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Welcome to The Shakespeare Shoppe™ Shakespeare Book,
CD and DVD store, in conjunction with Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
CURRENT FEATURED
DVD: AS
YOU LIKE IT (2007)
As You Like It (2007) Nominated: Golden Globe Awards & Screen Actors' Guild
Awards (2008)
Emmy award winner Kenneth Branagh, the man
who redefined Shakespeare for a whole new generation with Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet, brings the Bard's
most delightful comedy to sensational life! Rosalind is a young
woman living in the court of her uncle when she falls in love
with Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom. When Rosalind
is banished, she flees into the forest of Arden disguised as
a man...only to encounter Orlando who has also been exiled! But
can she win his heart, disguised as she is? With a setting inspired
by 19th century Japan and a star-studded cast including Kevin
Kline (Dave, A Prairie Home Companion), Bryce Dallas Howard
(Spider-Man 3, The Lady In The Water) and Alfred Molina
(Spider-Man 2, The Da Vinci Code), AS YOU LIKE IT once
again proves that all the world's a stage. Come enjoy!
Patrick Doyle tends to do his most gorgeous
work for Kenneth Branagh's films, which give him the broad
canvases his scores excel with. Most directors aren't willing
to make their films so dependent on music any more.
Many of the cues here are three to five minutes,
with achingly lovely themes working their way in and out of each
fully developed piece. The main theme, played by a solo violin,
backed by the LSO, is especially beautiful.
Rarely has The Merchant of Venice, one of
Shakespeare's most complex plays, looked as ravishingly
sumptuous as in this adaptation, directed by Michael Radford
(Il Postino). In a decadent version of renaissance Venice, a
young nobleman named Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare
in Love) seeks to woo the lovely Portia (newcomer
Lynn Collins), but lacks the money to travel to her estate. He
seeks support from his friend, the merchant Antonio (Jeremy
Irons, Reversal of Fortune); Antonio's fortune is tied up
in sea ventures, so the merchant offers to borrow money from
a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon).
But Shylock holds a grudge against Antonio, who
has routinely treated the Jew with contempt, and demands that
if the debt is not repaid in three months, the price will be
a pound of Antonio's flesh.
The Merchant of Venice is famous as a "problem
play"--the gritty matters of moneylending and anti-Semitism
sit uncomfortably beside the fairy tale elements of Portia
and Bassanio's romance, and some twists of the plot can
seem arbitrary or even cruel. The strength of Radford's intelligent
and passionate interpretation is that he and the excellent cast
invest the play's opposing facets with full emotional weight,
thus making every question the play raises acute and inescapable.
Irons is particularly compelling; kindness and blind prejudice
sit side by side in his breast, rendering the clashes in his
character as vivid as those in the play itself. - Bret Fetzer,
Amazon.com
After viewing the film on which Jocelyn Pook
based her majestic score, one wonders how THE MERCHANT OF
VENICE could be considered one of Shakespeare's comedies.
After listening to this beautifully recorded, hauntingly
atmospheric soundtrack, one may ask the question twice. While
buffered by some of the jolliest comic scenes Shakespeare
ever wrote, this deadly serious film, based on one of the poet's
most moving and difficult plays, asks how it is possible religion
and law -- the pillars of modern life -- have so often served
the human drive toward cruelty and avarice, towards religious
bigotry and misogyny.
This soundtrack draws carefully on Renaissance
musical motives, and is orchestrated with such respect for the
script that I actually enjoyed the recording as well at home
- as I did the score in the theatre. That is the greatest compliment
that can be paid any film composer. - Amazon.com
Macbeth (2006) AFI-Winning Australian telling of the classic Shakespeare
story
Transferred from Scotland to Melbourne, Australia,
the well-known fight for kingship among the Scots is transposed
to be the turf struggle for supremacy in the underworld gangland
of Melbourne. The script and the direction make this transposition
work, using the original dialog from the play, placing it in
the voices and bodies of an all-Australian cast, to the point
that the allegiance of the actors as to place is far less important
than the telling of a powerful tale of ambition. Sam Worthington
makes an enigmatic yet strong Macbeth, well paired by
Victoria Hill as his conniving and ultimately mad wife
Lady Macbeth: the two form a chemistry that serves the
original intent of the author well. The many characters who rise
and fall in the wake of the ambition of Macbeth tend to
blend a bit because of the condensation of the script, but Gary
Sweet as the doomed Duncan, Steve Bastoni as
Banquo, and Lachy Hulme as Macduff are particularly
fine.
The battle scenes are appropriately gruesome and
the musical score that accompanies this film is an odd mixture
of rock and piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphony movements.
With the bracing cinematography by Will Gibson it all works well.
- Amazon.com
William Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth"
was performed at the Globe Theater in 1605-06. The
"Scottish" play was a calculated to be pleasing
to James I, who took the throne of England after the death
of Elizabeth Tudor in 1603. It was not simply that the
play was set in the homeland of the Stuarts, but also
that when Banquo's royal descendants are envisioned the
last of them is the new King.
