I've embarked upon an ambitious project
Mar. 15th, 2003 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockfor tonight.
I'm sitting down to watch the entire Kenneth Branagh film version of Hamlet.
This is four hours. I've barely started, but I'm already loving it, I think. KB is sexy, whispering all that rhyming Old English to the empty air and such... and plus Kate Winslet is in this. I've always liked watching her on screen. Looking at the cast list, there's so many other people that I like here as well... I'm getting excited. I've also got my lit book here to follow along with the parts I've already read, and see how they interpret various scenes.
Their version of the ghost in the opening was kind of corny, but not terrible. The scene of Gertrude and Claudius' wedding was gorgeous though, absolutely lovely to look at. And KB's portrayal of Hamlet's rant about his mother that followed directly after was fabulous too. Some of y ou all are probably going to tar and feather me for saying this, but I can't believe he was in a Harry Potter film. He seems way too cool. Also, I thought very poorly of the first HP movie, and this has left me suspicious to sequels. So I'm still waiting for the video to come out before I watch Chamber of Secrets. What also interests me, though, is reading that Alan Cumming was considered for it... he's more like what I pictured the character to be.
But maybe if this thing I read about KB directing the next one would be true (since the third book was my favorite), I might be interested then.
Feh. I must go now--- still 3.5 hours of Shakespeare dialogue left to view. Thank god for a VCR, which I can pause and rewind as many times as necessary to comprehend what they're saying.
I'm sitting down to watch the entire Kenneth Branagh film version of Hamlet.
This is four hours. I've barely started, but I'm already loving it, I think. KB is sexy, whispering all that rhyming Old English to the empty air and such... and plus Kate Winslet is in this. I've always liked watching her on screen. Looking at the cast list, there's so many other people that I like here as well... I'm getting excited. I've also got my lit book here to follow along with the parts I've already read, and see how they interpret various scenes.
Their version of the ghost in the opening was kind of corny, but not terrible. The scene of Gertrude and Claudius' wedding was gorgeous though, absolutely lovely to look at. And KB's portrayal of Hamlet's rant about his mother that followed directly after was fabulous too. Some of y ou all are probably going to tar and feather me for saying this, but I can't believe he was in a Harry Potter film. He seems way too cool. Also, I thought very poorly of the first HP movie, and this has left me suspicious to sequels. So I'm still waiting for the video to come out before I watch Chamber of Secrets. What also interests me, though, is reading that Alan Cumming was considered for it... he's more like what I pictured the character to be.
But maybe if this thing I read about KB directing the next one would be true (since the third book was my favorite), I might be interested then.
Feh. I must go now--- still 3.5 hours of Shakespeare dialogue left to view. Thank god for a VCR, which I can pause and rewind as many times as necessary to comprehend what they're saying.
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Re:
Date: 2003-03-16 12:11 am (UTC)Eh...Never liked King Lear, though when i first read it, it gave me a stupid thrill to know that was where the name Cordelia came from.
I was also an obsessor of R&J before i read Hamlet. And you're very right; they are different stories. And it makes perfect sense that i was R&J was my love when i was 14 and when i was around 17, Hamlet became my next favorite Shakespearean play. I still enjoy R&J, but i don't feel for it the way that i had. Growing up has made me so jaded to the star-crossed lovers story (*cough*BuffyandAngel*cough*)
And lush skin! There's one scene where we see as muh of him as we do in that Sleeper/hip-bone scene with Spike.
Ooh, i know! Another reason i loved this version. It got rid of the alleged incestuous undertones, and gave us a bit more to the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. And you know...nekkid KB is very pretty.
I love his facial expressions when he's "mad"-- he some how comes off playful, irritated, bored, and tragically heartbroken at the same time.
See, right there you described an actor who is capable of doing Shakespeare and a Shakespearean actor. KB completely swallows up his characters and makes them his own. He loves the words he is spouting, breathes them even, and has a helluva time acting the shit out of them. IMO, that is a much more profound quality to performing Shakespeare than mastering the iambic petameter.
Have you ever seen him in Much Ado about Nothing? One of the lighter and funnier plays and once again, KB is having lots o' fun. Him and Emma Thompson are a hysterical leading pair.
Re:
Date: 2003-03-16 12:58 am (UTC)I was just thinking of how many sexual entendres and undertones there were in this play. I'm still on the first tape though-- stupid me keeps stopping and starting to eat & makes comments here.
I think the incestuousness is still there-- Hamlet's words call his mother & uncle to be incestuous multiple times. But the thign between Hamlet & Ophelia seems to be given a more different treatment, and I find my little shipper heart breaking on their behalf, even though I know that she ides and he dies and so on. But dammit, they're so pretty and happy together in the flashbacks!
::sigh:: I'll have to find my romantic ending in Joss, not in Shakespeare, I think.