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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #1: Romeo + Juliet
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #1 by John King Romeo + Juliet (1996) It’s a forbidden secret that Shakespeare was a playwright. At least that’s the impression one can get from an American...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #2: Titus (1999)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #2 by John King Titus (1999) If a postmodern, ahistorical approach to Shakespeare repulsed me in the hands of Baz Luhrmann, that aesthetic charms the shit out...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #3: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #3 by John King A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) Shakespeare’s language is sometimes poopooed by naïve readers as too old. I have, as a professor, been told...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #4: Hamlet (1990)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #4 by John King Hamlet (1990) Franco Zeffirelli is a creature of opera, and was friends with Maria Callas. He directed the version of La Traviata I attended at...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #5: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are...
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #5 by John King Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990) Tom Stoppard is a great playwright, a British postmodernist who well knows how literary meaning is...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #6: The Fifteen Minute Hamlet (1995)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #6 by John King The Fifteen Minute Hamlet (1995) Tom Stoppard turned Hamlet inside out in his Post-modernization of Shakespeare’s most famous play. The ways in...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #7: Shakespeare in Love (1998)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #7 by John King Shakespeare in Love Sooner or later, we had to talk about Shakespeare in Love. This is kind of the British version of a...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #8: Romeo and Juliet (1968)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #8 by John King Romeo and Juliet (1968) Shakespeare in Love is a meta-narrative that simultaneously enacts Romeo and Juliet while imagining the story behind the...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare On Film #9: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare On Film #9 by John King Much Ado About Nothing Joss Whedon’s remarkable follow up to The Avengers was, a bit surprisingly, Much Ado About Nothing. If a superhero movie...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #10: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #10 by John King Much Ado About Nothing (1993) Kenneth Branagh is an astoundingly good Shakespearean actor. And with his first Shakespeare film, Henry V...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #11: Henry V (1989)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #11 by John King Henry V (1989) Two weeks ago, I mocked Kenneth Branagh’s weak casting and directing, because I had to. I mean, Robert Sean Leonard. By now, if...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #12: Hamlet (1996)
The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #12 by John King Hamlet (1996) With his Hamlet (1996), the gulf between Kenneth Branagh’s acting and that of his Hollywood peers widens. In the early going of...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #13: A Midwinter’s Tale
#13: A Midwinter’s Tale (1996) If Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is a luxury train under the blithe control of an engineer who’s uninterested in whether his cargo stays on board while shooting through an...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #14: Richard III (1955)
#14. Richard III (1955) I’ve decided to deviate from my survey of Kenneth Branagh films lest this guide get too tedious, especially since his miserable Love’s Labour Lost is lurking for me like some...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #15: Othello (1995)
#15. Othello (1995) If we can agree, dear readers, that Olivier’s Richard III (1955) is both perfect and, in its own way, a bit old-fashioned, Oliver Parker’s Othello (1995) manages to treat the...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #16: As You Like It (2006)
#16. As You Like It (2006) Some enthusiastic newbies to Shakespeare crave an authentically Shakespearean experience, something satisfyingly old-looking, true to history, and they will primly turn...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #17: Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)
#17: Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) Oh fuck. Fuck. I mean: shit. Don’t see this movie. Don’t see this movie unless you are totally high. Okay, let’s consider what Branagh tried to do with Love’s Labour’s...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #18: The Worst Production I’ve Ever...
#18. The Worst Production I’ve Ever Seen (An Interlude) Well, dear readers, your rogue has been delinquent these last few weeks, while he was in the throes of preparation for Litlando, which was I...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #19: Coriolanus (2011)
#19. Coriolanus (2011) If, like me, you’re an American with a functioning cortex, then the current political climate looks dire, with presidential candidates presented to the public precisely like any...
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The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #20: Macbeth (2015)
20. Macbeth (2015) Confession: I don’t like the play Macbeth, which I regard as the tragic story of a porter who is trying to do his job when Scotland decides to miserably implode, politically...
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