really? I quite liked the one set in the 30's with Ian McKellan.
Me too. It's totally sweet.
My favorite WS play is The Tempest.
I've tried to figure out what's so great about this play, and I can't. I've read it once and seen it performed by the Actors from the London Stage, but it still doesn't do an exceeding amount for me. It's so meanderingly plotless.
I think my favorite tragedy is
Lear,
because it has like fifty thousand character arcs. And eye-gouging. For comedies, I think I go with
Much Ado,
which also has a great Branagh movie.
You really need to spend a weekend with Jen chatting up all the dark twisty corners of Wm. Shakespeare.
Yes please.
Somehow, I think Shakespeare might be the last thing on our minds... IJS.
Damn, damn, damn. Missed a lot of the Hamlet/Henry V movie discussion, but it's not like I have anything new. I bloody well hate Branagh's movie with the fury of a thousand suns. 5 million points from Gryffindor, indeed.
For film versions of Hamlet, I like the Almereyda (Ethan Hawke) one, because it got this
Really? See, my mother, myself, and Zach sat down to watch it one day, and we were painfully bored by the time Laertes is setting off. To the point where my mother asked if we could shut it off, which was a first.
I love that everyone was is talking about R&G. Has anyone else seen Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's MacBeth? Bloody brilliant, and it does have Hamlet in 15 minutes. And then Hamlet in 90 seconds for an encore.
We are delving far into Richard III right now, because Z is directing it next year and I'm the one who has the patience for the history plays.
The funny thing about Henry V is that neither of the famous versions includes the part where Heroic Hal orders all of his French prisoners executed in revenge. Makes it a much more ambiguous play, you know?
Yup.
My favorite WS play is The Tempest.
I've tried to figure out what's so great about this play, and I can't.
For me it's all about the language. I think this play is his most lyrical and beautifully written. I do agree that he wrote several other plays with more gripping plots.
My favorite WS play is The Tempest.
You know how sometimes you will see a show, and it was either so good or so horrific that you never want to see it again? Yeah. I got burned on The Tempest a few summers ago. Shakespeare in the Park (here), Prospero and Miranda were both TV actors imported from LA and had no idea how to act on stage, and just... eugh. Caliban rocked, though.
We are delving far into Richard III right now, because Z is directing it next year and I'm the one who has the patience for the history plays.
Heh. It's hard for me to think of
Richard III
as a history, because it feels so much like one of his regular plays. Like
Hamlet
as told from Claudius' point-of-view. The villain is your protagonist; how cool is that?
For me it's all about the language. I think this play is his most lyrical and beautifully written.
Yeah, I think that's usually the reason I've heard given. O brave new play, with such language in it.
I love the scene in Richard III where Richard talks Anne around at her own husband's funeral. It's so gloriously creepy. Oddly, I've never seen any of the movies of RIII.
"Ran" is heartbreaking. Especially the ending, where the poor guy up on the plateau drops his picture of Buddha, the only thing which has been giving him any comfort. Damn. I either shut the movie off right before that scene, or I spend the next hour weeping because I can't reach into the screen and pick it up for him.
"Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won?"
I think I was too tired to pay attention during
Ran.
It was so long. I enjoyed the cartwheeling Fool, though.
"Ran" is heartbreaking.
Oh, yes. This.
Connie, I think you might really enjoy Looking For Richard. It's a good look at it.
Ran also has the Greatest Battle Scene of All Time, a balancing act of Noh theater, epic grandeur, perfect-circle cinematography, John Ford-style emotional grit, Rachmaninoff, and blood. Every time I see it, no matter how many times I've watched it before, I'm completely shocked that such a scene even exists.
