The Last Movie You Saw On DVD or VHS or TV.

The Last Movie i Watch IP MAN 2.

Thank you for recommending this. It looks like a good film.

Yip Man was a real person. "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2" are biographical films. Yip Man was a legendary Hong Kong martial arts instructor. His most famous student was Bruce Lee.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Great cast: Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss. Inventive.

The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino as Shylock. Pacino was terrific as was the woman who played Portia. I found Joseph Fiennes oddly annoying.

The Max Reinhardt A Midsummer's Night Dream starring Mickey Rooney, James Cagney, Joe E. Brown and introducing Olivia de Haviland, then spelled with one L.

Fun and not as dated as I thought it would be.

Are you on a Shakespeare roll, POM? Time for Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. I so wanted to look like Olivia Hussey when I first saw it that I had my girlfriend iron my hair to make it straight.

I'm actually researching material for a play I am trying to write in which Gertrude, Hamlet's mom with whom I have been obsessed for years, is the main character.

BTW, Joe E. Brown as Flute stole the movie. He was naive, innocent, dismayed . . . just a wonderful performance. James Cagney was the perfect Bottom and Olivia, at 19, was radiantly lovely.

I wonder if this is anything like my obsession with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations? I've always wanted to write a short story about her early years up to her wedding that didn't happen.

It probably is. You should write that story. There are short stories, even novels, that are either based on famous characters like Gertrude and Miss Havisham. My daughter gave me a what she described as a "semi-literate" book called Ahab's Wife. The book started off alright, when the writer was more or less sticking to Melville, but, as it went on, there were just too many co-incidences (the title wife seemed to meet everyone who was famous in the 19th Century!) and the personality of the wife did not seem like someone Ahab would have married. Oh, she was a plucky (the only word for her) girl who went to sea disguised as a boy and she had her own haunting incident but she was also over-sexed and a tad silly.

Look how many books borrow the plot of Jane Eyre or extend it: Rebecca, The Secret Garden and Wide Sargasso Sea. Those books are all as popular as Bronte's original.

Go ahead! You will have a blast.

I saw Jane Eyre and Rebecca on DVD recently but is the Secret Garden the one with Kevein Spacey and John Cusack?

John Cusack and Kevin Spacey could not have had appropriate roles in a movie/tv version of The Secret Garden.

The Secret Garden was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett who also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. Burnett felt that children needed their own version of Jane Eyre, which was considered a racy book in its day.

The book was adapted several times for the stage, television and movies. Some very popular actors have been in productions of The Secret Garden including Colin Firth, Dame Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi and Margaret O'Brien.

I looked up "movie with John Cusack and Kevin Spacey" and found Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

I read some of Ahab's Wife, until it became boring.

Sometimes, when confronted with a bad book or movie, I have to see it through. I suffer from what I call "Luke Skywalker syndrome," which causes me to do a version of, "There is good in you, father! I know it!"

Anyway, Luke Skywalker Syndrome causes me to finish something that will make me hate myself later.

You're more forgiving and disciplined than I am. If I confront a book I'm weary about even pages into reading it, I tend to give up on it and move onto the next book.

It was the garden that confused me. I have seen so many movies lately. This movie was directed by Clint Eastwood.

Actually, i am not "forgiving and disciplined." i designed my college course of study to placate both my parents who did not want me to go on past high school, but, not because I am female. By my junior year, I was unhappy for many reasons. I also found I could never finish a book, so I went to graduate school in English for two reasons and one of them was to learn just what it is that I enjoyed reading.

I can understand the confusion. I never saw Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Was that directed by Clint Eastwood?

My younger son said that Eastwood's Gran(d) Torino is autobiographical: Eastwood is a cranky old man.

Just finished a much more modern version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream, from 1999 with David Straithairn, Kevin Kline and Stanley Tucci. Another updating to late 19th-very early 20th C Italy, which works well for Shakespeare.

Straithairn was very handsome (pant, pant). Roger Rees was warm and nurturing as Peter Quince. I say more roles for the very talented Roger Rees.

Bottom was given a hint of a backstory to expand the role for Kevin Kline's starpower. I love seeing two different productions back to back as I have. It was interesting to see how two very popular actors, James Cagney (in Max Reinhardt's 1935 film) and Kline, approached the role. Cagney was 35 when he played Bottom and approached the role with a great deal of athleticism and physicality. Kline was around 50. His age and the backstory (ne'er do well husband with an eye for a pretty face without a nagging tongue) gave his Bottom a bit of depth.

I actually found the youthful Mickey Rooney annoying as Puck, but I think that had more to do with the director than the young actor. Seeing the middle aged Tucci as Puck was interesting although the film would have worked better had Rupert Everett played Oberon a little older.

The most surprising aspect of the film was the nimble way that Calista Flockhart as Helena and Christian Bales as Dimitrius handled the iambic pentameter. Michelle Pfeiffer struggled with Shakespeare's language.

I am also wrapping up The Shakespeare Wars. I would like to think that Ron Rosenbaum would agree with me on AMSND.