A huge bombard of sack
sovay has asked for a roundup of all the scattered Anonymous reviews, like daggletailed sheep to the dip.
Here they are, a fanfaronade for Oxenford:
"We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world
seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more
simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the
bong."
From this coming Sunday's Times.
*****
And for dessert, Shapiro's latest jibe: "I have no problem if Roland Emmerich wants to drink the Kool-Aid, but I do have a problem when it's doled out in small cups to school kids."
*****
"...overwrought and cretinous..."
*****
"the sheer bloody Englishness of the whole thing"
"Who really wrote Shakespeare?"
*****
Splat! on RT
"Roland Emmerich’s act of cultural vandalism; the defenestration of one of England’s greatest dramatists by one of Germany’s poorest."
*****
Much Ado About Very Little, says the Village Voice headline. "The Shakespeare exposé no one has been waiting for." Nick Pinkerton provides a garland of garlicky pull quotes interwoven with some shrewd brief analysis:
"Shakespeare/de Vere pronounces that 'all art is political, otherwise it is just decoration.' In terms of the film, this means that the corpus attributed to Shakespeare is merely pretext for political cartooning . . . ."
"It is the particular idiocy of our time that the past is apparently only marketable via Da Vinci Code conspiratorial jabbering, here degrading the canon to the level of the potboiler."
But oh! how I'd love to see this poster:
"A self-serious faux exposé . . . Sporadically enjoyable trash . . . This is high camp, nothing more."
*****
And from I Heart the Talkies, reviewing at the London Film Festival:
"Roland Emmerich’s hymn to ludicrousness is a camp fiasco."
*****
This beauty was written back in June, merely on the strength of the trailer:
"Anonymous could prove to be an own goal for the anti-Stratfordian camp.
"Could it be that Emmerich’s desire for blockbuster success via the most controversial and bizarre plot possible has overridden the anti-Stratfordian desire to maintain an image of legitimacy? Anonymous runs a serious risk of exposing them to ridicule.
"In fact, the choice of such a bizarre theory seems so poorly considered that an intriguing, and just as unlikely, conspiracy of its own could be considered. What if Roland Emmerich is in fact a Shakespeare supporter, is deep undercover in the enemy camp, and has gone to the trouble of shooting a multi-million dollar film that contends that Shakespeare did not write his plays, but with the most preposterous storyline possible - all as some kind of cunning ‘false flag’ operation to discredit the anti-Stratfordians. But, like the conspiracies themselves, this is an unreasonable theory based on zero evidence."
*****
Did you see Salon?
" . . . swans around wearing a fixed half-smile of campy soulfulness, exactly as Vincent Price might have played Jesus."
*****
EW:
"Anonymous might just as well also declare that Elizabethans lived in yurts and invented the game of Sudoku, for all the pompous foolishness masquerading as intellectual provocation in this thumpingly silly yet self-serious period-piece what-if ... [A] tale told by an idio...syncratic moviemaker up to little more than mischief."
*****
"...the tone of a Hallmark Channel holiday special gone bat-shit crazy..."
Austin Chronicle
*****
"Rhys Ifans plays him here as a humorless snoot (the perfect hero for the anti-Stratfordian crowd, in other words) ... It’s as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who’ve spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him."
The A.V. Club
*****
First and last time I agree with the {shudder} Daily Mail:
"Pretentious, preposterous - ANONYMOUS is a Tudor turkey! ... A grotesque travesty ... ludicrously reductionist ... grotesquely offensive ..."
... a pinup of Joely Richardson in a strapless evening gown.
I clicked so you don't have to!
*****
Dear gods.
"Anonymous fetishizes Jamie Campbell Bower as young Edward; he's the most coltish of the movie's lippy male ingenues, but also a stand-and-pose aristo who appears to be in search of a runway instead of his muse. De Vere recites from Twelfth Night's 'present laughter' song as cougar Queen Bess (Joely Richardson) goes down on him, a perfect illustration that the movie's worst instincts are nearly its only entertaining ones."
Slant Magazine
*****
Oh Roger Ebert, no!
*****
Have Jonathan Jones, being trenchant: "Jonson, who knew Shakespeare in the flesh, testifies that the face printed in the First Folio, that of Will Shakespeare, is that of the plays' author. Except he doesn't 'testify' because he sees nothing to 'testify' about-there was no mystery to Shakespeare's contemporaries about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays."
