Much Ado About Nothing

In recent years, I have taken to repeatedly viewing Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film adaptation Much Ado About Nothing. It's as close to romantic comedy perfection as possible. Taking place in Italy, a household containing the patriarch Leonato (Richard Briers), his innocent and lovely daughter Hero (Kate Beckinsale), Hero's maidservant Margaret (Imelda Saunton), and Hero's saucy and staunchly single cousin Beatrice (Emma Thompson). They are visited by some soldiers fresh from war, the prince Don Pedro (Denzel Washington), the young and lovelorn Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard), the joking and bachelorific Benedick (Kenneth Branagh), and Don Pedro's bastard brother (literally and figuratively) Don John (Keanu Reeves). So pretty much everyone ever is in this movie.

Anyway, the plot is that Claudio wins the love of Hero through the kindly Don Pedro (7th grade style). To kill time in the week interrum before they marry, Don Pedro proposes a plan to get Beatrice and Benedick together. Awesome hijinks ensue. But then Don John is still all bitter about his life situation and jealous about Claudio, so he plans to ruin the wedding. Things get real at the wedding (this is a romcom!), and eventually a death is faked (thanks, Shakespearean priest!). Michael Keaton plays the gross and tedious Dogberry who ends up clearing up the whole misunderstanding, and then there is a celebratory dance!

The overarching story line doesn't interest me so much as the fun Beatrice/Benedick plot. They start off bickering and disagreeing in a fun witty banter sort of way. They exchange insults, and don't hide their dislike for each other. At the masked party (of course), it's revealed that Beatrice and Benedick have some sort of past where Benedick didn't quite love Beatrice as much as she loved him. Apparently things have been hilariously antagonistic ever since. Anway, the rest of the gathering conspires to get them to fall in love. They do this by making sure they are overheard in turn by Benedick and Beatrice talking about how much the other loves them, but how they're too proud to reciprocate. B&B's responses are to prove the conspirators wrong be requiting the love.


How quickly Don Pedro bounces back from Beatrice's refusal. And how awesome his plan is.

As evidenced by his many cinematic forays into the Bard's works, Branagh is one of the few actors that give Shakespearean speech prosody and nuance that sounds familiar to modern audiences. It's really easy to start zoning out when actors start delivering lines in a lovely cadence that shows off the iambic meter, but tends to blur all the words together. But Mr. Branagh actually delivers the lines as if he's expressing the ideas rather than just the beauty of how they are expressed. And Thompson is a very close second in this adaptation, being so sassy with her words.

In fact, the whole cast does a nice job of expressing things in a more conversational way. And as ridiculous as it is to cast Keanu Reeves in Shakespeare, he does an adequate job, mostly in the form of keeping an angry face to match his angry beard. He gets the general ideas across, and does much better when he's not soliloquizing. But overall, the performances are a success.

I could keep extolling the virtues of this movie, including the vibrant lighting and romantic score, but I want to get to the last ShakespeaRe-told adaptation because it was a fabulous.

It starts out with a hint at the backstory between Beatrice and Benedick, with Beatrice (Sarah Parish) being stood up on a date while Benedick (Damian Lewis) hits the road out of town. The story then picks up 3 years later. Beatrice is a local news anchor. Here we meet fair Hero (Billie Piper) and Claude (Tom Ellis) and see their romance start up. But Beatrice's skeevy co-anchor has a bad fall, so Leonard (Martin Jarvis), the boss, decides to bring a former anchor, Benedick, back along with a former director, Peter (Michael Smiley). Also working at the studio is Don (Derek Riddell), a slightly pathetic man who's just been left by his wife and carries a large torch for Hero.

It's actually a fairly faithful adaptation, at least in feeling. Slight changes include the reason Beatrice and Benedick are fooled into loving each other (for the peace of mind of every one who has to work with the bickering pair), simplifying the plot to ruin Claude and Hero's wedding (it's just Don being jealous), cutting down the soldier/security guard parts, and making the ending choices by Hero more realistic and empowering to modern audiences.


When Beatrice "mistakes" Benedick for Claude at the welcome party (in fancy dress of course). Pretty great modern translation, no?

But in the end it's always about Beatrice and Benedick. Sarah Parish is wonderful, playing Beatrice as smart and biting; I do so enjoy seeing sassy women onscreen. And I got a huge kick out of seeing Captain Winters be a sort of sleazy flirt with bad facial hair. Seeing Damian Lewis say "I am horribly in love with her" whilst sliding against a wall makes my life. As made-for-tv contrived the romance is, it comes off well. There are good moments before they fall for each other (thanks to scheming coworkers) that show that they have some things in common, so their liking each other isn't completely out of nowhere. And I just adore a good hate-turned-to-love story.

