Favorite Shakespearean movie?

[mrbasehart]

voc, Hamlet came out on DVD August this year:

http://www.amazon.com/William-Shakespeares-Hamlet-Two-Disc-Special/dp/B00005JLCI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1198459572&sr=8-1

[Variety of Cells]

Ahhh.  Well, I was asleep for all of August you see.  I decided to hibernate early this year, get it out of the way.  I knew I would probably miss something.

[Zardoz!]

Another good one that's often overlooked was the B&W "Julius Ceasar" with Marlon Brando as Marc Antony. His "Friends, romans, countrymen!" speech was pure art.

[Tripe]

Don't be mislead by Dead Poets Society; he does it just like any jobbing actor.

Has there ever been a good straight King Lear. I admit I haven't seen Ran yet, but it is on my to-see list.

Not really, I think because it's Shakes' most bombastic play and that's difficult to do in a straight translation and still connect with the audience. As the basis of adaptations though it works really well.

There's the Peter Brooks version of King Lear, made in the 70s which looks the part, but I didn't really like Paul Schofield's portrayal.  The BBC version that they did with Olivier in the early 80s isn't too bad, but it's clearly a low-budget project.

I'll refer you to my earlier opinion on Olivier.

[Zardoz!]

I was surprised to see several people like, or even know about, Throne of Blood, I thought that was an obscure one.

I don't think it's particularly obscure, but there are a quite a few cinephiles on this board.  I really doubt there's many films between us all that we haven't seen or heard of.   

Quite true. I should have known some people here would have heard of ToB, especially since it was a good movie.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Forbidden Planet, the Zefferelli version of Romeo and Juliet and this one.

True it's a filming of the performance of a ballet....but it's still a movie.

[Crazy_88s]

Does Shakespeare in love count?

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Does Shakespeare in love count?

I don't even think it should count as a movie...but then I'm in the minority.

[mrbasehart]

It's sort of on topic, so I'll include it here: I just got Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare.  I really love Bill Bryson and his travel books were great, though I think he managed to break through to a different kind of audience with books like Mother Tongue (about the English language) and A Short History of Everything.  I haven't read it yet, though I'm curious as to what he's written about, considering we know almost nothing about Shakespeare.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I haven't read it yet, though I'm curious as to what he's written about, considering we know almost nothing about Shakespeare.

Really?  Then what was that that Tim Curry was doing in that BBC mini-series I watched called "Shakespeare".....just making it up as he went along?

I'm not being argumentative, I'm really curious.  I mean, I know there's the on-going thing about whether he wrote all, some or none of the plays under his name but I thought there were enough records at the time that we know something...

[mrbasehart]

I haven't read it yet, though I'm curious as to what he's written about, considering we know almost nothing about Shakespeare.

Really?  Then what was that that Tim Curry was doing in that BBC mini-series I watched called "Shakespeare".....just making it up as he went along?

I'm not being argumentative, I'm really curious.  I mean, I know there's the on-going thing about whether he wrote all, some or none of the plays under his name but I thought there were enough records at the time that we know something...

Well, I don't think we're even certain what he looks like, for starters

I'll just quote the back of the book:

"We don't know if he ever left England.  We don't know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself.  His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery.  On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where was.  We have no record at all of his whereabouts for the eight critical years when he left his wife and three young children in Stratford and became, with almost impossible swiftness, a successful playwright in London.  By the time he is first mentioned in print as a playwright, in 1592, his life was already more than half over.  For the rest, he is kind of a literary equivalent of an electron - forever there and not there."

I think the lack of solid knowledge surrounding Shakespeare is why there's so many theories as to whether it was someone else ghost-writing the plays and such.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

I haven't read it yet, though I'm curious as to what he's written about, considering we know almost nothing about Shakespeare.

Really?  Then what was that that Tim Curry was doing in that BBC mini-series I watched called "Shakespeare".....just making it up as he went along?

I'm not being argumentative, I'm really curious.  I mean, I know there's the on-going thing about whether he wrote all, some or none of the plays under his name but I thought there were enough records at the time that we know something...

Well, I don't think we're even certain what he looks like, for starters

I'll just quote the back of the book:

"We don't know if he ever left England.  We don't know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself.  His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery.  On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where was.  We have no record at all of his whereabouts for the eight critical years when he left his wife and three young children in Stratford and became, with almost impossible swiftness, a successful playwright in London.  By the time he is first mentioned in print as a playwright, in 1592, his life was already more than half over.  For the rest, he is kind of a literary equivalent of an electron - forever there and not there."

I think the lack of solid knowledge surrounding Shakespeare is why there's so many theories as to whether it was someone else ghost-writing the plays and such.

Eight years is "impossible swiftness"?  And why couldn't he have turned out that much work in that amount of time?  Maybe some of it he had half written when he was still at home with the wife and kids?  Maybe he could churn stuff out like Stephen King?

And is it so surprising that we know so little about a commoner at that time until he became famous?  I mean, how much information can be dug up on anyone back then unless they were the type to never leave their farm for a minute?  And even then, do we actually know they were there?

Are they approaching this thinking that because we think he was a big deal now that people at the time recognized it and therefore kept careful notes about him for history?   Because what are the odds?

Hell, I'll bet if they didn't even go that far back - Edgar Allen Poe, for example - they'll probably find that they can't account for all of his time.  And yet with all of the drugs and drink he's said to have done, no one doubts that he wrote all of what's attributed to him.

Just being a Devil's Advocate.

[mrbasehart]

No, I agree with a lot of the points you're making.  Perhaps the blurb isn't very good - the tangent about the electron seems extremely odd - but he was a pretty famous playwright in his own time, not to mention a part-time actor and theatre owner, so it's unfortunate that there's so little information about him.   As for whether he knocked out a bunch of plays during the "lost years" as some scholars call it, I think (and my memory is really stretching now ) that the plays that were first written by him were all the style that were popular at the time, which would lend at least a little evidence as to the date of their production. 

I'll put the book at the top of my "to-read" list, and let you know what it's like. 

[Compound]

My favorite Shakespeare film?  Strange Brew.

It's a very loose adaptation...

[mrbasehart]

My favorite Shakespeare film?  Strange Brew.

It's a very loose adaptation...

Heh heh.  Isn't it Hamlet? Just with people in black and white body armour skating around like they're in Rollerball.  With Rick Moranis.