beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I tried to watch the Mel Gibson Hamlet.
I know, you all warned me. But it was the only one left in the library. (Today my reservation came in. Tomorrow I can go get Branagh again. I'll need it, to scrub my brain out.)
It's not just that Mel Gibson is a truly atrocious actor - and he is, really, very, badly.
It's everything. The set design and costume design and the way they butchered the text, dropped it in a blender, and threw random chunks of it at the screen in any old order. And then made stuff up. *shudders* ( Read more... )

On the plus side mum assures me I've watched this version before, and I successfully repressed that, so I can probably do so again.

I got the BBC collection version out the college library. I saw the box set in the shop I usually buy my Doctor Who stuff from and I was all *ooooh, shiny!* cause lookit, Shakespeare! But it costs a ton, and I didn't know if I'd like them, and the library has.

Hamlet played by Derek Jacobi, Claudius by Patrick Stewart, Ophelia was Lalla Ward, Laertes David Robb. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/527101/
There were other people too, but that's The Master, Captain Picard, Romana, and Kalas, to my fan filing system. Which admittedly is a really specialised set of associations. But I figured it would be good.
( Read more... )

So student me liked watching this one for the contrast, but fan me wants wants wants the David Tennant DVD... or better yet the ability to revisit the theatre experience as if memory were recordable. It isn't though. Fades and alters, can't hardly trust it at all.


Now I don't know if I want to buy the rest of them. Will I rewatch them much? Do I like them? I do keep getting moments where I notice they're not doing TV they're doing theatre with cameras, where the stage just looks all wrong and I wonder why they're not using... lots of things. And yet I can't watch it as I would the stage, the camera keeps deciding things for me and I do not always agree. It feels awkward and in betweeny. I'd probably get used to it, but...


There's also the thing where it might be recorded on a DVD but it looks really less good on my nice big TV.

Wants new versions. With all the best people in.

Possibly leaving out some of the words though. I know Shakespeare writ that ending and I can see the point of it, but I really did prefer the finishing it sooner version.



Right. Now some more theory reading. Which I was trying to do but couldn't keep my attention stuck to the page.


Also today there as dishwasher, cleaner person visit, laundry machine, hanging up laundry, and shopping reception. Been a bit busy. Just doesn't feel like much got done.

I have finished reading Hamlet for class.
It's so frustrating. A good performance takes even these so familiar words and breathes life into them, until they're happening right there in front of you. By the end of DT's Hamlet even though I had bits memorised the play faded into the background and the emotion of the final scene totally grabbed me. It was brilliant.
And now I read it, and it's words on a page, and I can't keep hold of the other feeling at all.
Ink and paper, gone all flat.
Frustrating.

They're very good words, but the meaning feels so easy when it's already acted and spoken and you can't skip back up a line and wonder what that bit meant and get hung up on the tricky bits. I feel like I'm stumbling around in the text just a little like I usually did a hockey field. Sure in theory I know how it works, and yet tangles keep happening.

On the plus side, I have found the parts I need to know for class, for the assignment, and for comparison with the renaissance stuff we've been studying up on. Lots of good quotes, lots of bits I can stick to Ovid or whatever, lots of stuff about spirits and heaven and hell and how all that worked that I can use to compare with Faustus in the assignment.

... I'd like to think up some good theme that would let me use lots of pictures of swords and jewelry for the assignment, but half the marks go on it so I think I need to stick with themes that I know will work. Or possibly do two projects and see how they come out.

Having just read Dr Faustus the part where Hamlet has every reason to believe the ghost is in fact a devil sent to mess him up stands out quite sharply. If you believe the ghost completely then all Hamlet's tough choices look a bit like dithering and flapping about. You have to doubt it, doubt his senses or his 'father' or his reading of the situation, before it all looks difficult enough to wait for. Or at least you have to have some undramatic reservations about the whole stabbing your uncle thing.

I still love Hamlet but I'm really very looking forward to DT's version on DVD. The play fades; it's integral to my understanding Hamlet's emotional state that transient experiences fade. But having noticed that, I'd rather like it back now.

I feel all... brain hungry. Want to know things! Do big thinking!
I'm reading very small sections of college books and having big long thinks about Hamlet between paragraphs. It's not the quickest way to get college reading done, but it has interesting.
Also, by 'big long thinks' I might possibly mean 'imaginary conversations with DT', which, um, pretty.

I like thinking things about the relation between the physical arrangement of the stage and the impact and meaning of the play. There's a whole section of chapter in books about that.
Finding someone to talk to about it who would consider it interesting is... a bit more of a challenge.

It was on a stage that stuck out in the middle of all the people. Much different than those that hide behind the curtains. And everywhere was shiny mirrors. Art to life. Shiny floor, shiny backdrop.
... and there was one family that just got up and climbed over the stage to get back to their seats after the interval. I did not think that was polite theatre. Especially since there had been theatre people on stage in the interval with brushes and mops and things making sure it was clean and dry and tidy. What if someone had spilled a drink? Or scratched it with high heels? Or got oil there? There was a sword fight and lots of running around, getting slippery on it would be Very Bad.

All the running around went through paths through the audience. That's a whole different experience than running around away from audience. I like it.

... I think I especially like things that make it different than cinema. If everything is hid behind the curtain level then it may as well be on a screen, because you see it flat. Yeah, oversimplification, but. When you've got a stage right in the middle of people and there's running around through people and appearing at the edge of the stage in between people and everything, that's not like cinema. And it would be totally different from one of the other two sides of seats. Well, not totally, but a bunch different. And that's not like cinema neither, where you get roughly the same flat thing wherever you sit.

This is part of why I think feet and hair acting is nifty. Because in cinema you'd get one or the other. The camera would focus in on important things and if an actor was wandering around with no pants on you'd never know it if the camera didn't want you to. On stage there's no such selection. All acting all everywhere all the time. And to change your focus the actors have to do things or not do things in patterns. Someone be quiet, someone look at someone, the stage have shiny lights or not, props set out an area, all that. It's clever and different and I want to turn it around and figure out how it works and pay attention to it a lot.

If I'd been to more than two plays in my adult life it would also be a bit more familiar to me and I'd maybe get more out of plays because of being better at reading them.



I was thinking of bare feet in cinema and all I came up with was River in Serenity. Bare feet are crazy apparently.


I am random.

And not wearing shoes.

I went to see David Tennant be Hamlet
and now I am home again
and from now on it will get further in the past and go fuzzier and get tied up with the describing of it and the thoughts I had about it and the things other people say about it and, well, since I considered dropping in to the university library on the way home, probably the things I'll study up on about it, and the experience has already turned into memory and story.

I don't usually think so much about that.

I'm thinking lots of thoughts right now so despite having decided four hours ago I was exhausted I'm sitting around thinking.

I want to see it again after I've done some thinking.

This might be possible, cause college sent an email around saying we must do a trip when it goes to London. That would be cool. See it twice at different ends, sort of thing.

I've also realised I react to David Tennant, actor, entirely different than how I react to any his characters. I see the Doctor and, well, he's the Doctor. Big huge complicated there. So I want to go travel with him and stuff and I think he's gorgeous and we could talk about a billion things and, you know, all that level of thinking. But I see David Tennant act and... I want to be a better writer so I could make something with him. Really. I want to write something that he could bring that much spark to.

... I'm trying very hard not to compare my work to Shakespeare, because lets face it, depressing. So that's not what I'm thinking about.

But it's like... okay, he's pretty and interesting and all that stuff, but I have a sort of writer specific kind of desire going on here, I want the *actor*. I want to be able to do all the stuff with words that he could do with acting. It would be like stretching out and shining.