A movie I won't be seeing any time soon, if ever

[ellid]

Anonymous, the latest entry in the "anyone but Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare" annals. The director, Roland Emmerich, was just interviewed on Morning Edition, and not only did he come across as an arrogant jerk, he kept denying the numerous historical errors (like characters who were long dead showing up, playwrights risking their lives to write (!) the Earl of Oxford writing all the plays despite dying before several were written, and oh yes Oxford is Queen Elizabeth's son!!!) as "just telling a story the way Shakespeare would have."

Yes. Really.

Not only that, he ended by denying that movie was actually even about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. It's all about creativity and how literature is written, see, not about a snobby aristocrat hiring a hick actor as a fraud. And though the host kept saying "oh come on," Emmerich just denied, denied, denied.

Best of all, he wrote a very self-serving letter to the New York Times a few years ago decrying an op-ed by an actual Shakespeare scholar that called the movie yet another example of opinion and conspiracy theory masquerading as fact.

No way am I paying good money to see this, even for the costumes. Besides, if Emmerich is any guide to the production team, they'll probably be just as bad as history.....

Comments

[estelwen.livejournal.com]

I saw a trailer for it on TV not long ago. Cue my roommate rushing in from the next room to ask why I'm screaming, "OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" at the screen.
I don't go to the movies much anyway, and I'm sure as hell not going to this.

Re costuming: I'm not sure about costumes as such (some of the stills of Elizabeth seem based on paintings of her), but it seems to have whacked-out facial hair. I'm no expert, but IIRC, the Elizabethan era was not big on handlebar mustaches. So there's that.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Not sure about the costumes, but a ruby red ruff instead of one tinted red is probably not what they actually had....

[estelwen.livejournal.com]

Bah. Queen Elizabeth was so badass she had fancy modern chemical dyes when all her peons had plant-based dyes. She was just that cool.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not the shade of red that's the problem - that particularly color isn't hard to get with cochineal, or even with madder if you know what you're going. It's the intensity that I question. Ruffs tinted with a bit of dye mixed into the starch used to stiffen them were quite fashionable, but only enough to give a faint color.