Is the 1996 film version of “Romeo and Juliet” dreadful or delightful?

If Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, has any enduring interest, it’s thanks to the scraps of Shakespeare allowed to survive the bum’s-rush treatment.

My distaste for the effort isn’t just about all the unkind cuts. It’s also about what’s done with what’s left.

Cuz, sure, it’s Shakespeare, but don’t worry, we’re going to SUPER-FAST-CUT from this part of the scene to the other, and Juliet’s mom and nurse are really going to SCREAM for her attention, and the camera is going to LURCH and ZOOM as they LURCH and ZOOM across the room, and the guns are going to TWIRL, and things are going to go SLO-MO and FAST-MO and ZAP and FLASH and CORUSCATE and…obfuscate.

Isn’t the actual play a bit more inviting and developed than this? Sweeter? If we’re so afraid of Shakespeare’s poetic imaginings that we can’t have Romeo speak of baptism without his being illustratively dunked in a pool—if every other phrase that would in life be uttered soft must be histrionically howled, just to make sure we GET it (a practice thankfully not followed in the tender if too-brief courtship)—if even the balcony scene must be reduced to a few cut-and-spliced nubs—why not skip altogether the homage to consternating if eloquent turns of phrase and just retool the plot? Call it “West Side Story” or something like that. Modernize away.

This “Romeo and Juliet” is relentlessly off-putting. Even so, it includes a number of engaging bits, in which the actors are effectively if briefly silly or sarcastic, anguished or playful, loving or hateful—in short, expressive of the full range of emotion from A to J that you would expect in the sort of collation of scattered select bits of the Bard. The actors do help us realize and feel the meaning of the words. But even their best delivery is drowned in cinematic sludge.

I’m all in favor of adapting stage to screen, and taking into account modern sensibilities and knowledge. I’m not eager to see the five-hour version of “Hamlet,” or to be assailed by every impenetrable archaism still not solved in the glosses.

But Luhrmann isn’t just solving a time problem, or a translation problem. He isn’t just eschewing piety in accommodating the fact that we’re living four centuries later than Shakespeare. For Luhrmann, the biggest hurdle is how to get viewers to swallow ambrosia when he believes we believe it’s castor oil. The method of the dissembling abominable varlet is to let Shakespeare shine only sporadically, and to disguise the flavor of Will’s words with a saccharine surfeit of jumping and jagged, clanging and cloying production values. Instead of skillfully helping viewers enter Shakespeare’s lyric world, Luhrmann insists on dissonantly distracting us from it. It’s a lot of fardels to bear. And it’s an insult.

Showtime: “The Tudors”

…and of course, everyone had perfect teeth in those days.

How do you like the 1960s TV series "The Fugitive”?

Alas, I find it unwatchable. I looked forward to watching the series for many years, had heard many good things about it. Now it’s finally starting to come out on DVD. I like David Janssen and the idea of a man who preserves his integrity and goodness despite the risks and hardships of being on the run after having been wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.

But I’m put off by the ponderous melodramatic voice-over and ponderous melodramatic music. The stories of the three episodes I glimpsed seemed slow, maudlin and unimaginative. I can’t be very fair about it because I kept skipping forward. The tales just didn’t engage me and I’m not curious to see more.

The show began in 1963. Netflix sent me the first three episodes. I don’t think we’d see some of the same hamfistedness in a 2008 television series, but we have other kinds of hamfistedness to endure.

“The Fugitive” was successful. Its idea is good. I suspect if I gave the series more of a chance I’d find a fair amount to like in it. But I’m not willing to give it that chance. Too much other, better stuff to read and watch.

Perhaps I’m spoiled by the slickly done movie with Harrison Ford, which took the trouble to dramatize the murder of Dr. Kimble’s wife, Kimble’s capture and his escape. The series by contrast begins with a mere summary of these events, repeated in the front of each episode. In other words, there is no real pilot episode.

Museum.tv says “The Fugitive” presented “some of the most fascinating human condition dramas of [the 60s], all told in a tight, self-contained semi-documentary style.”

Not unlike the Western hero, which U.S. television had embraced since the 1950s and with which it still had something of an infatuation, Kimble had the appeal of the rootless wanderer whose commitments to jobs, women or society were temporary, yet who at the same time deserved our sympathy as something of a tragic figure. The series’ and the introspective character’s success lay largely with the appeal of actor David Janssen’s intensity in the part…. The drama of the stories came not so much from the transient occupations of the fleeing hero, such as sail mender in Hank Searls’ “Never Wave Good-bye” or dog handler in Harry Kronman’s “Bloodline,” but from the dilemma of the Kimble character himself, something Janssen was able to convey with an almost nervous charm.

I don’t think it’s only the stagy television conventions that are off-putting (like the allegedly “tight” but actually tedious “documentary” style with the thunkety-thunk voice-over). I’ve managed to enjoy episodes of even the often thinly plotted old “Twilight Zone” (the guy behind the counter has three eyes? Oh my God!). But the best television of today (”24,” the new “Battlestar Galactica,” “Lost”) does seem far superior to the best television of 40 to 50 years ago. This era-boundedness doesn’t afflict literary classics. So long as we get a competent translation, we still find the same powerful dramatic virtues in Homer.

What is it about television? Many old movies don’t hold up either, but from the olden times we still have “Gone With the Wind,” “Wizard of Oz,” “Casablanca,” etc., which show that the limitations of a new medium don’t inevitably sabotage a vision. Do we care that we can tell that the Wicked Witch of the West is not actually melting but dropping through a trap door? On the other hand, there’s plenty on the tube these days to prove that all the technique and technology in the world can’t make up for a view of life that is tawdry, vicious or empty.

How does the BBC production "The Way We Live Now” compare to the Trollope novel on which it is based?

