Angels in America

I finally got around to watching HBO's version of Angels in America, thanks to bittorrent someone who taped it for me. I won't bother with a long review, but overall it was a surprisingly good rendition of the play. Relative to the production I had seen, I thought the "realism" parts of the play came through more strongly and with more subtlety, while the more "magical" parts fell a little flat. The "magical" bits, I think, were necessary to give the play the sense of being "more than the sum of its parts," so the movie fell a bit short. Still - quite good. We watched 4 hours in one sitting, and then the other 2 the following afternoon.

Arthur Silber has a longer essay on it. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.