Anyway, it's worth investigating if you love romantic-comedies as much as I do. Both the 1993 and 2005 version are on YouTube here and here. Enjoy. Watch them back-to-back. You won't regret it.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Welcome back to unofficial Shakespeare week. Let's talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's about 1000 kinds of ridiculous: fairies, broken hearts, love potion, a donkey-man, and a play within a play. But how does one make it more ridiculous?

1. Mismatch male and female costumes. Put the men in vaguely period attire and attach swords. But the women, they must sport 60s dresses with mid-thigh hems and a pair of boots. Also, they must also do nothing with their hair that would be anything but mod.

2. The fairies, let's make them dark green and mostly nude. Except for the children. They can have some clothes.

3. And fairies must move all magically...pray, let's speed up the film slightly and then proceed to record the speech in post-production, but obviously not quite match up the lips. In fact, let's do that to all the speech.

4. And you know what would give it that extra magical feel? Film it on location in a dark, dank forest with extra mud. That way, everything will be the same brown and dark green color.

5. And let's match this minuscule production design budget with world class actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company and get Peter Hall to direct it.

Thus came about the 1968 television adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's mostly successful at being entertaining, seeing as how legit actors are delivering their lines like they know what they're saying. It also helps that much of the dialogue is spoken swiftly (one of the benefits of a Shakespeare comedy over a tragedy as they're not trying to make things important by how long it takes them to say something).

Plus, did I mention Judi Dench plays the mostly nude Queen of the Fairies and Helen Mirren is Hermia? Although I believe both of them are upstaged by the unsettling yet awesomely intense performance by Ian Richardson as Oberon the King of the Fairies. Honestly, it's like he was the inspiration for Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka, it is that weird/great.

I'm not sure I can say anything else about how incredible this production is. Do yourself a favor and just watch some highlights of Judi Dench (but look out for Ian Richardson's eyes and the psychedelic editing job):



I hope your brain didn't just explode because now I'm going to talk about the pretty awful (and not in a fun psychedelic way) ShakespeaRe-told version. It's something I would expect to see on ABC Family. I'm not even kidding when I tell you I would rather watch My Fake Fiance again because at least Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawerance know they're in a crappy made for TV movie and are fully embracing the tragedy that their respective careers have become (you can see it in their eyes).

The updated version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, however, fails to be whimsical and fun. It kind of loses the magic in all its modernity. The night takes place at a holiday camp in which an engagement is broken off and then lovers are mixed up by love juice (oh, Puck). One odd choice is having the fairies and the mortals interact. Well the father and Oberon do at least, which leads to a superfluous and dorky plot line about bringing the romance back into a long marriage that I guess replaces the play within a play at the end.

Let's all just admit that Oberon is the best part of any adaptation. This time Lennie James got to rock this role.

Helena (Michelle Bonnard) comes off the best in this adaptation because she's less desperate and more sympathetically in love with James (William Ash in the updated Demetrius role). Although taking Helena seriously makes things much more cheesy than outrageously funny. This version also allowed me to see my favorite mambo dancing footballer and mistaken identity brother to the screen (William Ash and Rupert Evans), neither of which are that great of actors, they're mostly just nice to look at. Also, having the donkey-ified dude (Johnny Vegas) do a bad imitation of David Brent's awful/awkard dance from season 2 episode 5 of The Office somehow got a laugh out of me, it was so meta.

Final word: Find the 1968 version on Netflix instant play now. If you're up for it, the Re-told version is on there, too, but I'd probably watch to find My Fake Fiance first. (Found here. You're welcome)

Macbeth

Watching a filmed stage productions is usually pretty boring (musicals being a pretty consistent exception). Rarely do the performances transcend the screen without the aid of editing, music, sets, anything cinematic. I might as well just listen to an audio recording; and in the case of Shakespeare, listening to a recording is almost just as good since settings and actions are usually vocalized anyway.

I braved such an adaption of Macbeth because I had never seen it and I wanted to watch it online. The 1983 version part of a "Tragedies of Shakespeare" series is okay in the sense that it gave me a good idea of the story (with the aid of sparknotes) and I got to hear all the oft repeated lines that are used so often for other things ("sound and fury"--cochlear implants? "Double, double, toil and trouble"--isn't that an Olsen twins movie? "the weird sisters"--magical Billy Idolesque rock?). Anyway, the Scottish play is pretty creepy, in a power-hungry-ill-gotten-gains-mystical sort of way, and I'm sure if I'd watched a more cinematic version I would have enjoyed it more.