What to say about Macbeth? Words cannot
describe the ultimate spine-tingling, soul-shaking nature of
it until you've read it. Then you know that there is only one
way to describe this terrifying yet amazing play: by reading
it. Shakespeare captures a whole new age and style with
this harsh tragedy about the powers of evil. - Amazon.com
This brilliant and contemporary retelling of the
world's most tragic love affair makes this wildly inventive "Romeo
& Juliet" unforgettable. This special edition DVD
contains audio commentary by Baz Luhrmann, early rehearsal
scenes and an inside look at the making of the movie.
Baz Luhrmann's dazzling and unconventional
adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic love story
is spellbinding. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes
portray Romeo and Juliet, the youthful star-crossed lovers
of the past. But the setting has been moved from its Elizabethan
origins to futuristic urban backdrop of Verona Beach.
Like the movie itself, the Romeo + Juliet
soundtrack is filled with emotional twists; from the hardness
of Garbage's "#1 Crush" and the Butthole Surfers' "Whatever"
to Stina Nordenstam's endearing, whispery "Little Star"
the journey is all over the map.
Within the CD-enhanced grooves, however, moments
of absolute brilliance flow; Des'ree's "Kissing You (Love
Theme from Romeo + Juliet)" is perhaps her strongest
work to date, while Radiohead's "Talk Show Host" is
a track that the group treasures and performs live often. Those
two tracks alone make this soundtrack worth the purchase price.
- Denise Sheppard, Amazon.com
It's the greatest work of literature, but nobody
had ever filmed Hamlet uncut - until Kenneth Branagh
went about the task for his lavish 1996 production. The result
is a sumptuous, star-studded version that scores a palpable hit
on its avowed goal: to make the text as clear and urgent as possible.
Branagh himself plays the melancholy son of the Danish
court, caught in a famous muddle about whether to seek revenge
against his royal father's presumed slayer… the man who
now sits on the throne and shares the bed of Hamlet's
mother. (Or, as the song "That's Entertainment" summarizes
the plot: "A ghost and a prince meet / And everyone winds
up mincemeat.") As a director, Branagh (who shot
the movie in 70 mm.) uses the vast, cold interiors of a vaguely
19th-century manor to gorgeous effect; the story might scurry
down this hallway, into that back chamber, or sprawl out into
the enormous main room. With its endless collection of mirrors,
the place is as big and empty as Citizen Kane's Xanadu.
The experienced Shakespearians in the cast
come off nicely; Derek Jacobi's Claudius, Richard Briers'
Polonius, and Michael Maloney's Laertes are just terrific.
Julie Christie is a suitably attractive Gertrude, and
Kate Winslet makes the most of Ophelia's mad scenes. Branagh's
habit of folding in unexpected American performers is on the
mark, too: Billy Crystal is surprisingly good as the Gravedigger,
Robin Williams predictably camps up Osric, and Charlton
Heston is an inspired choice as the grandiloquent Player
King. - Amazon.com
Patrick Doyle easily matches John Williams
for great composition. This soundtrack is incredible, opening
with a hopeful note and a fanfare. The middle is well balanced
between dark, heavy thunder, victorious resolve, mystery, and
grief. The last track, even played by itself with no context,
will blow your mind away.
This is certainly one of my top 3 Patrick Doyle
scores and a towering achievement. The score unfolds like a great
romantic symphony encompassing several moods from serenity and
inner peace, to violence and lush gothic undertones, and a finaly
sense of joyous celebration. After listening constantly to Mr.
Doyle's scores for "Henry V", "Much ado about
nothing" and "Frankenstein", I thought he could
never top such achievements and somehow he did: "Hamlet"
is a masterpiece of thematic inventiveness and dramatic power.
- Amazon.com
Full of "sparkling merriment" (The Hollywood
Reporter), this sexy, sunny comedy positively sizzles as one
set of lovers battles against a dirty trick, and another set
simply battleseach other! Adapted by Oscar® nominee* Kenneth
Branagh and featuring an all-star cast, this charming romp
"casts the battle of the sexes in the form of an elegant
dance" (The New York Times). A military war has just ended,
but the "merry war" between Beatrice (Emma Thompson)
and Benedick (Branagh) rages on! Can their friends trick
them into making love instead? For that matter, can another couple's
devotion survive the evil Don John's (Keanu Reeves) vicious
lies? It's up to the blundering constable (Michael Keaton)
to save the day so that the course of true love may yet run smooth!
*1989: Director,
Actor, Henry
V;
1992: Short Film-Live Action, Swan Song; 1996: Adapted Screenplay,
Hamlet
Patrick Doyle has become one of those composers
whose first works in motion pictures mark the status of film
music scoring. His work for "Henry V" -actually his first
-put him on the map. But "Much Ado About Nothing"
puts him on a pedestal.
Emma Thompson gives a sweet reading on 'The
Picnic', thus giving support to the main love theme, which is
truly fantastic. Later this track gives way to the 'Overture',
a magnificent piece with epic proportions and, perhaps, one of
Doyle's best themes. The vocal tracks (sung by himself,
I believe) 'Sigh No More, Ladies' and 'Pardon, Goddess Of The
Night' are truly enchanting. Overall, the music on this CD is
remarkable. Patrick Doyle is remarkable. - Amazon.com
for the UK version)
