There's an app for that!

Of course there's a Shakespeare app.  Designed for both the iPhone and the Ipad, Shakespeare is a free app with the complete works of Shakespeare (41 plays, 154 sonnets and 6 poems, including doubtful works) and a searchable concordance to find the exact word or phrase you’re looking for (with “relaxed” searching to find words close to your search).  Get more information and download the app here.  The app is a collaboration between Readdle and Shakespeare.comhttp://shakespeare.com/.

Hank Williams was the original redneck noir hero

I just got back from seeing The Last Ride, a story about Hank Williams' last days. The movie stars Henry Thomas as Hank Williams, and though he's a decade and a half older than Williams was when he died (29), the hard-living singer/songwriter looked even older.
I'm not a fan of what the movie calls "hillbilly music," but Hank Williams transcended categories. You know all the songs that form the soundtrack of this movie, and there were so many, many more--three of which hit the top 10 after he died.
If you took Hank Williams' life and turned it into a crime drama, you wouldn't have to change much of anything to make him a classic noir character.
His mother ran a whorehouse ("Beat that," he says to the young man driving him around, played--and played well--by newcomer Jesse James.) He was baffled and bedazzled by women and it got him into trouble. He drank and smoked and drugged. He raised hell. And he died after a bar fight. he had a double dipping of talent and he threw it away with both hands.
The movie is leisurely--at two hours, it's about 30 minutes too long--but it's worth catching, if for nothing  more than Henry Thomas' performance as Hank. You can see his charm. You can see his bitterness. You can see his world-weariness. It's a good performance in a movie that's not so good. (Although I will say this for the writers--they know their southern phrases and they're pitch perfect, which you don't often see.  When a girl named Wanda--played by Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco--tells James' character how her father died, she says "he died of the black lung." The "the" is important there--nobody from that part of the country ever just says "of black lung.")
If you're in the mood for a bio-pic with a noir-ish edge and a fair amount of heart, check out The Last Ride.

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...