mariness

So Sunday I got out to the Enzian Theatre, the wine and dinner theatre which was the only place showing Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing in the Orlando area.

As it happened, it was also the only place hosting a Master Sommelier and wine tasting during the documentary showing of SOMM, which is about the test you have to take to become a MS. As we learned while waiting in the rain for this to end, the local area has at least four of the 200 odd master sommeliers in the world (go Disney!) (about 133 in the U.S., go California!) which apparently is an Actual Thing and if you are into this sort of thing, REALLY REALLY REALLY big, like, awesomely big. Like, to put this into Geek Terms for you, Nathan Fillion big. Since I am mostly into saying, "Merlot," I was more focused on trying to place to park long enough to get my wheelchair out of the truck before my brother headed off to golf, which turned out to be tricky under the circumstances.

While continuing to wait for the SOMM event to end, I ran into an acquaintance, so we got to chat about comic books and what not, then we got to hide with a lot of people in a small lobby while the theatre rushed round and round and round and round trying to clean up all of the bottles of wine, and then FINALLY, forty minutes past showtime, we got into the movie, to be greeted by the announcement that having hosted Disney Master Sommeliers for a special event, the Enzian was planning on following up that trick by hosting Blackfish, the anti-Sea World documentary, which I had rather assumed was not going to be shown locally except possibly and quietly at UCF.

Also they were out of apple cobbler.

As a mitigating factor, however, they did have chai. Chai = good.

After all this I have to admit that Shakespeare was relatively undramatic, though I thought it was a fun film. Nathan Fillion was one of the best Dogberrys I've seen stage or film – I guess five years on Castle has done something for him; Tom Lenk channels his old Andrew character from Buffy for Verges, also fun; Beatrice did not, at the end, turn into a raging blue goddess as I was half expecting her to, so that was good, and overall it had a number of laugh out loud moments, and if you like Shakespeare, or Whedon, go see it. Especially for Nathan Fillion, who is really good here. Also, I now covet Joss Whedon's house, the setting for the film.

But the film has a few small problems. Some are in the original play – there's really nothing anyone can do with Don Juan, the bad guy who is a bad guy because....he's a bad guy. That's it. I don't blame the actor, and Whedon does what he can to do something with this by adding in a sex scene of sorts and some plastic handcuffs, but...really, there's not much that can be done with the role. I saw an abbreviated high school production that put Don Juan in a clown suit, and even that didn't work, so I can't blame Whedon for this. Some stem from the comparisons I couldn't help making to the 1993 Branagh film. Here, the major sufferer is Alexis Denisof, who is adequate, and quite willing to do the humiliating pratfalls and so on, but bluntly, he's not Kenneth Branagh, and it shows. Then again, to counter that, Sean Maher is no Keanu Reeves either, and that shows.

But the film also has a large problem. It's in the original Shakespeare, so I can't blame Whedon for it entirely, but it stands out here. And it's this:

Um, exactly why are we happy that Hero and Claudio are reunited at the end?

Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film managed to more or less slide past this with a lot of significant looks between Hero and Claudio and a lot of other people before Evil Don Juan breaks them up, strongly suggesting that the two have had a very long term thing going on and REALLY love each other maybe because they are both so boring, and then a lot of tears and YAY YOU ARE ALIVE looks from Claudio suggesting that yeah, they might just make it as a couple afterwards. It helps, too, that Branagh's film was set in some undefined but definitely "past" period where we could imagine that the whole virginity thing still mattered, and that the only lights available at night were candles and stars, making the whole "Oh, that must be Hero having sex against the window!" more believable. And the entire film is suffused with joy allowing us to look past things. A lot of things. It is just possible, in that film, that everyone is drunk enough – at least drunk on joy enough – to overlook that Claudio just HUMILIATED AND DUMPED HERO AT THE ALTAR in a scene awful enough that people honestly believe it could have killed her.

(In the comparable Downton Abbey scene absolutely no one thinks that girl should take the guy back. Run him over with her truck, maybe, but take him back, no. Just saying.)

Whedon's film lacks that joy. And the costuming. It has iPhones. And electric lights. Which means that he can't show us the scene where Claudio watches Margaret, believing that Margaret is really Hero, can't show us that yes, this is, under certain conditions, plausible. And heartbreaking for Claudio. Instead we have to hear it through someone else, and, well, it's not plausible. It makes Claudio seem easily duped, and worse, it makes it look as if Claudio never loved Hero that much in the first place.

This is not helped by the film's cynical tone, or by the fact that Whedon chooses to show very little interaction between Hero and Claudio: why are these two together in the first place again? Couldn't tell you. Or by the fact that the two actors don't seem to care that much for each other. Or by how Fran Kranz chooses to play the role: he's great at morally questionable roles, the tone he takes here. In one way, that makes sense -- Claudio is marrying a wealthy girl that (in this version) he doesn't seem to know that well, one he's willing to dump on the word of a guy who just minutes before was shown wearing handcuffs. And Whedon chooses to leave in Shakespeare's racist bit at the end, moving the camera around just to make absolutely, one hundred percent that we got it. (Branagh cut the line so we could focus on YAY happy! instead of OK CLAUDIO WE HATE YOU.) That's great, that's subtle, that makes a great point about the morality of the play – but it makes it very hard to be happy that these two are getting together in the end, and robs the film of a lot of its joy. Cloaking this relationship, or rather lack thereof, in contemporary clothing and furniture, complete with iPhones and iPads, only strengthened my uneasy feeling that really, seriously, Hero and Claudio should not be together, and that, really, yes, Beatrice might turn into a rampaging blue goddess at any moment.

On the other hand, Nathan Fillion explaining police procedures in Shakespearian English as Tom Lenk toad eats him never gets old. So, as I said, recommended.

Dollhouse...with only two episodes left, now you decide to get good?

(I'll have a longer summary of my multiple issues with the entire second season and indeed the show later, but episode 11 was surprisingly good.)