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For those of you who are sick of baysplosions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsYrGIQnmxo)

Ironically, this appears to feature explosions anyway. Titus Andronicus was the last Shakespeare adaptation for the big screen which I saw, and this does appear to have the potential for a good movie as well.

Huh, never heard of that Shakespeare play. Not sure about the Elizabethan English in modern setting, but it's got a top-notch cast and looks good.

E. English in a modern setting can work.  Much as I hated the idea of the Romeo & Juliet adaptation, it worked well once I finally broke down and saw it.

Titus w/ Antony Hopkins was another good one.  Not exactly "modern" but not ancient Rome, either.

The original story is set in Ancient Rome and a lot of the subject material and themes are extremely contemporary. It's not the best of Shakespeare's Tragedies - mainly because Coriolanus is such a dick and doesn't gain much audience sympathy but also because the story is quite similar in ways to Julius Ceasar - but it's okay when done well.  I never personally have any issues with seeing Shakespeare in different settings - see Kurosawa's Ran for example.

Worth noting that this is Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut.


Also, sorry to be anal, but can we change the title of the thread to the film title - makes it easier to find in the list later on.

Richard III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_%281995_film%29) is a great movie.

It is one of the more 'rare' ones, since it is typically considered too difficult for audiences. As Draconian said, the characters, including the lead are complex and not particularly like-able especially from the point of view of modern sensibilities.

Ran is not a great example of what people are concerned about here really since it doesn't use the original text. I don't really have a problem with it though, people have been doing it for *ever*, it practically seems more notable when people set a Shakespeare play in the original setting at this point.

That's a fair point.

Did anyone ever go and see the Reduced Shakespeare Company at all? They had one sketch where they talked about putting Shakespeare plays in modern settings and imagined Titus Andronicus as a cookery show. Hysterical stuff. (They then did the history plays as an American Football game which was similarly amusing).

Quite a lot of Shakespeare on in London at the moment - recently had David Tennant and Catherine Tate in "Much Ado About Nothing" (Set in early 80's GIbraltar) and Kevin Spacey is playing Richard III (in a modern setting and directed by Sam Mendes) but tickets are pretty much sold out :(

My vote for worst updated Shakespeare is Peter Greenaway's "Tempest". Glorious production design - boring as fuck. Not that I ever liked the story much in the first place.

Unfortunately, I think that joke is going to be lost on anyone who doesn't know what happens in Titus Andronicus. It is also a hilarious concept. And consider yourself are lucky to be able to access the London theater scene - here in Aus we don't really get a lot of quality productions. Lots of what we get tends to have the 'as reinterpreted by Australians' vibe to it, which (at least for me) is rather meh.

Although perhaps that it's entirely fair, because when I saw Kurosawa's Throne of Blood I was suitably impressed. So I guess cultural interpretations can work.

Throne of Blood is pretty fantastic, well worth searching out. For a long time you couldn't get it on any kind of home video here, I had to see it in a film festival or something originally (back in the 90s at some point) but I think it has been available now for a while.

I will second this.  Finally saw this at a live performance and it was incredible.

Coriolanus - Official UK Trailer (http://youtu.be/bsYrGIQnmxo?hd=1)

A Bloodworth by the man himself!

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=21175.0

Merged.

Saw the main actor being interviewed on the daily show last night.  After watching the trailer, I'm pretty stoked for this.  Looks awesome all around, and I'm a sucker for old plays/stories adapted into modern settings.