confessions of an amateur cineaste

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is fun and frothy and we all know this. It’s a popcorn movie, it has pretty people, it has zombie pirates, it has emotional investment and also a plot. These are all good things. We will look back fondly on them after the torture of the sequel, coming soon to a media journal near you.

I followed it up with Twelfth Night, or What You Will, which I have discussed a bit with some of you elsewhere. There were a lot of things in it that didn’t work for me ( the production value, a lot of the music, the secondary characters in the Malvolio subplot save Feste, a few line readings that I am particular about because of my big love for the play) but I loved Viola (Parminder Nagra!), Orsino (Chiwetel Ejiofor!), Sebastian & Antonio, and the use of Hindi (a fact gone unnoted on the IMDb page). It’s a darker version, and that’s a good thing.