"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.

Dork Tower's homage to Bloomsday.

Has anyone else seen Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's MacBeth?

I read it, but haven't seen it. It takes a lot of brainpower to see the words on the page and approximate what the enactment would be like. Gave me a new appreciation of dramatic reading/acting, it did. (It was also infuriating, because the teacher, who had clearly seen the play put on, didn't get how none of his students could envision it properly, and he kept on like, Come on people! This isn't so hard! And we all replied, YES THIS IS HARD SHUT UP YOU LITTLE MAN. But by the end, I was starting to get it.)

I saw part of a Tempest put on for children, a long time ago, that (I think heavily adapted the text and) used masks in a really cool way. Caliban was introduced as a man with a clay pot stuck over his head -- like when you grow a pear inside a jar. And the decisive moment when he gets free of enchantment is his taking a board and breaking the pot so it shatters down around his shoulders.

Ariel was a woman in black, hooded, holding a white moon-like puppet. When Prospero sets her free at the end, what he does is take the puppet, carefully, and set it on the floor, and then in a trice he snatches the hood off the woman's face. She looks up, looks around, bursts into happy tears, and runs away into the audience.

I read it, but haven't seen it. It takes a lot of brainpower to see the words on the page and approximate what the enactment would be like.

Ohhhh, yeah. It's a very hard read. But fantastic to watch onstage.

That Tempest sounds lovely, Nutty.

Just today I was listening to that recording I have of Ian McKellen reciting the HoYayful Sonnett XX backed by a rock band sounding like the Velvet Underground.

!!! That sounds amazing.

I am sadly uneducated in Shakespeare, but I keep meaning to watch Looking for Richard, because, well, I'm a Sir Ian fangirl.

Looking for Richard is brilliant for the sound design alone.

Most of what I know of Richard III is what I learned from The Goodbye Girl. I tried to watch the Olivier version once, but got bored after about half an hour.

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.

I own two versions of Much Ado, the Branagh version, which I love, and also the Joseph Papp version with Sam Waterston as Benedick. The other comedy I like a lot is Twelfth Night. And I really liked Ian Holm's King Lear from a couple of years back.

(I think there was also a Nicol Williamson Hamlet, but I disremember.)

Yeah, there was. Anthony Hopkins played Claudius, and Marianne Faithfull (!) played Ophelia.

The other comedy I like a lot is Twelfth Night.

Oh yes. That too. The Trevor Nunn film rules. Ben Kingsley owns.

t perks up

We're talking Shakespeare films?

t thwaps self on hand

NO! Grading, not playing. Bad Teacher!Kristin. No biscuit.