Catholic Film Reviews

My two oldest and I drove fifty miles to an art house cinema several years ago to see the Michael Radford film adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s thorniest “Problem Plays”, The Merchant of Venice.
Fascinating how many of Shakespeare’s alleged Comedies–defined primarily by the fact that there’s a “happy ending” for the main characters–are actually [...]

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Buy BBC Hamlet on DVD from Ambrose Video
Buy BBC Hamlet on VHS from Ambrose Video
It is also available from Ambrose Video as part of a boxed set of 5 DVDs of the BBC Shakespeare Tragedies. (Enter “BARD” in the appropriate discount code box for a special $2 discount for bardolatry.com readers!) Or buy the set [...]

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Geoffrey Wright, the director who gave us (by way of a truly disturbing performance by Russell Crowe) the truly disturbing movie about Australian skinheads, Romper Stomper, has re-envisioned Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a drug-land setting, complete with the three witches as Goth chicks.
Yikes.
It isn’t clear to me from the review how much of the script is [...]

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Happy birthday, Lord Larry!
Yesterday, May 22, was Laurence Olivier’s 100th birthday, in honor of which  BBC Radio 4’s "Archive Hour" of May 19 included a discussion of Laurence Olivier’s legacy as an actor. It is still available on streaming audio for at least a few days. Here’s the blurb:

Mark Lawson reassesses Laurence Olivier’s reputation. 100 [...]

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Heads up, thesps!
A very young Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie teach you how it’s done in this “Shakespeare Master Class.”
(Remember, boys and girls, it all comes from the buttocks!)

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…reciting the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night.
A to-die-for vidclip from YouTube:

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Warner Home Video Press Release: The Shakespeare Collection A Quartet of Great Films from the Bard’s Greatest Works
THE SHAKESPEARE COLLECTION
Branagh’s Hamlet 2-Disc Special Edition ~ Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream ~ Olivier’s Othello & Thalberg’s Romeo and Juliet All Debut August 14
Burbank, Calif. May 7, 2007 ­ Warner Home Video will debut [...]

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The renowned Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC has published a new website entitled Shakespeare in American LIfe. The site includes a “Stage and Screen” section with a “Shakespeare in Hollywood” subsection that would appear to be worth the time of anyone interested in Shakespeare on screen.

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John has just logged a new review, of Tim Supple’s 1999 Twelfth Night, starring Parminder Nagra. And we’ve got vidcaps up for it, too!

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…according to Daniel Rosenthal, author of Shakespeare on Screen and the soon-to-be-published 100 Shakespeare Films. The Guardian UK has an article on Rosenthal’s thesis here.
Here’s how the article begins:
Shakespeare is box-office poison – or so the thinking goes. But if you look at the hundreds of blockbuster epics, westerns and rom-coms based on his work, [...]

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