It’s been a while since I read Anthony Trollope’s fat story, so I can’t say how closely the four-part adaptation sticks to it, although much of the plot rings a bell. The novel is of course more leisurely. But this mini-series about divided loyalties and honest versus fraudulent aspiration is as finely wrought as one could wish.

The story of every character major and minor should not revolve around the person of the almost-wholly-shameless fraudster Melmotte; but that is “the way we live now.” David Suchet’s Melmotte is a glib, obtuse and bad man, but one with a certain grand vision (and gall). There’s pathos when the chickens come home to roost. We almost feel sorry for him. On the other hand, good riddance.

Another bad man is Matthew Macfayden’s Felix Carbury, who loves two women equally little. One he uses for sex, the other for money. After having seen Macfayden’s performances as the noble and reserved aristocrat in “Pride and Prejudice” (2005) and the noble and reserved spy in “Spooks” (2002-2004), I couldn’t quite accept him immediately as the semi-charming lout Felix Carbury, who in the end somehow stumbles back onto his feet despite everything, and unlike Melmotte. But disbelief was suspended quickly enough.

As for the good guys who suffer tragically, we expect that things will work out for them sooner or later precisely because they do not accept “the way we live now,” even if they have their blind spots. Roger Carbury harbors a lifelong and undying love for his cousin, Hetta Carbury (the sister of cad Felix). He may lose her to his very good friend, entrepreneur Paul Montague (duped into believing that Melmotte really intends to help him build a railroad in America). Roger (Douglas Hodge) struggles to do the right thing even when the personal cost seems unbearable. Meanwhile, Paul has to contend with an old flame from America come to England to haunt and harry him.

Melmotte’s daughter, Marie Melmotte (Shirley Henderson), one of Felix’s victims, does not at first inspire the same sympathy as stolid and stoic Roger Carbury. She appears a somewhat comical figure, petite and a bit goofy in her love-starved eagerness. One of the great pleasures of the series is watching her grow in stature. We realize (as does even Felix, briefly) that there’s much more to her than meets the eye. The transformation is entailed by the story, but it’s also a smart and wonderful performance. Marie cannot be taken seriously at all…and then she can only be taken seriously. But there’s been no cheating; we simply find out more about her.

The story moves in good pace, and never in the dull self-important way that some adaptations of classics adopt. Each of the first three segments ends on an appropriately suspenseful note.

Any complaint at all to make? Not really. I’m sure when I read the novel again I’ll find something that I wish had made it to the mini-series, or had been treated differently. But one can always make that kind of complaint about the translation of printed word to screen, and it is often an unfair one. To experience the narrative voice of Trollope, one must actually read Trollope, there is no way around that. But in its own terms, the series based on his book is perfect.

Why are so many movie subtitles sub-par?

I weary of lazy subtitling. I shouldn’t even really call it sub-par since I don’t remember ever watching a video with sub-titles as energetically complete as I would prefer. It’s all sub-par. Par must be imagined.

The difficulty or inadvisability of literal translation only goes so far as an excuse. I suppose another rationale must be that the translator or his editorial boss wishes to spare the viewer the necessity of spending too much time reading at the expense of viewing. However, one does like to know what was said, especially if one is trying to make connections between the words of one language and the more-or-less equivalent words of another. Perhaps one can’t directly translate certain idiomatic expresses–but why are cultural and historical allusions also rubbed out, simply because the residents of one country might be less likely to recognize an allusion than the residents of another?

Then there’s the sin of condensing or rewriting. “Don’t move, I know the way,” the girl says to Elliot Gould in “The Silent Partner.” In the Spanish subtitle this becomes “Don’t accompany me.” What, in Spain or Mexico, nobody ever says “Don’t move” or “I know the way”? Would an inordinate amount of time have been lost if the subtitle had given the speaker or student of Spanish a better idea of how the same thing would actually be said in Spanish? Okay, maybe the Spaniards never say “Don’t move,” but don’t they sometimes say “Stay there”? It’s not exactly a congested phrase from Homer or Shakespeare we’re talking about here.

What is going on in the movie “Primer”?

Having now watched “Primer” (2004) a second time on DVD (the first time being some months ago) I can authoritatively state that I don’t really know exactly what is going on in it.

The independently made movie (for a reported budget of $7000) explores the consequences of two physicists’ unexpected invention, a time machine put together in a garage that superconductively allows one to loop back in time and relive a day or part of a day. There are severe constraints on how the machine works and how it can be used. One can’t go flitting around to different eras of history. But Aaron and Abe can keep returning to the same stretch of several hours, so that several versions of them might be running around during that span, trying to perfect it. Filmmaker Shane Carruth (who also plays Aaron in the film) told the Village Voice that he feared Q&A about the film would be mostly about plot points, but it’s not surprising that viewers want a better idea of what happens than they can glean without special study. One site about the movie offers several different timelines to clarify events, each timeline apparently based on a different use of the machine or maybe a different version of a day or part of a day. Well, the timelines are confusing too.

The movie’s rapidfire mumbling technospeak, indirection and understatement, and slow unpeelings of meaning all make it both compulsively interesting and hard to solve. We know that at one level it’s about trust and betrayal, maybe also about biting off more than you can chew. But the permutations of plot are almost too indirect, almost too frustrating to try to decipher. “Almost” because I wouldn’t say the movie should have been raveled differently. It’s an effective, fascinating flick. Carruth tells Village Voice: “I know that you could watch it and think it’s some kind of random assemblage, like it’s a tone poem to time travel. But to know that there’s a method to it is half the battle. Two viewings seem to do it, but I can’t say you have to see it twice; that’s so pretentious.” Maybe my two viewings were too far apart. But I’ll probably see it again.