Tuesday, April 14, 2009

He won't shut up about Shakespeare.

We borrowed a DVD of As You Like It with Helen Mirren (before she was a dame.) I am very excited to watch it. It is one of my favorite shows. We seem to be going through shows that I have been involved with productions of.
The Macbeth was a disappointment. So much so that we actually didn't make it through. They sacrificed diction for "madness" and they seemed to think that whispering inaudibly made it spookier. Maybe it was just bad sound quality on the film, but I rather thought it was the performances. Anyway, I am hard pressed to think of a great film version of Macbeth, even the Orson Welles who, as many of you know, is one of my sacred cows.
Another is The Tempest which has Helen Mirren as a female Propero (I guess England was out of old men who could play the part. They are all working on comic book films I suppose.) It also has Russell Brand as Trinculo presumably in keeping with, in the wake of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, his trend of being cast as people who very much resemble him. Julie Taymor directs. Along with Where The Wild Thing Are, it is the other film I am looking forward to.

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