Christensen and Barton in an Italian tale
14 February 2005
Let's clear a few things up before we begin. First of all, the title of this piece has nothing to do with the director of Aliens. Nor is it a sequel to the Evil Dead's Necronomicon. We are, of course, talking about the 14th century Italian classic by Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (or "Il Decameron" if you want to be all Italian about it), which is being made into an English language film starring Hayden Christensen and Mischa Barton.
Barton's involvement has been public for some time, but it's only today that Hayden was confirmed. Well, actually, Barton told us at the BAFTAs on Saturday night, but we didn't quite get around to telling you about it. The OC starlet said, "I'm about to be starting one this summer called the Decameron. It's filming in Italy with Hayden Christensen. I'm really excited." Well, you heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen.
The book follows ten young noblemen and women, who have retired to a country villa to escape the plague ravaging Florence. This being before the days of Monopoly and Risk, they amuse themselves by telling each other stories – ten each, for a total of one hundred tales. The stories vary from the bawdy via farce to the plain filthy – but of course, this being literature and very old literature at that, it doesn't count.
It's basically the Italian Canterbury Tales (the Calabrian Tales, if you will), but the producers are designing it to appeal to a young audience, promising pop music and costumes by Italian designer Roberto Cavalli – which suggests that the corsets and wimples are out the window in favour of, er, corsets and jeans. We're also going to go out on a limb and guess that they cut out about ninety of the 100 stories in favour of a subplot involving car chases and lightsabers.
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Herbie, Fully Loaded
