Shakespeare The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is a string of essays describing the problems involved in adapting what is essentially a thearical form to cinema. It's an academic work and so the writing is quite dry at times and because we have essays we have repetition - how many times you can write about Olivier's 'Richard III'?

There are three essays of note. 'Videos and its paradoxes' looks at the use of video as a study aid, and how the prouctions on show can colour the student's view of the play - so Anthony Hopkins characterisation of Othello in the BBC production is wildly different to Lawrence Fishburne's in the recent film - neither is necessarily correct, but the student might not make that connection.

'Filming Shakespeare;s history: three films of Richard III' offers the best and most honest review of Paccino's 'Looking for Richard' I've read, treating the film on its own merits and not as a version of the actual play. Finally, 'Flambiyant realist: Kenneth Branagh' again tries to re-dress the critical mauling his films have been subjected to - there really isn't anything like the four hour 'Hamlet'. The one disappointment is 'Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots' which looks at adaptations which are re-imaginings of the text. It's cursary, anodine and misses out 'In The Bleak Midwinter' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Why?

Shakespeare Fascinating interview with Kevin Klein regarding his Tony nominated performance as Falstaff.

Shakespeare Macbeth test silly, say irate teachers: "The 14-year-olds taking the compulsory exam on the Bard were asked in the paper on Macbeth to write as if they were agony aunts for a teenage magazine. The question, in the paper devised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, told the pupils: "In Macbeth, Banquo warns Macbeth about the witches' influence. You give advice in a magazine for young people. "You receive this request: 'Please advise me. I have recently moved school and made some new friends. I like spending time with them but my form tutor thinks my work is suffering. What should I do? Sam.' "Write your advice to be published in the magazine."

Shakespeare Multi-lingual performance celebrating diversity: "Students auditioned for the parts, and 28 were selected to narrate and perform scenes from Act 2 and recite sonnets. Each scene — including that with Juliet perched at her balcony calling for Romeo and that with tragic duo's secret marriage — was performed in all three languages by different pairs of Romeos and Juliets."

Shakespeare Paltrow gives birth to baby Apple: "The baby weighed 9 pounds 11 ounces and both mother and baby were said to be doing well."

The Saturday Sonnet

Two

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

[translation, analysis]

Scene Unseen: The Usual Suspects: John Ottman Interview

Film After last week's interlude with Spike Jonze, here is an example of what a film maker interview can be like. Its a static shot of two people talking, Jess Bond of Film Score Monthly and John Ottman the composer and editor of The Usual Suspects. There they sit for fifteen minutes but its a startling riveting piece which takes in Ottman's career both with Bryan Singer and elsewhere.

The more interesting section describes the process of using a temp score on a first cut of a film. As the editor of the film, he knew the material better than many composers so when he added the temp track to the film using some of his favourite pieces from the time, but he did such a good job that the executives wanted him to create an original score which was very close to the temp track. Luckily he had already composed main theme so he was able to incorporate this throughout the film meaning that the music could still retain its own style. But then because what he had written was so good he found himself watching trailers and even other films were the theme would crop up either literally or reproduced slughtly. In fact, he turned up to score another film and found another temp track which featured something which sounded like The Usual Suspect and pretty much was, only slowed down.

I can see what he means. Time and again a film will be slightly ruined because I'll spend the best part of its running time trying to work out were I've heard the main theme before. But as Ottman describes, its largely not the composer's fault. Often they're an after thought - the last thing before the film is released - so they don't have the time to sit down and create something entirely original so they will spin off something they already know. One of the more amusing moments in the dvd commentary of Love Actually is when Richard Curtis says how good them music is at the end and Hugh Grant quiping how good it also was in Shakespeare In Love. Happily for Ottman he has the time to create something new and has actually stopped listening to other music. He's in a position in which you can tell that it's a 'John Ottman' score in the same way you can tell a 'John Barry' score -- but he doesn't say it out of arrogance -- its an example of self understanding and an appreciation of how far he's come.

Commerce I watched the following exchange happen at lunchtime in the second biggest Boots The Chemist in Liverpool City Centre. A security guard approached a clerk who stacked the shelves:
Guard: Erm ... we have a situation.
Clerks: Right.
Guard: There's a woman who's been walking around the shop for two hours.
Clerks: Ok.
Guard: She's been telling the customers she's a member of staff...

News A Google seach demonstrates how life can change in twenty hours....



I wonder if his boss took the decision before or after he spoke this morning about how he wasn't going anywhere.

