I'm a sucker for film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays that combine modern settings and Elizabethan English. So in anticipation of Coriolanus, which I plan to see while it's playing in movie theaters in Chicago, I did some research and found out that Belgrade plays the role of ancient Rome. Well, not ancient, since they moved the action to modern times. And we're probably not supposed to think it's Rome. Now I really have to see the film.
According to a Reuters article written from before the shooting began, "Most of the filming will be done in the Serbian parliament building and other locations in Belgrade, which offers settings from the Roman era, a medieval Serbian state and buildings destroyed by NATO aircraft during the 1999 bombing of then Yugoslavia."
Also noted: it's Ralph Fiennes's directorial debut. What happened with directors practicing their craft by making short, low-budget quirky films they show at film festivals before their first big bite and an international distributor? If you're a star of the screen and stage, you can now just plunge into a big project like this?
