We’ve been coming to Shakespeare & Co.’s performances for over twenty years, I believe. We have rarely been disappointed — their attempt to get around the inconvenient sexism of The Taming of the Shrew didn’t work — and we’ve been delighted this year. Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor were both excellent, although The Merry Wives was — surprise! — funnier.

The Hamlet had some stunt casting: Jason Asprey in the lead, with his real-life mother (and company founder) Tina Packer as his mother. It would have been a mere stunt except both are wonderful actors, and Asprey played a resolute, believable Hamlet. He’s grieving, angry, and set on revenge. This was a more visceral and affecting version, not as mannered and self-conscious as many of the other Hamlets I’ve seen. It was also not as funny as some of them: Polonius is often played as more of a fool, which can lessen the obviousness of the of love holding that doomed family together. But the visibility of the love among the various and overlapping families made this a more moving version.

In an inspired change, which also lowered the number of required players, the traveling troupe of actors consists of a single thespian who enlists the king and queen to act in the play within the play. The folded over inwardness and outwardness was fascinating. And there was another benefit: Asprey gets to instruct Gertrude — his real mother and one of the great Shakespeare directors — in the basics of acting.

Last night we saw The Merry Wives, and it was hilarious, full of the funny business Shakespeare & Co. brings to the comedies. Malcolm Ingram was a fine Falstaff, full of himself and, given his stage girth, there’s lots to fill. Jonathan Croy chewed the scenery appropriately as the French Dr. Caius, and Dave Demke pushed pink-plumed foppery as far as it would go. But Corinna May and especially Elizabeth Aspenlieder really shined as the merry wives. The play is a trifle — the love interest is resolved pretty much offstage — but it is a trifle with the women firmly control.

(By the way, Harold Bloom’s chapter on Merry Wives in Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human is unintentionally funny because he is so besotted with Falstaff that Shakespeare’s use of the character as a buffoon drives him apoplectic.)

[Tags: shakespeare reviews]

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I saw A Scanner Darkly last night and thought it was worth seeing if only for the hammy delight of Robert Downey, Jr. But, I left wondering why Richard Linklater insisted on “rotoscoping” it, turning live action into animation. It’s a difficult process and not nearly as automated as I’d thought. The effect is definitely cool and trippy, but it sure is distracting: “I wonder how they did the hair?” “Why is the tow truck so realistic when everything else is cartoony?” “Does that really count as a nude scene?” It actually made part of the plot (no spoilers ahead!) harder to follow. Would it have been a better movie if it had been left unpainted? If not, does the paint mask flaws in its construction?

By the way — and this too is not a spoiler — our daughter pointed out that the quote from Philip K. Dick that ends the movie seems at odds with the movie’s thrust. Or maybe the movie is just too far out for a square like me. Daddy-o. [Tags: a_scanner_darkly animation movies philip_k_dick richard_linklater]

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Blufr.com, which seems to be a clever way of promoting Answers.com, poses amusing true-false questions. I spent a compulsive seven minutes there this morning instead of doing my email… [Tags: entertainment]

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The publisher sent me a copy of Jeremy Blachman‘s book, Anonymous Lawyer (book|blog). It’s hilarious. In fact, it’s far better than it has any right to be: It’s told in the form of blog posts, with occasional email asides, which would seem to be a tough limitation, and it’s about a one-sided character who is the most career-focused, shallowest, nastiest person you’ve ever imagined. But Jeremy pulls it off because he is a deeply talented writer. He is also fearless. A lesser author would have tried to curry the reader’s sympathy. Nope. Not Jeremy. That takes guts. But it pays off in laughs…appalled laughs.

