low creativity

TV Sorry for the low creativity of today's post but I have the sniffles. Amid my sniffles I've been watching the BBC's adaptation of Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right, a ramshackle costumer which comes across as a Jane Austen parody with farce instead of zombies. I was attracted by appearances from David Tennant and Laura Fraser but as I watched it became apparent that by the end I'd be posting on this blog the following question:
Who's In It From Doctor Who?

Anna Massey played Miss Pollard in Big Finish's The Girl Who Never Was

Geoffrey Palmer played Masters in Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Administrator in The Mutants, and Hardaker in Voyage of the Damned.

Christina Cole played Lilith in The Shakespeare Code.

Barbara Flynn played Sister Chalice in The Skull of Sobek

David Tennant played The Tenth Doctor

Fenella Woolgar played Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and the Wasp and Commander Hellan Femor in The Company of Friends.

Ron Cook played Mr Magpie in The Idiot's Lantern.

James Bolam played Sir Archibald Flint in The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

Anna-Louise Plowman played Diana Goddard in Dalek

Alison Skilbeck played Deputy in Frontios.

Sarah Crowden played Mrs Gribbins in Eye of the Gorgon.

Philip Madoc played Eelek in The Krotons, Rag Cobden in The Return of the Krotons, The War Lord in The War Games, Mehendri Solon in The Brain of Morbius, Fenner in The Power of Kroll, Victor Schaeffer in Master and Brockley in Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.

Simon Day played the Steward in The End of the World.
Isn't that amazing? Such things are relative, but it's like a casting session for the Big Finish audios and the new tv series. Have I missed anybody? At one point I thought Bernard Horsfall had wandered into shot too but it was just any old supporting player. And wondered if Matt Smith was playing Fraser's son (!). If that wasn't enough some of the people who haven't actually been in Doctor Who have a certain affinity:
Bill Nighy was tipped to be the 10th Doctor by The Times and famously the Daily Mail who put it on the front page.

Lynn Farleigh -- All three of her husbands - Michael Jayston, David Yip and John Woodvine have made guest appearances in Doctor Who.

John Alderton was among those actors to be offered the part of Kane in Dragonfire but was not free.

Laura Fraser was in Casanova, starring David Tennant and written by Russell T Davies.
Frankly an appearance in by any of these is long overdue...

tenth anniversary

TV Popular television review website Off The Telly celebrates its tenth anniversary. Graham Kibble-White offers some history:
With this new look came – I hate to say it – another innovation from Jack. And quite a simple one too: the concept of regular, diarised updates alongside the ad hoc arrival of reviews. Now, let’s be clear; he didn’t get it all right. His suggestion was for OTT to go weekly. Bloody hell. I opted for monthly, and suddenly, we had a real sense of momentum. The need to get something chunky and new online – in fact three things chunky and new – every 30 days really gave it some impetus.
Also included is a subtle nudge in my direction. Yes, I know ...

irony free zone

The Media James Murdoch (who gave this year's Edinburgh MacTaggart Lecture) is an irony free zone isn't he?
"James Murdoch, the heir to his father Rupert’s global News Corporation empire, tonight accused the BBC of undertaking a “chilling” land-grab of the media that posed a “serious and imminent” threat to the future provision of news in Britain. "
What as opposed to his Dad berating the government for not changing the rules so that he can own more of it? He even has a backhanded clonk at The Guardian while he's at it:
"“I saw recently an article in which the editor of The Guardian (Alan Rusbridger) suggested that the government should fund local news coverage of court proceedings and council meetings, a profoundly undemocratic and ruinous idea.”
Yes, because News International has been prepared to get its wallet out for that too, obviously. Oh and he seems to be under the impression that people read the BBC News website because it's there rather than because it offers better quality than some of its commercial cousins:
"Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet,” he said. “We seem to have decided as a society to let independence and plurality wither. To let the BBC throttle the news market and then get bigger to compensate.”
Because people only read the BBC News website to get their news and don't surf anywhere else. You'd think he was from some rival media conglomerate.

For an example of what happens in the independent marketplace, local staff at the Metro have been kicked out after Associated Newspapers decided to close the regional offices putting some very good journalists out of work and effectively shutting down another regional news service.

wish this

Elsewhere I really wish this had been better than it was. I'd love to know how they managed to nudge Elizabeth Shue into playing herself.

