MST3K [Hamlet (1961), Wirth] (1999), Nelson

On Saturday mornings, young CGriff (then CSmith) would wake up in time to watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with her dad and brother. We never really got around to this one then, but I have fond memories of bad acting, worse FX, and 2 robots with a guy named Mike trapped in space, doomed forever to watch the most horrible movies their captor, Pearl, could throw at them. But at least they had their comic commentary.

Their take on Shakespeare was most popularly done with a dreary made-for-TV German version of Hamlet from 1961 which had been redubbed in English. For MST3K, at least, the film version would have run just under 90 minutes, which, for as s-l-o-w-l-y as they talked, meant that a LOT of text must have been cut. This film is probably the reason we have Hamlet and Vampires today, given it's faintly Transylvanian setting and speech.

Anyone who's seen MST3K knows that the commentary ranges from the supremely easy (fart noises) to the fairly intellectual ("Ugh. Yeah, go a LOT to England."). They will make fun of anything from the acting choices ("and now my patented SPAZZ move!"), to criticism of the text ("is there a word in English he HASN'T said?"). Between suffering through chunks of the movie, the robots Crow and Servo have short vignettes with Mike, making more fun of what we've just seen.

One of their first segments takes the cake for me, though, because they make fun of me. Yep. Hamlet's SO popular to do abstract modern versions. Countless College Students indeed. Also, which of the Ros and Guil pair is Squiggy? Slay me, but I love Ros and Guil jokes. And the 'Alas Poor ?' game where the robots had to identify celebrities by random skeletal remains was pretty funny.

Anyhoo. I spent about half of this show being tickled to death, and the other half messing around on my phone to kill time between boring scenes. Seriously - it is the darkest, slowest, most ridiculously interminable Hamlet. And it's less than 90 minutes.

Right now you can find the whole thing on YouTube, or on Netflix, if you're feeling legal. 10 minutes of the best of below.

The Dead Fathers Club, Matt Haig

"You know what Hamlet's tragic flaw was?" asked a patron at the Theatre where I was serving concessions, leaving this book on the counter while I poured his wine, "He thought too much."

It is true that many complaints about Hamlet are about the 3 hours spent wondering aloud whether what he's doing is right. And sometimes even I get a little frustrated with his hesitation. He's kneeling in front of you, just DO IT! But what sometimes get lost, in all of the waffling, is the real moral trauma affecting the Danish Prince: Was the ghost telling the truth? Is Revenge the only choice?

Matt Haig's novel isn't exactly Hamlet, but it sheds light on the classic tragedy in a mind-blowing way.

First of all, Haig has an incredible narrative voice. Like his The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, the central character is a young boy - 11 year old Philip. His father, the owner of the CASTLE pub in smalltown UK, recently died in a car accident, and now his ghost is appearing and telling Philip that it wasn't an accident, that his brakes were cut by his jealous brother, Alan, and that in order to avoid the Terrors taking over, Philip must kill Alan and get his Revenge. The age adds a horrific new layer to the story - when we read of Hamlet, he is between 18 and 30 years old - Philip is eleven. How can you ask an eleven year old to commit Murder? Where is this ghost's moral compass?

But with his age, too, there is a whole different style to the storytelling. There is very little punctuation, and sometimes very little segue into new thoughts. There is a whole chapter on breeds of fish, because Phillip loves fish, he has several as pets. There's even some great mini-throwbacks to the play: Carol (Phillip's mum)'s bras are made by "Fortin," and one of Philip's nicknames at school is "Helmet." But the depth to which Haig obviously understands this play is best exemplified in this gem of a passage after Alan buys Philip a Playstation and is setting it up in the living room:

...and Uncle Alan's bum was still in the air like he was saying prayers to the TV.
Playstation
Praystation
And I was standing there and I was looking at him and then I was looking at the poker by the fire which was not a real fire but it was a real poker. I thought I could pick it up and hit him in the HEAD and he would be dead... I thought then everyone would know it was me and I would be taken away from Mum and I must think of another way to kill him and not after he has bought a Playstation.

I mean. HOW BRILLIANT IS THAT? And so many times throughout the book, Philip thinks about what he's been ordered to do, and thinks about it. And while he's thinking so hard about it, he loses the name of action.

While it's written in a very child-like voice, it's definitely not a child's book. Besides the bad language, it was really disturbing for me to read an 11 year old contemplating suicide, and murder, and the heart-wrenchingness of being ordered to break up with his first girlfriend which offers its own set of problems for the narrator.

Good lord, I never thought I'd be so into novels based on Hamlet, because it's one of the most familiar plays to me - but authors never stop thinking of new and interesting viewpoints for the tragic spiral of events, new outlets, new off-shoots, new ways to say No.

The Dead Fathers Club

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st Us Edition edition (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670038334
• ISBN-13: 978-0670038336

Sunday Miscellany: Better Myths

One of my favorite things about the internet is the ability to shout at it WITH CAPS. And also the amount of witty people there are playing here. It's like the world's giantest sandbox of fun things, and everyone has their own corner and sometimes we find the awesome thing another person is making and then we must SHARE IT.

Like this guy
This guy whose name I do not know
I know only that he makes me giggle
Uncontrollably

Basically, this super-educated guy is re-writing myths, legends, and literature for the NSFW crowd.

And

It

Is

Amazeballs

He has included some Shakespeare with, I think, an interesting perspective. Below are the current Bard's Best he's written up, with my favorite quotes from each of his summaries. Please enjoy your Sunday afternoon exploring his delightfully crass style of storytelling!

