The Alamo, movies, and Shakespeare

That’s an ambitious title. The Alamo. Current Films. Shakespeare. Hard to wrap that all together with three disparate topics, but I’ve got a specific destination:

San Antonio Shakespeare.
The holidays found me at the Alamo Drafthouse, on several occasions. Saw a couple of movies, and the location is what was so important. A maximum theater can turn an okay movie into a brilliant experience. I saw “Something about the Morgans,” which, really, it’s a Big-City meets Backwoods vehicle. If I hadn’t seen it in an Alamo Drafthouse, the movie wouldn’t have been as enjoyable. Just a throwaway romance with comedy factored in. The best bits, though, are used up in the trailers. Nothing new to see.

How many times can city-slickers show up in the country, bumble along, and be okay? While I prefer a hotel to a tent, I can carve out an existence in “country” settings. I have a little more horse experience beyond “riding a pony on my tenth birthday,” from the trailers.

The sub-plot wherein the two busy executives had equally busy assistants, and those two assistants get it on? That was about the best part, to me. Might’ve been the time the jalapeno poppers, or the “Enter the Dragon” (personal) pizza arrived. Alamo Drafthouse does food right.

The other movie was “Sherlock Holmes,” with no jalapeno poppers, and a “Porky’s” pizza. What an excellent romp through fantasy world, and for a moment, some rather inventive story-telling. For a film. Freeze frame future action, rewind, analysis, and then, run it forward again. Obvious chemistry, real or imagined, between the two lead characters. Points for some historically accurate London. I can’t recall, might’ve been the pizza, if the Tower Bridge was called the London Bridge. Not that it matters. Might be embraced by the Steam Punk crowd, certainly had that feel about it.

Might’ve been the pizza, though.

For a crowning video experience to the holiday weekend, I watched Tom Stoppard’s excellent movie production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and one critique of the movie suggested that the script is better suited for the stage than celluloid because the dazzling word play.

The characters fence with words, and Tim Roth is an excellent actor for this piece. 1990 film, predates some of his other notable films (and TV, &c.) Gary Oldman and a sterling Richard Dreyfuss, for the three main roles.

Seeing that play (on film – video really, it’s a DVD, and never mind the semantics), it reminded me how poor the movies were. Not bad, just not enough snap and crackle to make the dialogue pop.

If I had one problem with the film version of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, it was the opening sequence. I’ve enjoyed the staged versions better.

As a completely useless side bar item, I saw the actor play Hamlet in the film version, saw him on stage in Hamlet, circa 1991, or thereabouts. No digital record, just notebooks.

My visceral response, though, to the films at the Alamo? Loved them. Might be the location. Or the pizza. It’s an out of this world.

• Aperture: ƒ/4.5
• Camera: KODAK EASYSHARE C315 DIGITAL CAMERA
• Flash fired: no
• Focal length: 6mm
• ISO: 100
• Shutter speed: 1/1025s