O (2001)
Directed by Tim Blake Nelson
Even though he's the only black student at the elite Palmetto Grove Academy, star basketball player Odin James has the adoration of all, including the team's coach and the Dean's beautiful daughter Desi. Odin's troubled friend Hugo, the coach's son, deeply resentful of his father's preference of Odin on and off the court, plots a diabolical scheme to sow the seed of mistrust between O and Desi, setting in motion a disturbing chain of events which erupts into a firestorm of breathtaking intensity.
4 connections found
View:
4 connections, in both directions
What critics compared O to
I excitedly flocked to Tim Blake Nelson's O and Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You , high school movies paying tribute to "Othello" and "The Taming of the Shrew", respectively.
Goulding seems confident and pleasant enough on the surface, but underneath smolders a passionate jealous rage towards his friends Odin James (played by Mekhi Phifer of "Shaft"), Michael Casio (Andrew Keegan of "10 Things I Hate About You") and Odin's girlfriend, Desi Brable (Julia Stiles of "Save the Last Dance").
As was the case with other such teen-based adaptations of Shakespeare's work such as "10 Things I Hate About You," "Romeo + Juliet" and "Hamlet," the story feels, looks and sounds different, yet is nevertheless pretty much the same.
And, regrettably, this new paintjob on a reliable warhorse doesn't have the verve or vivacity of Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet or 10 Things I Hate About You.
Tim Blake Nelson's controversial version of Othello is a belated entry in the pre-millennial wave of literary classics rendered with teenage casts -- Jane Austen's Emma as Clueless, Baz Luhrmann's overamped Romeo + Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew as 10 Things I Hate About You.
Aug. 31, 2001 | After Julia Stiles starred in "10 Things I Hate About You," the 1999 high school comedy update of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," the celeb profiles that followed announced she would be playing two more Shakespeare heroines: First, Desdemona in "O," a high school update of "Othello," and then Ophelia in "Hamlet."
But the very fact that "10 Things I Hate About You" ("The Taming of the Shrew") and "Get Over It" ( "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ) were comedies gave them some leeway from literary scrutiny.
Of the spate of classics-transposed-to-high-school movies that have been released over the last few years, some (Ten Things I Hate About You, Hamlet 2000, Clueless) have been much more successful than others (She's All That, Cruel Intentions, Crime and Punishment In Suburbia).
Stanley Kubrick is his idol, and the final shot pans over a giant poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey .