Movie recommendation: Much Ado About Nothing

Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing — now there’s a string of words I never thought I’d type.

Start again: Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is a delightful adaptation. The film is in the spirit of Michael Almereyda’s 2000 adaptation of Hamlet, with the players speaking Shakespeare’s language in a contemporary setting. Beatrice and Benedick (Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof) are plausible and appealing, and there are many inventive and hilarious bits of business along the way, particularly from Dogberry (Nathan Fillion) and the security detail. Whedon’s black-and-white film evokes both 1930s screwball comedy and Woody Allen’s comedy of manners, both of which themselves owe something to the Shake. I watched this film on spec, so to speak: I had no idea what to expect. What I got was something magical.

You can find out more at the film’s website.

[Two excellent new movies in three weeks. The other: Stories We Tell.]

Recently updated

This American like Now with more details of the like s in the latest This American Life.

[It’s pouring outside.]

Charlie Rose, The Week

Charlie Rose’s new show The Week premiered last night on PBS. The show seems to be another PBS effort to engage younger audiences, certain to be sitting at home of a Friday night watching TV. One odd moment: a quick compendium “if you’re looking for something to do this weekend.” It includes Kanye West’s Yeezus as Album of the Week. Yeezus!

Two more odd moments. At the beginning, an address to the viewer:

“For more than twenty years, you have sat with me every weeknight at my table, the one you see behind me. You’ve eavesdropped as we talked to the most interesting people in the world.”

No, I haven’t sat at my own table every weeknight, much less Charlie Rose’s. But the metaphors here don’t add up: I sit at the table, but I eavesdrop as “we” talk? Sitting at the table ought to make one a participant in the conversation, no? A more appropriate intro might say:

“For more than twenty years, you have stood every weeknight back somewhere in the shadows, somewhere back there in the dark somewhere, at a distance from my table, the one you see behind me. You’ve eavesdropped as I, and I alone, talked to the most interesting people in the world.”

Another odd moment: at the end of the show, Rose speaks of “the debate we must have” about “how we treat women and how we treat minorities.” (Who are we ?) The debate must include everyone, Rose says, and he runs through a set of from-to pairs to suggest the range. My favorite: “from the famous to the less famous.” Did Rose write that? Or does someone on his staff have a degree in Snark?

As you might guess, The Week includes copious clips from Charlie Rose. Last night’s show seems to be intermittently available from Hulu.

Related reading
Charlie Rose and David Foster Wallace

[Malcolm X understood that sitting at a table does not make one a participant: “I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate.” From the speech “The Ballot or the Bullet, ” April 3, 1964.]

This American like

I greatly admire This American Life . I listen every week, and I’ve used episodes or parts of episodes with great success in my teaching. But I didn’t like the show’s the most recent episode, the five-hundredth, partly because of the general air of self-congratulation. But also: because I don’t like like .

From WBEZ Chicago, it’s This American Life , distributed by Public Radio International. I’m Ira Glass, and this is our 500th episode. And what does that feel like? Well, it feels like both a milestone and it feels like nothing. It feels like an odometer clicking over.

It also feels like like :

And like, first of all, should we mark it at all? You know what I mean? Like 500 shows on the radio actually isn’t that big of a deal for most programs. Like Terry Gross, she knocks through 500 shows like every two years. Doesn’t even notice.

I did. Noticed the like s, that is. Elaine did too. All through the show. We listened while driving, and every like, well, it like hung in the air in the car, and we couldn’t even open the windows because it was so hot outside. I mean like seriously, seriously hot.

You can read a transcript of the show and count the like s, if you like.

*

July 20: Reading through the transcript with the help of ⌘-F, I count fifty-three meaningless like s in the celebratory 2013 conversations between Ira Glass and contributors. The heaviest flurry follows:

Sarah Koenig: It’s so personal. And I feel like it’s really — I don’t know. Like I’ve known you for 10 years now, right? And I heard you say that. I was like, oh, right. That’s right. Because I was like, I know there’s a lot of times in interviews where I’ve just been listening in, and you’ll reveal this thing, and I’m always just like, that’s ballsy.

Ira Glass: To me that’s just so obvious that you would do that if you have something like that to do, because it’s good tape. Like your job is to make good tape. You know what I mean? Like that’s our job, is to make good tape.

Sarah Koenig: I know, but I feel like that’s the thing that’s different, right? Like you’re willing to kind of exploit anything you’ve got in there. And I think a lot of people, for a lot of people, that stuff is just off-limits.

[If you teach Hamlet , you should listen to episode 218.]

Department-store Shakespeare

I have been thinking about the world this receipt represents, or the world that I think this receipt represents. I found the receipt in an Anchor Doubleday paperback reprint of Mark Van Doren’s Shakespeare, a book first published in 1939. The paperback price is ninety-five cents. I think it’s reasonable to assume that the receipt goes with the book, which belonged to Jim Doyle and bears his name. Van Doren’s book is one of at least a dozen that I have from Jim, who was my professor for three classes at Fordham College in the late 1970s.

Jordan Marsh was a celebrated Boston department store that grew into a New England chain. Its Malden store opened in 1954. Jim Doyle grew up in Cambridge, a few miles from Malden, and attended Malden Catholic High School. In 1965, Jim would have been a student at Providence College in Rhode Island. His twenty-first birthday was on April 9, 1965. Was he home for the occasion and spending some birthday money? I would like to think so, but it’s just as likely that he bought the book used, perhaps years later, with the original receipt still tucked between pages.

Here’s what boggles my mind (assuming again that the receipt goes with the book): in 1965, a suburban department store’s book department carried at least one work of Shakespearean criticism.

Other Jim Doyle posts
Doyle and French
From the Doyle edition
Jim Doyle (1944–2005)
A Jim Doyle story
Teaching, sitting, standing

[The Department Store Museum is an excellent source for background on Jordan Marsh. That’s where I found the 1954 date. My guess that Jim was home from college for a long Easter break (Providence cancels classes for Easter Monday) fell through: in 1965, Easter fell on April 18. (There’s a website). Mark Van Doren’s Shakespeare is still available from New York Review Books.]

Blog typography

Tommi Kaikkonen’s Interactive Guide to Blog Typography is worth reading. Especially useful are the recommendations about line length and font color.

I seem to be following all but three of Kaikkonen’s recommendations: I don’t indent paragraphs; I don’t mess with small caps; and I use fonts that are similar (Lucida Sans and Trebuchet) not contrasting. I use Trebuchet for all-caps elements, such as the ORANGE CRATE ART at the top of this page and the headings in the sidebar. (If you’re reading in a reader, you never see those.)

Related reading
All typography posts (Pinboard)

[I hear the people of the future: “Blogging? That’s so early-twenty-first century.”]

The Art of Handwriting

From the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art: The Art of Handwriting. The online version of the exhibit has handwritten letters and postcards from thirty-nine artists. My favorites: Carl Andre’s block capitals, Winslow Homer’s shorthand-like cursive, Ad Reinhardt’s lower- and uppercase italics, and Saul Steinberg’s parodic calligraphy. Clicking on each image takes you to a page with a larger version and more to read.

Related reading
All handwriting posts (Pinboard)

[Orange Crate Art is a handwriting-friendly zone.]

Misread

From a shopping list:

feet

Janis

No. That would be felt and tonic (as in gin and). I wish I could say that I can always trust my handwriting.

Related reading
Illegibility and shopping
Signage, misread

Domestic comedy

“It’s not like that apple I ate in the Garden of Eden — I mean, Los Angeles.”

Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[To be specific, a farmers market in Silver Lake.]

Bob and Ray and Komodo dragons

News of a new Komodo dragon exhibit at the Bronx Zoo made me think of Bob and Ray.

[From 1973 to 1976, Bob and Ray were on New York’s WOR for four hours every weekday. I was a regular listener.]