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bronanlynch · 4 years

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hamlet, much ado, CORIOLANUS, henry the fifth (guess which one I had to c&p)

tbh I assumed u were just really really excited abt coriolanus which like. valid and mood

HAMLET: Do you have any specific/creative ideas on staging a production of Hamlet?

oh boy do I........ ok first of all I would def borrow some of the set/lighting stuff from the production that I saw a few months ago (the one with ruth negga as hamlet) bc there was a lot of really really cool stuff w doors and silhouettes that I thought was super effective. also extremely a fan of having hamlet played by a woman or a transmasc actor bc like. ok. I don’t think trans!hamlet was necessarily what that production was going for but that’s how it came across to me, a transmasc person like. I’ve seen hamlet played by women in a way that felt like hamlet’s a woman in that version, regardless of how much or little they change the script/pronouns. the ruth negga version was like. oh. hamlet is trans and also even if that wasn’t what they were going for it’s still the only portrayal of a transmasc character that’s ever resonated with me personally. not to get into gender stuff but I very rarely feel like I recognize myself in fictional depictions of trans people but something abt this specific hamlet just. really vibed w me y’know? something about the mannerisms and the costuming and the way his depression isn’t specifically abt his gender stuff but that sure doesn’t help (all the layers of being referred to/referring to himself as unmanly, talking abt hating femininity contrasted w how much this version of hamlet clearly cared abt ophelia+gertrude, another reason for everyone to disapprove of his relationship, etc)

anyway tl;dr my ideal production would make hamlet trans, also I’ve been kinda vaguely considering what the costuming might look like if u set it further back in history like. more like the time that the sources shakespeare was working on were from bc then I could use the stuff I learned for my dissertation abt early medieval clothing for something

also I hate how every single production I’ve ever seen has done ophelia’s ~madness so I wanna do a version where she’s playing the same game hamlet is of like. pretending to ~go mad~ so that ppl won’t see her as a threat except it doesn’t work bc there’s a moment when she’s like. giving out the flowers and too much of her anger comes through at claudius. when she leaves the stage for the last time claudius gestures for one of his guards to follow her out with the implication that he’s having her killed (later, when gertrude comes back to say that she’s dead, so does that guard and claudius nods like. yeah good job u did the thing). also laertes tries to follow ophelia when she leaves but claudius stops him, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t play it like that he can’t just let her go like that

also also if hamlet doesn’t die in horatio’s arms what’s even the point, from a narrative perspective as well as a homoeroticism perspective. also in general horatio needs to be present throughout and like. important? bc too many production neglect horatio but like. he’s the one who makes ppl care abt hamlet anyway I’m gonna stop now before I go into an entire essay

wait no that reminds me of the actual academic essay I did write abt generational conflict in hamlet and why u gotta cast the parent generation as like. obviously older than hamlet’s generation in order to get that across. also bc lots of productions cast hamlet & gertrude closer in age than hamlet & ophelia which. hmmmm. don’t love that

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Go off about the best female character.

beatrice muchado is a strong contender but also everyone already loves her so I have less to say that hasn’t already been said, I would be tempted to say viola twelfthnight if I weren’t so firmly on team viola/cesario is trans, I love ophelia a lot but I hate the ~madness scenes, most of my favorite women in shakespeare productions I’ve seen have been women playing male roles like please I would love to talk abt the all-female julius caesar where brutus was a butch lesbian, or like. gwendoline christie as titania in midsummer except titania and oberon’s roles were swapped (which I have mixed feelings about bc the oberon/nick bottom stuff is played as a joke which like. to be fair that’s how titania/bottom is usually done and I know the joke isn’t actually just ‘haha they’re gay’ it’s abt the weird magic shit and the fact that puck and titania are messing with them but. y’know. the experience of being in an audience laughing at two dudes kissing did not make me personally feel great. however I fucking loved pretty much everything else about the production so it balances out to still being the best midsummer I’ve ever seen and also one of the best plays I’ve ever seen full stop)

also best is such a vague and subjective thing like. Idk I love a lot of them for different reasons, y’know? I do think beatrice and maybe juliet are the ones I would say are the best written, gertrude is a close third bc it really depends on how she’s played in any given production but one of my favorite parts of hamlet is in the last scene when she drinks the poison if it’s framed as her knowing exactly what’s going on and daring claudius to stop her and admit his own guilt

