14 (0)