¡Sarah!

It's done, it's done! It took me from mid-October to June 3rd, but I have completed my goal of watching one version of each of the plays in the Shakespeare canon. I'm very happy to have done this Shakespeareathon and I'm pretty proud that I was able to finish it. I learned a lot about Shakespeare's plays and I'm excited to keep learning about them (as well as the plays of other Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights).

UNFORTUNATELY, this excitement is only just returning some twenty days after I finished the Shakespeareathon. I didn't plan it this way at all, but the last three plays I watched were among my least favourite plays of the whole thing, and that definitely killed a lot of my Shakespeare-related enthusiasm. With all apologies for a belated entry, here are my thoughts on the last seven plays of the Shakespeareathon~

( Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I may see my shadow as I pass. )

I am currently halfway through Shakespeareathon #27 and will post an update to that list soon, but in the meantime here is a short post about a Shakespeare-related movie I watched recently: Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela, a Bollywood musical adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet." Based on the previous very few Bollywood movies I'd seen, I went in expecting this to be a colourful movie with a light story, silly songs and a happy ending, and for a while it fit my expectations exactly - Ram, the Romeo character, has an introduction song that's the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a very long time - but, as is only natural for a "Romeo and Juliet" adaptation, the second half was rather darker and oh my gosh you guys I LOVED IT. This is totally one of those movies where you could list a whole bunch of things they could have done better (Ram and Leela's relationship is based on nothing except that they are both very pretty! Major events happen and are never mentioned again! Everyone has a gun except when it would be inconvenient for the plot!) and I would agree with every one of them but super not care. As someone who spends entirely too much time thinking about "Romeo and Juliet," here are some of the things I love about this movie: ( civil blood makes civil hands unclean )

(Also, if any of you know anything about Bollywood, feel free to recommend me some movies! I will totally seek them out. At the moment I've only watched six!!)

So I know that I have complained a lot about my situation here, and I'm sure I will complain again, but this weekend I went down to Saitama to watch the Yukio Ninagawa production of "Troilus and Cressida" that I was freaking out about a few months ago, and

it

was

amazing.

I don't really have the time tonight to write about it in extreme detail (especially as I am sure that once I start I WILL NEVER STOP), but rest assured that I will do so!!! But you guys, you guys. I am so, so grateful right now that I am here and was able to go to this play. I mean, Ninagawa seems to be directing Shakespeare and Greek tragedy and other plays pretty much constantly, so I was confident I would be able to go see something by him, but how completely amazing a coincidence is it that my time on JET managed to line up with the summer he directed a play I have been pining for years to see. And clearly I am saying this as a total fangirl of basically everything to do with this production, but -- you guys. It was amazing.

ANYWAY you will definitely hear more about this (as well as the production of "Macbeth" that I saw in Harajuku!) before the week is out; I just wanted to whip up a super happy and positive post while I still felt this way. xD

After reading its Wikipedia page, I feel like kind of an idiot thinking I should rush to my LiveJournal to announce to the world how Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" is like the second coming of Ace of Base, right down to the way she sings the lyrics, but seriouslyyyy! I know I don't talk about them that much anymore, but from the end of elementary school and all through middle school Ace of Base was my favourite group, and so it is a big deal to me that someone would write a song so obviously influenced by them. Seriously, how did I not know about this sooner, I love it. xD

Movies!

14. Push, 2009
the_wykydtron and I had been sorta kinda wanting to see this for over a year, and finally we did! And I think that she summed it up best when she commented on some new plot point, "This twist would be really interesting if I cared at all!" This movie had a really cool setting and some characters that potentially could have been really compelling, but somewhere along the way the writing and the editing failed. Which is frustrating! I would still watch it again though, just for Dakota Fanning as a psychic thirteen-year-old who goes out and gets drunk when she's frustrated with the other characters for never doing as she tells them. Seriously, how randomly awesome is that. xD

15. The 300 Spartans, 1962
Rounding out our evening of movies that have no interest in creating any sort of suspense at all is this tale about the Battle of Thermopylae. I don't think I hated it to the same extent that the_wykydtron did, but it certainly wasn't great. I would love to see this film remade - less talking, more action, less secondary character romance, more greenscreen, and, I dunno, maybe that guy from The Ugly Truth in the lead. I mean, I dunno, I'm just sayin'.

16. Much Ado About Something, 2001
Lolariously enough, I don't think this documentary includes anything that the Wikipedia entry doesn't at least touch upon, but it was still an interesting watch. And surprisingly casual - we see clips from interviews that took place while the subjects were driving, eating in the cafeteria, and even gardening! Anyway, this documentary discusses the idea that Christopher Marlowe was not killed, but in fact went into exile, where he wrote all of the plays that today we believe to be Shakespeare's. I find the Shakespeare authorship theories kind of interesting, although I have yet to be convinced by any of them. This one doesn't rely entirely upon anagrams, which is a point in its favour, but I still didn't find it all that much more compelling. It basically goes like this: "Shakespeare wasn't smart enough to write the plays he wrote, but Marlowe was! Oh, he died in 1593, you say? Well, uh, no he didn't! He just went into exile! In, uh, Italy! Yeah, Italy! 'Cause Romeo and Juliet is set there! Here, have a list of lines from Shakespeare plays that are very similar to lines from Marlowe plays and obviously prove that they were written by the same person, completely ignoring how we already know that Shakespeare was a master at stealing inspiration from wherever he could get it!" So ... yeah. x)

While I'm on the topic: I have a bit of an inexplicable love for Christopher Marlowe, to the point that my favourite part of Shakespeare in Love is the way they handle his death. Especially when I went into that movie not expecting him to be in it at all! SO AWESOME.

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So I'm gonna go against the grain a bit here and say that if I had a time machine and was going to use it to go back and watch performances in the past, forget concerts! The first thing I would do is pay a visit to Elizabethan England and watch one of the very first productions of a Shakespeare play. I know there's a reproduction of the Globe now where they perform plays of the era, but oh man so not the same as actually being there! Theatre etiquette was totally different back then for one thing, hahaha. So yeah, that's first.

After that I would actually answer this question properly and go watch a Mozart concert or opera.

And then I would find out the truth behind the Trojan War!!

And then I would join the majority of my friendslist and go and watch pretty much every concert on the Bad tour, lol. xD