CORIOLANUS: Which gay pairing has the most evidence? (Conversely, which pairing do you wish had evidence?)

cesario/viola+orsino is canon send tweet. but really like. usually the cross-dressing heroine changes back into women’s clothing at the end to restore heteronormativity or whatever and I know that viola does say “hey I’m gonna go change” but never actually does and orsino still calls them cesario after that in one of his very last lines so like. I’m just sayin

brutus and cassius’s deaths are basically the same as romeo and juliet’s, and are therefore also a pyramus and thisbe retelling, in this essay I will

HENRY V: What is the best monologue/soliloquy? in general I’m not that into king lear but edmund’s “now gods, stand up for bastards” monologue is extremely good and sexy, somewhere there’s a recording of riz ahmed doing it that’s just. chef’s kiss

as a hamlet stan my favorite hamlet soliloquy is his first one, the one that starts with “oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt,” and ends with “but break my heart for I must hold my tongue” which not to be a basic bitch but that’s one of my favorite lines in anything ever

also antony’s funeral speech for caesar gets me (almost) every goddamn time. the one singular exception to this was the shakespeare in the park production a few years ago where they were trying to do shallow modern political commentary that really didn’t work and actively undermined the themes of the play

#sorry that this ended up being so much #me namedropping various productions I've seen but listen. I miss live theater so much #thanks!#girlfriendsofthegalaxy #answered #dreaming.txt #about me #shakespeare

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/we-love-how-stupid-the-venom-movie-is/

We Love How Stupid The Venom Movie Is

Three decades ago Marvel Comics debuted one of its most popular anti-heroes, Spider-Man arch-enemy Venom. Now Eddie Brock and his slavering black and white symbiote pal have gotten a solo, Spider-Man free shot at the big screen. Did that turn out to be as bad an idea as it sounds? Chris Person, Ethan Gach and I discuss.

Chris Person: Yes, but also no.

Ethan Gach: Precisely.

Chris: I don’t know about you, but I had a real good time with that not-so-good movie. It knew exactly what it was.

Fahey: I came out of the theater thinking the exact same thing: what a great bad movie.

Chris: It feels exactly what a Venom movie should be: dumb, confusing, extremely juvenile. It feels like a movie dropped out of the 90s, back before we started acting like superhero movies should be competent or adult. A friend said “that movie wields its dumbness like a weapon.”

Fahey: Oh god, that’s beautiful.

Ethan: If ever there was a movie that earned its absurd Tom Hardy voice.

Fahey: For one thing, we’ve finally found the perfect person to cast against Tom Hardy, and that’s Tom Hardy doing a funny voice. Tom Hardy Talks To Himself For Two Hours would be a great movie.

Chris: I assumed it was a different guy, they did a lot of good stuff with the Venom voice in post-production.

Ethan: Oh wow, same. I’ve never heard a voice that altered be that funny before. Venom had some of the funniest lines by far, just in timing and inflection alone.

Fahey: Oh, Hardy went all out on that voice. His influences, from a Screen Rant interview: “ Redman, Busta Rhymes, and James Brown as ingredients and then I played with it to create the fusion of sort of what you hear, which sounds nothing like that, but initially was like vibe or heartbeat that I wanted to bring to it.”

Chris: OK now I just want a Busta Rhymes Venom movie.

Fahey: You can really hear it when Venom calls Brock “Pussy.”

Chris: They really got the most out of that PG-13.

Ethan: Action-wise, I found most of it underwhelming, but the smoke-filled fight against the SWAT team toward the end actually worked surprisingly well.

Chris: It felt like they didn’t know how well this movie was going to do and were kind of conservative with it?

Fahey: They used a trick to pull off the PG-13. They made the first half hour, 45 minutes super boring so the film ratings board folks fell asleep.

Ethan: And yet it never seemed to waste time. In the very beginning I thought it would do the long drawn out thing of “oh, this weird goo, is it evil?” but then it immediately leaves Jameson’s body and begins messing shit up.

Fahey: RIP JJ Jameson’s son.

Chris: I have seen some debate as to how long that movie was.

Ethan: it definitely did not feel like the billed run time.

Chris: It felt like an hour and a half tops. Also, I should say for clarity that while I respect Tom Hardy committing 100% to a tacky movie, his performance almost exists in its own space. I’ve described it as Bobcat Goldthwait if he never did the high registers or Charlie from It’s Always Sunny if he somehow had an MSNBC gig.