Hamlet 2 (2009)



Hamlet played by Octavio.
Directed by Dana Marschz.

Without hopefully giving too much away (!) it’s important to note, right up front, since this (p)review is being published on a blog about Hamlet, that the provocatively titled Hamlet 2 has almost nothing to do with the play. The title of the film comes from the musical that Steve Coogan’s down at heels teacher is producing in order to save the drama department at the athletics driven high school in which he’s marooned following a failed acting career.

Though the story of the musical has the mysteriously resurrected young prince employing a time machine to visit key moments in the play to save Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius and his father, do not watch the film expecting a sharp parody of Shakespeare’s story or themes in the tradition of Ten Things I Hate About You or even Get Over It, other than a very general mention of Hamlet oedipal complex.

That’s part of the joke; in casting about to create a production which demonstrates the power of theatre, rather than actually presenting one of the greatest works in the English language just as Michael Maloney’s similarly out of luck actor did during Ken Branagh’s In The Bleak Midwinter, Coogan’s hack egotistically writes his own version, an “offensive” travesty which also parachutes in Jesus, Einstein and a raft of other real life figures and pop culture references.

So while some of the resultant staging, in which Shakespeare’s scenes are lovingly augmented by a giant video screen, most remarkably with Hamlet Snr’s face looking down on his son, the dialogue is deliberately hammy, the film’s main trump card, the song and dance number Sexy Jesus Sing-Along has more to do with Grease and Jerry Springer: The Opera (and their ensuing condemnation by the religious right) than The Mousetrap.

With director Andrew Fleming’s film just about absolved of disingenuousness then, what enjoyment you dig up from this back stage high school musical probably depends on the extent to which you feel Steve Coogan is a comic genius. I have issues. I think he can be a very clever actor, and at his finest, in 24 Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, Marie Antoinette and the little seen Happy Endings, his work can be outrageous but poignant. Sadly, he also has a tendency, when he’s the focus of attention, to push himself too far, resorting to the worst variety of gormless mugging, as in The Parole Officer or Around the World in 80 Days.

During Hamlet 2, he’s in almost every scene, and Fleming, deep in the genius camp, appears to have given him a certain latitude to improvise which leads some scene to donder on beyond their natural end as Coogan attempts to ring out every drop of the “comic potential”. When Fleming (who in the 1990s brought us the righteous run of Threesome, The Craft and Dick) should be playing up the zanier aspects of the film in preparation for his finale, he’s too busy allowing Coogan to shout, gurn and toss his hair about as though it’s a punch line. That has the effect of stagnating the rest of the film and at worst Coogan becomes the boring one at the party who hogs the conversation but doesn’t realise he’s ruining everyone’s night.

Elizabeth Shue cameos, playing herself, having given up acting for the nursing profession, but much of her contribution is reduced to reacting to Coogan’s hero worship and shouting out of her back catalogue. The mighty Catherine Keener is wasted in the role of his wife, throwing out some good barbs, but generally looking like she knows she’s in a dud. David Arquette plays their “boring” lodger whose turn is to mumble obvious observations about the situation but otherwise has nothing to do. And at the moments when they’re at their funniest, Fleming cuts away to whatever bit of business Coogan is up to. Only Amy Poehler is given space to work as a ballsy civil rights lawyer who doesn’t care about the quality of the production.

Hamlet 2 barely manages to resuscitate when dealing with the teenagers who populate the drama club. There’s some interesting subtext in relation to our perception of the kid’s background, and their ability to turn in a good performance on stage despite the material. At a guess (though the deleted scenes on the dvd don’t reflect this) I’d suggest that there are a couple of sub-plots within this group which are still sitting in the editing software. The director has clearly decided that the film is about Coogan, Coogan and more Coogan, and I take no pleasure in saying this, especially since the film company have been good enough to supply me with a preview copy, on this occasion his timing off, off and even further off.

I will add this. I laughed four times, proper belly laughs, at very good jokes, which it would be a shame to spoil, especially since if you’re in the right mood, Hamlet 2 might just work, particularly in the finale where the population of the town turn up to simultaneously gasp and applaud the final production. The film is co-written by South Park's Pam Brady and these closing dance numbers clearly share some DNA with the productions in the film version of that series (Bigger Longer & Uncut).

