Future releases

I've seen parts of Patrick Stewart's MacBeth. Well done but I really miss the medieval setting for that play.

Though the acting was not as fine in Gibson's Hamlet I just thought the scripting and directing brought a clarity to the play, perhaps because it was a more meathead version.

The other thing that can be cut out of Shakespeare is his triple and quadruple layers of simile and metaphor. Once you've described something poetically you don't have to go back and keep beating it to death. Pick the best one and move on.

Semiramis wrote:
Love Brannagh's Othello-version as well.

Actually Branagh didn't direct Othello, just played Iago in it. But it was this portrayal that led a critic to remark the Branagh "is the only living actor who can make Shakespeare sound like street talk." If you watch his performance, the insight of that comment is apparent: Shakespeare rolls off his tongue like a cussing sailor. It's this naturalness that I think made his Crispin's day speech in Henry V vastly superior to Olivier's delivery.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
I did see the Al Pacino in Merchant of Venice and I have to admit to not having very high hopes for it, I really couldnt see Pacino in the role- but he is superb in it.

Back in college, I had the great pleasure of sitting in while Patrick Stewart dropped by (before Star Trek made him famous) and talked to a group of theater students. He started off by talking about his first day of rehearsal at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He showed up with his lines memorized ready to go, only to find everyone sitting around a large table. The director turned to the first actor beside him as asked him to talk about his character. The actor talked for several minutes, after which the next one talked, and so on. As the discussion went around the room getting closer and closer to him, Stewart realized with horror that he had absolutely nothing to say. He resolved from that day forward that he would never again be caught with nothing to say.

It was true, he talked for a full hour nonstop, and was mesmerizing. One thing I remembered is he mentioned being recruited to play Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. He said he would only do it if allowed to play him as a monster. Up to that time everyone had been playing Shylock as a victim and symbol of human universality ("if you prick us, do we not bleed?"). He said that in Shakespeare's time Jews were universally considered demonic at best, subhuman at worst, and perhaps Shylock's lines could be reinterpreted with anger, not pity. He demonstrated by roaring: "If you prick us, do we not BLEED?!!"

I think this performance had a balancing effect on subsequent portrayals of Shylock, and Pacino took a middle and very realistic road, perhaps as a result of Stewart's monstrous performance.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Yeah I was suitably impressed by Pacino interpretation of the character. You swing back and forth nicely from rooting for him to severely disliking him several times.

Hard to imagnine a modern film script being so brave as to have a main character who is so contentious.

'House' and Archie Bunker is about as close as the modern age gets. But he still has to be lovable or nobody will go for it.