Much Ado About Much Ado

source: Regal Cinema Poster Contest on Facebook

Joss Whedon's version of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" opens to a wider audience tomorrow, although skipping many cities (such as my own hometown of Chattanooga). So you may have to drive a couple hundred miles to see it, but if it's popular with general audiences it will surely spread to more theaters.

Theater Listings for June

From ComingSoon.Net

Filmed in just 12 days entirely on location in exotic Santa Monica, Calif., Much Ado About Nothing features a stellar cast of beloved, or soon to be beloved, actors - some of them veterans of Shakespearean theater, some completely new to the form, but all dedicated to the idea that this story bears retelling, that this dialogue is as fresh and intoxicating as any being written, and that the joy of working on a passion project surrounded by dear friends, admired colleagues and an atmosphere of unabashed rapture far outweighs their hilariously miniature paychecks.

Shot in glorious black and white by Jay Hunter, the June 7 release stars Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof as Beatrice and Benedick, the world's least likely lovers headed for their inevitable tumble into love. The supporting cast includes Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, Clark Gregg as Leonato, Fran Kranz as Claudio and Reed Diamond as Don Pedro.

Joss Whedon will appear with Stephen Colbert tonight. I will post the video as soon as it appears.

Set your TV recording device thingie! @JossWhedon will be on @ColbertReport tonight at 11:30pm/10:30pm Central on @ComedyCentral.
— MuchAdoFilm (@MuchAdoFilm) June 20, 2013

Interview with Total Film Magazine:



Whedon has chosen the winners of the Regal Cinema Much Ado Poster Challenge
See all the amazing fan posters Here on Regal Cinemas Facebook

.@JossWhedon has spoken & the #MyMuchAdoPoster contest winner is @dcmjs. See his poster at @RegalMovies theaters! pic.twitter.com/nkfhwe4GDU
— MuchAdoFilm (@MuchAdoFilm) June 20, 2013

Joss Whedon ~ Frank Langella's Dracula was "Hot"

Fantastic Whedon interview with Time Magazine




Best take-away? Whedon says that for him, the "hottest" vampire of all was Frank Langella. That shouldn't surprise anyone who recalls the "Dracula" episode of Buffy with the suave Langella look-alike.

Guardian UK Geek-Out Over Joss Whedon

Great fannish article about Joss Whedon From Guardian UK

Excerpt ~ on Buffy and Feminism:

Whedon... (created) his own universe: supernatural and sci-fi worlds populated by fast-talking, wise-cracking folk whose language has infiltrated our speech (if you find your vocab becoming rather suffix-y – if you've ever used words like "backstabby" or "kissage" – thank Whedon).

. . . What you can't miss about his oeuvre is its empowering depiction of women. Buffy, with her kickass reflexes and witty rejoinders, never needed rescuing by a guy – hell, she once stuck a sword through her boyfriend's chest. Was it hard, I wonder, to introduce a feminist icon into fantasy, a genre more associated with teenage boys with limited social skills? "It's like horror or, back when it was somewhat new, rap," Whedon replies. "It's a fringe art which means you will find the most egregious misogyny in there – but also the most subversive feminism."

Whedon has said before that if anyone wonders why he writes female characters the way he does, they need only meet his mother. Writing a female hero was a conscious decision "but if it doesn't come from the subconscious it'll just be a polemic, it'll reek," he says. "There's nothing worse than someone who thinks they're supposed to add a feminist or racial agenda that they're not invested in." Whedon himself was inspired by James Cameron – "He gave us [Alien's] Ripley and [The Terminator's] Sarah Connor when we desperately needed them, and he wasn't doing it with any stated agenda."

He admits, however, that the status quo may not have improved dramatically. He's keen not to lay a thick judgment on the Twilight franchise, but he admits the films "feel like a reaction against Buffy: 'OK, we liked the part where it was sexy, and there were love triangles, and monsters… We found her a bit grating.'

"Kristen Stewart is kind of captivating," he continues, "she can just stare at stuff and it works because I still want to watch it. But it does seem a bit passive. 'I don't know which beautiful boy to choose between!' is not exactly the struggle that every girl is going through."

"Much Ado About Nothing" Panel Discussion at SXSW Film Festival in Austin

Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing" looks like real movie magic, Shakespeare meets Mad Men!

James Marsters on Spike as Spock

Great insights as James Marsters compares the character Spike with Mr. Spock from Star Trek!

ET Online:

"In Buffy, I thought that I wanted to be the new Spock," he tells ET. "I was a little side character that no one really thought would be much, but I kind of turned the theme at a different angle so you could kind of look at it. …Spock was that side character that nobody thought would be much and he ended up kind of turning the theme on its head, ‘cause Star Trek really was about human beings perfecting a world view and then sharing it with the galaxy, and then Spock was just trying to figure out how to be human in the first place."

The now fifty-something star was just one of many sci-fi icons present at Creation Entertainment’s Grand Slam Convention: The Star Trek and Sci-Fi Summit in Burbank, CA, among other such notables as Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, and many more.

. . . "In the world of Buffy, vampires were supposed to be ugly and very quickly dead. Joss used to say that he wasn't into the Anne Rice thing. He didn't want vampires to be romantic. That's why in Buffy when we bite people we become hideously ugly. Because in Buffy vampires are a metaphor for all the problems you face in adolescence. So, the vampires of today are very different. They're more in the Anne Rice vein. And that's cool too."

"I think every generation has their own take on vampires, and I think it's fabulous," he continued. "I think vampires, for some reason, they are the most malleable of all of the basic archetypes of horror. Like, wolfman has to be wolfman, has to be a good man or woman that's forced to do evil by the moon. If the wolfman is a jerk, it just doesn't work. Or, if the invisible man is not a jerk, it won't work. The reason the invisible man works is he's a real jerk and so the audience is terrified when he's invisible cause, what's he going to do now? If it's a really nice guy and he's invisible, who cares? But for some reason, vampires can almost be anything. You can use them to whatever ends that you want. Whatever the zeitgeist is in this decade, or whatever, vampires can morph to fit that."

~~~More at Link~~~

What does he think of Joss Whedon? (My transcript)

Joss is a true artist. I knew him when he was about to have a heart attack at all times. I asked him one time "It must be wonderful to wind up the universe and just see how it plays out." And he was like sweating, and like "Yeah, the problem is, I have to keep winding."
He was really killing himself to put the show out and basically do a 48 hour movie every week. And so, I got to see him under intense pressure. He's a genius so it's like, some days you'll get a huge amount of love, and some days you want to hide from him.