http://shakespeare.learnhub.com/lesson/video/495-throne-wars-hamlet-meets-star-wars Hamlet meets Star Wars.  It’s just a school project, so don’t expect much by way of production values (it’s hand-drawn animation), but points for the creativity.

http://briefepisode.com/2008/10/24/were-the-world-mine/ Start with a movie centered around a production of Midsummer.  Not new (Dead Poet’s Society, among others, springs to mind). Now imagine that the character playing Puck whips up a *real* love potion that works on his fellow actors, and then runs around spraying it on everyone in town.  All heck breaks loose, as you could well imagine. Oh, and did I mention that the actor in question is gay?

http://goldenstate.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/presidential-endorsement/ Comparing the presidential candidates to Shakespeare is hardly new.  But Coriolanus doesn’t come up all that often, so I thought this one worth a link.   [* You know, I never did watch the Colbert report on this subject since I was in Disney at the time, I’ll have to go check it out.] The other candidate (I’ll let you guess which is which if you don’t want to peek :)) is compared to Hamlet and Macbeth, though I think that’s the weaker of the two arguments.  After all, the author says (albeit jokingly) that the candidate is not a good match for Macbeth because “he is not a man given to seeing ghosts in his dining room.”  … apparently seeing ghosts up on the parapets is not a problem?

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/23/librarian-fined-500.html BoingBoing points to the story of a librarian who got a $500 fine for “ethics violation” after promoting his daughter’s book in the newsletter, and by distributing free copies.  (He called it “Best Book Ever”, hence the title :)) Just so happens that the book in question is a Manga version of Macbeth.  Hey, I’ll take popularity for the bard anyway I can get it.  If people buy copies of the book just for protest, that’s still exposure!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I notice something different every time I flip through one of the plays.  This time it is Midsummer, right at the beginning.  I know that Lysander is pleading his case for Hermia, and argues that Demetrius could have Helena instead.  What I don’t think I ever noticed, though, is what he says:

LYSANDER
Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,
And won her soul;

Maybe I’m not fully up on my terminology, but are we supposed to believe that Demetrius actually slept with Helena, and now has completely lost interest in her? We’re not talking about modern times where a girl will go on a daytime talk show with 15 guys who might be the baby daddy.  You’d think that one guy just blurting out “Yeah, he slept with her and they’re not married” would be a big deal, wouldn’t it?  On top of that, Theseus basically says, “Yeah, I’d heard that too.”  How does Helena not come off looking like a big slut? But maybe I’m overinterpreting, and maybe “made love” really is supposed to mean something more along the lines of “showered with attention and gifts and tokens of affection, and generally made her believe that he loved her.”  That’s always how I’d interpreted it, without close scrutiny of the exact words.  That seems a bit more forgivable. So which is it?  Is Demetrius just a typical young man who only wants what he can’t have?  Or is he a scoundrel who takes advantage of women and casts them aside? [I suppose there is also the third option that he’s talking about a different Helena here – let some random girl we don’t get to meet play the role of town slut – but that would be strangely and unnecessarily confusing.]