Author: duane

Ranking Julia Stiles Shakespeare Movies

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AI-generated sketch of Julia Stiles in Shakespearean costume
She’s giving Kate vibes in this AI-generated sketch.

I love this idea for a list, courtesy ScreenRant – Top Julia Stiles Shakespeare Movies. Of course, she only made 3, so it’s a very short list – Hamlet, O (Othello), and 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew). The math geek in me wants to say that only leaves 6 possible combinations, but who are we kidding – nobody’s making O their number 1. I love that I can just italicize a single letter like that as a title.

I like to remind people, though, that Ms. Stiles may have been having a bit of fun with us during her Shakespeare period.

She portrayed Ophelia to Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet in 2000 … but she also starred in Down to You with Freddie Prinze Jr. the same year. Is that a Shakespeare adaptation? Well, no. But she does play a character named Imogen – who shares a name with a character from Cymbeline. Which Ethan Hawke also starred in, in 2014! But we’ll call that one a coincidence, the girl’s not from the future.

Then, in 2004, she starred in The Prince and Me. Oh, and she was named the same as a Shakespeare character? Not this time. She just played the love interest to the Prince of Denmark. And they fall in love bonding over Shakespeare sonnets.

I’m a little tempted to stage a Julia Stiles movie marathon just to see how many Shakespeare references we can spot in the strangest places.

How Did Lady Macbeth Kill Herself?

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We talk a lot about Macbeth in my house lately. My daughter’s kind of obsessed with it. So when Macbeth content appears on my radar, I play closer attention than perhaps I’d been doing. Today I saw a reference to her suicide, and I thought about Ophelia. Was Ophelia self-aware enough to have deliberately committed suicide, or was she incapable of realizing her own distress and thus not guilty of that sin? Does the same rule apply to Lady Macbeth? To figure this out, the important question to consider is how did Lady Macbeth kill herself?

Although it is sometimes overlooked in a quick read, we do find out what happens to Lady Macbeth. Right at the end of the play, Malcolm tells us that “Macbeth’s queen, as ’tis thought, took her own life by “self and violent hands.” So, in other words, people thought it, I’m confirming it.

…his fiend-like queen,
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life

– Macbeth Act V Scene viii
AI-generated sketch of Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth alone with her thoughts

I don’t have an answer to the question any more than I have it for Ophelia. Is it suicide in the same sense when a person is no longer in their right state of mind, does it? It could be argued that Ophelia almost has her moment of clarity – sending messages in the flowers she gives to everyone. So, you could try to make the case that she had consciously decided to end her life. I’m not sure Lady Macbeth gets the same benefit of the doubt. The only times we see her after her descent, she doesn’t look good.

But I have a more specific question here. I don’t think it has an official answer, but it might be fun to speculate. We know how Ophelia met her end. What about Lady M? All we get is the above “by self and violent hands” comment. I’m taking that to mean she daggered herself (I’m just going to go ahead and make that a verb). But this could be just one of those redundant ways of saying the same thing — just a fancy “by her own hand,” which would leave everything open to interpretation.

What do people think? How did Lady Macbeth kill herself? Do we know of any productions that show it? As I write that, I’m trying to remember if Marion Cotillard’s version (2015 with Michael Fassbender) put it on film. I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Morgan Freeman as Othello? No, Thank You

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AI-generated image of Morgan Freeman interviewing himself
Morgan Freeman interviewed by … Morgan Freeman (AI-generated)

If you start listing actors famous for their voices, two things are guaranteed to be true — Morgan Freeman will be on that list, and most of them have done Shakespeare. Patrick Stewart, Orson Welles, James Earl Jones, Alan Rickman …

… but wait, where exactly is Morgan Freeman on that list? I hadn’t stopped to consider that he’s done no filmed Shakespeare. There are plenty of clips from his recitation of Seven Ages of Man from As You Like It, but that’s not a stage performance. But as far as I can tell, that’s it. You can find clips of James Earl Jones’ King Lear, or even Alan Rickman as Tybalt. But I find no performances by Mr. Freeman.

