I think I'm the only one...

I must be the only one in the history of man to hate, and I mean HATE, the story of Romeo and Juliet. I wish there Shakespeare had a broken home so I could say to him (if he were alive) "a plague on both your houses!" Seriously. I have no comprehension of how people like that story. It's depressing and aggravating and is all a result of massive mis-communication and idiocy. I have only ever met one version of R&J that I liked and that's the Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. I believe that the only reason I like it is because it's artistically well done enough that I can get past it and ignore the story. I bring this up because I just caught an episode of Lux Radio Theater that was a rendition of Madame Butterfly. I was very excited since I have never seen the show and you hear about it all the time. People rave about it. I liked it clear up to the end.... When (BEWARE: SPOILER) she kills herself on her father's death sword. All because of a stupid, frickin' MISCOMMUNICATION! Argh! it irked me to no end. I felt like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls the football away. Stop doing this to me, people!!!!! I haven't liked any movie versions of R&J (except the one stated before), I don't like West Side Story (go ahead and gasp in chagrin - I know you want to), and I don't like Madame Butterfly now that I've heard it. It's once again a poorly masked rehashing of the R&J story and it looses me once more. Grrr.... I feel cheated and betrayed.

Everything is Illuminated

Several years ago J & I saw the trailer for a film called Everything is Illuminated and we finally, finally got around to watching it last night. It was an interesting movie... about as funny as a movie involving death, flashbacks to nazis massacring Jews, and suicide can be. It was definitely amusing in parts, very heavy in others, and made you think a lot. I don't know if I missed a lot somewhere or if the story was a bit disjointed, but there were some things that kept nagging at me and seemed unresolved. As a result, I've been trying to look it up and see if anyone else put in the missing pieces. No luck yet, but I did find this, courtesy of the external links on the Wikipedia page for the novel the film was based on:

http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/1007/opin1.php/



Additionally it seems as though the book and the movie diverged a good bit. I was thinking about reading the book, but have since decided that I am way more interested in researching the points made in Prague Post article.

The take-home part of the movie... I am going to make an "Offiscious seeing-eye bitch" t-shirt for Mags & see if I can get her into public places with me. ; )