But that’s not enough for me. As the first ambassador says in Hamlet 1, “The sight is dismal”. And it really is.

Hamlet 2 was released on DVD on the 7th September 2009.

Hamlet vs. Ophelia.

The Shakespeare Geek compares and contrasts film and tv versions of the 'remembrances' scene:

"The big question, in my mind, is to what degree Ophelia deserves the treatment she gets from Hamlet. Is she just a pawn, moved one way by her father and another by her boyfriend? Does Hamlet agonize over his decision to crush her, or is he so far removed from that relationship that he doesn’t think twice about it?"

Stop now, what's that sound?

Music Stop now, what's that sound? It's Apple shooting itself in the foot by approving the official Spotify application. On the one hand it makes the iphone an attractive music player (if you have the money to pay for the premium service and data) but on the other it'll be interesting to see how many people will simply stop buying their music from iTunes.

From my own experience, it's a very long time since I bought a cd. The other day I was looking for the Melody Gardot album on my hard disk and then realised that I'd been listening to it from Spotify all along. Ditto Little Boots. I predicted in January that the application has the potential to change the way people enjoy music. I just didn't think it would happen quite so quickly.

And in case you're wondering it's from Chumbawamba's Timebomb. Which ironically, isn't on Spotify. Ha! But it is preserved on YouTube, in this effervescent live version recorded at about the time Tubthumping made them rich and arguably ruined their careers. Spot the bit of improv that immediately dates the clip.

mid-thirties

TV AJ Langer who played Rayanne in My So-Called Life has just given birth to her second child. Which is great news of course, but the reason for writing is because of the photo which accompanies the post at Celebrity Baby Blog of Langer as she is now, mid-thirties, (roughly) the same age as me now. Just a reminder that none of us are getting any younger.

faith

Politics I couldn't help thinking when I read this that there will are some public meetings where citizens actually get less sense when the politicians are actually there. Which sort of demonstrates the faith I have in some of our public representatives right now.

is no more

Liverpool Life The Josephine Butler House at the junction of Hope Street and Hardman Street in Liverpool, one of the great old landmarks of the city whose status has been open to question for some time as it stood zombie like with the surface of its bricks missing is no more. As I passed by this morning on my way to work I noticed that it has received a mortal blow to its side and will doubtless be a heap of bricks and rubble by time of writing.



With the umpteenth Tesco Express moving in on the property opposite, it's another sign of the errosion of Hope Street's distinctive character.

Google Street Map shows what the complete house looked like, albeit covered in scaffolding:


View Larger Map

premise mangler

TV Our trip to the 90s continues with the shooting script for the final episode of Quantum Leap with a cliffhanger ending that might have been if the show had gained a sixth season. It's a premise mangler and seems to be genuine.

presence from the off

TV Rick Berman Talks 18 Years of Trek In Extensive Oral History. Surprisingly candid. TrekMovie offers some notes:
  • Billy Campbell cast as Riker, but Pike didn’t feel he had command presence, so went with 2nd choice

  • Gates McFadden fired at end of first season because head writer Maurice Hurley "he had a real bone to pick" with Gates and din’t like her acting, Berman brought Gates back for 3rd season after Hurley left

  • Whoopi Goldberg initially wanted to replace Gates McFadden as ships doctor for Season 2, but it was felt she wasn’t right for that role so they created new "Yoda-like" character of Guinan
  • Much as Frakes grew into the role, Billy Campbell would clearly have been a more interesting presence from the off -- he turned up in the title role of the second season episode "The Outrageous Okona" and stole every scene and turned an only ok episode (like most of the first couple of seasons) into a great one.

    Twilight's Catherine Hardwicke's new Hamlet film

    News of another new screen Hamlet this time directed by Twilight's Catherine Hardwicke and starring Emile Hirsch as the young prince and Ophelia played by one of the actresses from the vampire film. No mention in the links as to whether it's to use Shakespeare language or an adaptation.

