Shatner. Hamlet. Video. Any Questions?

http://room34.com/archives/1616 I had not seen this. Now that I have, I’m not really sure what to say about it.  William Shatner on the Mike Douglas show, circa 1969, pimping for his (Shatner’s) now infamous album The Transformed Man that brought us such cult gems as his Tambourine Man, and Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. I had no idea, having never heard the complete original album, that each bad song was intermixed with a bad rendition of famous poetry.  Thus we have “It Was A Very Good Year” mashed up with To be or not to be.  (I see from wikipedia that there are selections from Romeo and Juliet, and Henry V on the album as well.) Unfortunately the quality of the sound is horrendous – the music is too loud, and the sync is off by a mile. [It dawns on me as I title this post that it takes a certain kind of actor to be represented solely by last name.  Olivier.  Welles.  McKellan. … Shatner. ]

Filthy Shakespeare, Now In Paperback

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/desdemona-talks-dirty/ My post from a year ago (“Oh Great, The Filthy Shakespeare Movement Is Back”) continues to be one of my most popularly searched, mostly for people googling for the phrase “hey nonny, nonny.” Anyway, the book in question, by Pauline Kiernan, is now in paperback.  NYTimes has the review, and looks like they like it. Maybe some nice publicity agent will send me a review copy and I’ll get to see for myself :).  After all, the original article never does say what “hey nonny, nonny” means :).

Were The World Mine : Musical Midsummer Movie?

http://briefepisode.com/2008/10/24/were-the-world-mine/ Start with a movie centered around a production of Midsummer.  Not new (Dead Poet’s Society, among others, springs to mind). Now imagine that the character playing Puck whips up a *real* love potion that works on his fellow actors, and then runs around spraying it on everyone in town.  All heck breaks loose, as you could well imagine. Oh, and did I mention that the actor in question is gay?