• Macbeth is a Pussy

so Macbeth gets home and Lady Macbeth is like HUSBAND WE MUST MURDER THE KING
and Macbeth is like whoa
whoa
where did all these balls come from
i am seriously about to trip on them this is unpleasant

• Hamlet is Very Bad at Revenge

hits up some of Hamlet’s old bros named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
who I think shakespeare named specifically to fuck with my typing fingers
and he’s like hey guys
Hamlet’s wandering around getting crazy all over my nice palace
i’ll totally pay you to take him out for some beers and make him chill the fuck out
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are like NO PROBLEM BRO
and OFF THEY GO
but it turns out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not licensed psychiatrists
and are thus TOTALLY USELESS WHEN DEALING WITH HAMLET

• Romeo and Juliet are Doing It Wrong

but no worries guys
here comes Friar Lawrence
enabling ALL your bad teenage decisions

• The Taming of the Shrew is Just the Right Amount of Ludicrously Sexist

plus Petruchio is starving her and depriving her of sleep
literally 
he is doing things that are specifically banned in the geneva convention
pretty sure
he straight WILL NOT GIVE HER MEAT
and he sits up every night
so that whenever she falls asleep he can just start SCREAMING UNTIL SHE WAKES UP
THIS IS STRAIGHT HORRIFIC TORTURE
THIS IS NOT A COMEDY ANYMORE THIS IS FUCKING TERRIFYING

• A Midsummer Night's Dream is About a Bunch of Teens Running Around in the Woods But No One Has a Chainsaw

guys
if there was every any doubt that it was shakespeare who wrote these plays
instead of some fancy rich asshole with too much time on his hands
NICK BOTTOM THE WEAVER is all the proof you need
to convince you that no educated person would be caught dead near this theatrical clusterfuck
so lemme get this straight
you’re writing a play set in athens
your characters are named things like Theseus
Helena
and NICK BOTTOM THE WEAVER
that’s like if you wrote a play set in the stone age with a bunch of cavemen
and one of them was named PROFESSOR MCBUTTS THE ASTROPHYSICIST
actually could someone please write that play

Coriolanus (2011), Fiennes

You guys.
I saw it!
It was like seeing a flayed unicorn. Magical. Singular. Kinda made you want to puke. Definitely made you consider the political system that necessitates (and condones?) this kind of violence and behavior.

How did Shakespeare know that the world would be ruled by governments calling themselves "democracies" - governments "of the people" - but who were really meeting their own agendas and working in the pockets of even larger businesses? DID he take a ride in the Doctor's TARDIS and see what has become of us now? This is so f*cking topical, it's like he's here with us now, watching our follies and commenting on them onscreen through Fiennes incredible directorial voice.

DISCLAIMER: Once again, I had the chance to go see something from Shakespeare that I had never read nor heard previously. So all of my assumptions about the play are based on this movie. All I knew about this play was there was war, some latent homo-eroticism, a mob, and that Coriolanus is a funny word to my husband, who giggles every time I say it.

I'm still not entirely clear on what the war was about - but it could be any war between a super power and a maligned and embittered smaller faction. The headlines said "Border wars," which makes sense if you're thinking of the sprawling Roman empire, and Aufidius's army as a dangerous rebellion unwilling to surrender control of their turf. And I'm not entirely clear on the food shortage in Rome as a plot point - it doesn't seem to come back after igniting the mob's ire at the beginning. But, again, isn't that us? A large vocal majority with no control over our resources or how their distributed? The men who bring Caius Martius down, too, are smarmy politicians - elected officials who see that Caius Martius being in power would be terrible for them because he would never listen to them. Nor, however, would he consider the needs of the masses.

Coriolanus is not a story with heroes and villains. No one is entirely good. Caius Martius (Ralph Fiennes) is a good soldier, but would that necessarily make him a good ruler? Aufidius (Gerard Butler, aka my Ger-Bear) has his country's best intentions at heart, but who is he really helping when he accepts Coriolanus into his fold? Volumnia (hot-dayum, Vanessa Redgrave!) bred this super-soldier, this heartless man, but who is she trying to save and whom does she sacrifice in the end?

BTW, I thought it would be latent this homo-eroticism. It was blatant. (Again, never read it), but when Coriolanus comes to Aufidius seeking refuge and resources to take his revenge on Rome, Aufidius basically says 'dude - I loved the chick I married, but that is nothing compared to what I felt when you walked through that door.' Shakespeare, that is f*cking hot.

Just because there's probably nowhere else to say this, though, Millenius (Brian Cox), ILU. He seemed to be a good-hearted soul, but politics is a strange and twisted business, corrupting anyone in its snare.

On live TV while trying to talk the mob and their inciting politicians down, Coriolanus has a raging breakdown in which he says in no uncertain terms that he does not care about the common people. Right then and there they banish him from Rome. If only it were that easy. If only we could stand up and say "NO - you do not represent me. You do not represent us. You are banished, Rick Santorum." (Or Gingrich, or Bachman, or the thousands of elected politicians who daily sit their thrones and decide what's best for them and not what's best for their country or the people they claim to represent.)

Petition the Bros. Weinstein to make this movie available in your area. Do it. Because it is a movie this country needs to see this year.

PS: Twice in the film, Caius Martius is referred to as a Dragon - once, by himself as the "lonely dragon" exiled from Rome, and once by Millenius after he sees the changed and vengeful Coriolanus. Fiennes started his own production company to produce the film. He called it "Lonely Dragon Productions." I love him.