QUAD Outdoor Cinema - Romeo + Juliet

Friday Night is a night out under the stars, headsets on, volume turned to 11 watching a couple of great Oz flics that both punch well above their weight in particular when it comes to soundtrack and score. 

SINGLE SESSION AND DOUBLE BILL TICKETS AVAILABLE

6pm “One Perfect Day”  8.15pm Romeo + Juliet 

William Shakespeare’s ROMEO + JULIET

1996 (M) 120mins

Director Baz Luhrmann.

Writers Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce, William Shakespeare

Cast Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Pete Postlethwaite, Brian Denehy, Miriam Margoles

When this version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was released in 1996 it heralded  the brilliant new creative team Bazmark onto the cinematic world stage; it conquered audiences and divided critics, best displayed by the two leading international critics at the time. But make up your own minds if you haven’t already, or simply revisit this masterpiece of modern cinema

Roger Ebert – Chicago Herald “I've seen Shakespeare done in drag. I've seen Richard III as a Nazi. I've seen “The Tempest” as science fiction and as a Greek travelogue. I've seen Prince Hal and Falstaff as homosexuals in Portland. I've seen “King Lear” as a samurai drama and “Macbeth” as a Mafia story, and two different “Romeo and Juliets” about ethnic difficulties in Manhattan (“West Side Story” and “China Girl”), but I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of “Romeo & Juliet” makes of Shakespeare's tragedy”.

Peter Travers - Rolling Stone “Leonardo DiCaprio  & Claire Danes , fill their classic roles with vital passion, speak the Elizabethan verse with unforced grace, find the spirited comedy of the play without losing its tragic fervor and keep their balance when the audacious Australian director Baz Luhrmann hurls them into a whirlwind of hardball action, rowdy humour and rapturous romance.

It’s a good thing that Shakespeare gets his name in the title, or you might mistake the opening scenes for Quentin Tarantino’s Romeo and Juliet. Shot in Mexico in a style that might be called retro-futuristic, the film reworks Shakespeare in a frenzy of jump cuts that makes most rock videos look like MTV on Midol.

If your head isn’t spinning yet, it will. The rabid flamboyance of Luhrmann’s vision, remarkably accented by Kym Barrett’s costumes and Catherine Martin’s production design, is meant to make Romeo and Juliet accessible to the elusive Gen X audience without leaving the play bowdlerized and broken. Luhrmann relishes knocking cobwebs off classics.Shakespeare has never been this sexy onscreen.Amid the clamour from outraged purists and Shakespeare spinning in his Stratford-on-Avon, England, grave, you should notice that Luhrmann and his two bright angels have shaken up a 400-year-old play without losing its touching, poetic innocence”.

Bring the picnic blankets and hampers and head to The Quad for a great night of outdoor cinema in the heart of Lismore, 21- 23 May.