Overheard today in line at the supermarket:

“Know what movie I saw? Tristan and Isolde. It was sooo good! I cried!”

   “You cry at everything.”

“No, seriously! It was like Romeo and Juliet…only good.”
No, seriously, I had to restrain myself from smacking the child.

Technorati Tags: movies, Shakespeare

The Rose Theatre remains were discovered in 1989. This is where Shakespeare was thought to have learned his craft. Sir Ian McKellen (pick your movie — he was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, but also Magneto in X-Men) is one of the major supporters saying that he does not want it restored. “The point,” he says, “is that these remains are the genuine thing. We don’t want to start covering them up.”

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – HOPKINS TO QUIT AFTER SHAKESPEARE ROLE:

Wow, here’s a newsflash — Sir Anthony Hopkins says that he wants to do one more King Lear, and then “call it quits.” He’s done Lear before, and didn’t like it, so he wants to have another go in a movie – preferably done “the old traditional thing of setting it in Denmark or a craggy area of Britain, shooting it near the coasts in winter, set it in the dark ages.”

Technorati Tags: movies, Shakespeare

FT.com / Arts & Weekend – The play wot Shakespeare wrote: How often do you hear “Sir Thomas More” mentioned, let alone staged? Yes, I’m not talking about the man, but about the play about the man. A play that Shakespeare afficionados may already know what co-written by our favorite man in Stratford. Although this play may never have been staged in Shakespeare’s time, it is the only surviving play to feature Shakespeare’s own authenticated handwriting.

Technorati Tags: Shakespeare

Book Reviews: Make room on the Shakespeare shelf:

I am so tired of seeing reviews for “1599” that I almost did not follow this link through, but I’m glad I did because it brings up several Shakespeare books I had not yet heard of. “The Oxford Shakespeare” includes two “newly recognized” works as well as two versions of King Lear. “The Shakespeare Miscellany” seems to be trivial stuff like all the different ways to spell Shakespeare’s name – as well as the names of everybody he collaborated with, stuff like that. “The Sourcebooks” series looks at one play at a time, and comes with an audio CD of scene performances.

I need to pick my Shakespeare books more carefully. Last Christmas I got “Will in the World” which was good, Bloom’s “Invention of the Human” which I only barely dented, and Garber’s “Shakespeare After All” which I actually found pretty painful. I need something a little lighter next time. I hear “Shakespeare’s Bawdy” is fun.

Technorati Tags: book review, Shakespeare