news, views and reviews of Shakespeare on film (and in the Pacific Northwest)
Posted in Adaptations, Branagh on Mar 14th, 2008
Kenneth Branagh’s remake (complete overhaul, more like) of the 1974 classic Sleuth was released on Tuesday. It stars Michael Caine and Jude Law as competitors for the love of a woman who are trying to one-up each other in a dangerous battle of wits. The script is by Harold Pinter, who writes about masculine vanity [...]
Posted in Adaptations, Bard bio on Dec 3rd, 2007
Directed by John Madden
Starring Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Judi Dench, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Ben Affleck
Bard-love received an unexpected shot-in-the-arm with the release of this buoyant Best Picture winner from 1998, a revisionist romantic comedy that imagines the “making-of” Romeo Juliet. The smart script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard smoothly [...]
Posted in Adaptations, Audiobooks on Sep 5th, 2007
This just in from Project Gutenberg, which is amassing a wonderful library of text and audio files of public domain works, available for free on the internet:
SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS WANTED
Along with the thousands of text files that Project Gutenberg has to offer there are also many audio recordings. For many people these are great ways to [...]
Posted in Adaptations on Jun 28th, 2007
One of our very favorite Bard ripoffs is Tom Stoppard’s (Sir Tom Stoppard’s, if you can believe it) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (See our reviews of the film version here and here.) Well, it’s Sir Tom’s 70th birthday, and in honor, BBC Radio 4 is doing a series of programs, including the following:
STOPPARD SEASON
15-Minute [...]
Posted in Adaptations on Jun 25th, 2007
This is a fairly new online journal, dealing (academically) with what one might call the “Steal, but only from the best (namely Shakespeare)” industry. (I, um, have been guilty of giving that a go myself.)
The journal is called Borrowers and Lenders, and its latest issue is here.
Shakespeare's Othello meets Spenser's Faerie Queene in this new and provocative mystery-thriller set in Milwaukee.
This is the story of James Ireton, a gifted young Shakespeare scholar haunted by a tragic past and recurring nightmares of a Knight, a Lady and a vicious Dragon. James thinks they’re just dreams, but when two people close to him fall victim in a seemingly motive-less series of brutal murders, James discovers there may be a very real Dragon preying in the shadows of his life. Worse, if he doesn’t find a bit of St. George in himself, the woman he loves may prove the Dragon’s ultimate victim.