    Update: It's a musical: "Hamlet will try to work out some of his more agonizing decisions through composing music and singing it in clubs to small groups of about six people. Harwicke has described hers and Hirsch's Hamlet as kind of an "early Kurt Cobain." Hirsch is taking singing and guitar lessons to prepare for the role."

    it’s very difficult to believe



    Film My copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder begins with a BBC announcer suggesting that fans of Columbo will be in for a treat. She’s not wrong; just as Forbidden Planet begat Star Trek, it’s very difficult to believe that the producers of Columbo hadn’t seen this before knocking out their first scripts, so structurally similar are the two. Like Columbo, the film opens with the arrogant murderer carrying out his plot (and in this case explaining it) and we then spend most of the rest of the picture watching the detective bring himself up to speed. He even has a moment were he dips back in and says “Just one more thing…” before indicating the vital clue that blows the whole mystery wide open which had been on-screen already, but we’d simply missed in our fear for Grace Kelly’s safety.

    Aaah, Grace Kelly. I think she’s my favourite of Hitch’s famous blondes. He apparently liked her repressed British sexuality, and its true that there’s a china doll aspect to her which is probably why the moment in which she’s attacked in Dial M is so potent – she looks like she could break. But Rear Window and To Catch A Thief both demonstrate her comic ability; neither Kim Novak or Tippi Hedron could sustain the screwball elements of both films which is all the funnier because we can’t believe someone with that face and figure could offer us the kind of Zooey Deschanel like eye-boggles her character gives in Rear Window when Jimmy Stewart’s character is talking crazy and later when she’s heading across to the apparent murderer’s apartment. Similarly, earlier in the later film, Hitch actually attempted to pitch his shots in such a way as to deglamourise her because our attention has to be with Cary Grant. It didn’t really work.

    When I was at college, Rear Window was used to demonstrate the difference between diagetic and non-diagetic sound. The whole film was lensed on an elaborate set, and looks like it (perhaps inspiring the ediface Caden Cotard’s theatre director creates in Synechdoche, New York) though for much of the film we can suspend our disbelief because the director fills the soundtrack with noise seeping in from the rest of the city – that’s non-diagetic sound – the sound which has been added in and isn’t being created on screen. Diagetic sound is the click of Stewart’s flash, the bark of the dog, the piano music, anything which is apparently happening within the viewable space. Between the two, despite the artifice, you believe that Jimmy’s apartment, though we only leave once (when we see the death of the dog from the neighbour’s perspective), exists within a much larger space, that the potential murderer and companion are going somewhere other than craft services.

    The opening of To Catch A Thief is a demonstration of Hitchcock’s restraint. He’s showing that all of the rich ladies in the local area are having their jewellery pinched by a cat burgler, but he doesn’t want give away the characteristics of the fiend yet – and we don’t discover their identity until the very end of the film. So he reduces each burglary to six or seven shots. An establishing shot of the home; a shot of a black cat heading in its direction, a shot of whatever’s being stolen, shot of the cat leaving, shot of the scream of the victim, shot of the space where the jewellery used to be. Repeat three times and we already know more about the scenario than most modern films what resort to elaborate action sequences, voiceovers or scrolling text. With the possible exception of the rooftop climax, all of To Catch A Thief is as restrained, the minimum number of shot choices for maximum effect; when the director later describes it as a fancy, something he dashed off between more interesting projects, he’s being modest; the same care and attention is at play here as in his more respected projects.

    Mickey Rourke’s ouevre

    Film Elizabeth Wurtzel picks her five favourite films about drug use:
    "It’s hard to narrow down a list to just five, and of course there are all the subcategories that one wants to include but shouldn’t: the movies we know were made by people who did too many drugs, like the absolutely awesome and awe-inspiring Apocalypse Now, and the best rock concert documentary ever, The Last Waltz; and of course the movies you hope were made on tons of drugs, like Howard the Duck and Ishtar and most of Mickey Rourke’s ouevre..."
    Misses Trainspotting. Doesn't include the film version of Prozac Nation either...

    only one barometer

    TV The new line-up for Strictly Come Dancing has been announced. There's really only one barometer required to see how successful it's going to be:

    Who's In It From Doctor Who?

    Craig Kelly



    Was Joe in the 2005 online animated webcast relaunch Scream of the Shalka.

    Lynda Bellingham



    The Inquisitor in The Trial of a Timelord and Big Finish's Gallifrey audios.

