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Yesterday I spent my morning seeing Pirates 4 and my afternoon seeing Arcadia on Broadway, which did leave me somewhat worried that I was going to walk away with a case of cultural whiplash. It was however a highly enjoyable day and I have no complaints! I mean aside from the complaint I guess that Pirates 4 is not a good movie, but it was nonetheless a surprisingly enjoyable one.
Before I talk about that though let me quickly say that Arcadia was totally worth it - it was my first time seeing it live, rather than reading it, which of course made for an incredible experience in and of iteslf. The biggest flaw was unfortunately Thomasina - she was a great physical actress, but she was trying so hard to sound like a child that she ended up delivering all her lines in a high-pitched shout rather than projecting, and it didn't work for me at all. Which is depressing, because: Thomasina! The character did come through (the proof: that
innerbrat, who had never seen the play, walked away starry-eyed about Thomasina depsite hating the actress' voice, AS EVERYONE SHOULD BE) but it was still disappointing. On the other hand, Raul Esparza as Valentine was the standout for me, pitch-perfect as one of those people who seems very ordinary and not particularly interesting and suddenly you get them talking about their passion and they're magnetic. I really did not expect to be walking away from the show with a crush on Valentine. (It's interesting, because reading the text I came away seeing more chemistry between Bernard and Hannah, but in this production there was ten times as much chemistry between Hannah and Valentine. I mean, Billy Crudup's Bernard was excellent, but he was very much playing him as an occasionally-endearing academic ass.) Anyway, for anyone wondering if it's worth it: yes.
And NOW WE SWITCH MODES.
The thing about Pirates 4 is that it's actually at least three different movies wrapped up together. I mean, there's the movie where Jack Sparrow Flails Around, and that one goes pretty much as we all expected it would:
JACK SPARROW: I have six increasingly wacky fight scenes in my contract for this movie!
BARBOSSA: My bromantic nemesis, we have the same goals! At this point in the movie I'm trying to kill you, but OUR PATHS WILL SURELY CROSS AGAIN for some surprise teamwork and bromantic hijinks.
JACK SPARROW: Excellent, I'm looking forward to the scene where you and I and Zombie Ponce de Leon all hop into bed together.
IAN MCBLACKBEARD: I am this movie's eviler-than-Geoffrey Rush pirate villain. WATCH ME BE SINISTER.
PENELOPE CRUZ: HELLO. I am your pirate love interest. Blackbeard may be my father; PREPARE TO DIE or at least to be press-ganged.
JACK SPARROW: Of course I think you're hot, the first time you appear in this movie you're disguised as me, and we all know the person I love most is myself.
SOME LOVEABLE PIRATES: We are generally unimportant, but loveable!
GIBBS: I'm more important than you would expect! And also loveable!
JACK SPARROW: May I just say I'm sort of weirded out by how many morally unambiguous acts of heroism this movie expects me to perform now that I'm single-handedly carrying the franchise? Oh well, onto wacky fight scene #4.
So there is that movie . . . and then there's the movie with the angsty priest and the captive mermaid, with lots of longing looks and epic hurt/comfort and "yes, normally we do drown sailors . . . but you're DIFFERENT" and "SHE NEEDS TO BREATHE! LET HER BREATHE! SHE'LL DIE!" and the half-naked priest tenderly staggering around the jungle with the naked mermaid in his arms, which, I mean, there is no way that's not someone's very specific kink, and the hilarious thing is that while technically this is all part of the same plot as the Jack-and-Blackbeard-and-Penelope-Cruz movie, they're in the same traveling party and everything, they are in no way actually in the same film. From my recollection Jack and the priest spend exactly one frame on-screen together.
In all honesty
innerbrat and I spent the entirety of the priest-and-the-mermaid movie cracking up, and at one point batyatoon leaned over and told us reproachfully that we were being mean, but Batya, you have to understand, we were cackling with idtastic delight. I am now waiting for the "Character X is a priest and Character Y is a mermaid!" AU prompt to appear on every kinkmeme ever. I am sure there are already at least three SG:A fics like that (and two of them existed before this movie even came out, because from my understanding that is just how SG:A fandom rolls.)
And then there was the movie that was actually trying to work in historical context, with King George and the Spanish and I guess Blackbeard was technically sort of part of the fake-historical-context movie too? I don't really know what that was about. Or why the Spanish were there at all. But I am not complaining about the bizarre SPANISH FALL, EVERYONE DIES bit at the end, because again: HILARITY. No one expects the Spanish Inquiition!
