Monday, July 20th was a very important day in history. We all know that by now. I probably don't need to tell you but for those out of the loop it was the day that Ed Howard wrote up Black Book at Only the Cinema for The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club. What? You were thinking something else?
Anyway, as it goes with these things I was introduced to a film I had not yet seen and as it further goes was more than impressed by the lead performance by Carice van Houten playing the heroine with the duel identity of Rachel Stein / Ellis de Vries. I was curious to see what else she had done and did a quick search on IMDB. Coming out later this year was the title Vivaldi and I thought, "Hey, a bio about the composer. I'd like to see that." Curious to find out more I clicked on the link and discovered the first name in the cast was...
Neve Campbell.
Huh?
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Neve Campbell (although full disclosure, I don't think much of her as an actress at all) it's just that she doesn't fit in a movie named Vivaldi.
"Wait a minute," I thought, "Beethoven was about a St. Bernard. Maybe Vivaldi is the name of Neve's parakeet or something."
Nope. It's about the composer. The composer named Antonio Vivaldi. The Venetian Baroque composer who lived from 1678 to 1741. And the first person listed in the credits is Neve Campbell.
Let's look at it another way. I like Sylvester Stallone. While I may not think very much of many of his movies I've always liked his presence onscreen. I like him in Rocky, I like him in First Blood and I like him overall. I'm not going to compare him to Robert DeNiro but he's okay in my book. Nonetheless, if I'm looking up a new historical biopic named, oh let's say Robespierre, and I click on it and the first name on the cast list is Sylvester Stallone I'm going to think, "Wow, somebody really dropped the ball here. Somewhere between the pitch meeting and the first day read-through someone really, really blew it."
That's how I feel about Vivaldi. Someone dropped the ball. Someone doesn't care about getting the right person for the job. Although you know, I could be completely wrong. I still remember hearing way back when that Amadeus was being made into a movie and the guy from Animal House was going to play Mozart. Pinto! Flounder's pledge buddy! That was going to be Mozart! What the ...? And yet, for me at least, it worked. So maybe I'm wrong about Campbell and Vivaldi and Stallone and Robespierre (if that movie ever gets made - fingers crossed) but something tells me "No." Something says it's going to be bad and that Campbell's going to employ that insufferable "naturalistic" pausing after every third word that has been the hallmark of her performances thus far. Something tells me when it comes time to buy the ticket I'll turn around and just say, "Neve(r) mind."