    [This isn't getting old is it?]

    the chairs

    TV Victoria Coren is on Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching tonight:
    "Then there were the chairs. The chairs worried me most of all. I stared at them intently on the dvd. Great vast squashy things. Chairs in which one could not, with any decency, wear a skirt. Chairs from which the feet of anyone under 5 foot 6 would not touch the ground. Chairs in which Kate Moss would look fat. And they ask why women don’t do panel shows!"
    You should be able to watch the show here (after broadcast).

    the puppetry justification

    TV For some reason, this reminds of career changing puppetry justification documentary in Being John Malkovich:



    [via]

    occurs to me

    Theatre It occurs to me that when I talked about visiting the RSC I missed out something 'important', largely because I wasn't doing this, then.

    Who's in it from Doctor Who?

    Philip Edgerley as Cleomenes in The Winter's Tale



    ... was Collis in Big Finish's Time Works and Saf in The Empire State.

    Noma Dumezweni as Paulina in The Winter's Tale



    ... was Captain Erisa Magambo in Turn Left and Planet of the Dead.

    More on 3D Hamlet

    I've been talking to the people at Shakespeare 4 Kidz who announced recently that they're working on a 3D film version of their Hamlet production. Here is their press release:

    S4K’s Hamlet in 3D will be the first of a series of six movie adaptations of the musical versions of the Bard’s plays originally created by the acclaimed UK theatre company Shakespeare 4 Kidz.

    The film, which is produced by Mark Thomas and Elsinore Films, will be directed by double BAFTA winner John Godber, who is reuniting his partnership with Thomas, the producer of Godber’s film version of Up ‘n’ Under.

    Series producer Mark Thomas of Elsinore Films explained “We have long admired the work that Julian and the team at Shakespeare 4 Kidz have achieved, which is often described as the “Disney-fication” of Shakespeare, and we are delighted that funding opportunities have presented themselves so readily.”

    Executive Producer Michael Cowan, co-MD of Spice Factory and Stealth Media Group says: “We believe that there is a great commercial opportunity here for the S4K series to flourish in the worldwide market, and the titles to enjoy an ‘evergreen’ status which will still be selling in 50 years time.”
    Not only will the story of Hamlet be told in a unique and exciting way, but the addition of the latest 3D technology brings added excitement to cinema audiences: a ghost that hovers in front of your eyes, cannon-fire that flies into the auditorium and a final sword-fight that seems to literally be all around you, are just some of the features promised in the first film, which is firmly targeted at the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and High School Musical market.

    S4K’s Julian Chenery, who is a co producer of the new film series, says “Creating a Hamlet for children was the ultimate test for The Shakespeare 4 Kidz Theatre Company and we are thrilled that the team of Mark Thomas, John Godber and Michael Cowan are able to help bring this unique idea to the big screen.”

    S4K’s Hamlet is the first in a series of three Shakespeare 4 Kidz movies that will be produced back-to-back over an eighteen month period. “Hamlet” will be followed by “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet” in the first block of three. The second series will feature “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Twelfth Night” and “The Tempest”.

    Alongside the movies, Elsinore has developed a television show “Movie Quest – A Romeo 4 Juliet”, a public search to find two undiscovered young actors to play the lead parts of Romeo and Juliet.

    S4K’s Hamlet will be distributed internationally and in the UK by Stealth Media who are about to release the 3D version of Garfield Petforce.
    They've receiving some curious criticism for the project, a typical example being from the usually good Paste Magazine who are unusually snippy and cynical about the project the tone of their post exemplified by opening of the title "No seriously...".

    It is a bit annoying when people jump to conclusion without checking things out first -- it's part of the new culture I suppose, in which surface has replaced depth. I remember at Easter when certain books suddenly dropped from Amazon's listings and people where immediately jumping about and pointing (metaphorically speaking) and accusing Amazon of homophobia when in fact it was just one guy in Paris who'd clicked the wrong box when he was updating a database and it had spread through the webshop and nothing could be done because it was a bank holiday ...

    Anything which brings kids to Shakespeare is a good thing from Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare to even the Romeo and Juliet cartoon with sea mammals. I wish I'd been exposed to such things at primary school -- we essentially reached third year secondary school and had Julius Caesar dumped in our lap which was incredibly difficult having only touched on the "All The World's A Stage..." speech from As You Like It the year before. In other words, Shakespeare 4 Kidz is a brilliant idea.