Fahey: Yeah, it’s a weird time dilation sort of thing. I recall feeling the opening drag, but once Brock and Venom got together it was so much stupid fun it just flew by.

Ethan: I first got excited for this movie w hen I watched the original trailer that everyone thought was terrible. It reminded me of 2004’s Punisher. While it doesn’t have nearly the arc or deep bench of characters that movie had, it just felt so damn refreshing to see a comic book movie where it doesn’t seem like the writers, directors, or studio have a to-do list of boxes they need to check.

Fahey: Is that Dolph Lundgren or Thomas Jane?

Ethan: Jane.

Fahey: Ah yes, where instead of killing his wife and kids the mob killed everyone he ever loved, all at once. Good stuff.

Ethan: Also, what timing on the UN’s global warming report. I was perfectly primed to accept Venom’s core premise and not really get caught up in the nonsense particulars.

Chris: We should probably speak to the plot. Here’s what you gotta know: Not Elon Musk gets some symbiotes and Eddie Brock tries to stop him after getting Venom’d. And Riz Ahmed does a good job with some very bad dialogue.

Fahey: Wow, you remembered an actor other than Tom Hardy and Dawson’s ex (Michelle Williams)!

Chris: Jenny Slate is in there too, weirdly!

Fahey: It’s hard to be a scenery-chewing villain no one cares about. And yes, Jenny from Parks and Rec, doing not a single funny thing.

Ethan: I also really appreciated Mr. Robot’s Ron Cephas Jones doing the bit role of Brock’s Network boss. And the inconspicuous white dude from Veep who is very good at doing that one thing.

Fahey: You guys have IMDB open now.

Ethan: It was also neat to see a movie shot in San Francisco, rather than shot in front of a blue screen and made to look like New York. I almost turned on a Full House rerun afterwards

Fahey: Though main filming was in Atlanta and NYC, painted to look like San Francisco.

Chris: Georgia: we will literally never tax a film crew ever.

Fahey: Have a peach sticker.

Ethan: Mike, is this the Venom you wanted? I never knew the character beyond the Fox Spider-Man cartoon.

Fahey: Man, it’s tough to say, as the Venom I wanted was generally defined by Spider-Man. There are shades of the Venom: Lethal Protector comic series in here — that’s the one where Venom moves from NYC to San Francisco and becomes an anti-hero — which I dig. My favorite Venom so far has been from the Venom: Space Knight series, in which the Flash Thompson version of the character comes into his own.

Venom: Space Knight

Fahey: I can’t help but feel Eddie Brock’s journey was seriously cut short here. That said, I still had a hell of a time.

Chris: I had a blast. The dialogue is very Good-Bad in a lot of ways, and there’s one line from Michelle Williams near the end that had me and the person I saw it with dying. The parts that suck are fun, and the parts that are fun are solidly slapstick. But I probably won’t see it again unless I’m on a plane.

Fahey: I will purchase it on 4K Blu-Ray if it comes with a director’s commentary. If I ever find myself in a hospital for four months again, forced to flip through basic cable channels, I’d stop and watch.

Ethan: The beginning montage of Brock’s Vice News-like reporting killed me, as did Brock later saying something to the effect of “Oh no my legs!” after wiping out on a motorcycle during a chase scene. This is definitely the type of movie I will try to convince everyone I see to watch so I can watch them watch it and then probably be very disappointed when they don’t laugh as hard as me.

Fahey: I will never eat tater tots again.

Chris: Same, but with uncooked lobsters.

No lobsters were harmed during the uploading of this photo.

Fahey: Or Woody Harrelson in a red fright wig.

Ethan: I would gladly watch a sequel that was just Hardy and Harrelson sitting in adjoining cells doing Waiting for Godot: Symbiote Edition.

Fahey: We can only hope.

Ethan: Can I just say the ugly, grimey yellow tile in Brock’s apartment made me really happy? It felt like one of those small details that only exist, like Harrelson’s ridiculously red wig, to remind you this is all coming out of a comic book, and which end up being a lot more effective for me than, say, an epic $50 million CGI battle in the third act. Probably just out of nostalgia for the movies that were forced to do that back when computers were made out of wood.

Chris: I only have one thing to say: “Hey……I’m sorry about Venom.”

Fahey: It’s not your fault, man. It’s not your fault.

Source: https://kotaku.com/we-love-how-stupid-the-venom-movie-is-1829632685

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