Love both programs - the FS I don’t think is meant to be taken super seriously - it’s meant to be fun and chaotic just like Baz Luhrmann’s R+J - I think the voiceovers and the odd music cuts totally fit the quirky editing of the film (like all of Baz’s films).
Which is why all the Moulin Rouge pieces (for the most part) kind of fall short because it fails to really capture that "bigger than life" aspect the actual movie shows. I think that's why Ashley's Moulin Rouge piece worked (because she's good at the OTT expression) and why V&M's FD worked when they played up the drama a lot more.
For some context, when that version of Romeo & Juliet came out it brought a boring Shakespeare story to life to a new generation of teenagers. As I said earlier, Claire Danes was the model angsty teenager we adored -- she had just played the role of Angela Chase in "My So-Called Life." The movie came out when I was 14 years old and I was in 9th grade. I love the colors of the set and the music just gave it this mood -- like "YES, Romeo and Juliet was like me." It was the teenage angsty version of R&J and teenagers like me loved it so much.
Shae-Lynn is not that much older than Claire Danes (3 years). She would have been around 20 years old at the time the movie came out and the movie likely had the same effect on her.
Again, I feel like a lot of programs that use the music try to kind of play it straight with those cuts. So while I get it seems kind of all over the place, I see Shae's vision for the piece.
I am impressed that Jun, even though he wasn't even born yet when the movie came out, has managed to understand the feel of that program. I agree with the poster who said that it was similar to Elena Radionova's Titanic program. I pretty much liked the FS because Elena sold it so well (and honestly she capture the raw, dramatic emotion of the movie. It was cheesy, but that didn't stop people from watching the movie multiple times.).
