http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/coogan-and-keener-to-work-on-hamlet-2.php You can imagine that I did quite the double take when I saw “Working on Hamlet 2” in a headline.  Turns out that the plot of this new movie revolves around a drama teacher who decides to write a sequel to Hamlet. Reminds me of all those tv sitcoms that ran with the whole “Re-imagining Hamlet” idea — Gilligan’s Island, Dick Van Dyke, Head of the class, etc.. Here’s an opening for you all.  What’s the plot of a Hamlet sequel?  Is it all about Fortinbras, or Horatio?  Does young Hamlet make an appearance as a ghost? Or, option B:  Every American television show that involves high school students has inevitably done an episode arc where the school play is Romeo and Juliet, or Midsummer.  But how many can you name that have done Hamlet?  

http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/movie-news/kingsley-signs-the-will-of-shakespeare.php Well here’s an interesting idea.  How about a novel based around Shakespeare’s deathbed as he updates his last will and testament?  The new movie, based on the novel by Christopher Rush, will star Ben Kingsley in the title role (which, if you missed it, is a play on both Will as in Shakespeare and Will as in the legal document). I assume that it’ll be the standard movie fare where his “last moments” are actually little more than a flashback through his entire life.  What will be interesting (I have not read the book) is to see how they deal with one of the most damning pieces of anti-Stratfordian evidence, that the will contains no mentions at all of any books, ownerships, or other ties to what has become the Shakespeare canon. How do you like Ben Kingsley for the title role?   

So, did anybody watch Kid Nation?  That’s the one where they put a bunch of kids into a ghost town with (supposedly) no adults around in an attempt to recreate Lord of the Flies, only without the violence and the sticks sharpened at both ends.  It made quite a bit of press when the parents started poking around to see if they could file charges that the show broke child labor laws and endangered the children. Well, it premiered tonight.  One of the aspects of the show is that the children earn money, and then they get to spend it in the store.  And in this very first episode, on the first day that the store was open, did anybody see what Jared (11yrs old) bought?  “Henry V, Julius Caesar, or King Henry VIII…..I picked King Henry V, by William Shakespeare.” I’m not kidding.  Some kids bought candy, one kid bought a bike.  This kid bought Henry V. I am going to assume that he bought it because he’s a geeky kid (in the good way) and not because the producer shoved it in his hand.  But I swear if anybody busts out the St. Crispin’s Day speech in any later episodes, I quit!  

The other day out of the corner of an ear I caught a commercial on the Encore movie channel.  Something about showing a romantic movie Monday nights at 9.  But the gimmick was famous nines, like “There are nine planets in the solar system…..cats have nine lives…..Beethoven wrote nine symphonies…..Shakespeare wrote nine sonnets…..” WHAT? Fine, “Shakespeare In Love” is one of the movies currently in their rotation, so they were going for the tie-in.  But man, that’s just painful to my ears.  Sure he wrote 9 sonnets…on the way to writing 154 of them. 

I’m a man of my word, and I said here that when my kids learned how to sing at least the first part of Sonnet 18, I’d record and post it.  So, here it is, my five and three year old singing “Shall I compare thee…”.

I did what I could to clean it up, but it gets a little rushed at the end.  They get excited when the microphone is on. Of course, I may not have thought this entirely through.  They sing it now, all the time.  Breakfast lunch and dinner.  I thought that if they’re going to sing the same song over and over again, I’d rather it be Shakespeare than something from Dora or High School Musical.  I’m beginning to question that assumption…