today's Shakespeare post ends up in the toilet
I have spent a lot of today sitting in front of the computer writing fic and eating Capn Crunch instead of writing my syllabus for class Monday, because I am responsible like that.
Oddly, my Shakespeare posts get longer in that sort of situation.
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Oh man, this is a tricky one. I am working on two assumptions: one is that by "movie version" we are talking about cinematic versions rather than made-for-tv or filmed stage productions; also, that the difference between "version" and "adaptation" is that the former is a relatively straightforward reading of the play, and the latter reshapes it in some way (with modern text or rearranged text or somesuch). So I am leaving out televised versions, which in some ways makes the question easier and in other ways makes it much harder, because I can't squee about Age of Kings or the ESC Wars of the Roses (why yes, I do put out for history cycles, thanks for noticing).
The thing that I realize in thinking of the question this way is that there are a lot of Shakespeare movies I really like, but not really that many I really love (and the one I love the most I'll be talking about tomorrow). Up until about a year ago I would have picked Branagh's Henry V without question, which I'd loved since I saw it in high school and was just absolutely hooked, but since then the film and the play have both accrued just a few too many unpleasant associations, although I really want to keep loving it, and objectively I think it's splendid. I am generally fond of all of Branagh's Shakespeare films, come to that, although the rest of them have some major flaws: Hamlet has some of the best takes on the supporting characters and the best vision of Elsinore I've seen in a production, but is given to excess; Much Ado is sunny and happy and cheerful but has some really painful casting; As You Like It has a great Celia and an adorable Orlando and a lot of dodgy racial issues. Love's Labour's Lost is charming but only if you like both Kenneth Branagh and Cole Porter a lot, because it has a lot of those things and also is utterly on crack.
I also really love Olivier's HV, although I know some people hate it; it's a very particular sort of movie, I think, and you kind of have to disassociate it from the text of the play, but I always enjoy watching it (except for the Dialect Comedy Team). It's like reading a beloved old storybook about knights or something. I am not keen on his Hamlet at all -- it bores me stupid -- and his Richard III is fantastic consistently for about 45 minutes and then becomes patchier (on the whole it starts to feel very pageanty fairly quickly).
And I do totally love the Loncraine/McKellen Richard III, which I think is my answer, because it is the sort of thing that absolutely should not work and yet completely does, thanks largely to McKellen, and because -- okay, let me talk about modern-dress Shakespeare, Shakespeare transplanted to different settings, whatever you want to call it. I know a lot of people who dislike Shakespeare and some others who only want to do modern-dress Shakespeare because it's immediate and the closest analogue to what they actually did in Shakespeare's theater. I really like setting-changing, BUT I also think it requires thought to pull off, and it needs to illuminate something about the play (and, if done really well, about the setting), and I think that the choice of milieu says something about the play's insight into how tyranny works and how the operations of power are basically all the same (I remember being told by a friend who specialized in Soviet politics and who was reading the play for the first time that "This is EXACTLY LIKE STALIN"). And also because it's generally fabulously acted and even where it's not (Robert Downey Jr., I am looking in your direction) it's very entertaining.
It also gets points for reducing a play that runs four hours uncut to just under two hours while still being true to the spirit of the whole. So there's that. And it has Richard doing "Now is the winter of our discontent" over a urinal, which is awesome even if you didn't write a paper on toilet scenes in More's Richard III and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey like I did.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line
Oddly, my Shakespeare posts get longer in that sort of situation.
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Oh man, this is a tricky one. I am working on two assumptions: one is that by "movie version" we are talking about cinematic versions rather than made-for-tv or filmed stage productions; also, that the difference between "version" and "adaptation" is that the former is a relatively straightforward reading of the play, and the latter reshapes it in some way (with modern text or rearranged text or somesuch). So I am leaving out televised versions, which in some ways makes the question easier and in other ways makes it much harder, because I can't squee about Age of Kings or the ESC Wars of the Roses (why yes, I do put out for history cycles, thanks for noticing).
The thing that I realize in thinking of the question this way is that there are a lot of Shakespeare movies I really like, but not really that many I really love (and the one I love the most I'll be talking about tomorrow). Up until about a year ago I would have picked Branagh's Henry V without question, which I'd loved since I saw it in high school and was just absolutely hooked, but since then the film and the play have both accrued just a few too many unpleasant associations, although I really want to keep loving it, and objectively I think it's splendid. I am generally fond of all of Branagh's Shakespeare films, come to that, although the rest of them have some major flaws: Hamlet has some of the best takes on the supporting characters and the best vision of Elsinore I've seen in a production, but is given to excess; Much Ado is sunny and happy and cheerful but has some really painful casting; As You Like It has a great Celia and an adorable Orlando and a lot of dodgy racial issues. Love's Labour's Lost is charming but only if you like both Kenneth Branagh and Cole Porter a lot, because it has a lot of those things and also is utterly on crack.
I also really love Olivier's HV, although I know some people hate it; it's a very particular sort of movie, I think, and you kind of have to disassociate it from the text of the play, but I always enjoy watching it (except for the Dialect Comedy Team). It's like reading a beloved old storybook about knights or something. I am not keen on his Hamlet at all -- it bores me stupid -- and his Richard III is fantastic consistently for about 45 minutes and then becomes patchier (on the whole it starts to feel very pageanty fairly quickly).
And I do totally love the Loncraine/McKellen Richard III, which I think is my answer, because it is the sort of thing that absolutely should not work and yet completely does, thanks largely to McKellen, and because -- okay, let me talk about modern-dress Shakespeare, Shakespeare transplanted to different settings, whatever you want to call it. I know a lot of people who dislike Shakespeare and some others who only want to do modern-dress Shakespeare because it's immediate and the closest analogue to what they actually did in Shakespeare's theater. I really like setting-changing, BUT I also think it requires thought to pull off, and it needs to illuminate something about the play (and, if done really well, about the setting), and I think that the choice of milieu says something about the play's insight into how tyranny works and how the operations of power are basically all the same (I remember being told by a friend who specialized in Soviet politics and who was reading the play for the first time that "This is EXACTLY LIKE STALIN"). And also because it's generally fabulously acted and even where it's not (Robert Downey Jr., I am looking in your direction) it's very entertaining.
It also gets points for reducing a play that runs four hours uncut to just under two hours while still being true to the spirit of the whole. So there's that. And it has Richard doing "Now is the winter of our discontent" over a urinal, which is awesome even if you didn't write a paper on toilet scenes in More's Richard III and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey like I did.
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line