This glorious sun of...
Via 
angevin2, lots of great Shakespearean news. The Hollow Crown team will, as some of us have hoped, do the Henry VIs and Richard III, which means after "It's Hard Out There For A Lancaster", we'll get "It's Hard Out There For A York". Now, my first two thougths were: A) Who'll play Margaret/Marguerite d'Anjou? - because if you do the Henry VIs in addition to Richard III, this is surely one of the all time great female roles in Shakespeare, and it offers an actress the possibility to go from teenage princess to ancient crone, from vicious power player to nemesis and accuser - and B) Who'll play Richard? (because even a Ricardian like myself will admit unreservedly that Shakespeare's Richard III is one of the best villains ever. I also hope the Duchess of York, Elizabeth Woodville and Anne won't be cut into near non-existence a la Laurence Olivier but will get to have their impact. And speaking of female roles, I wonder what they'll do with Shakespeare's Joan of Arc (aka never mind Richard, THAT'S the most blatant truth distorting propaganda by playwright in the histories)? (I know what Shaw's suggestion would be. Replace the Joan scenes with some from his own St. Joan. :) Anyway, Margaret of Anjou. Spontanously, I would want Amanda Hale, who was one of the few good things in The White Queen as Margaret Beaufort and I could see playing both the young and the old Queen with full intense force.
I also saw in today's New York Times that they want to publish a Gone With The Wind prequel about Mammy called Ruth's Journey, which got me interested despite the fact the two sequels to GTW ("Scarlett" and "Rhett Butler's People") were dreadful, because certainly giving Mammy a name and a story of her own is long overdue... but then I saw that the book will be written by the same man who wrote Rhett Butler's People. Which killed my interest. (Two of the most objectionable things about Rhett Butler's People:a) retconning the entire Scarlett and Melanie relationship and Melanie's character by claiming Melanie never liked or trusted Scarlett and was secretly writing letters to Rhett's sister about how jealous she was, and b) making Rhett a quasi abolitionist who objects to slavery (and has a discussion about that with Ashley mid war). (This is not how you rectify the treatment of slavery in GWTW. Rhett grows more and more conservative as the novel - GTWT, that is - progresses, and even at the start, the reason why he predicts a Southern defeat isn't because he sees slavery as wrong but because he is aware the Northern states have the better industrial resources. Which Ashley, btw, agrees with.) I'm all for adding new perspectives to compelling yet deeply problematic sources - this is what fanfiction often DOES, after all - but if you're prone to do so via completely throwing out the original characterisation, then you've lost me.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/973004.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
angevin2, lots of great Shakespearean news. The Hollow Crown team will, as some of us have hoped, do the Henry VIs and Richard III, which means after "It's Hard Out There For A Lancaster", we'll get "It's Hard Out There For A York". Now, my first two thougths were: A) Who'll play Margaret/Marguerite d'Anjou? - because if you do the Henry VIs in addition to Richard III, this is surely one of the all time great female roles in Shakespeare, and it offers an actress the possibility to go from teenage princess to ancient crone, from vicious power player to nemesis and accuser - and B) Who'll play Richard? (because even a Ricardian like myself will admit unreservedly that Shakespeare's Richard III is one of the best villains ever. I also hope the Duchess of York, Elizabeth Woodville and Anne won't be cut into near non-existence a la Laurence Olivier but will get to have their impact. And speaking of female roles, I wonder what they'll do with Shakespeare's Joan of Arc (aka never mind Richard, THAT'S the most blatant truth distorting propaganda by playwright in the histories)? (I know what Shaw's suggestion would be. Replace the Joan scenes with some from his own St. Joan. :) Anyway, Margaret of Anjou. Spontanously, I would want Amanda Hale, who was one of the few good things in The White Queen as Margaret Beaufort and I could see playing both the young and the old Queen with full intense force.
I also saw in today's New York Times that they want to publish a Gone With The Wind prequel about Mammy called Ruth's Journey, which got me interested despite the fact the two sequels to GTW ("Scarlett" and "Rhett Butler's People") were dreadful, because certainly giving Mammy a name and a story of her own is long overdue... but then I saw that the book will be written by the same man who wrote Rhett Butler's People. Which killed my interest. (Two of the most objectionable things about Rhett Butler's People:a) retconning the entire Scarlett and Melanie relationship and Melanie's character by claiming Melanie never liked or trusted Scarlett and was secretly writing letters to Rhett's sister about how jealous she was, and b) making Rhett a quasi abolitionist who objects to slavery (and has a discussion about that with Ashley mid war). (This is not how you rectify the treatment of slavery in GWTW. Rhett grows more and more conservative as the novel - GTWT, that is - progresses, and even at the start, the reason why he predicts a Southern defeat isn't because he sees slavery as wrong but because he is aware the Northern states have the better industrial resources. Which Ashley, btw, agrees with.) I'm all for adding new perspectives to compelling yet deeply problematic sources - this is what fanfiction often DOES, after all - but if you're prone to do so via completely throwing out the original characterisation, then you've lost me.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/973004.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.