But I loved the ShakespeaRe-told version because it visualized a lot of what Shakespeare revealed with long speeches. In other words, it was a more accessible version for film. And instead of the position as king being the incentive for murder, it's the chance to be the top chef at a 3 star restaurant. James MacAvoy plays Joe Macbeth, a chef whose hard work is overshadowed by his employer Duncan Docherty (who he only refers to as the Scottish Chef, haha). One night, Joe and his fellow chefriend Billy Banquo (Joseph Millson) encounter a trio of garbage men who predict Joe's success as head of the restaurant, but also Billy's son's eventual inheritance of it all.

After Joe recalls the experience to his wife Ella (Keeley Hawes), she ends up convincing Joe that the only way that he'll gain his success is by murdering Duncan (obvs) by using his practiced killing skills as a chef with a knife. Things spiral out of control from there.

But what really pulled things off (besides the presence of James MacAvoy and Richard Armitage(!) as Macduff) was the creepy visuals. Joe starts seeing blood everywhere, most disturbingly the water of his wife's shower. And his wife's guilt is shown in how she repeatedly washes her hands and the steadiness (or lack thereof) of her hand as she applies make-up. Somehow this all worked together. I was impressed by how dark a made for TV movie could be. I also thinks this is a great introduction to the story for anyone unfamiliar, although being able to catch some of the references makes it fun to watch even for those who know the play well.

You can find it on YouTube or Netflix instant play.

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's most ridiculous plays. I read part of it when I was a in a history of performance class as part of this heinous dramaturgy project that later got aborted. I never finished it, mostly out of the laziness of my heart, but also because I find reading Shakespeare plays really boring. Seeing a good production, however, is fun.

But The Taming of the Shrew is probably best seen live. I've never had that pleasure, but the play just cries for an audience to goad on the cruelty of both Katherina and Petruchio.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton spar in the 1967 film version of The Taming of the Shrew sporting great cleavage and a great beard, respectively.

I'm all for mutual insults. In fact, that's the backbone of many great romantic comedies (see: It Happened One Night, When Harry Met Sally). However, The Shrew takes a much discussed misogynist turn in which Katherina is "tamed" by physical, mental, and emotional torture by Petruchio. I can see that maybe being entertaining if done in a very joking and brash way since Petruchio seems to get genuine amusement out of the whole situation.

Physical domination: eeeeh. Please also note Elizabeth Taylor's intense eye shadow.

However, in a more faithful adaptation of the play seems to require a sudden and unexplained submission to by Katherina to her somewhat lunatic husband Petruchio. In that way, I wasn't quite sure I found Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 film version that amusing so much as mildly disturbing. I think there needed to be a bit more farce for it to be enjoyable, which the oft cut framing device seems to provide.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's a fairly outdated play that has always been a little creepy. However, the updated version part of the BBC's ShakespeaRe-told* in 2005 gives enough motivation behind both Katherine and Petruchio.

I find myself attracted to Rufus Sewell in his BAFTA nominated role as Petruchio. Mostly when he says "I want you to have all my babies." But I'm also impressed by how well he wears those boots on his wedding day.

Katherine (the pocked sized Shirley Henderson) is a politician who's goals to move up the ranks are threatened by her frighteningly temper and shrill yelling. Petruchio (Rufus "I'm actually quite endearing" Sewell) seems to have genuine affection for Katherine (in addition to his gold digging which he's rather upfront about), and his lunatic antics seem to be his crazy way to win her over.

That's about a foot difference in height. I find that endearing.

Plus, the ending speech where a woman's duties to her husband are enumerated are also applied to a man to his wife, thus making things more whimsical and less sexist. Although it's still odd.

I think I may be in love with this adaptation. Here's a little taste when our lid finds his pot:


Right? It's just ludicrously cheesy, but made for TV in Britain seems so much classier, right?

End notes: I didn't mention the Bianca and her many suitors storyline, but that's mostly because it's rather dull. Who wants to hear about the popular girl? Not me, unless you make her likable, like in the teen adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You (also, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt being one of the suitors makes that plot more endearing exponentially).

And for the curious both the 1967 and 2005 versions are found on YouTube here and here. Enjoy.