I don’t want to set your expectations too high, because that’s a sure way to kill a humor book. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

PS: In his personal blog, Jeremy reviews “Keeping Up with the Steins” and says: “The movie didn’t know what it wanted to be — a farce about the excesses of bar mitzvahs, or a tug-at-the-heartstrings family comedy. And so it floated in between, and ended up not terribly satisfying.” Anonymous Lawyer does not suffer from that problem. [Tags: anonymouslawyer jeremy_blachman books humor]

While we’re talking about the intersection of blogs and books, you might want to take a look at the site for a book in progress, Search Analytics for Your Site, by Louis Rosenfeld and Richard Wiggins. Lou Rosenfeld’s new company, Rosenfeld Media, (Disclosure: yes, I’m on the board of advisors) is trying to be innovative and open about the publishing of books. They’re also publishing Card Sorting by Donna Maurer, with whom I got to bond over Eleanor Rosch at the Information Architecture Summit

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I got an email msg from Attila Weinberger, a Romanian blues musician who was wondering if we’re related. I told him my father had Hungarian blood, and Attila’s hometown turns out to have been in Hungary for a while. So, there’s a pretty good chance we’re cousins to some degree.

In any case, I promise you that this is the best Transylvanian blues you’ve ever heard. He’s a damn fine musician who was playing the blues even when the Communists didn’t want him to. You can hear some tracks here, or click on AG’s Blues Radio at the upper left of his site. [Tags: attila_weinberger music blues romania]

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McDonald’s Interactive has left McDonald’s because McDonald’s is leading the planet to “global calamity.” Interactive is now devoting itself to stimulating mass action on the environment. [Tags: environment mcdonalds games]

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AKMA raises question about The Da Vinci Code that advance the discussion beyond the canapes served at Jesus’ wedding and the resurrection of the mullet. (I read the first page of the book and put it down. And I haven’t seen the movie.) [Tags: akma da_vinci_code movies theology]

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Bruce Willis is set to make a fourth Die Hard movie, in which his character, John McCainMcClane comes out of retirement “to battle terrorists intent on using the internet to spread their attacks.” According to Entertainment iAfrica, the original script was titled Die Hard 4.0, but Willis nixed the pix’s title.

The previous Die Hards were titled: Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and Die Hard with a Vengeance. So, what would be a good title for the fourth Die Hard given that it has the Internet as its villain? For example:

Die Hard on the Internets
Die Hard 404
Die Hard: Packet Wars
Die Hard: Vista

And what tough guy line might McClane utter in a signature sort of way? E.g.,

Something tells me the Net’s no longer neutral.
Time to live? Ten seconds, you son of a bitch.
I’m going to tear you a new open source.
Markets are conversations…and I speak fluent Bullet.
Cathedral? Bazaar? It all makes the same beautiful, beautiful rubble.

[Tags: movies contest bruce_willis]

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The Boston Globe is a great paper, I love it, I subscribe, I read it everyday, ok? But the little things unreasonably annoy me. Aaarrrgggghhh! For example:

EVery Saturday, the Globe’s op-ed page runs a box of notable and fun quotes from the week, usually with a jest or two from the TV funnymen. This week, one of the seven quotes is Bill Clinton saying “I had a lot of happy times there,” talking about his private White House office in an audiotape tour of his museum. Ooooh, “happy times”…Bill Clinton….snicker snicker. This is as funny as Steven Carrell saying “That’s what she said” on The Office, except on the TV show it’s supposed to be embarrassingly not funny.

The funnyman quote is a Jay “The Opposite of Funny” Leno joke about the Capitol being locked down because of what sounded like gun shots. It turned out it was just a pneumatic tool being used to repair an elevator. Japed Jay, “You can see how these mistakes are made. See, people in Washington, they’re not used to the sound of actual work being done.”

Hey-oh!

This was the funniest political joke on TV last week? Congress is lazy? Clinton got blown? How trenchant!

Both of these quotes are lazy and thoughtless. They’re comforting, not revealing or provocative like the best political humor. In a small small way, they help abrade democratic discourse.

(Note to self: Next time have the morning coffee before blogging.)

[Tags: media whines boston_globe jay_leno humor]

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I’m sure people have studied this already and that some work is already well-known, but I think it’d be interesting to investigate the principles game designers use when creating AI for characters to see if we can learn anything about human psychology at the theoretical level. Game designers aren’t trying to model human intelligence; they just want to not have enemies be sitting ducks who don’t notice when the character next to them takes one to the head. Given the designers’ extreme utilitarian and behavioral intentions, what can we learn about human psychology? Quite possibly nothing, but it’d be fun to learn about. [Tags: games psychology ai]

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