Great analysis of Pride and Prejudice, or greatest analysis of Pride and Prejudice?
We give thanks to you oh great gods of the internet for bringing us this gem.
Great analysis of Pride and Prejudice, or greatest analysis of Pride and Prejudice?
We give thanks to you oh great gods of the internet for bringing us this gem.
BBE One has announced a three part serial television adaptation of the suspense novel written by P.D. James titled, Death Comes to Pemberley.
It is set to take place six years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. During Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s annual ball Lydia “the bad one” Wickham shows up and there is a murder mystery surrounding the death of her husband.
According to the reports I’ve seen it is set to be released in later 2013 early 2014.
Casting has already been completed for the roles of Mr. Darcy (Matthew Rhys, who also starred in the FX Show The Americans), Elizabeth Bennett (Anna Maxwell Martin, XXX), and Lydia Wickham (Jenna-Louise Coleman, from Dr. Who).
What better way to celebrate the season than to watch the greatest Christmas film of all time? Some might say that It’s a Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, or Elf is the greatest Christmas movie of all time, and those people would be wrong. Die Hard is the greatest Christmas film of all time. Case closed. That being said, I had never actually seen Die Hard all the way through, so this is my thoughts about the film having never seen it before.
Drinking Game
We weren’t going to watch this sober now were we? Here are the rules I came up with for Die Hard.
Drink
Chug
Pour One Out
Thoughts and Opinions
Again I have never seen this movie so over all it was a great time, pretty much everything you would want from an action movie with lots of 90’s hair. I thought the pacing of information on the terrorists plans was done well. We got little tid bits along the way which was nice and left a lot of misdirection so you never knew for sure what they were up to. Too often we get all the information in some monologue all at once or it’s some crazy unbelievable twist at the very end. Die Hard did a good job of keeping the plan complex enough that they had a getaway plan but not so complex that it was off the wall crazy. Alan Rickman makes a great villain, it’s no wonder he would later go one to play Snape, he’s just too easy to hate.
My favorite part is how the cops and FBI were beyond incompetent. I get that its better if the lone guy inside doesn’t have the cops on his side but wow. They didn’t even believe it was a real hostage situation for way too long. At one point Carl Winslow’s boss is convinced John McClane is the only terrorist and that the body that fell out of the building was a suicide jumper. This is after Carl Winslow’s car has been decimated by machine gun fire and moments later the cops are fire on from every angle with guns and rocket launchers. After which Carl Winslow’s boss doesn’t then say “oh shit we are in real trouble” he just keeps on believing that it is a couple guys and will blow over. The FBI then come in to take over and plan on using attack helicopters to kill the terrorists. They then say out loud that they will probably lose 20-25% of the hostages which “they can live with”!
Some observations were:
Interesting Trivia from IMDB
Director – Joe Wright
Elizabeth Bennet – Keira Knightley
Mr. Darcy – Matthew Macfadyen
Introduction
My goal is to be as thorough as possible when watching these adaptations so I watch the movie twice, once just watching and once with the director’s commentary. I also watched all of the extras on the Bluray Disc version of the movie and cross referenced the DVD to make sure I didn’t miss any. So I will split this up into three parts, the film itself, the director’s commentary, and the extras.
The Pride and Prejudice (2005) Drinking Game
When we watched the movie we decided to make a drinking game out of it. In order to remember when to drink we had to cut down some of them but here were our original rules.
Drink for the following:
Pour one out:
Feature film
This is the only version of Pride and Prejudice I will have seen prior to starting all this blog business. I was working at a movie theater at the time it came out which means I could see any film for free. So I think I might have seen this movie at least 5 times in the theater when it came out. So in other words I am pretty familiar with it. This is the first time I have seen it though since reading the book so I was able to take in any differences and read in between the lines on a few of the scenes.
The film is great. I think all the actors and actresses did an amazing job and embodied their characters very well. From the awkwardness of Mary and Mr. Collins to the casting of Knightley and Macfadyen as Elizabeth or Darcy everyone was top notch. Pride & Prejudice purest prefer Colin Firth as Darcy, from the 1990’s miniseries (which I haven’t seen) so we’ll have to compare when we get there. In particular Judi Dench was fucking nails as Lady Catherine de Bourg. When I imagine in my mind of Lady Catherine the image of Judi Dench is automatic, she just owns that part. The only other actress that I think does as good of a job as playing an evil bitch lady is Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films. Both women own their parts so much that you get a physically angry when you see them on screen. I really liked Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennet as well as Talulah Riley as Mary Bennet.
The cinematography is also great in this film. I think Joe Wright does a wonderful job on some of the outdoor scenes, you really get a sense of scale and contrast when they shoot the outside shots. So much of the movie takes place indoors its good to see how grand all these places really are. I also really enjoyed the ball room scenes where it is this chaotic jumble and you get to see several perspectives of characters at the same time. The movie is a solid two hours long but I feel like it moves at a pretty good pace. You feel the effect of time as some of the characters deal with feelings but it keeps the momentum of the film moving.
Comparing to the book the film shorten a lot of what happened in order to have it all fit in a two hour film. In the book when they travel it’s all ways for a few weeks at a time. You don’t quite get the impression of that in the film. They never give specifics on the passage of time so for all we know the film takes place over a couple of weeks or years. I don’t really care that they shortened some of the trips. Honestly Elizabeth’s stay at Rosings in the book felt like it lasted forever and I think the movie did a great job of distilling its essence in a few scenes. The only criticism I have of the film deal with the whole Wickham incident. I don’t think they could have cut out his relationship to Darcy since it is the catalyst that brings Elizabeth and Darcy together, however I don’t feel they did a good job of explaining his and Darcy’s relationship. They just say in the movie he was engaged to Darcy’s sister and broke it off leaving her heart broken when in the book he had boarder line kidnaped her and was on the verge of eloping. It all just comes across as muddled and you don’t get the full effect of Darcy and Wickham’s hate. To me this lessened the impact of the rain scene where Darcy proposes and Elizabeth rejects him. The Wickham situation was her biggest basis of hating him. It’s still a great scene and they do a great job of acting during it but if you have only seen the film I could see it being confusing of why she’s so mad at him. There were some other changes here and there in the film but over I think they were generally made for time and that it didn’t really affect the core of the story.
Favorite Scenes:
IMDB Trivia (All this information comes from the trivia section of IMDB)
I love the trivia parts of IMDB. If you have never looked at this stuff before I suggest it.
Directors Commentary
The director’s commentary was so-so. Since it’s only the director the commentary is mostly about how this was short or how conditions were filming on this day. If you are super into Pride and Prejudice then you might enjoy it but otherwise I wouldn’t really bother.
Fun Facts learned during the commentary:
These seem like cool tidbits but trust me, just read the trivia section of IMDB, it’s not worth watching the whole directors commentary.
Extras
I’m watching the Bluray/DVD combo version of the film so I assume the separate Bluray and DVD versions of the film are these same versions.
Conversations With The Cast
Jane Austen, Ahead of Her Time
A Bennett Family Portrait
Pride & Prejudice: HBO First Look
The Politics of 18th Century Dating
The Stately Homes of Pride and Prejudice