He does have some history with Shakespeare, though:

In the late 1970s, the largely unknown actor played the title role in Coriolanus and lent support as Casca in a production of Julius Caesar before returning to the world of Shakespeare over a decade later for a run of The Taming of the Shrew in 1990 as Petruchio.

What are his thoughts on Othello, you may ask? Oh, he has thoughts:

Freeman didn’t hesitate when asked if he had a least favourite role from his lengthy and distinguished career: “Yeah. Othello. Played it on stage. Don’t like it.” Refusing to hold back, he even voiced his disdain for the work itself. “Don’t even like the play. I’ve seen it a number of times, but I hate it myself.”

Well ok then! Maybe we could get him as King Lear?

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/morgan-freeman-names-his-least-favourite-role/

Avenging Shakespeare: What If?

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AI-generated cartoon Loki peforming Hamlet
Poor Yorick is about to be used as a projectile.

I was a huge fan of Marvel’s movie efforts right through Infinity War / Endgame. I’m also one of the people who think that Disney’s switch to television series was their jump-the-shark moment. I haven’t really followed any of their Disney+ shows, and once you lose those, you start losing the Easter eggs in the movies, which makes you care less about the movies. It’s a slippery slope.

Then I discovered the Season 2, Episode 8 of the animated What If? series has the Avengers in Shakespearean England. I’m in!

I haven’t watched any episodes leading up to this one, but who cares? I get the general idea – it’s a multiverse thing where we see the characters we know in new roles. This one opens with Loki doing Hamlet, and I’d recognize Tom Hiddleston’s voice anywhere. Sold. Of course, it’s not long before some alien force attacks, and the fight scenes begin.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the Shakespeare we get. We don’t get a Shakespeare character (though Tony Stark looks much like him). There’s a two-second bit where Loki is talking about a new play he’s written called Iago. “There are other characters in it,” he says, “but really it’s about Iago.” I laughed.

I assume this is based on Neil Gaiman’s comic of the same name, but I’ve not read it. Maybe I should? I’m going to assume it has a lot more Shakespeare content.

Andrew Scott as Patti LuPone

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I have not yet seen Andrew Scott’s Hamlet, though it appears universally loved. It regularly comes up on the Shakespeare Reddit as one of the most approachable takes on the character ever filmed.

AI-generated image of a theatre where everyone is on their laptop

I wonder, then, if they caught it on video when he apparently stopped his performance to stare down a rude theatre-goer who opened up a laptop during “To be or not to be”?

“When I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop — not his phone, his laptop — while I was in the middle of ‘to be or not to f***ing be’,” Scott said. “I was pausing and [the stage team] were like, ‘Get on with it’ and I was like, ‘There’s no way’.”

On the one hand, I can’t disagree with him. You probably paid a lot of money for a live theatre ticket like that. And you’re going to fire up the laptop? Just to hell with everybody around you, right? Forget stopping the play, I want you on the blacklist for that theatre so you never see another live show. All this guy got was a stare down. Also, go ahead and stare him down for his phone, too. It’s all rude.

On the other, does anybody see what bothers me in the above quote? In the context of being interrupted during the most famous soliloquoy in the English language, our Hamlet says “like” twice. “He was like blah, and I was like, blah!” It’s amazing what’s happened to the language in 400 years. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

Where’s Patti LuPone When You Need Her

Maybe Mr. Scott just needs some years to get tired of it. Broadway legend Patti LuPone is famous for letting the audience know how she feels about them. In 2015 she marched into the audience and ripped the phone out of one audience member’s hand. In 2009 she started yelling at people who, ignoring the announcement, were taking pictures of the show. Gloriously, this moment lives on via YouTube.

I need to get to more live theatre, in the hopes of catching one of these moments. Who said Shakespeare is boring?