| Posted by Bel | The time is 11.32am here in Wellington NZ |

A film that makes you really happy

I recently re-watched Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Yes, I realise this film doesn't have (SPOILER!!) a happy ending, but I enjoyed watching it so much.

When this film came out in 1996, I was pretty much the same age that Shakespeare first intended his heroine to be. And I was just as malleable, impetuous and giddy as your average young teen - be she living in Verona, Verona Beach or small town NZ.

Re-watching the film was such a pleasure. It was slightly worrying how much of the script was sitting verbatim in my head after so many years. And not just the Shakespearean quotations, but the specific delivery and intonations by this version's actors.

Miriam Margolyes tottering about as the Nurse, crying out "Hhhhhuuulieet!".

Claire Danes actually managing to make the "wherefore" in "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" like a "why" and not a "where".

The police chief Prince growling out "All... are... BANISH-ED!!" in the final scenes.

And, of course, Leo doing the same donkey-like gasping bray of a cry you can trace back to The Basketball Diaries and even saw recently in Shutter Island.

It can be a dangerous territory, going back and re-watching the films that influenced those tender years. And yet so many favourites from the 90s are still standing strong: Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Mallrats, Wayne's World.

Any word on Heathers? Can't Hardly Wait? Empire Records? Have you re-watched something lately and found it just made you so so happy, regardless of the content?

| Posted by Bel | The time is 12.31pm here in Wellington NZ |

Dear Baz:

(I can call you 'Baz', right? I mean, um, I don't even know what to call you for long, so I'm gonna have to.)

I like you, Baz, I do. I have liked you for a long time. I saw your film Strictly Ballroom at the cinema when I was a wee girl of 10 years old and got told off immediately afterwards for attempting to flamenco dance in my bedroom, waking my younger brother up in the process.

When Romeo + Juliet was released, I was at a tender age. Nerdy enough to love the original text, teenagey enough to love the sexed-up modernisation. I bought the poster, I bought the CD soundtrack, I bought the other CD soundtrack. I put my hair in a deliberately nonchalant half-up style and wished more boys in my town wrote poetry in beautiful natural light on the beachfront (instead, they were more the menacing-cigarette-in-a-gas-station type).

In my first year of university, just as I was a public relations student realising that I was actually a film theory student, you unleashed Moulin Rouge. It was only 18 months since I had last been in Paris. You transported me back and you added a whirlwind of drama and glamour which included the most beautiful dress to bless the silver screen until that green frock in Atonement.

Then you made a film called Australia. I remember being aghast when I saw the trailer. I think I may've actually shuddered at that bit when Kidman's face, as smooth and luminescent as a traditionally iced wedding cake, peered down at the dark skinned child huddled in a hovel which managed to scream simultaneously "poverty!" and "fabulously decorated by the one and only Catherine Martin!".

I'd heard that you'd been working on operatic stage performances, Baz, a move which seemed both inspired and completely logical. I decided to ignore this cinematic misstep, much in the way we pretend that Guy Ritchie's Madonna film didn't happen, or how we must block out the fact that Elizabeth Moss is a grand ole crazy Scientologist and just focus on how wonderful and perfect she is as Peggy.

Last year there were rumours you had a new project on the boil. The Great Gatsby was going to be remade and you were the man to do it. I watched the film not so long ago and thought that its themes of the indolent upper classes and the slow rot of wealth were still timely - I could see Joseph Gordon Levitt making a great Nick Carraway (the narrator).

Next thing we heard, you'd cast our old friend Leo in the title role - a part made famous by Robert Redford, if not emblazoned in minds by the original F Scott Fitzgerald novel. Then the glorious news that it was to be Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan.

But now - I hesitate. Oh Baz. Just when it seemed that things were going so right, it all seems that things could go horribly, horribly wrong.

Baz, listen - honey.

Please don't do this.

Just don't.

Resist the urge.

I know how it is. You're away for the weekend, you're in Vegas, you're hanging out with Michael "Blow Shit Up" Mann and Oliver "Throw Money At It" Stone and you get a bit carried away. It happens!

You do things you wouldn't usually, you say things you don't mean. Nobody's going to hold you to it, sweetheart.

I always feel a bit woozy after wearing 3D glasses for a couple of hours. Was that it? Did you have to trial new fancy ones? Was James "More! More! MOOOOORE!" Cameron there? I can't imagine he'd be a good influence. Did something weird happen like that scene in The Hangover when Mike Tyson starts singing and you start thinking he's kind of funny and adorbs and forget he's actually a convicted rapist? Vegas is a crazy place, I hear.

Anyway, hopefully you're home now and have had a bit of time to think it through over a cool can of Fosters and have moved on from the whole folly.

If so, cheers! and good luck with the script and that whole shooting business. Let me know if you need any consultation on cloche hats (they're a personal fave).

If not, well.... *shakes fist*

Love, your fan,

Bel xxx