Though you may prefer the Flick Filosopher, being snarky: "Listen: Anonymous is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a fusty nut with no kernel. It speaks an infinite deal of nothing. Just give me a random Shakespearean insult generator, and I can do this all day."
*****
"A vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad."
A.O. Scott in the New York Times
*****
"...an airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory...a dispiriting dropping of a boo-bird."
Philadelphia Inquirer
*****
"...it feels like the work of a sleazy lawyer throwing the book at a corpse ... [the RSC cast is] incongruous, like putting filet mignon in a Quarter Pounder With Cheese...Emmerich is a camp artist, someone who doesn’t know his work is ridiculous, which, at times, is a backhanded hoot for us."
Boston Globe
*****
"About the time I realized a character I had been thinking was named Edward was really named Robert, I realized something else: I no longer cared about any of these pantalooned drips."
St. Paul Pioneer Press
*****
"...spittle-flecked..."
Chicago Tribune
But Michael Phillips adds gracefully, "A week after seeing it, what I remember of it most vividly has nothing to do either with de Vere or with Shakespeare: It's the way Redgrave gazes out a window, her reign near the end, her eyes full of regret but also of fiery defiance of the balderdash lapping at her feet."
*****
...muddled beyond belief, a prestigious-looking debacle ... [the] film is cobbled so amateurishly together that one can barely follow what's going on, and why, and to whom ..."
Dustin Putman
*****
"...looney-tunes..."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
*****
"...some crazy shit..."
Rolling Stone
*****
"...rings false at every turn..."
Wall Street Journal
*****
"Emmerich’s big mistake was to approach the material as tragedy rather than comedy ... as a third-rate ripoff of Hamlet, when it could have been a second-rate ripoff of Twelfth Night."
Slate
*****
Ron Rosenbaum on "10 Things I Hate About Anonymous":
"No, let’s give it its due: a high point in stupidity in Western culture."
*****
Shakespeare Bites Back by Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson & Prof. Stanley Wells, CBE. A free e-book!
As of early Friday morning, 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and a surprising 52 on Metacritic.
Edited to Add:
Those vile "teaching materials" unpacked (latex gloves recommended): "Divide your class into two teams, the Upstart Crows and the Reasonable Doubters, to weigh the question: Was William Shakespeare really an improbable genius, or just a front man for someone with real ability?"
Sixty Shakespeareans speak out. Simon Callow rocks. As does Stephen Fry.
*****
I am cheered by this incomparable snark from Alan Nelson (thank you,
angevin2).
*****
Over at IMDb, there's a ten-star review by a starry-eyed Oxfordian, a visionary: "[A] moment of singularity that indicates the end of the world as we know it ... If my intuition is correct, the prison gates will soon be swinging wide open, and the shaking will begin in earnest."
*****
Got to the New Yorker review via Metacritic, and Denby does himself proud:
"You can’t keep the bastards straight in 'Anonymous' ... preposterous fantasia ... a story already so rotten that, as Shakespeare, or, rather, Oxford, might put it, the kites wheel and shriek rather than batten on so foul a carcass ... a farrago."
Go, Denby. You rock.
Metacritic, weirdly, gave that a 50. That's mixed?
*****
"...gratuitously tawdry..."
Washington Post
*****
An interview with the benighted screenwriter on NPR's Morning Edition.
*****
I don't think you have Simon Schama at the Daily Beast...
*****
Holger Symes saw it first, back in September, and has kept up the excellent work of commentary and rebuttal.
*****
"...ridiculous and baffling...'Anonymous' is how the filmmakers should have listed their contributions in the credits."
SFGate
*****
"While all of this plot is enough, Anonymous piles on: not only must Edward be a daunting man with his pen, but also with his 'pen,' that is, he beds the queen, in flashbacks where he’s played by Jamie Campbell Bower and she by Joely Richardson. Here she’s smitten by his gift for verse, illustrated in a scene where she tosses him out in a pique, but is won back over as he mutters fabulous poetry while approaching her: we see his naked back and her seated, gazing up at his mouth but eventually facing his penis, which she proceeds to adore." -PopMatters.
Nine
Here they are, a fanfaronade for Oxenford:
"We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world
seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more
simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the
bong."
