Are the accusations against the current film _Elizabeth_--that the style derives from MTV--really common? Can anyone refer me to an example in print? Isn't the more obvious comparison to _The Godfather_? I.e., family rivalries, chiaroscuro lighting, young scion of family assumes patriarchal responsibility at the cost of personal happiness, penultimate cross-cutting bloodbath, etc. Isn't it all just lifted straight from _The Godfather_? Granted _The Godfather_ gets a lot of its thematic material from treating what had previously been gangster iconography as post-Elizabethan drama (specifically Webster)--as a UCLA Theater major, the director would hardly have been unaware of these references--and _Elizabeth_ just returns the favor by borrowing the visual and editing strategies back to the proper time period in order to "update" the visual style and to differentiate itself from the Masterpiece Theater tradition. Whence the excuse for comparing _Elizabeth_ to MTV? Sincerely, Edward R. O'Neill UCLA General Education Program [log in to unmask] wrote: > > Considering the accusations of _Elizabeth_ being MTV, I'm sure I'll get > attacked with that, and assumed because of my age to have been weaned on > MTV. In truth, it was inspired primarily by 1920s avant-garde cinema, > plus Maya Deren and others, and around a particular theme. ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu