MOVIE - All Is True

PG-13 (1:41)

Limited release 5/10/2019

Viewed Memorial Day, 2019 at the Maple Theater in Bloomfield, MI - a pretty cool theater

IMBd: 5.9/10

RT Critic:  72  Audience:  76

Critic's Consensus:  Impressively cast and beautifully filmed, All Is True takes an elegiac look at Shakespeare's final days.

Cag:  5/Loved it 

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also starred

Sony Pictures Classics

Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench 

My comments:  A pretty decent movie.  All is true?!?  That's what I kept wondering as I watched this movie...how much is true and how much is just of the author's imagination?  How much is based on tidbits of information?  There's so much controversy about Shakespeare, the man and the myth, lol!  There's even a huge faction that say it wasn't even a guy named Shakespeare that did the actual writing of any of the plays.  This movie was totally interesting, thought-provoking, and whether it is true or not, was a great piece of historical storytelling.  The poor older gent behind me fell asleep, I suppose it was slower going than the adventure-packed stuff that is thrust down our throats for the last couple of years.  I really enjoyed this one a lot.  And Branagh's depiction of the bard is a blast to watch!  AND with Judith Dench as Anne...be still my heart!

RT/ IMDb Summary  The year is 1613, Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest writer of the age. But disaster strikes when his renowned Globe Theatre burns to the ground, and devastated, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he must face a troubled past and a neglected family. Haunted by the death of his only son Hamnet, he struggles to mend the broken relationships with his wife and daughters. In so doing, he is ruthlessly forced to examine his own failings as husband and father. His very personal search for the truth uncovers secrets and lies within a family at war.

PICTURE BOOK - Will's Words by Jane Sutcliffe

How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk
Illustrated by John Shelley

2016, Charlesbridge

HC $17.95

40 lovely, thick pages.

Goodreads rating: 4.36

My rating: 5, no question!

Endpapers:  Dark Rust

Setting:  1606 London

1^st line/s:  "Dear Reader:  We have to talk.  I have failed you.  I set out to write a book about the Globe Theater and its great storyteller, William Shakespeare.  About how the man was an absolute genius with words and wove those words into the most brilliant and moving plays ever written."

My comments:  This is more than a book that tells about how many of our everyday word choices and combinations were originally penned by W. S.  There are wonderful explanations included for each and the opportunity to read them in context, which is more-than-excellent.  It also tells of the times, of the theater, of how it all "worked."  You learn lots!  And the illustrations are a blast - there's so much to take in as you look and look at the details.  Great timeline and bibliography included as well.

Goodreads:  When Jane Sutcliffe sets out to write a book about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, in her own words, she runs into a problem: Will's words keep popping up all over the place! What's an author to do? After all, Will is responsible for such familiar phrases as "what's done is done" and "too much of a good thing." He even helped turn "household words" into household words. 
           But, Jane embraces her dilemma, writing about Shakespeare, his plays, and his famous phrases with glee. After all, what better words are there to use to write about the greatest writer in the English language than his very own?  As readers will discover, "the long and the short of it" is this: Will changed the English language forever.

64. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

2014 National Book Award FINALIST
audio read by Kirsten Potter
2014, Random House Audio & Knopf
11 unabridged cds
336 pgs.
Adult fantasy/dystopia
Finished 11/15/15
Goodreads rating:  4.0
My rating: 3
Setting:  Michigan area, contemporary times after a pandemic

First line/s:  "The king stood in a pool of light, unmoored. This was act 4 of King Lear, a winter night at the Elgin Theater in Toronto."

My comments:  This is a tough one for me to rate.  It's the kind of book I'd like to sit down with a book group and discuss.  Great writing, lots of jumping around (most of it's easy to follow, Mandel must have had to use a wall covered with diagrams to keep things straight...), but there's something a little bit missing.  It's not a book that will be easily forgotten, that's for certain, but it left me feeling I'd missed something (or some things)....

Here are some notes I found later on my phone:  I thought for awhile since finishing this book about what I really take away from it.  This is the kind of book I'd like to sit and talk about with friends.  I bet everyone would think the theme of the book was different than others thought.  There are so many levels, so many relationships, and so many things that I haven't even figured out connecting.  I picture the author having a huge black wall in front of her, creating characters and scenarios and overlapping an circling and layering plot and setting, particularly time.  Time.  Plague.  Why some people get sick and others didn't.  TWhy did they live in public buildings and not in houses they could've easily taken over - for comfort and safety alone.  What had happened to the entire company that they missed each other on the road?  Seems totally imporbable.  What was so important about the glass paperweight?  Didn't seem to fit completely into the story.  Would people really turn on each other the way they did?  And how exactly would an entire world ground to a halt the way it did?  The resources were still there and there had to be people still left that knew how to tap them...

Becky's Review from Becky's Book Reviews

Goodreads Summary:  An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. 
      One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur’s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them. 
      Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten’s arm is a line from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave. 
      Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

6. The Bookman's Tale - Charlie Lovett

A Novel of Obsession

2013, Viking

354 pgs.

Adult HF and CRF (settings switch back and forth)

Finished 1/27/2014

Goodreads Rating: 3.77

My Rating: 5/ I really, really enjoyed this book - both story and writing

TPPL

Settings in the book:  mostly Ridgefield, NC and Kingham, (The Cothswolds), England

1st sentence/s:  (Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Wednesday, February 15, 1995) "Wales could be cold in February.  Even without snow or wind the damp winter air permeated Peter''s topcoat and settled in is bones as he stood outside one of the dozens of bookshops that crowded the narrow streets of Hay.  Despite the warm glow in the window that illuminated a tantalizing display of Victorian novels, Peter was in no hurry to open the door.  It had been nine months since he had entered a bookshop; another few minutes wouldn't make a difference.  There had been a time when this was all so familiar, so safe; when stepping into a rare bookshop had been a moment of excitement, meeting a fellow book lover a part of a grand adventure."

My comments:  Yup, I really enjoyed this book.  I love the way it was written - in short chapters during three different time periods.The short chapters helped me totally remember what had been happening previously in each time period.  The story has a little bit of everything - mystery, history, the book world, mental health, forgery, the art world, a love story and a whole lot of really great storytelling. I want more!

Goodreads Review: A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller’s search through time and the works of Shakespeare for his lost love.
     Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman’s Tale is a former bookseller’s sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature’s most tantalizing mysteries with echoes ofShadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.
     Hay-on-Wye, 1995. Peter Byerly isn’t sure what drew him into this particular bookshop. Nine months earlier, the death of his beloved wife, Amanda, had left him shattered. The young antiquarian bookseller relocated from North Carolina to the English countryside, hoping to rediscover the joy he once took in collecting and restoring rare books. But upon opening an eighteenth-century study of Shakespeare forgeries, Peter is shocked when a portrait of Amanda tumbles out of its pages. Of course, it isn’t really her. The watercolor is clearly Victorian. Yet the resemblance is uncanny, and Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture’s origins.
     As he follows the trail back first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare’s time, Peter communes with Amanda’s spirit, learns the truth about his own past, and discovers a book that might definitively prove Shakespeare was, indeed, the author of all his plays.

MOVIE - Anonymous

Yes! This depicts what I've believed for a couple of years now!
Thursday, 2/2/12 at Crossroads (by myself)

69. The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown

audio read by Kirsten Potter (she was great)
Penguin Audio, 2011
$39.95 TPPL
9 unabridged cds
10.5 hours
336 pgs.
Rating:  4
NYTimes Review (from 1/16/11) excellent plot summary
The Reading Lark book review - I love her format, and I agree with so much of her thinking!

First line/s:  We came home because we were failures.

Setting:  Contemporary rural Barnwell, Ohio, a small college town and hour from Columbus (I think)
OSS:  Three very different sisters return home at the same time and show us, the reader, why they hate and love each other.

The three sisters told the story as "we," which I suppose was very clever and difficult to write, but which I didn't really like.  The father, a Shakespearean scholar, professor, and fanatic, and  his wife, a stay-at-home mother who was a free spirit in her own right, have raised three daughters in a home with lots and lots of books and no television.  They go to a "hippie/granola" school, then to the small college where their father teaches.  They are all bright, and all tainted in some way - as we all are.  Named for Shakespeare heroines Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean) and Cordelia (Cordy) love each other fiercely, but while comparing themselves to each other run amok.

I enjoyed the book without really liking any of the characters...well, I did like Cordelia.  Everyone has flaws.  They had lots...and they overcame them all so that the ending is a lovely, tidily wrapped up package.  It's nice to know that you can like a book without really liking its characters.  Lots to think about with that, alone!

MOVIE: Gnomeo and Juliet

Ho Hum
Released 2-11-11
G (1:24)
3-1-11 at El Con with Rachel G.
RT: 54 cag: 58
Director: Kelly Asbury
Voices include James McAvoy and Emily Blunt
the music's by Elton John, and if I remember right, he produced it, too.

Next door to each other, in contemporary England, live the garden gnomes of the Capulets and the garden gnomes of the Montagues. They come to life whenever there's no human in the vicinity. They, too, hate each other for no remembered reason, just as the humans do. They are constantly trying to outdo and out race each other. Then Gnomeo and Juliet meet and fall in love. I more or less follows the same story, but they don't die at the end, they life happily ever after.

It wasn't boring, but it sure wasn't great. It was rated G and a movie I could take a ten-year-old lady to see. So it served its purpose.

17. The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet - Erin Dionne

for: middle grades (the protagonist is in the 8th grade)
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2010
HC $16.99
292 pgs.
Rating: 3.5

Hamlet Kennedy begins 8th grade with an added humiliation to her usual humiliations - her 7 year-old sister, Desdemona will be attending classes with her. A tiny genius with over-the-top vocabulary, Dezzie will supplement her college-level classes with art and music and "socialization."

Ham has spent her whole life in a very odd family, trying to fit in as a "normal" person when in her outside world. Her parents are Shakesperian professors who have chosen to live the life - dressing and eating and even speaking as if they were still living in the early 1600's. Hamlet's mother doesn't even allow contractions! Of course some of the kids tease her about her name, but now they must find out about her sister -- and because the English and history teachers have chosen to present A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet's parents are invited to class. The final humiliation comes when she discovers she has a natural ability to recite Shakespeare beautifully. It's the last thing she wants. Something else to draw attention to her, a girl who wants to fit in and be normal.

Well, Ham will never be able to be normal - that is, average - coming from this family. Her parents are so clueless it's scary. And the "mean girls" are so stereotypical that you understand them and where they're coming from long before some of the other characters, who weren't so easily understood. Ham's best friend is a boy, but there's not enough background information to really, truly, understand their relationship, especially when Ham is told that Ty "likes" her. Okay, so what am I trying to say here? It's a good story. Different, in many ways. Some of the characterization is shaky, some is right-on. It's slow in places, but fun, especially if the reader knows even the tiniest bit about Shakespeare. I'll be interested to hear how kids like it.

Here are a few other reviews:
The Cooke Agency (literary agents - this is the first time I've seen a review from that venue!)
Becky's Book Reviews
Kids Read

70. The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber

A Novel
Audio read by Stephen Hoye
Published: 2007
For: Adults
15 cds/ 18.5 hours
480 pages
Rating: 3
Publisher's Weekly Starred Review

Told from three points of view, parts of this book were v-e-r-y tedious, others more interesting. My biggest problem with it, right from the start, was that I didn't think the reader (Stephen Hoye) fit. At all. Something about the timbre of his voice, or his accent, or......well, I'm not sure. But I began wishing I were reading it instead of listening to it. I bet I would have liked the story much more.

