Sometimes we realize this when we wake up to discover that an entertainment idol has died – Robin Williams, David Bowie, Tom Petty. You don’t appreciate what you had until life tells you, “No more.”
But sometimes you know what’s coming, and I’m not sure if that’s worse. Sir Ian McKellen (and Sir Patrick Stewart and Dame Judi Dench and too many others to name) will not be around forever to bring the Shakespeare. In the linked interview above Sir Ian gets realistic on us that he’s “probably not really” got any more Shakespeare in him. Sad day, but one that had to come eventually.
What’s your favorite Sir Ian role? Richard III, Macbeth, Lear? In the image above a very young McKellen takes on Hamlet. I wish we had video of that!
For my day job we have a very large email marketing business. It’s normal conversation to talk about what others are doing, so when I got the following subject line in an email I laughed and showed it to my coworkers:
Make someone ugly cry. Adobe can help.
What I wrong as a comment was, “I know what they meant, but that’s the worst subject line I’ve ever seen.” It sounds like Adobe’s offering to help you chase ugly kids around the playground and make them cry.
A couple days after that post, a coworker calls me over and says, “You posted something the other day and I’ve been meaning to ask you about it…I don’t get it? You wrote, I know what they mean … but I don’t. I don’t know what they mean? Is it like the optical illusion with the old woman and the young woman and I can only see the old woman?”
So I told him, “Claire Danes in the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo+Juliet.”Turns out there’s actually several blogs and tumblrs dedicated to her cry face in particular, and she’s even been asked about it in interviews 🙂
Set in the fictional present, King Lear sees Hopkins as the eponymous ruler, presiding over a totalitarian military dictatorship in England. Emma Thompson stars as his oldest daughter Goneril. The ensemble also includes Emily Watson, who stars as his middle daughter, Regan, and Florence Pugh (Lacy Macbeth), who plays his youngest daughter Cordelia.
This is a BBC production, but the headline clearly says Amazon, so I’m unclear when (and whether) this will be available to Amazon Prime customers in the US. But I’ll be waiting!
Does anybody know whatever happened to that 2008 production? None of the actors (nor the director) named in that post appear to have any IMDB Shakespeare credits in that time frame.
In the kitchen at work the other day, a coworker tells me that he’s just returned from London, where of course he had to stop by The Globe. I ask if he saw a show, and his response is, “I wasn’t really on a schedule that allowed time for a show, and besides, it was Taming of the Shrew. Maybe if it was Hamlet or something, but Taming of the Shrew?”
We generally agree that Taming of the Shrew is, at best, “nothing special” Shakespeare. I refer to it as a Shakespearean sitcom, and compare it to a Seinfeld re-run that you see on the hotel room tv when you’re channel surfing. Maybe you’re all “Oh yeah, this is a good one” or maybe you’re more, “Eh, seen this one a thousand times.”
But! A coworker hears our conversation and comes to Shrew’s defense. He calls it a vicious takedown of masculine roles in Shakespeare’s time, and that it is only the fault of modern directors who want to “move it along” and tend to skip or de-emphasize key scenes that cause the play to appear like the “battle of the sexes” romantic comedy it’s known as. He says that when played properly, you completely empathize with Katherina because you see the kind of men that she’s expected to put up with. When I push him for specific examples of key scenes he refers to the line of suitors that are introduced early in the play, by which I assume he’s referring to Act II, Scene i for anyone that needs a refresher.
Where do you stand on Taming of the Shrew? Is it completely misogynistic? A silly romantic comedy with a happy ending? Or should it be taken more seriously? How deep does it go?
I’m not sure how much Shakespeare we’re going to get in this one, but the coming action film starring Kaya Scoldelario and Josh Hutcherson is being billed that way:
The Mark Gordon Company has set Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Olivia Munn (X-Men: Apocalypse) and Helen Hunt (As Good as It Gets) to star in the action romance Die in a Gunfight, a modern update on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
More specifically the film, “will see Hutcherson and Scodelario as two star-crossed lovers Ben and Mary. Set against a backdrop of corporate espionage, revenge, and a long-standing feud between their families.”
If we hold this one to the same standard as Lion King, I wonder how well it would fare? I’ve often said that the only way we can call “brother kills brother and son takes revenge” a Hamlet story is if we count all “lovers can’t be together because their groups hate each other” a Romeo and Juliet story.
Maybe we need to come up with a metric for how much Shakespeare something has to have in it before they get to use the name?
Let’s predict, shall we? This will be fun. For us to consider this a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet it should ideally have …
Two warring families (or other social groups) who hate each other just because. They always have. Maybe there’s backstory, maybe not, we don’t need one.
One representative from each family, who would like to see the families reconcile so they can be together.
A best friend / confidant for each.
One representative on each side (a Mercutio and a Tybalt) who are quite fine with them continuing to try to kill each other, thank you.
Some sort of time element driving the plot, such as Juliet’s marriage to Paris. Something to keep it moving.
A Friar Laurence character to come up with a crazy “this’ll never work, but it’s our only hope!” plan.
You’ll notice I did not say “They have to end up dead.” I’m actually quite ok with flipping to a happier ending, because if you don’t then you really do just rule out the possibility of any Disney or kid-friendly adaptations.
What do you think? Something I missed? Something I put on my list that you can live without?
Sometimes we realize this when we wake up to discover that an entertainment idol has died – Robin Williams, David Bowie, Tom Petty. You don’t appreciate what you had until life tells you, “No more.”
