Sunday!
As You Like It was a lot of fun. I’m not sure I’d put it as one of Shakespeare’s (or Bacon’s or whomever’s) best plays, or even as one of his best comedies, but I had forgotten that this was the All the world’s a stage/Seven Ages of Man play and Jacques speech and Touchstone’s musings on “a lie seven times removed” were themselves worth the price of admission.
Shakespeare (or Bacon or whomever) really enjoyed writing parts for fools. They get the best lines, anyway.
Perhaps that’s part of the point. “We can’t have the main character say this. The play’d be resolved by the middle of the second act!”
So, instead, they have the main characters run around as idiots, the fools run around being the only ones who know what is going on, and some guy we’ve not seen before in the play comes out at the very end to say “oh, hell with it, let’s have a happy ending.”
So… what have you been reading and/or watching?
Murakami!!!Report
I’ll give one more shout-out to Review. Awesome. I might try to pick Rick and Morty back up tonight, or finally watch the last Star Trek movie. Watched the second ep. of Bob’s Burgers but the show hasn’t grabbed me yet.
I ordered season 1 of The Returned, but it’s not here yet. I’ve heard good things about Utopia (UK show, not the upcoming reality thing) but am waiting to find a cheap way to watch it.Report
“Technically, having a guy show up in Act V, Scene 5 to say “the bad guy from Act I, Scene 1 who put all this in motion has changed his mind!” *IS* kinda lazy writing.”
You’d best watch your step, son. After what they did to Ira Glass, the NPR set’ll be coming after you like you were Suge Knight at a pre-VMAs party.Report
Dude, I am not saying that Ira Glass was right. For one thing, if I were to complain about Shakespeare, I’d complain about his so-called “comedies”.
If I were trying to *IMPERSONATE* someone who I imagine would complain about the Tragedies, which it normally wouldn’t occur to me to do, I’d probably spend more time complaining about Othello, The Scottish Play, or even *HAMLET* before I’d complain about King Lear and *IF* I were to complain about King Lear, I’d complain that it felt like it was 90% completed, put in a drawer because the genius who wrote it had a just given birth to, like, the best tragedy freakin’ ever and didn’t have the strength to polish it off right then, then a bunch of stuff like life happened and he came back to the play without giving it a final edit and just handed it in because he needed rent and/or beer money.
A 90% done King Lear is *STILL* better than most of the plays ever written.
And yet having a guy show up in Act V, Scene 5 and say “oh, yeah, the bad guy changed his mind” remains lazy writing.Report
@jaybird
There is a theory that modern audiences miss a lot of the jokes because actor’s tend to use British upper-class received pronunciation instead of the Original Pronunciation which was the language as spoke by the Elizabethans.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Original+Pronunciation+youtube&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=326C3521B467DE99D92E326C3521B467DE99D92EReport
I missed a lot of jokes in the comedies when I read them because I didn’t catch most of the innuendo (of which there is a ton). When I re-read (or, better, watch performances of) them, I get the impression of Shakespeare being – among other things – the Elizabethan era’s Seth Rogen.Report
@jaybird @saul-degraw @katherinemw
http://popsonnet.tumblr.comReport
Kat,
the worst thing to read is Shakespeare’s physical humor bits. You get the “this is intended as comic relief” … but without all the pratfalls and craziness that a performer naturally imbues in the lines.Report
Glyph – That’s amazing, thank you!Report
Wow, the pop sonnets are awesome.Report
I loved As You Like It – Rosalind made only a decent Rosalind, but a splendid Ganymede.
And I watched the rest of Continuum, and *just barely* started a scifi miniseries from 2007 called Tin Men. I read an astonishingly fun YA novel called _The Story of Owen, Dragon Slayer of Trondheim_ – really wish the author had more books out. And then I read lots of other things.Report
I’ve been watching Season 3 of Continuum. Do we know if it’s going to have a 4th?Report
It would break up the continuum if there wasn’tReport
You home, but apparently that is actually one of the issues that have resulted in a delayed renewal announcement. The Canadian network that produces it is worried that committing to a serial with a multi-year story arc, and relatively low ratings, is more trouble than it’s worth.Report
I home?
Maybe it will go a way for a year or two and then get a new season. Then there would only be a break in the continuum.Report
Even its producers don’t know, because it’s independent of their choice.Report
Depends on the timeline.Report
The Winter’s Tale is my favorite Shakespeare play.
Please tell me you are not an anti-Stradfordian?Report
“anti-Stradfordian” is such an ugly term.