From this coming Sunday's Times.
*****
And for dessert, Shapiro's latest jibe: "I have no problem if Roland Emmerich wants to drink the Kool-Aid, but I do have a problem when it's doled out in small cups to school kids."
*****
"...overwrought and cretinous..."
*****
"the sheer bloody Englishness of the whole thing"
"Who really wrote Shakespeare?"
*****
Splat! on RT
"Roland Emmerich’s act of cultural vandalism; the defenestration of one of England’s greatest dramatists by one of Germany’s poorest."
*****
Much Ado About Very Little, says the Village Voice headline. "The Shakespeare exposé no one has been waiting for." Nick Pinkerton provides a garland of garlicky pull quotes interwoven with some shrewd brief analysis:
"Shakespeare/de Vere pronounces that 'all art is political, otherwise it is just decoration.' In terms of the film, this means that the corpus attributed to Shakespeare is merely pretext for political cartooning . . . ."
"It is the particular idiocy of our time that the past is apparently only marketable via Da Vinci Code conspiratorial jabbering, here degrading the canon to the level of the potboiler."
But oh! how I'd love to see this poster:
"A self-serious faux exposé . . . Sporadically enjoyable trash . . . This is high camp, nothing more."
*****
And from I Heart the Talkies, reviewing at the London Film Festival:
"Roland Emmerich’s hymn to ludicrousness is a camp fiasco."
*****
This beauty was written back in June, merely on the strength of the trailer:
"Anonymous could prove to be an own goal for the anti-Stratfordian camp.
"Could it be that Emmerich’s desire for blockbuster success via the most controversial and bizarre plot possible has overridden the anti-Stratfordian desire to maintain an image of legitimacy? Anonymous runs a serious risk of exposing them to ridicule.
"In fact, the choice of such a bizarre theory seems so poorly considered that an intriguing, and just as unlikely, conspiracy of its own could be considered. What if Roland Emmerich is in fact a Shakespeare supporter, is deep undercover in the enemy camp, and has gone to the trouble of shooting a multi-million dollar film that contends that Shakespeare did not write his plays, but with the most preposterous storyline possible - all as some kind of cunning ‘false flag’ operation to discredit the anti-Stratfordians. But, like the conspiracies themselves, this is an unreasonable theory based on zero evidence."
*****
Did you see Salon?
" . . . swans around wearing a fixed half-smile of campy soulfulness, exactly as Vincent Price might have played Jesus."
*****
EW:
"Anonymous might just as well also declare that Elizabethans lived in yurts and invented the game of Sudoku, for all the pompous foolishness masquerading as intellectual provocation in this thumpingly silly yet self-serious period-piece what-if ... [A] tale told by an idio...syncratic moviemaker up to little more than mischief."
*****
"...the tone of a Hallmark Channel holiday special gone bat-shit crazy..."
Austin Chronicle
*****
"Rhys Ifans plays him here as a humorless snoot (the perfect hero for the anti-Stratfordian crowd, in other words) ... It’s as dull as it is brainless, the work of creators who’ve spent far more time concocting silly stories about Shakespeare than learning from him."
The A.V. Club
*****
First and last time I agree with the {shudder} Daily Mail:
"Pretentious, preposterous - ANONYMOUS is a Tudor turkey! ... A grotesque travesty ... ludicrously reductionist ... grotesquely offensive ..."
... a pinup of Joely Richardson in a strapless evening gown.
I clicked so you don't have to!
*****
Dear gods.
"Anonymous fetishizes Jamie Campbell Bower as young Edward; he's the most coltish of the movie's lippy male ingenues, but also a stand-and-pose aristo who appears to be in search of a runway instead of his muse. De Vere recites from Twelfth Night's 'present laughter' song as cougar Queen Bess (Joely Richardson) goes down on him, a perfect illustration that the movie's worst instincts are nearly its only entertaining ones."
Slant Magazine
*****
Oh Roger Ebert, no!
*****
Have Jonathan Jones, being trenchant: "Jonson, who knew Shakespeare in the flesh, testifies that the face printed in the First Folio, that of Will Shakespeare, is that of the plays' author. Except he doesn't 'testify' because he sees nothing to 'testify' about-there was no mystery to Shakespeare's contemporaries about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays."
