Finally I Can See The Globe On Screen

There's been a trend of late to film live stage performance for distribution to a wider audience, and I'm all for it.  I just wish I could get to see more of them!  Too often (I'm looking at you, Benedict Cumberbatch) the performane is a special event, one night only, and you have to be in the lucky position to be near one of the limited theatres in the very limited release.

But good news for me!  The Globe on Screen series - featuring Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice and Richard II - is scheduled to come to my neighborhood this fall.  I actually park in the movie theatre parking lot every day when I go to work (and no, I don't work at a movie theatre - we just happen to have reserve space in the garage).  So it looks like going to see all of these productions - none of which are on my "seen it" list - is going to be a easy as taking a quick detour of about 50 yards instead of walking to my car that night.  Awesome!

Alas, Poor Deadpool

I loved the Deadpool movie.

I hated Star Wars : Shakespeare by Ian Doescher.

So how then should I feel about the upcoming special Deadpool Shakespeare issue this fall, written by Mr. Doescher?

I'm cautiously optimistic.  Well, that's not the right word, that implies that I'm leaning toward "it'll be good."  I don't think there's any reason to put any real effort into it. I think there's a pattern here where you take a pop culture phenomenon like Star Wars or Deadpool, and you make it do vaguely Shakespearean things like putting the main character in a ruff, or maybe some puffy sleeves or pantaloons, maybe have him talk to a skull. Then force all the dialogue painfully into iambic pentameter.  You ever try to read iambic pentameter for any length of time where it's clear the author is doing it just to prove that he can?  It's like someone telling you that they're awesome at haiku, that they've written hundreds of them,

but when you begin
you see that they're just
counting syllables.

There's much more to it
than just the simplistic math
of five seven five.

I also fear that they're going to take a cue from Kill Shakespeare, another project that I very much did not love.  Saying that something has Shakespeare content needs to be more than just naming your characters the same.

Yeah, optimistic clearly isn't the word.  Is there a single word for "wishful thinking"?  I'm that.  I wish that it's going to be something I like.

Shakespeare or Pokemon?

Can you pick the Pokemon names out of this list of Shakespeare characters?

I thought this quiz would be a lot easier than it was. I assumed the difference between Shakespeare names and Pokemon monsters would be obvious enough.  I was wrong - I got 4/10.  Then I looked at the comments on the quiz itself and people are all, "10/10, big deal." But I realized that it's because they're memorizing the Pokemon characters, just like we'd do for the Shakespeare characters. Admittedly I've got little knowledge of the lesser plays like Pericles and Cymbeline, which is where many of the questions come from, just so you know.

I thought it would be easier to just invent my own, so I mashed up both lists :)