I like Keira Knightley. I don't care that's she's arguably overrated, "too" skinny, or that there's been an over-saturation of films with her name in the credits. When I saw Love Actually, well, let's just say it didn't take much imagination to sympathize with Andrew Lincoln.
Two of her best movies arrived on Blu-ray, Tuesday, having just shipped Monday from Amazon.com. Both collaborations with Joe Wright came packaged in the traditional blue cases, but with gold Academy Award slipcovers.
Book adaptations are always risky. Exactly ten years after the definitively faithful 6-part Pride and Prejudice mini-series, Joe Wright crafted somewhat of a modern version, without actually changing the setting or time period. It's Austen with attitude. One challenge is to compress the story into 2 hours. Instead of a story that unfolds leisurely, it has to move at a fair clip to finish the tale in time, even with the excising of many scenes or characters such as Mr. and Mrs. Hurst.
Filmmaking is obviously a visual art, and Wright, with Roman Osin, manages to bring extraordinary images to the screen. Most scenes are washed in golden sunlight or candlelight, while others clearly use digital grading to make certainly hue pop off the screen. The opening shot, as well as the climactic scene take place at sunrise. Artistic license is taken with setting, character, period wardrobe, and movie trickery such as the scene that shows Darcy and Elizabeth dancing in full ballroom where everyone else is suddenly invisible to the camera.
Dario Marianelli's score is almost always present, based around a single piano theme. This theme is even performed with differing levels of proficiency, on the piano, by two of the characters within the film.
It's well crafted cinematic beauty, but novel purists will be wasting their time. They will always have the 300 minutes of P&P on Blu-ray with the 1995 version.
Filmmaking is obviously a visual art, and Wright, with Roman Osin, manages to bring extraordinary images to the screen. Most scenes are washed in golden sunlight or candlelight, while others clearly use digital grading to make certainly hue pop off the screen. The opening shot, as well as the climactic scene take place at sunrise. Artistic license is taken with setting, character, period wardrobe, and movie trickery such as the scene that shows Darcy and Elizabeth dancing in full ballroom where everyone else is suddenly invisible to the camera.
Dario Marianelli's score is almost always present, based around a single piano theme. This theme is even performed with differing levels of proficiency, on the piano, by two of the characters within the film.
It's well crafted cinematic beauty, but novel purists will be wasting their time. They will always have the 300 minutes of P&P on Blu-ray with the 1995 version.
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