Though you may prefer the Flick Filosopher, being snarky: "Listen: Anonymous is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a fusty nut with no kernel. It speaks an infinite deal of nothing. Just give me a random Shakespearean insult generator, and I can do this all day."
*****
"A vulgar prank on the English literary tradition, a travesty of British history and a brutal insult to the human imagination. Apart from that, it’s not bad."
A.O. Scott in the New York Times
*****
"...an airless, bilious, endless pageant of pseudohistory...a dispiriting dropping of a boo-bird."
Philadelphia Inquirer
*****
"...it feels like the work of a sleazy lawyer throwing the book at a corpse ... [the RSC cast is] incongruous, like putting filet mignon in a Quarter Pounder With Cheese...Emmerich is a camp artist, someone who doesn’t know his work is ridiculous, which, at times, is a backhanded hoot for us."
Boston Globe
*****
"About the time I realized a character I had been thinking was named Edward was really named Robert, I realized something else: I no longer cared about any of these pantalooned drips."
St. Paul Pioneer Press
*****
"...spittle-flecked..."
Chicago Tribune
But Michael Phillips adds gracefully, "A week after seeing it, what I remember of it most vividly has nothing to do either with de Vere or with Shakespeare: It's the way Redgrave gazes out a window, her reign near the end, her eyes full of regret but also of fiery defiance of the balderdash lapping at her feet."
*****
...muddled beyond belief, a prestigious-looking debacle ... [the] film is cobbled so amateurishly together that one can barely follow what's going on, and why, and to whom ..."
Dustin Putman
*****
"...looney-tunes..."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
*****
"...some crazy shit..."
Rolling Stone
*****
"...rings false at every turn..."
Wall Street Journal
*****
"Emmerich’s big mistake was to approach the material as tragedy rather than comedy ... as a third-rate ripoff of Hamlet, when it could have been a second-rate ripoff of Twelfth Night."
Slate
*****
Ron Rosenbaum on "10 Things I Hate About Anonymous":
"No, let’s give it its due: a high point in stupidity in Western culture."
*****
Shakespeare Bites Back by Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson & Prof. Stanley Wells, CBE. A free e-book!
As of early Friday morning, 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and a surprising 52 on Metacritic.
Edited to Add:
Those vile "teaching materials" unpacked (latex gloves recommended): "Divide your class into two teams, the Upstart Crows and the Reasonable Doubters, to weigh the question: Was William Shakespeare really an improbable genius, or just a front man for someone with real ability?"
Sixty Shakespeareans speak out. Simon Callow rocks. As does Stephen Fry.
*****
I am cheered by this incomparable snark from Alan Nelson (thank you,
angevin2).
*****
Over at IMDb, there's a ten-star review by a starry-eyed Oxfordian, a visionary: "[A] moment of singularity that indicates the end of the world as we know it ... If my intuition is correct, the prison gates will soon be swinging wide open, and the shaking will begin in earnest."
*****
Got to the New Yorker review via Metacritic, and Denby does himself proud:
"You can’t keep the bastards straight in 'Anonymous' ... preposterous fantasia ... a story already so rotten that, as Shakespeare, or, rather, Oxford, might put it, the kites wheel and shriek rather than batten on so foul a carcass ... a farrago."
Go, Denby. You rock.
Metacritic, weirdly, gave that a 50. That's mixed?
*****
"...gratuitously tawdry..."
Washington Post
*****
An interview with the benighted screenwriter on NPR's Morning Edition.
*****
I don't think you have Simon Schama at the Daily Beast...
*****
Holger Symes saw it first, back in September, and has kept up the excellent work of commentary and rebuttal.
*****
"...ridiculous and baffling...'Anonymous' is how the filmmakers should have listed their contributions in the credits."
SFGate
*****
"While all of this plot is enough, Anonymous piles on: not only must Edward be a daunting man with his pen, but also with his 'pen,' that is, he beds the queen, in flashbacks where he’s played by Jamie Campbell Bower and she by Joely Richardson. Here she’s smitten by his gift for verse, illustrated in a scene where she tosses him out in a pique, but is won back over as he mutters fabulous poetry while approaching her: we see his naked back and her seated, gazing up at his mouth but eventually facing his penis, which she proceeds to adore." -PopMatters.
Nine