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May. 29th, 2017 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHmmm...I'm going to have to try Still Star Crossed because guess who is playing Juliet's father, Lord Capulet? Anthony Stewart Head. And Lord Montague is Grant Bowler from Defiance. It's basically what happened in Verona after Romeo and Juliet died. (Basically all hell breaks loose, not the optimistic ending Shakespeare opined.) Which is an interesting premise, just wish it wasn't adapted from a successful YA series. Although that could be a good thing, sometimes book adaptations give a series a bit more cohesion.
I was thinking about favorite Shakespearean plays, adaptations and film versions...and really the devil is in who performed it and how.
On paper? My favorite is Hamlet. It just has the best lines.
Performed? It's more of a toss-up. I've seen really good live theater presentations of
King Lear (Anthony Hopkins played Lear vis RSC in London) and Twelth Knight in Stratford Upon Avon. Not much else.
Film? Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet, and Fassbender's Macbeth, also Ian McKellan's Richard III. Kenneth Brannagh also made Henry the V very accessible.
Adapted? Harder. I think West Side Story is by far the best adaptation. The others I can't remember or didn't quite work. Romeo and Juliet really lends itself to adaptation.
Although I do have a fondness for the film Ten Things I Hate About You which is a teen adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, a bit better than the musical version Kiss Me Kate.
(You can tell I was an English Lit major and a theater geek, back in the day, can't you?)
2. There's a list of 65 television shows popping up this summer in TV Guide. 65. Half of them are game shows, which makes me nostaglic for the 70s. Half of the television series in the 1970s and part of the 1980s were unscripted game shows. I don't enjoy game shows that much, but my best bud at the time adored them. So I saw all of them. She loved two things -- game shows, science fiction and horror.
Midnight, Texas looks sort of interesting, it's another adaptation of a Charlain Harris series. (I don't understand how Harris gets adapted let alone published. Her writing is abysmal. But then I didn't understand the appeal of Twilight. So what do I know?)
The adaptations are actually more interesting than her books. This one is about a down-on-his luck medium, a waitress and a town filled with ghosts, angles, a were-tiger, and something else.
It's more about community and family then sexual relationships, partly because it is on NBC and not HBO. So, if you're curious to see what a non-cable subscription channel would do with it, check it out.
What else? I think I should try Wyonna Earp on Syfy at some point. People seem to like it.
Can't really remember anything else. Oh, Nashville and Younger are popping up again.
I'd like to try The Last Kingdom...but not sure where it can be found in US. I like Bernard Cornwell for the most part, was a fan of his Sharpe series. Everything else is on HBO or Showtime, which I don't get at the moment. Starting to wish I hadn't let go of it. Although I could always grab it back again.
Salvation is a..."meteor is falling to earth how do we stop it series". I like some of the stars.. Santiago Cabrera.
And a whole host of other things...The Sinner is an odd miniseries about a woman suddenly going nuts and stabbing someone and the detective who investigates why. The detective is portrayed by Bill Pullman.Will is basically a TNT series about Wild Man, Will Shakespeare who wants to revolutionize theater. And yes, it's the actual William Shakespeare.
I was thinking about favorite Shakespearean plays, adaptations and film versions...and really the devil is in who performed it and how.
On paper? My favorite is Hamlet. It just has the best lines.
Performed? It's more of a toss-up. I've seen really good live theater presentations of
King Lear (Anthony Hopkins played Lear vis RSC in London) and Twelth Knight in Stratford Upon Avon. Not much else.
Film? Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet, and Fassbender's Macbeth, also Ian McKellan's Richard III. Kenneth Brannagh also made Henry the V very accessible.
Adapted? Harder. I think West Side Story is by far the best adaptation. The others I can't remember or didn't quite work. Romeo and Juliet really lends itself to adaptation.
Although I do have a fondness for the film Ten Things I Hate About You which is a teen adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, a bit better than the musical version Kiss Me Kate.
(You can tell I was an English Lit major and a theater geek, back in the day, can't you?)
2. There's a list of 65 television shows popping up this summer in TV Guide. 65. Half of them are game shows, which makes me nostaglic for the 70s. Half of the television series in the 1970s and part of the 1980s were unscripted game shows. I don't enjoy game shows that much, but my best bud at the time adored them. So I saw all of them. She loved two things -- game shows, science fiction and horror.
Midnight, Texas looks sort of interesting, it's another adaptation of a Charlain Harris series. (I don't understand how Harris gets adapted let alone published. Her writing is abysmal. But then I didn't understand the appeal of Twilight. So what do I know?)
The adaptations are actually more interesting than her books. This one is about a down-on-his luck medium, a waitress and a town filled with ghosts, angles, a were-tiger, and something else.
It's more about community and family then sexual relationships, partly because it is on NBC and not HBO. So, if you're curious to see what a non-cable subscription channel would do with it, check it out.
What else? I think I should try Wyonna Earp on Syfy at some point. People seem to like it.
Can't really remember anything else. Oh, Nashville and Younger are popping up again.
I'd like to try The Last Kingdom...but not sure where it can be found in US. I like Bernard Cornwell for the most part, was a fan of his Sharpe series. Everything else is on HBO or Showtime, which I don't get at the moment. Starting to wish I hadn't let go of it. Although I could always grab it back again.
Salvation is a..."meteor is falling to earth how do we stop it series". I like some of the stars.. Santiago Cabrera.
And a whole host of other things...The Sinner is an odd miniseries about a woman suddenly going nuts and stabbing someone and the detective who investigates why. The detective is portrayed by Bill Pullman.Will is basically a TNT series about Wild Man, Will Shakespeare who wants to revolutionize theater. And yes, it's the actual William Shakespeare.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-30 02:31 pm (UTC)I got into Shakespeare at 14 years old, when they were broadcasting the BBC Shakespeare plays on US TV and I decided to see what all the fuss was about. (Yes I was an enormous nerd.) If they'd been broadcasting one of the war plays that would probably have been the end of my curiosity, but luckily it was "As You Like It," starring a young Helen Mirren as Rosalind - amazingly good! Some of the funnier bits were almost Monty-Pythonish.
Years later I saw a stage version of "As You Like It" that had all the "Forest of Arden" part of the play done as a bunch of TieDye shirt and ripped-jean-wearing hippies playing guitar and singing the Elizabethan music as if it was a 1960's lovefest - and it worked REALLY well.
Also if you can find it, the BBC-TV version of "The Taming of the Shrew" starring John Cleese is also fabulous! Not one of my favorite plays, but this production wasn't at all as sexist and knee-slapping as other versions (the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton scenery-chewing version comes to mind) but was far more nuanced. I highly recommend it.
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Date: 2017-05-31 12:15 am (UTC)Did see As You Like It at the Public Theater -- or Shakespeare in the Park in Central Park, with, of all people, the guy who voiced the Disney animated version of Robin Hood. Oh, and one of the stars from 3rd Rock. That was in 2005, I think. Also, saw an all nude homosexual version of Midsummer Night's Dream in England in 1987, which...was just weird.
Envy your Lear with Ian McKellan. That would have been awesome.
I've seen quite a few of them. Julie Taymor's Titus Adronicous is rather memorable, if slightly gorey, with Jessica Lange and Anthony Hopkins.
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Date: 2017-06-01 05:29 pm (UTC)McCoy is in the DVD version. The recording is a good Lear IMO, but lacks something. Like many stage versions it may not have transferred well to screen.