http://voxefx20.blogspot.com/2008/02/natalie-portman-scarlett-johansson.html Ok, the link above is nothing but pictures of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, the stars of the movie (oddly, as I write this, a commercial for the movie just came on tv…) But I found the link because they’d tagged it Shakespeare. Other than a straightforward Henry VIII connection, does anybody know a particular reason to think that this movie will have anything Shakespeare related? I notice (via Wikipedia) that Sandy Powell, the costume designer, also did Shakespeare In Love. Not that that’ll mean anything :). Oh, and here’s an Amazon review of the book that takes the author to task for being less than subtle about the fate of Anne Boleyn, claiming that anybody who’s read their Shakespeare knows exactly what happens to her.
The Actor Who Wrote Hamlet
http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=2423 Great article on the Arden Third Edition of the works, which has taken the bold step of publishing *three* different Hamlets (bad quarto, second quarto, and first folio) as separate texts, rather than trying to blend them. The author of the post goes on to discuss how the separate scripts demonstrate that Shakespeare was first and foremost an actor who wrote scripts, and not some poetic genius locked up in a room by himself cranking out lines he never blotted. On the contrary, there’s lots and lots and lots of rewrites. I think the major problem with this theory is that each change between the scripts does not necessarily represent Shakespeare himself saying “Ok, I didn’t like that, I’m changing it.” There are many other hands at work, including his fellow actors, the typesetters, and so on. For any given change between scripts you can’t say which one was what Shakespeare intended.
Raul Midon : All The Answers
This is just barely a Shakespeare reference, but I liked it. Raul Midon performed his song “All The Answers” at the TED conference in March, 2007. The song is about how these days whenever we want to know something, we just Google for it. He then goes on to intermix trivial questions where you couldn’t care about the answer with philosophical questions where all the googling in the world won’t get you the answer. One of the questions in the latter category is about Shakespeare, and I like the way it fits into the song. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/188
Starcrossed
I don’t know what made me think of this in the shower this morning, but it was surprisingly easy to Google for. Anybody remember Laverne and Shirley? Remember the singing combo, Lenny and the Squigtones? These days we would probably call it a jump the shark moment when the producers turn to somebody like Michael McKean (who played Lenny, and later starred in This Is Spinal Tap) and say, “Hey, you can sing in real life, let’s write a show around your character being able to sing, too.”
Anyway, the song is “Starcrossed.” Enjoy…
Thy Eternal Summer Shall Not Fade
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23188937-5001021,00.html OK, I knew that Heath Ledger had died, and that Michelle Williams, mother of his children, was taking it very hard. The linked story tells of his funeral, which turned into a giant beach party with everybody splashing in the ocean. What caught my eye was that Williams read Sonnet 18 at the service. An interesting choice, since folks have such a tendency to focus on the first part, the one all about “You’re so beautiful there’s really nothing for me to compare you to” that they often forget, or perhaps never knew, the ending and it’s thoughts of immortality. Normally I’m not one for overly quoted Shakespeare just to be deep (I cannot stand weddings where they bust out the old “Let not the marriage of true minds…” thing). But given the setting for this particular case, it sounds like it must have been a nice sentiment.