Before I end this tour of Shakespeare in the movies, I just have to give a shout out to Steve Martin and Woody Allen for their tributes to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This play holds a special place in my heart, possibly because I’m a borderline hedonist with a special appreciation for Dionysus, the Greek […]
I think my Shakespeare in the movies tour was devised just so I could talk about Strange Brew and 10 Things I Hate About You, two of my all-time favorite films. But I realize it’s gotten way out of hand, what with so much other material out there.
10 Things is not just another teenage movie, and […]
The Taming of the Shrew
is a fun play to remake into movies. You’ve got a spunky girl causing a bunch of trouble, an overbearing father and a lot of sexual tension with this new man in her life. It’s a great formula for a Hollywood comedy.
I faked my way through an honors paper that asked the […]
High school seems like an apt setting for the type of jealousy and back-stabbery of Othello. And though I’m not sure I’d ever be prompted to watch O (probably because of Julia Stiles, and despite Mekhi Phifer), I did let Quentin Tarantino talk me into watching Switchblade Sisters, a loosely based rendition in pure cult […]
If you didn’t know this about me already, I happen to be a white girl. But the year that Ella Fitzgerald died, I wanted to be her for Halloween, so I went out and got some dark brown theatrical make-up and slapped it on. I made a few mistakes that year:
I wore a sleeveless, backless […]
I gave Scotland, PA three stars on Netflix, but I gave it three-and-a-half on Flixster. The trouble with the Netflix rating system is that you can’t give a movie half a star. Like many, this film for me was more than “Liked It” but less than “Really Liked It.” What I hate is when they […]
So, despite my dresser, I’m more inclined to believe in karma than an after life Hell. I’m all about the golden rule. I believe that what goes around comes around. I believe that to live by the sword is to die by the sword and that fighting monsters can turn you into a monster. But I […]
I’m only one season behind on Lost now. When I started watching, I was three years behind, watching scenes that happened before, feeling as if I had slipped back in time to the year 2004, watching time progress again to 2005 and 2006. So, I’m a little slow in jumping on a bandwagon, and I’d […]
I had a thing for bad boys ever since kindergarten. I think they represented a kind of freedom I longed for in my hyper-controlled, good-girl world. My name was Sparkman, so the bad boy in my class called me, “Sparkplug.” I didn’t know what a sparkplug was, but I knew I wanted him. There was […]
I’ll admit it. Strange Brew is my favorite Hamlet tribute film of all time. It’s got a heroine (Pamela) instead of a hero, and instead of a prince, she’s an heiress to her father’s corporate empire. It has the ghost of her father communicating from the dead through an 80s video game machine, and a duplicitous […]