trailer break: ‘Letters to Juliet’

Hmmm... well, I don't need to see the movie now, as the entire story was in the trailer.
In saying that, it looks a LOT less offensive than almost everything else with the word "romantic" in the genre title that's come out recently.
I don't think I'd mind terribly much if I had to see this.

I'd see it just for the actors involve really. I mean not sure I'll trek to the theaters to see it, but most definitely it'll be on my Netflix queue.

There's one thing that I like about this trailer - the love story also involves older people in a romantic storyline (not an old, comfortable, married storyline, but a 'true love' type storyline). That's a good thing, I think - so often films seem to think that love is only something that happens to young beautiful people, not old grey haired (although still beautiful) people with grandchildren.

Did the person who cut this trailer aim to squeeze the entire movie into two and a half minutes? The vast majority of movies are predictable, but this one goes so far as to explicitly show both the reunion of the older couple and the reunion (at the wedding, no less) of the younger one. The hell?

First of all, I knew that Taylor Swift song was going to pop up. Second, I yelled at the screen, "No! Don't leave Gael for the blonde English twerp, you idiot!" and my dog thought I was yelling at her. That's right, trailer, you made a puppy sad.

And third, why the hell are Romeo and Juliet still being used as a metaphor for True Love? 90% of high school students study that play. It is a cautionary tale. Did everybody but me just have exceptionally lazy English teachers?

Oh, and fourth? Yeah, yeah, of course the mysterious Lorenzo has a vineyard. And is all, "I'm on a horse." Of fucking course.

(Cynical today? Yes, thank you.)

And third, why the hell are Romeo and Juliet still being used as a metaphor for True Love?

For the same reason people often use Wuthering Heights and Anna Karenina for the same reason. For some strange reason, people have a time for "romantic stories" in which the couple is either hopelessly dysfunctional or at best more dysfunctional than most of their audience.

Then again we live in a society in which a lot of people thought Nine and a Half Weeks and Basic Instinct were sexy and still more considered "Every Breath You Take" to be one of the more romantic songs ever written.

No wonder Bronx Cheer never got greenlighted...

For some strange reason, people have a time for "romantic stories" in which the couple is either hopelessly dysfunctional or at best more dysfunctional than most of their audience.

Arrgh!

For some strange reason, people have a thing for "romantic stories" in which the couple is either hopelessly dysfunctional or at best more dysfunctional than most of their audience.

For some strange reason, people have a thing for "romantic stories" in which the couple is either hopelessly dysfunctional or at best more dysfunctional than most of their audience.

I don't think it's that hard to understand, really. It makes people feel better about their own love lives.

Is Romeo & Juliet one of Shakespeare's plays that is always on the high school syllabus in the US? I don't think it is in the UK, we did Twelfth Night and The Tempest for the comedies, and King Lear and Macbeth for the tragedies. I did an English Literature degree, but didn't do much Shakespeare (apart from a semester on the comedies) as I was concentrating on Middle English.

I think dysfunctional 'love' stories have a power of over people because we've been imbued with the idea that love changes everything. You can change a man if you love him enough, your life can change if you find the right person to love etc etc etc. We know it doesn't actually work like this, having done the actual loving-people-in-real-life thing, but there's still the lure of the big shebang destiny fantasy and I'll admit that (even though I know it's rubbish) it's still got a kind of pull for me. Although having said that, I would never have said Wuthering Heights or Nine and a Half Weeks were 'romantic'. Crap like Twilight doesn't strike me as romantic, more a manual on how to stalk and emotionally subjugate someone.

Romeo & Juliet, on the other hand, cautionary tale though it may be, does a great job of playing on all your teenaged ideals which is why I think it's seen as a great romance. Things have changed since the 1600s, the 'teenager' exists as an idea when it didn't then, and the whole idea of teenage rebellion and illicit love affairs is part of your psyche when you're 15 or 16, as far as I remember.

Is Romeo & Juliet one of Shakespeare's plays that is always on the high school syllabus in the US?

Actually, I don't know - I'm in Canada. It's very popular in high schools here, but fair enough. That was a wild exaggeration. It still makes me grind my teeth when I hear people compare themselves to R&J like it's a good thing.

The take home message I got from that play - actually, there were two: 1) blanket family feuds are a bad idea and 2) deciding the person you met at that party that one time is your true love for all eternity and you're willing to kill yourself and others over them is... unhealthy. Or, more broadly, dedicating yourself to something/one on little information will often end up hurting you.

Is Lorenzo the "Most Interesting Man in the World" guy? It sure looked like him. That would rock.

I am the only one who has noticed that the film includes Vanessa Redgrave. I repeat Vanessa Redgrave. She is one of the greatest actresses (stage, TV and Screen) of her generation. Her family is an acting dynasty. She can act circles around most actors working today. I can't believe the degree to which she has to make her self smaller to be in this film.

I guess we're done making films for adults with seasoned acting professionals (I point mostly to women) who get to flex their acting muscles. Maybe this is better than not seeing her at all but not by much. BTW-She looks beautiful.

There was a struggle between Mutant Enemy and their fans over the season 6 Buffy-Spike relationship. The writers wanted to protray an unhealthy relationship, but lots of the fans kept wanting to interpret it as a romantic relationship. Plus, some people argue about who was the more abusive partner, Spike or Buffy.

I think there are lots of reasons for this sort of thing. Some of the more basic ones are the conflict between women's desire for equality vs. desire for the alpha male, the imposition of moral codes upon evolved emotions (the moral codes can be good or bad, but they mean different kinds of stories), the differences between what we look for in a date vs. what we look for in a spouse, the inability some people have in telling the difference between lust and love, previous childhood abuse distorting one's perception of relationships, the contradictions in our society's expectations leading to contradictions in what writers do to appeal to readers/viewers, and writers' desires to up the stakes and protray more and more dramatic tension in relationships.

Face it, if our movies and books are about messed up relationships, it's because we're a messed up society. The difference between a good movie and a bad movie about relationships is how self-aware the writers are. Do they realize what they are writing is messed up or not?