Spam Somewhere along the line I think I must have registered with a music website and my email address has been shopped around so almost every day I get something telling me about this or that potential top pop act. I usually delete them before the bandwidth sapping picture of some wey-faced stool sitter can download. But I was putting my slippers on and didn't have time to lose this one before the whole thing appeared. I'm posting the complete contents of the message because you wouldn't believe it otherwise. It appears to be entirely irony free. Pay close attention to the beginning of paragraph three:

"Two things you?ll notice straight away about 19 year old Jentina. First, she's gorgeous, with the kind of natural good looks that stop traffic. Second, she?s a real personality with a passion for the music she's making, not another pop puppet with nice hair and teeth and nothing underneath.

She grew up listening to Nas, Biggie and Tupac and fell in love with hip hop. She would spend hours as a kid trying to write lyrics of her own. So when she finally decided to sort her life out, she knew music would be the key. She moved to London and got a job in the hip Soho clothes store/gallery Zoltar The Magnificent. She would stand behind the counter with her laptop making beats and 'just wishing'. A chance meeting and one 30 minute rap later, her manager invited Jentina to the studio and the rest is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Jentina?s debut single, 'Bad Ass Strippa' is an lesson in pure attitude and low-end funk and one of the most accomplished debuts you are likely to hear for years!! With New York City's very own legend Jimmy Douglas on production duties, Jentina's whispered chorus and the warm bass that drips out of the speakers propels the track into the realms of the classic. Throw in an O'Jays 'For The Love Of Money' sample which could hardly exemplify the song?s attitude more directly, and you have a speaker-quakingly fine record that will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs.

I realise now why I never read these things because its annoyed me somewhat. Time for a list. Five things:

(1) In the accompanying photo Jentina is demonstratably attractive. Except she's wearing a tracksuit which just screams 'outside the chippy with me mates and white cider on a satdy nigh' So full marks for picking up on the zeitgeist of the target audience.

(2) The title of the song. I remember a few years ago when The Prodigy were kicked around the hit parade for producing the song 'Smack My Bitch Up'. The message we have here is that it wouldn't have caused the same controversy if it had been sung by Jennifer Lopez.

(3) And given the title, publicist thinks it 'will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs'. When I listened to 'daytime radio' as a child, Blondie was as racey as it got. For the purposes of this missive and to give a balanced view I've visited the website so you don't have to and listened to the thirty-second preview. It's not any better or worse than anything else in the charts, nothing write home about. The song is basically a masterclass in exotic dancing. Said publicist and so the record company apparently think its acceptable to introduce kids to the world of strip clubs at three in the afternoon. I should mention here that the above was accompanyed with: "CALL THE BOX on 09012 930 100 and vote # 285 for the brand new video for Jentina's hot new debut single 'BAD ASS STRIPPA'!!" So they want people to pay for the 'pleasure' of seeing this as well. But the content. The title. Daytime radio. Something doesn't add up. [Before you get all huffy about free speech movements, I'm right with you. Its just there are times of the day. I agree with the need for a watershed and film ratings. It just feels like childhoods are being shortened more and more.]

(4) 'the hip Soho clothes store/gallery Zoltar The Magnificent' What is this a seventies teen film parody? All it took was for her to rap for thirty seconds before being offered a record contract. Is this is just a 'street' version of how Pete Waterman infected The Reynolds Girls on the world?

(5) That said publicist actually thought that this arr-shucks gush was the perfect way of selling a track with attitude to the public. Its the music equivalent of the blurbs which I never read on the back of video boxes and just as insipid. Take out the names and title and put in someone else's and it becomes a joke:

"Fraser Hines's debut single, 'Punch and Judy Man' is a lesson in pure attitude and low-end funk and one of the most accomplished debuts you are likely to hear for years!! With New York City's very own legend Jimmy Douglas on production duties, Fraser's whispered chorus and the warm bass that drips out of the speakers propels the track into the realms of the classic. Throw in an O'Jays 'For The Love Of Money' sample which could hardly exemplify the song's attitude more directly, and you have a speaker-quakingly fine record that will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs."

Effectively its the writing style of a teen mag used to sell something which is surely meant for a more mature demographic. Didn't you people learn anything from the alco-pop debate?

If my conscience is pricked that someone sat down and wrote this and it's their job and they may hate their job and they're just trying to make a living and its being targeted at a different market anyway, all I want to say is this. Yes, I've written some pretty purple prose myself (some of it no doubt in this very post) but look at how you're portraying a real person. Without any irony, your reducing her to being a thing. You might say 'she?s a real personality with a passion for the music she's making, not another pop puppet with nice hair and teeth and nothing underneath' but that has the effect of making the reader think that either she is all those things and you're just trying to hide it by protesting too much or that if she's everything you say she is why aren't you letting her speak for herself? Somewhere along the line, Girl Power has become wholesale objectification. That can't be good.

