Oh, and Branagh's Henry V is a rare chance to see Robert Stephens on screen--while being married to Maggie Smith and producing Toby Stephens as their child, he spent most of the '60s and '70s with a bottle. He emerged to be (a fairly decent) Aragorn in the BBC radio play of LotR, and then Branagh cast him as Pistol in Henry V, who he portrayed excellently, I thought. He died not too many years later.

oh, I once heard a story about an actor who was going to play Lear for the first time. Understandably nervous, he consulted an older actor, one who had played Lear a number of times and was well received. He posed the question and the older man thought long and deep. After some time he said, "get a small Cordelia."

Older actor = Gielgud. Wish I could have seen him perform.

The first live Shakespeare I ever saw was the one I was in, Romeo and Juliet in junior year of high school (I was the Apothecary). The only other time I've seen a complete play done live was Macbeth at Barat College in Lake Forest (now closed, unfortunately), which always had live Shakespeare outdoors during the summer.

I really should head over to Navy Pier and see the Shakespeare Rep sometime.

Y'all are giving me chills, quoting Henry V.

Will kinda does that from time to time.

And then he'll strip his arm and show his scars
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's Day."

Or words to that effect. Love that speech, so very deeply. And Aims should totally watch Slings & Arrows, especially the first season -- it should make Hamlet considerably more accessible. Plus, pretty pretty Paul Gross. Plus, hell, you're an actor: you'll recognize so very many of the people (not as in "recognize the actors" but "There's the easily-confused but sweet older man who always has trouble with his lines who there's one of in every single theater company in all the Americas! Hey, that's the overentitled but undertalented ingenue who knows someone on the board of directors! Holy mackerel, it's the pretty boy who turns out to be a decent actor! Look, it's Bitter Prickly Woman -- I did a show with her umpteen years ago, and, bless Paul Gross, he's giving her the smackdown she so richly deserves that my own weak-ass director never dared give her!"). So, so much fun.

Nutty! Please go see Dream before it goes away! One of my best friends from college is playing Snug the Joiner, and he is made of awesome. Also, I know that tacklehugging is not so much your style, but feel free to deliver some sort of friendly assault on his person on my behalf if you stick around afterwards.

ION, the Dark Is Rising trailer I saw today bugged me mainly because 95% of the dialogue and voice-over sounded like it'd been lifted verbatim from every other episode of S1-2 Buffy, with pronoun shifts. I don't know how many trailers are out there, but the one I saw could not possibly have been more Buffy without actually making Will a blonde 16-year-old girl.

I'd been vaguely not-ill-disposed toward it until then (still not likely to see it, but not ill disposed), but the more-Buffy-than-Buffyness of it grated like anything.

But the actual movie, once the irritating trailers were over? That one about the kid with the scar and his friends and Alan Rickman's painful childhood memories and the kitten plates and their awful owner and crazy Helena Bonham-Carter? Loved it.

Yes, I loved that one too, JZ.

I've never read The Dark is Rising, so I don't know where to put the recrimination marks.

Bev, you're kidding! Oh, I think you'd adore it. Though you should probably wait until after the movie.

"They have called this day...the 11 of March!" A classic take on the speech from dueSouth: [link]

Slipped through the cracks, yep. But since there's a small child who's already half in love with the thing from the trailer, I can just about guarantee I'll be seeing it. So I'll read after.

I really want to see The Water Horse, too. Sort of Roan Inish-esque. (See how I avoided that, there?)