Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection on sale today only

Click the image to be taken to Amazon.ca

The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection (Amazon Exclusive Box Set) (State Fair / Oklahoma! / The King and I / Carousel / South Pacific / The Sound of Music) [Blu-ray] (Bilingual)

If it’s your cup of fine Earl Grey, Rodgers and Hammerstein are on sale today only at Amazon.ca for the bargain rate price of $56 CAD. Even if you’re only interested in two of the included 6 films, at this cost its cheaper than buying them individually. And from what I’ve read and seen the transfers are terrific.

V for Vicissitude, V for Vendetta

Though today is not the fifth of November, one still would be well served to remember the importance of the nursery rhyme which bears this date. Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot; the sentiment of these simple lines is pushed to its utmost in Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s incendiary agitprop anarchistic graphic novelism in the form of the anarchistic terrorist-cum-ideologue V.

Though published in the internecine political warfare between the Labour and Conservative parties from 1982 to 1989, it was not until the equally fraught period of British society in 2005 that the material was eventually adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving, directed by James McTeigue. Or rather, 2005 would have been the release year of the film, on the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Treason Plot no less, had WB Studios decided not to delay the release in the wake of London’s horrific 7/7 bombings.

Though the missed opportunity to have the film premiere on this precipitous and propitious date is regrettable, more regrettable still is that the film does little to engage with the very brand of ideological violence which provoked the bombings and which the graphic novel examines (hereafter referred to by the less pretentious designation of “book”). Had it done so, perhaps the film might have retained its original date, or at least the filmmakers and studio could have embarked on a much needed and undoubtedly valuable discourse on the politics of this century. Instead, those involved squandered their chance, as the film squandered its full potential. Though perhaps my criticism is unwarranted, since the book answers questions the film doesn’t dare to ask: What is the measure of villainy? Of heroism? The depths of compassion and the heights of our capacity for cruelty? But then, ought any text dealing with the political strive to grapple with just this dimension of our humanity?