Logobar Hope you like the new gizmo. Now I can't be accused of using a logobar for far too long ... [hint: click 'refresh']

Shakespeare An intriguing production in which the characters from the real play find themselves taking part in the making of a film: "In the new comedy, Puck and Oberon are returning to a wood near Athens, as directed at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Puck mistakenly follows a sign that says 'A Wood Near Athens.' That sign is on a 1934 Hollywood sound stage at Warner Bros. 'They become engulfed in this movie that's being made around them,' Ludwig told Playbill On-Line. 'Oberon falls in love with one of the actresses, and Puck falls in love with just being there and getting treated like a star.' People at the studio think the fantasy figures are studio actors. When Victor Jory and Mickey Rooney have to unexpectedly leave the project, Oberon and Puck get cast as Oberon and Puck. (Jory and Rooney both did the movie.)"

Shakespeare Basically, imagine the film School of Rock if a man playing Shakespeare had turned up instead of Jack Black. Getting kids to relate to the play: "'How did your son die?' Shakespeare, surprised and somewhat saddened at an old, still painful memory, said his boy caught a fever and died; as if to reassure his audience, he added that medicine wasn't very good in those old days. And then another student jumped up and said the boy's fever was caused by rats, and the rats gave it to flies, and the flies bit the people, and the old playwright allowed that there was some truth to that."

Shakespeare New film uncovers the mystery of Edward De Vere, yet another possible author of the canon: "Roland Emmerich has committed to direct an intense 16th Century drama, exploring a theory about the true authorship of Shakespeare's works. No, no, it's all right, you're not dreaming, nor has that suspicious guy by the copier slipped ketamine in your coffee again. Ladies and gentlemen Roland Emmerich is back, and this time... he's serious."

Shakespeare Mouthwatering selection of quotations about food:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O! it came oer my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.

"Twelfth Night" (1.1.1-7)

H2G2 Yesterday was the third anniversary of Douglas Adams' death, but at least there is a bit of light this year. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy -- The Official Movie Website has opened with a bang (you'll see) and you can keep up with developments at the adjoining weblog (which today features a cast and crew photo).

Architecture A few days ago I talked up the Pevsner Guide To Liverpool, rewritten by my old friend Joseph Sharples. Catherine Jones of the Liverpool Echo took Joseph for a walk around some of the buildings mentioned in the book, including the old Royal & Sun Alliance Building:

"Sharples has a sneaking admiration for the concrete lines of the Royal & Sun Alliance building in Old Hall Street ... at pavement level "its blank walls give little pleasure, but from a distance - and especially from the river - its rugged bulk and distinctive silhouette contribute greatly to the skyline. As a monumentally selfimportant head office of a local insurance company, it follows worthily in the tradition of the Royal Liver Building." But, over a cup of tea after our blustery, rain-splashed walk around the Canning Street conservation area, Joseph says: "Oh dear, does that sound critical? It's not meant to be."

Its alway odd when you read quotes from people you used to know well in print because often they don't sound like themselves at all. On this occasion II can here the man say the words and can't wait to bump into him at Lime Street Station or on a bus (as I usually do) and congratulate him on what is a really great read.

Life The local postal service has finally imploded in on itself. Having reduced the service to one delivery a day, we don't seem to be even getting a weekend post either. There is always the sneaky suspicion that some post isn't getting through at all and First Class items are sometimes taking a day or so so be delivered. It's hit my ScreenSelect deliveries pretty hard. Where once I used to glory in six discs a week now I'm lucky to get five; last week what with the bank holiday I received two. This is reducing my value for money, goddamnit. Spokespeople for the Post Office say that its just slight teething problems during the transition into a new way of working. But surely if everything had been planned correctly there wouldn't be teething and their business and our service wouldn't be effect....

TV What already? Big Brother V starts 28th May and I won't be watching. Far too many other things I could be doing. Then again I said that last year and look what happened. So we'll see....

Shakespeare Extensive interview Adrian Noble, the former artistic director of The Royal Shakespeare Company: "Of course, there were things that went dreadfully wrong at the RSC, and I deeply regret them. The principal mistake was announcing everything at the same time. We should have got the company's structure sorted out first, and moved on to the redevelopment later. As it was, opposition to one aspect of the project rebounded on to the others, so that nothing got considered on its own terms. People wanted a scapegoat, and as I'd been based at the RSC for 23 years, I was an easy person to pick on. But now I'm out of it, I'm not bitter. [French actor/director] Jean-Louis Barrault said, 'You must feel passion for everything but cling to nothing' - quite right. Festering is not in my nature. I have to move on."