Turning Shakespeare Inside Out--Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I first saw Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on stage in the 80s, but Tom Stoppard wrote it in 1966. I loved it.  I loved it not just for the clever way that the playwright inserted his characters' point of view into the story, using a sort of theatrical kaleidoscope that showed something completely different (a technique used in later plays like Wicked) when the view shifted, but also for the language.  R&G is very much a play about language. The play is full of quotable lines--"Who is the English king?" Rosencrantz asks. "That depends on when we get there," Guildenstern responds. The Player has a great speech about the kind of entertainment he and his players provide, offering up love, blood and rhetoric in various combinatins, but always with blood. ("The blood is compulsory," he says.)

In 1990, Stoppard directed a film version of his play starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon himself). Both men look impossibly young (Roth was 29, Oldman was 32) and Oldman actually has a scruffy Heath Ledger-in-the-Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus-thing going on.   Oldman plays Rosencrantz as an innocent fool,  with Roth playing the only slightly more savvy Guildenstern. The two play off each other really well, especially in an early scene when they're trying to remember what they're doing riding toward Elsinore and when they're trying to figure out exactly what's going on with Hamlet. 
The movie is currently streaming live on Netflix, or you can buy it used from Amazon for less than $5.

Kill the Bat-Man

Or at least critique him... A new book, Gotham City 14 Miles collects 14 essays about the 1960s "Batman" TV series. The book critically examines the show, in an effort to determine its weight and worth in current pop culture. PRE-ORDER IT NOW at all comic shops!!!

I don't know the guys who put this together (one of the essayists is a friend of a friend) but the idea of the collection appeals to me. Burgess Meredith as the Penguin; Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Cesar Romero as the Joker. With all due respect to those who came after...these are the actors who defined those roles. (Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker transcended the role, so he's i a category all his own.)