(In other news, there was epic racefail, surprising no one. And some genderfail? I am not going to talk much about these because personally I could in no way take any part of this movie seriously enough to bother being annoyed.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/238471.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
Before I talk about that though let me quickly say that Arcadia was totally worth it - it was my first time seeing it live, rather than reading it, which of course made for an incredible experience in and of iteslf. The biggest flaw was unfortunately Thomasina - she was a great physical actress, but she was trying so hard to sound like a child that she ended up delivering all her lines in a high-pitched shout rather than projecting, and it didn't work for me at all. Which is depressing, because: Thomasina! The character did come through (the proof: that
innerbrat, who had never seen the play, walked away starry-eyed about Thomasina depsite hating the actress' voice, AS EVERYONE SHOULD BE) but it was still disappointing. On the other hand, Raul Esparza as Valentine was the standout for me, pitch-perfect as one of those people who seems very ordinary and not particularly interesting and suddenly you get them talking about their passion and they're magnetic. I really did not expect to be walking away from the show with a crush on Valentine. (It's interesting, because reading the text I came away seeing more chemistry between Bernard and Hannah, but in this production there was ten times as much chemistry between Hannah and Valentine. I mean, Billy Crudup's Bernard was excellent, but he was very much playing him as an occasionally-endearing academic ass.) Anyway, for anyone wondering if it's worth it: yes.
And NOW WE SWITCH MODES.
The thing about Pirates 4 is that it's actually at least three different movies wrapped up together. I mean, there's the movie where Jack Sparrow Flails Around, and that one goes pretty much as we all expected it would:
JACK SPARROW: I have six increasingly wacky fight scenes in my contract for this movie!
BARBOSSA: My bromantic nemesis, we have the same goals! At this point in the movie I'm trying to kill you, but OUR PATHS WILL SURELY CROSS AGAIN for some surprise teamwork and bromantic hijinks.
JACK SPARROW: Excellent, I'm looking forward to the scene where you and I and Zombie Ponce de Leon all hop into bed together.
IAN MCBLACKBEARD: I am this movie's eviler-than-Geoffrey Rush pirate villain. WATCH ME BE SINISTER.
PENELOPE CRUZ: HELLO. I am your pirate love interest. Blackbeard may be my father; PREPARE TO DIE or at least to be press-ganged.
JACK SPARROW: Of course I think you're hot, the first time you appear in this movie you're disguised as me, and we all know the person I love most is myself.
SOME LOVEABLE PIRATES: We are generally unimportant, but loveable!
GIBBS: I'm more important than you would expect! And also loveable!
JACK SPARROW: May I just say I'm sort of weirded out by how many morally unambiguous acts of heroism this movie expects me to perform now that I'm single-handedly carrying the franchise? Oh well, onto wacky fight scene #4.
So there is that movie . . . and then there's the movie with the angsty priest and the captive mermaid, with lots of longing looks and epic hurt/comfort and "yes, normally we do drown sailors . . . but you're DIFFERENT" and "SHE NEEDS TO BREATHE! LET HER BREATHE! SHE'LL DIE!" and the half-naked priest tenderly staggering around the jungle with the naked mermaid in his arms, which, I mean, there is no way that's not someone's very specific kink, and the hilarious thing is that while technically this is all part of the same plot as the Jack-and-Blackbeard-and-Penelope-Cruz movie, they're in the same traveling party and everything, they are in no way actually in the same film. From my recollection Jack and the priest spend exactly one frame on-screen together.
In all honesty
innerbrat and I spent the entirety of the priest-and-the-mermaid movie cracking up, and at one point batyatoon leaned over and told us reproachfully that we were being mean, but Batya, you have to understand, we were cackling with idtastic delight. I am now waiting for the "Character X is a priest and Character Y is a mermaid!" AU prompt to appear on every kinkmeme ever. I am sure there are already at least three SG:A fics like that (and two of them existed before this movie even came out, because from my understanding that is just how SG:A fandom rolls.)
And then there was the movie that was actually trying to work in historical context, with King George and the Spanish and I guess Blackbeard was technically sort of part of the fake-historical-context movie too? I don't really know what that was about. Or why the Spanish were there at all. But I am not complaining about the bizarre SPANISH FALL, EVERYONE DIES bit at the end, because again: HILARITY. No one expects the Spanish Inquiition!
(In other news, there was epic racefail, surprising no one. And some genderfail? I am not going to talk much about these because personally I could in no way take any part of this movie seriously enough to bother being annoyed.)
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/238471.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.