Shakespeare and the Jersey Shore

Yo Willie!
That's right, Shakespeare is not just for wordsnoots any more.  Here's Vinny Guadagnino talking about why he started acting Shakespeare.

The Return of NoHo Noir

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

Esme Morales and her partner Edgar are back in this tale of zombies, skanky badge bunnies and more. Read it here.

Shakespeare Fan Fic

Who knew? You can find the archives here.

Lord Voldemort rocks Shakespeare

When I read John Locke's adaptation of Coriolanus for a film market in 2009, I scoffed. Although I thought he did a brilliant job with the language and the conceit of the play (which was filmed in Serbia, Montenegro and the UK), I predicted it would not be very commercial. In fact, it was a box office disaster, earning a little over a million dollars in its global release. (Interestingly, three-quarters of that million was from US dollars, it only earned $31 million overseas.)
I've never seen the play performed live an I barely remember reading it, so when the dvd of Coriolanus came out, I picked it up. And was ... dazzled.
Ralph Fiennes directed the movie and stars in the title role. with his shaved head and facial scars he looks every inch the warrior he is playing, a soldier who never wanted to be a politician and who has no patience (or love) for the common people who want to embrace him as their hero. In the Harry Potter movies, Fiennes delivers lines like, "Harry Potter, the boy who lived, come to die," with a sinister silkiness. Here he blows out all the stops--sometimes whispering his lines, sometimes roaring them like the "dragon" he becomes. It's a symphonic performance even when it skirts close to melodrama.
Vanessa Redgrave plays Coriolanus' mother--a great part for a mature actress--with a ferocity that just wipes everyone off the screen. (You'll get a glimpse of her intensity in the trailer.)She is a master (mistress) of manipulation but her ambitions for her only son go horribly awry. With her coronet of silver braids and her noble profile (it should be on a coin), she takes command of the story.  "I would the gods had nothing else to do but confirm my curses," she spits at a Tribune who has betrayed her son. (This story is full of excellent insults, my favorite being, "This Triton of minnows.")

Of course, she's Vanessa Redgrave... so you'd expect her to be awesome, but what's surprising is Gerard Butler's mastery of the Shakespeare's words. He's terrific and in the scene where Coriolanus' mother comes to beg him not to destroy Rome, he's got one line and does everything else with his eyes and his body language.
And then there's Brian Cox. Brian Cox should be in every Shakespeare production somewhere.  He's just the perfect actor.
The setting of the story is a world of graffiti and greed, and the color scheme is monochromatic, often black and white in color (or more precisely...gray and white with splashes of blood). Blood is spilled here, and there are a couple of brutally intimate scenes where one or another character is slitting someone's throat or knifing them int he guts. (The story begins with a character sharpening the blade he will later sheathe in a body.)  The war-torn country LOOKS war-torn and not art-directed, and some of the scenes could have come from an Occupy Wall Street rally.
The directing is spotty and Fiennes occasionally makes some creative choices that seem a bit iffy. But all in all, this is a terrific production of one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and it's worth two hours of your time.

Just Say No

Foodie advisory.  You may come across a carton of McConnell's Salt Caramel Chip ice cream in your supermarket freezer. You may read the description on the side of the carton and visions of chocolate ice cream stuffed with salty-sweety bits of pure caramel may dance through your head. And you may pick up that carton of ice cream and buy it.
Don't do it! 
Because you will be disappointed.  The salty-sweety caramel bits are tasty but the ice cream, a pinky light brown substamce even more pallid than a layer of unadorned German Chocolate cake, has a faint ... chemical ... taste.
I tried a spoonful.
Disappointment.
I tried another.
I let the ice cream melt around the caramel bits.
Third time was not the charm.
And so, the search for caramel ice cream goes on...

What's in a name?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Romeo insisted. In his own time, "Shakespeare" was a household name, with many variant spellings--Shakespear and Shake-spear, for example--but though he had three children, there was no one to carry on his name. His only son Hamnet died in childhood, his daughter Judith (married to an unsavory character named Thomas Quiney) outlived all her children and died at 77. Shakespeare left most of his estate to his daughter Susanna, who married a local doctor and gave birth to one child, Elizabeth. Elizabeth married well but died childless--William Shakespeare's last direct descendant.

"I'll Take Shakespeare for 500 Alex"

My head is stuffed with trivia. I blame my father. He had an eidetic memory and my siblings and I inherited various degrees of it. I can't remember how to do some of the simplest things on a computer for more than a minute and a half, but I can recount the plots of books I read at 8
I've tried out for Jeopardy a couple of times and have never made it past their trivia test. (There's always a geography question that stumps me--some question about a river in Tanzania or a mountain in one of the 'Stans.) But I would rock a Shakespeare category.
For example, di you know...
Shakespeare was 52 when he died.  Hard to believe he died that young and left such a rich legacy behind. And according to the site No Sweat Shakespeare, it was a rich legacy; Shakespeare died a wealthy man. He left everything but his second-best bed and bedclothes to his daughter Susannah. (His wife, Anne Hathaway, got the bed.)
The Fun Trivia site has a slew of Shakespearean trivia quizzes for people who just can't get enough fun factoids about the bard. If I were teaching English, I'd lean heavily on this site to engage my students and show them that Shakespeare doesn't have to be boring.  I'd also teach Macbeth as a Shakespeare noir.  It's got everything--friends betraying friends, a dangerous woman, a manipulated man. And witches!!!  But I digress.
A lot of Shakespeare sites (like the Shady Shakespeare Company)  use Shakespeare trivia as a marketing gimmick, most likely to promote "stickiness" among their users.  I know I always "stick" around to read trivia and quotes. 
Some sites are just in it for the trivial pursuit of it all, like Sporcle, which has a whole bunch of Shakespeare trivia games. Check out "Shakespeare or Batman?" with its compendium of hilariously over-the-top quotes you have to match to either the superhero or the Shakespeare hero.
It's more fun than popping virtual bubble wrap. (Don't pretend you haven't done that.)