Category: Uncategorized

Most of the posts in this category are simply leftovers from a previous era before the site had categories. Over time I plan to reduce that number to zero and remove this category. Until then, here they are. I had to put something in the box.

Is The New Romeo & Juliet Movie Going To Be As Bad As It Looks?

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

There’s a new trailer up for the Hailee Steinfeld Romeo & Juliet movie, and I was very excited to see it.  I’m of the believe that that DiCaprio Romeo + Juliet movie may not have been high art, but was an important step in bringing Shakespeare to young “MTV” audiences.  So when I saw the trailer posted by MTV News I had high hopes.

There’s a soundtrack, and it’s a cool trailer, I’ll give it that.

But … oh, oh god.  It’s not Shakespeare. They just went ahead and wrote their own dialogue.

Let’s play a game.  Watch the trailer, and mark two points – the first time you hear dialogue that is so very clearly NOT Shakespeare that you can’t stand it … and the point at which you hear so much of it you can’t watch anymore.

For me the first time is the bit at the ball where somebody says, “The Capulets and Montagues are mortal enemies!”

REALLY?  What genius script writer felt the need to add that little bit of exposition?  Show me don’t tell me, isn’t that what they teach in writing 101?

As for the second, my finger was hovering over the STOP (for the love of god, STOP!) button when Tybalt shows up, uttering such Shakespearean classics as, “Don’t let that name be spoken in this house!”  and my favorite, which I knew was coming from an earlier trailer, “Come settle with me, boy!”

But out of my love for Shakespeare and for you my loyal geeks, I had my coworkers tie me to down to the armrests of my chair and forced myself to watch through to the end.

The trailer ends with Hailee doing a voiceover of the “Give me my Romeo” speech that just sticks a fork in the entire thing, because it’s just plain bad.  It sounds like somebody handed her a complete works (perhaps the No Sweat version) and told her, “Read this.”

Am I overreacting?  Will we be talking about this one 20 years later like we do with Luhrman’s version?  Maybe by then at least Hailee Steinfeld will be old enough that I won’t look at her like a babyfaced child when she flops herself down on the bed under Romeo. Ewww.

Shakespeare’s Voice

~ duane ~ 5 Comments

File this one under, “I’m surprised I never wondered about this before…”

When Daniel Day Lewis portrayed Lincoln last year he gave the president a high, nasal voice that sent many into hysterics.  It’s simply not done that way!  Everybody that’s ever portrayed Lincoln has always given him a deep booming voice.  But Lewis (or is it Day Lewis?), known for the depths of research into the character, decided that his version would be the more realistic one.
What’s that got to do with Shakespeare?  Well, I’m wondering – what do you think Shakespeare’s voice sounded like?
I was thinking of a game.  Not a blog game or a hashtag game, but a video game.  And in this imaginary video game, when you finished a level, a little animated ghost of Shakespeare would tell you “Job well done!” or something more linguistically appropriate.  My first thought was, “I’ll consult Ben Crystal on the subject of original pronunciation to learn how it would sound.” 
But then I thought, no, that would tell me how the characters on stage would sound. And that’s not the same thing.  I’m curious what Mr. Shakespeare himself sounded like when he spoke.
The idea is weird to me.  I simply never think about him speaking.  We think about him writing, to be sure.  Earlier today Bardfilm made a reference to just how tired a man’s hand can get after writing out the plays in long hand.  We have the image of the man working in front of his parchment, quill in hand, often by candlelight, churning out the words as we have them today.  But when he went to work and talked to his actors … what then?
If Daniel Day Lewis decided to play William Shakespeare, what do you think he’d do with the character?  You know what, I’ll even open it up wider because I like that idea.  Seriously, what would Daniel Day Lewis do with the character of Shakespeare do you think?  Any attributes are wide open for discussion.  Would he bring Shakespeare’s rumored syphilis into the portrayal, and if so, how might that show itself?  What about his rumored marijuana habit?  What do we think Shakespeare weighed during his life?  We so often only see the headshot, after all.  Would Mr. Lewis have to put on some pounds, or lose some?

What if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was the original?

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

The other day on Reddit somebody asked whether you could truly appreciate Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead if you had no previous knowledge of Hamlet.

I suggested that this would be amazing, because you’d then get the rare opportunity of seeing Hamlet as the backstage play!

Think about that.  Imagine if R+G was the original, the play you were intended to see and appreciate.  And then later somebody came along and said, well, have you seen this one?  Would it work?  Would Hamlet then forever be the inferior play, or would it clearly outclass Mr. Stoppard’s work?

It’s little more than a thought experiment, because I think that even if you’ve never seen Hamlet, you’ve almost certainly heard of it, and you probably have no choice but to go into R+G with the knowledge that it is a spin-off of that one, and not the other way around.