What's your favorite Shakespeare movie?

Call me a nerd if you like, but I love Shakespeare, and I love Shakespeare movies.

So, what is your favorite Shakespeare movie?

My current favorite has to be Titus. That movie is just such a trip. I rented it last weekend and watched it for the first time and I was simply transfixed to the screen the whole time. The sets are stunning, the costumes are fantastic, the acting is superb and the overall experience is a maniacal romp through a strange combination of modern technology and ancient Rome.

 

romeo and juliet(no not the one with guns, the original)

we watched in in english last year but because ours was the imamture class our teacher didnt tell us about or show us the sex scene and nudity. i caught it on HBo a few months later and i jsut sat there yellin TITTIES TITTIES!!!

 

Maybe that's why your teacher didn't show you...

 

probably

 

Roman Polanski's rendition of Macbeth is worth seeing if you're into the genre. My favoutite is Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Olivier's 1945 version is still a classic, but it is marred due to the cut scenes of the traitors and their subsequent hanging. The reason for that was that it was made during WWII and it had to follow a certain propaganda decorum to keep up the morale, ie. there are no cowards, or traitors in the Allied Forces. Another interesting movie is Richard III with Sir Ian McKellen. In this one they've changed the time setting to a 1930's England with the sly king Richard imposing a fascist regime and hence showing parallels with Adolf Hitler and Brecht's Arturo Ui.

 

A Midsummer Nights Dream, the one with Michelle Pfeifer and with Stanley Tucci as Puck. This has been my favorite Shakespeare story anyway since I first read it when I was little. I've always been into faeries and enchanted forests.

 

Is 10 things I hate about you based of a shakespear play?

 

I think it's based on "Much Ado about Nothing" but I'm not sure. If it is, it's only slightly based (even the Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes does a better job at actually following the story). 10 Things I Hate about You is a cute movie but I don't think it really counts.

 

o ok...and i think it's tamming of the shrew...but i dnt remember..

 

Oh you're right, it is Taming of the Shrew. That makes more sense.

 

Anthony Hopkins did a great job in 'Titus'. And the film was definitely a trip.

But my favorite Shakepeare film is the great Olivier's 'Henry V'.

I like Branagh a lot. But his 'Henry V' I didn't find nearly as powerful as Olivier's.
Though I saw Branagh's 'Henry V' only 2yrs ago, not a single scene stands out dramatically in my mind.

However Olivier's 'Henry V', though it's been 10yrs, still looms large in my mind scene after scene.

My second choice is a toss-up between Olivier's 'Richard III', and the more recent 'King Lear' with Ian Holm.
Ian Holm's 'King Lear' is brutal in its utter stark minimalism.

 

Another film that deserves recognition is Ran by Akira Kurosawa. It's a very colorful adaptation of King Lear set in feudal Japan. If you don't mind reading subtitles I seriously reccomend that you check this one out.

 

i dont get it why just one mention of Akira Kurosawa so far. you must see his Kumonosu Jo (literally translates as The Cobweb Castle, but released internationally as The Throne of Blood), his take on Macbeth; and his Ran (King Lear). they are awesome. especially Throne of Blood i breathtaking.

i think Orson welles's Macbeth and Othello and Olivier's Hamlet are two great films too, but if i have to pick one it'd be Polanski's Macbeth.

 

and Jesus, there's nothing nerdy about liking shakespeare. he was a writer for the popular stage of Elizabethan England, right? his audiences mostly included, long before the invention of Bardolatry by the Romantics as a reaction to Dr.Johnson, "beer-guzzling bawds and drunken, lecherous whore-mongers." it's just his genius that he managed to write populist plays and still make them pregnant with so many subtones of human life and thought. but Old Bill is for everyone, not just for 'intellectual fascists' like me (it's only this morn that a friend called me that; see, how unjust!!!).

 

I have 'The Throne of Blood' on DVD and must recommend it, too. Without being blasphemous, it's a cross between "Ringu' and 'Scarface'. Well worth seeing. Romero should do a remake! Can you imagine?

 

Roman Polanski's version of "Macbeth" & Franco Zeffirelli's version of "Romeo & Juliet."

 

Anthony Hopkins in 'Titus' (andronicus).