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.

Oh yes! I remember the Ian Holm Lear -- that was the one with PBS controversy all over it, because the king drops trou when he tells the hurricanoes to blow. The US-market VHS version didn't actually show all that much, but, you know, PBS, controversy.

I think Lears must have a history of being staged well, or anyway I haven't seen a bad one. I thought the Trevor Nunn version of 12th Night made a good stab, and I liked some of the characters, but in the end it didn't quite pull together for me. It felt a little too OTT, which I know is ironic to say of a Shakespeare comedy.

I keep meaning to watch Looking for Richard, because, well, I'm a Sir Ian fangirl.

Er, Ian McKellen isn't in that. He's in a straight filming of the play, just called Richard III, but the Richard in Looking for Richard is Al Pacino. And an entertaining, questing Al Pacino he is -- his and his colleagues discussions are as interesting or moreso than the play itself.

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

I know! I'm in Actually Getting Work Done mode at the moment, and so want to jump in, but y'know, work and getting done. Freakish, but true.

another Tempest fan. I think because when I first saw it somehow everything in it was so magical. Outdoor, perfect new england summer night. drunk sailors swinging on tree branches ( on e broke durring the preformance I saw - and it was just beautifly incorperarted into the play) The plot - not important . I am interested in Caliban and Ariel. Also Prospero.

I quite liked the one set in the 30's with Ian McKellan.

Well, I am, once again, the freak - nine times out of ten, Sir Ian makes me want to smack him, and smack him hard. With the exception of an astonishing Macbeth - and he got that one totally right - I have never once seen him act anything that didn't essentially play, to me, like "oh look. It's Sir Bloody All About Me Ian again." Basically, he's so damned self-referential in his acting that almost everything he's in, I get the sense of Sir Ian deigning to entertain the steaming masses by Emoting. Pass-a-dena.

Also, I really truly dislike modernising the Elizabethan dramas. Couldn't stand the Miami Romeo and Juliet, except to think that it was a pity that Leguizamo wasn't being given period Shakespeare to do, because he was brilliant.

In re The Tempest, I am also in the "all about the language" school. And since my online nickname was Sycorax for awhile, I have an investment in the play.

My favourite Lear was the one Olivier filmed for the BBC in the seventies. It's completely heartbreaking, full of grief and disillusionment and basically? About an old man's dreams being shattered, by his own silliness. Which, of course, makes me happy as hell: streamline the themes.

There are a lot of things about Shakespeare I don't know. But at least I know the title's not Henry V: This Time it's Personal, or something, I suppose. But now I feel ignorant. And, sadly, most places I go, having read some makes me impressive. Sigh. With Plei on the "Parker" love.