One of the adaptations of Twelfth Night available on Amazon Prime is a 1969 made for television version with Alec Guinness as Malvolio, Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby, and Tommy Steele as Feste. It’s not bad but I still haven’t seen an adaptation of the play I really like. The BBC Television Shakespeare version is…
The 2013 Seventh Doctor Doctor Who audioplay Afterlife feels more like a Tenth or Eleventh Doctor story than any audio I’ve heard so far. It’s good, though, and it’s kind of nice hearing Seven being taken out of his comfort zone.
Oh, to be young and right about everything. 1987's Dirty Dancing is supposedly based heavily on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s childhood, though one suspects some facts were altered in the interest of fantasy, to say nothing of distinctly 80s pop music turning up in 1963. But as a sweet indulgence it certainly works…
Several episodes of Cowboy Bebop are homages to specific genres. One of my favourites of those episodes, and of the series in general, is the horror homage in the eleventh episode. But it isn’t simply a stand alone piece that uses the characters to tell an entertaining story referencing a certain kind of film…
The new Sirenia Digest, which I read this morning, features a cool Sci-Fi noir by Caitlin R. Kiernan called “CHERRY STREET TANGO, SWEATBOX WALTZ.” Like a lot of Caitlin’s stories for the Digest lately, it features a protagonist being interviewed or interrogated by someone demanding they tell a story that’s evidently…
In last night’s new Better Call Saul the MVP was definitely Kim. But the nice new episode had other good scenes having to do with Jimmy though all the drug dealing business still feels like a screensaver.
You think you’re hot now, try crossing Death Valley without any water. That’s what a gang of bank robbers do in 1948's Yellow Sky, a magnificently shot Western loosely based on The Tempest.
William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline isn’t just a play where most people’s plans go awry, it’s a play where most people’s plans go awry without them even knowing. It’s a play not only about misinterpretation but the gruelling emotional journeys people embark on initiated by misinterpretation. It has the logic typically…
There are a lot of reasons The Two Doctors is significant for Doctor Who canon, but the three parter doesn’t really get to the meat, so to speak, of the story until the third episode. This is where writer Robert Holmes really leaned into trying to convince the audience to go vegetarian while convincing the Doctor in…
Jet Black is the polar opposite of Edward so it makes sense that the episode of Cowboy Bebop that follows Edward’s introduction focuses on Jet. Another unusual character for an anime series, Jet was probably most closely modelled on Jigen from Lupin III. He has a similar beard and both have a somewhat paternal role in…
Among the many difficult jobs Allied forces faced after World War II was reuniting families separated by the Nazis. 1948's The Search is about the small children found in concentration camps and the efforts to find their parents, who were often dead. Shot on location in the ruins of post war Germany, there’s an…
You don’t need to be Machiavelli to see that the realms of politics and business are filled with opportunists, people who use the language of friendship and loyalty merely for their own gain. But now and then I suppose there must be a poor sucker who believes everything courtiers say and such a one is Shakespeare’s …
Last night’s première of Better Call Saul’s fourth season was a lot like the third season première—not a lot of dialogue, not a lot of plot, just the feeling of a stage being set. Sometimes I like this deliberate slow down, sometimes it does feel stretched a bit too thin.
It’s a little difficult to describe why I tend to hate Shakespeare productions directed by Jonathan Miller. I generally like Miller in interviews and find myself absorbed by his insight; I love his Alice in Wonderland from the 60s. I even like the adaptations of Shakespeare he produced but didn’t direct. But something…
Keeping a gangster’s beautiful daughter hidden while her father is on the lam can be trickier and involve more slapstick and songs than you might imagine. In 1956's Naughty Girl (Cette sacrée gamine) a suave nightclub singer has just such a task which makes for a delightful screwball comedy that is overshadowed…
1963 continues to be a busy year for the Doctor in the 2013 Doctor Who audio play 1963: The Assassination Games. The Seventh Doctor proves a natural fit for this entertaining conspiracy espionage thriller.
Seventeen years after he played the definitive merry rebel, Errol Flynn found himself in the opposite role in 1955's The Dark Avenger. A high adventure take on Edward the Black Prince, son of England’s Edward III, the film finds Flynn in charge of England’s occupation of Aquitaine. Lacking the energy and fun of…
How very different Richard III is with Queen Margaret around. When Jane Howell’s production aired in 1982 it was as a conclusion to a series, the first three parts of which were made up by Shakespeare’s three Henry VI plays. This gave Howell the rare opportunity to produce Richard III without trimming or removing…
Logically, a safer and more efficient way of life is preferable to a dangerous and difficult one. Yet few viewers would be unaffected by the evacuation of the remote, forbidding island in Michael Powell’s 1937 film The Edge of the World. Based loosely on the evacuation of St. Kilda in the Scottish archipelago a few…
It’s not until the ninth episode of Cowboy Bebop we finally meet the last member of the Bebop crew featured in the opening theme. A much broader and more cartoonish character than the others, Edward also represents a personification of the chaotic reconfiguration of landscape, culture, and society that characterises…