It’s more that, in recent years, I’ve spent more time thinking that the Shakespeare Conspiracy is merely really dumb when, once upon a time, I thought it was freaking stupid.Report
Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald on audiobook. I usually like to mix it up, but a couple days ago, I finished Bright Orange for the Shroud and now I think I’m going to go on a Travis McGee binge.
Also started reading The Black Box by Michael Connelly, this one on the page. I drink everytime I read the sentence “Bosch nodded.”
And has anyone seen Nathan Fielder’s show on Comedy Central, Nathan for You?Report
I “collect” good companion-to-the-hero characters. Meyer is one of the best.Report
Speaking of Shakespeare, I saw a performance of “The Tempest” at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, which was fantastic. I love seeing Shakespeare’s plays performed – it’s so much more effective than reading them. How much enjoyment would you get out of reading the screenplay of your favourite movie, compared to watching it?
Also, after collecting recommendations on science fiction and fantasy books not based in Europe, the US, or pseudo-medieval-Europe, I’ve recently read The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (very cynical dystopian science fiction set in Thailand; good if you don’t mind it being depressing), The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (relatively unique among fantasy for its pseudo-Arabian setting, but pretty generic in terms of characters and plot, and average in terms of writing) and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (a quite good high fantasy novel with a neat setting and fairly original plot and cosmology).
Also just finished Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.Report
Cryptonomicon is still my fave of his.Report
“Bard on the Beach.”
I so need to move to Vancouver.Report
… and I’m picturing “Bard on the Beach” on the nude beach near UBC…
Nude actors, nude audience.
Good, bad? Hell of a mental picture.Report
Bard on the Beach is in Vanier Park, on the south side on English Bay. It’s nowhere near UBC’s Wreck Beach (the nude one).
Bard is fantastic, I’ve gone to it a few different years.Report
I have long thought that introducing young people to Shakespeare by forcing them to read it was a surefire way to get them to hate Shakespeare. It is not meant to be read like a book.Report
Guest post.Report
I still thank the teachers at my high school who used the recordings (on vinyl!) for us to read with
so we had a chance to learn the rhythms of the speech.Report
Re-reading The Baroque Cycle and thinking (again) about how I’d cast the HBO series.Report
I’ve started a few oddball shows during the last days of summer. FX’s Married and You’re the Worst are both very much in the same genre as Louie. I’m enjoying both, but my standards are always a bit lower during the summer.
The season finale of Suits was pretty awesome. I really, really like that show. Falling Skies has been so-so this year but I’m hoping it ends on a high note. Hell on Wheels is just as good as last season. Another show I really, really like.Report
What season is Suits on now? I’ve been watching Season 2 sporadically.Report
They just wrapped Season 4. I like the way they do the seasons where they break them up with 5-6 months in between. It actually makes it a bit more fun because just when you’re starting to get a little fatigued it goes off the air and just when you’re starting to really miss it they put it back on. I wish network TV could pull that off.Report
Man, I gave up on Louie this season after the first 2 or 3 eps. They just kept piling up on the DVR and I was seemingly always in a mood where it felt like it was going to be a chore to watch them so I finally just blew them away. Did I miss much?Report
Not really. I only watch it sporadically. It can be a bummer of a show so I have to be in the right mood to check it out.Report
“bummer” – this is why I skipped it I think. It seemed like it was tipping over from being funny AND dark and depressing, into mostly just dark and depressing.Report
That’s pretty accurate.Report
Episode 3 was called “So Did the Fat Lady” and CK won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Writing for it, so I would think it is worth checking out.
As for the rest of the season, I would skip the 6-part “Elevator” series but I would watch the 3-part “Pamela” series.Report
NEW PETER WATTS TOMORROW! I ordered the hardcover even though I still have not finished the last three or four books I ordered.
Still, I am optimistic that my family may have to fend for themselves the next few days.Report
Is it a sequel to Blindsight?Report
Sort of? It’s set in the same universe at least, though I don’t think it directly continues the events/characters of Blindsight.Report
I’ll read it regardless.Report
The Kindle edition is only about $10, so you’re getting off cheaper than me. Early reviews look good.Report
I spent Sunday afternoon watching my granddaughter enjoy her first birthday party. Highlights included the open-mouth face-plant into the cupcake and, because she had figured out how to use the little wheeled walker earlier in the day, reckless charges through the crowd that put everyone’s ankles at serious risk.Report
I loved As You Like It, but I’m a sucker for Shakespeare and love to see his plays performed live.
I finished Mick Foley’s Have A Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, which I really enjoyed despite only being a casual wrestling fan, and I’m deep into The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, the collaborative autobiography of Mötley Crüe. I can’t believe any of those guys are still alive.Report