The three points of view: Jake Mishken was a dolt. Albert Crusetti was a gem. Richard Brayskirtle was a pompous ass, a seventeenth century pompous ass (and Jake Mishken was his 20th century counterpart). Well, this doesn't tell much about the story. Okay. Albert Crusetti and his coworker, Caroline Raleigh, find some hidden letters inside the covers of a 17th century book. Some are encoded. Throughout the book, we, the readers, are allowed to hear/see/read these letters, the tale of Richard Brayskirtle and his association with William Shakespeare. Apparently, he has hidden away a WS play about Mary, Queen of Scots. When Crusetti gets duped out of the letters, they make their way to Jake Mishken, an intellectual property lawyer, who becomes very deeply embroiled in the escapades that are to follow - including his family (Nazi mother, Jewish father, former thug-current priest brother, rich Swiss wife and two odd children), the Crusetti family (librarian mother, deceased cop father, lawyer and cop siblings), and a variety of Russian gangsters and Shakespearean scholars. It sounds a bit complicated, and it is....it's interesting at points, exciting at points, and pointless at points.

Get it? You switch back and forth between Shakespeare's early 1600's and contemporary America, with a bit of contemporary England thrown in. Good luck.

All the World's A Stage - Rebecca Piatt Davidson

Illustrator: Anita Lobel
For: Middle Grades
Pub: 2003
Rating: Cool
Read: Sept. 1, 2008

I stumbled upon this book while I was looking up aanother picture book about Shakespeare. Drawn immediately to Lobel's illustrations, I then realized that the verse is a take on the House that Jack Built...

This is young William,
His mind all ablaze,
Who stays up all night
Writing poems and plays.

This is the Muse
Who sings to the boy
Who stays up all night
Writing poems and plays

As the page is turned, we see that the next illustration is titled "The Comedy of Errors": At the bottom of the illustration is a famous quote from the play, "We came into the world like brother and borther, and now let's go hand in hand, not one before another."

These are the twins
In matching disguises,
Courting and sporting
All kinds of surprises...

Amusing the Muse/Who sings to the boy/Who stays up all night/Writing poems and plays.

We continue on through Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer's Night's Dream, King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and ends...

"You'll be my players
And the world, my stage.
We'll live through the tales
That unfold on each page!
Happy you'll be
When you act well your part,
And happier, I,
Making words into art."

The last three pages are information about each of the plays, descriptions of the characters in the illustration, and added commentary. The illustrations are bright, bold, drawn very much in a style that I enjoy. And yes, I can SO think of ways to use this book in my teaching of Shakespeare. I'm teaching Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar (as well as Romeo and Juliet) this year. I'll have the three classes that are NOT included in this book design pages in the same style and tone for the plays that they are reading! Cool!

36. The Merchant of Venice - Gareth Hinds

Graphic Novel
Based on the play by William Shakespeare
For: YA/Adult
Pub: 2008
72 pgs.
2.5/5
Read: Aug. 12, 2008

I keep trying graphic novels. I really wanted to love this one. Immediately you take in the modern setting and easily understood conversations. Okay, this might work. But then, many of the guys in business suits look the same (except for Shylock) and you have to keep flipping back pages to compare. However, you're comfortable with a few holes in the plot and you're following the storyline just fine. But wait. Slowly the dialogue is beginning to change, and although it flows beautifully, it's getting harder and harder to understand. Hinds gets tricky and goes from easy-to-understand modern prose to unedited Shakespeare by the end of the book. Some readers might like this dip into the original. I didn't.

I got it, but I had to work too hard for it. Darn, I had hight hopes. I'm teaching this play to seventh graders this year, and a graphic novel would be such fun. Not this one, unfortunatley. I'll just have to keep looking!