    Even a cursory glance at their website shows that they've thought a great deal about how these shows should be put together, even to the point of offering for sale packs which can be used by schools to put on their own versions and teacher resources. Far from being a cynical exploitation of the bard, this looks like a carefully thought out strategy for bringing children to his work at a much younger age than usually, and the film is simply an extension of that, which can only be a good thing.

    I don't really care about this

    Books We've talked before about issues related to massive franchises and the canonicity thereof and as a warning I'm going to be talking about them again. This is rather old news, but Karen Traviss one of the more popular novelists in the Star Wars universe has decided to stop writing for the franchise or as the Canon Wars blog puts it, "Popular SW Writer Quits Over Continuity". The whys and wherefores of this are fairly complex, and if you want the detailed version of it, she's written about it on her blog, but what it boils down to is this:

    Having been hired write a series of novels set during the Clone Wars, most specificially focusing on the troopers and done that for half a decade, the animated series has turned around and added events which radically alters the version of events which she's been writing about. The plot of the cartoon has invalidated the plot of Traviss's novels, essentially tossing out all of her work in favour of something else and everything she had been planning to do in her stories doesn't make any sense within the highly sensitive grand Star Wars narrative.

    Rather than trying to rewrite the history of her own books and pretend the new history is what she's otherwise been writing about, the author has decided to talk away. In that blog entry she's pretty sanguine about the affair, talking about it in terms of just being a tie-in writer for hire, that her work doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things and she's got other work she can be getting on with. It's been fun, but it's time to leave the storytelling to someone else. Laadeedaa.

    Except if I was her, I'd be pissed off, and here's why.

    The new tv series of Doctor Who has been careful not to contradict anything from the spin-off novels but inevitably this has happened; but unlike Lucasfilm the BBC has never sat down and said what is or isn't canon and though some fans have had a go at making it work together, most of us I think have just decided that as a time travel series which even during its original run often contradicted itself and sometimes in the same story, that it doesn't have to be consistent. It's all about how good the particularly story we're watching is.

    Contrast that with Star Wars, which of all the franchises, is the one which has been fairly arrogant about how it has a "canon" and how they have a department and this guy keeping an eye on things so that everything makes sense to the point of apparently ordering authors to change their work so that it matches what's gone before. It has been rumoured that cracks are appearing, that to an extent Lucas views the films as one canon and whatever it is canon-keeper Leland Chee's doing as something else but nevertheless when Lucasfilm are happy to put someone up for Wired magazine to interview about this aspect of their business.

    That being the case, the multiple authors working within the franchise must feel a certain responsibility for continuing the story and have the expectation that whatever they're doing won't be purposefully contradicted, in other words, if you've been hired to write a series of novels it should be on the understanding that whatever you're doing is important within the wider context, and that your medium isn't going to be considered less important than the message of another, that the cartoon is more important than the novels.

    Except, in any sane world, the animated Clone Wars series is more important than the novels. It reaches a far larger audience and as episodic television filling in the gap between live action films shouldn't be beholden to whatever is happening in the books and one single author. Yet, here's the rub. What's the point in thumping your chest about how well you're making this grand narrative consistent and make sense if you can turn around and throw out a building storyline that a proportion of fans have invested in, both time and money, at any opportunity?

    Please understand, I don't really care about this, even if the past few paragraphs suggest otherwise. I haven't read a Star Wars novel in my life. But I do like my genre franchises and I imagine if I was a Star Wars fan and liked these particular novels I'd be fairly annoyed about the situation, I'd feel like I'd been ripped off; it smells of the same kind of creative decision which dissolved Peter Parker's marriage in the Spiderman comic books and chips away at fragile artistic integrity such things have, offering the naysayers something else to point and laugh at. Which is something which effects us all.

    [Insert about ten paragraphs about how much easier it is to be a Doctor Who fan in this climate.]

    making these kinds of lists

    Meme Of course I'm well above making these kinds of lists, but nevertheless, at present ...
    Rebecca Hall
    Zooey Deschanel
    Kate Silverton
    Rachel McAdams
    Lenora Crichlow
    What?

    I'm here and willing

    Elsewhere In an effort to finally treat The Hamlet Weblog with some respect, I've been contacting theatre groups, publishers and broadcasters to let them know I'm here and willing to talk about their work in relation to the tragedy. The response has been very good and yesterday I published my first pro-active review after being sent a preview copy of a new edition of the play illustrated by the Victorian painter Harold Copping.