meadow4.ca

Ophelia, although portrayed differently in film versions, has remained a significant character in all of them.  The following link is of a video on youtube called Ophelia: The Evolution.  This video, through short clips, provides a brief understanding of the Ophelias filmed through the ages.  The adaptations of Ophelia’s role (in this video) can be seen through actresses Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham, and Julia Stiles. This video would prove beneficial to our study of Hamlet as it identifies different characteristics in the variations of Ophelia.    Through this digital resource, we see the conventional Shakespearean Ophelia with the Renaissance ideology, and the unconventional one in post-modern times.   

c) Works Cited

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xc5h3JvZ-w

Don’t understand Hamlet? Well Adam McNaughton will sing it for you in three minutes. And he’ll make it more interesting by using celebrities as characters as well as his people. While the song is not humorous for the most part, it does a great job at pin pointing the main subplots in the story. The visuals are very amateurish, yet it is quite appealing. Their techniques are mostly low budgeted, but we get the point of the whole thing is to show the story of Hamlet, the song is just a narrative to guide us. This team’s choices are quite strange, from ‘casting’ (Tony Soprano as the king of England and the BK King as Claudius) to music (in comparison to Hamlet and the music type it is supposed to be associated with it). And yet, we have a contagious starting, transitioned sub plots to an understanding ending. In three minutes, you could know the whole story with sufficient detail. It’s not just the characters and their parts in the story; it’s the objects and even a few settings. While this is made for humor reasons (not quite there yet), it is very beneficial for comparison to other works of Hamlet to see if they follow and highlights the most important things well.

Works cited:

McNaughton, Adam. Three minute Hamlet. April 10 2007. December 14 2008. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1xtcNxmbKU.>

Hamlet Online is a website that has a thorough amount of information on anything, and everything Hamlet. This site has information starting from texts to translations to overall summaries. This site links overall information to other sites that are more detailed. The information includes what the referred site is about and why these sites are the most valuable on information such as translations of Hamlet, the origination and history of Hamlet, the movie versions of Hamlet and its comparisons. Because our main objective is to find information to help us in our film study, the most important part will obviously be the Movie section. Although, this only has two links, one being the ever helpful IMDB.com and the other being a thoroughly detailed yahoo board on everything about Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet. While The Internet Movie Database is very helpful, it usually gives basic but important facts. Whereas, the yahoo link can give us more detailed helpful information. Anything from original interviews with Kenneth Branaugh to the soundtrack of the film, this can tell us a lot about the movies worldviews. Also, this will give us a sense of similarities and difference from Almereyda’s version, which we will be analyzing ourselves, but through this information, we figure out how the same thing can be translated very differently, especially depending on what era the films storyline will be in.

References:

• Movies. Hamlet Online. December 11^th 2008. http://www.tk421.net/hamlet/hamlet.html#movies
• Leong, Virginia. Movie Links. Hamlet (Kenneth Branaugh). May 3^rd 1997. December 11^th 2008. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/6261/hamlet.html
• Almereyda, Michael. Dir/writer. Hamlet. 2000. Miramax Films, 2000. Recorded movies.
• Hamlet (2000). The internet Movie Database. December 11^th 2008. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171359/

Hamlets we’ve seen so far have all been a man. What if they were women?  What if women played their roles? In this Podcast of University of Warwick Tony Howard, author of Women as Hamlet, is interviewed. He talk about why are women being attracted to the role of Hamlet. The podcast reveals some interesting characteristics of Hamlet and how they are played by the women. This will help us understand the character of Hamlet and be able to observe in the opposite point of view. As it also talks about the issue of power and class, it relates to our class subject. Listen to it you’ll know what I mean.

Works Cited

“The women who played Hamlet” January 24, 2007 09:33:46 Podcast. “|University of Warwick Podcast.” Podcastdirectory.com. December 14, 2008. <http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/1102355>.

Through time stories change and the way they are told also change. This websites focus on the various Hamlets through time and gives us a brief description on the movies. From this website we see the different perspectives of Hamlet over time. The website gives us the Cast members of the different adaptations, a synopsis of the story, and other general information about the film. We can learn various ideas from this website about Almereyda’s Hamlet. Through time stories change and Almereyda chose to make his hamlet in a way such that it would appeal for the people of the present. He most probably watched all the Hamlets of the past and found what was successful about each of them and tried to put it into his film. Almereyda would have used the idea of a business empire as his hierarchy by watching over “Hamlet goes Business”. Since this is the 21^st century and a lot of hierarchy is based on businesses it would suit the movie if it would be a company. After viewing various parts which were useless in the previous Hamlets Alemereyda cut them off for his. By find out more about the Hamlets before we can learn why Almereyda made his the way he did and how he made it appealing to the people of today.

“Film adaptations of Hamlet.” Free Base. Metaweb. 14 Dec. 2008

<http://www.freebase.com/view/user/tadhg/default_domain/views/film_adaptations_of_hamlet>

The article I found discussed Ophelia’s role in Hamlet. It states that by herself, Ophelia is not an important character. However, because Gertrude is also in the play as Hamlet’s traiterous mother, Ophelia acts as a foil for Gertrude and becomes the target of Hamlet’s idea of women: they’re whores, And as whores, they have “fishmongers”, as Hamlet calls them; Claudius for Gertrude and Polonius for Ophelia. Hamlet believes that Ophelia’s nature is just like his mother’s and that she is just hiding it behind a screen of innocence. However, we as the audience just see Ophelia as a young woman torn between her love and her family who ends up giving her loyalty to her family instead of her beloved, something that Hamlet sees as an extension of her traiterous nature. Of course Ophelia eventually goes mad because of the web that she is caught in and all the tragedies that it brings.

This article will be helpful in our study of the film because it gives us an insight into Hamlet’s mind and thoughts, and also brings out another underlying story within the play: the one of women and their roles. The article brings attention to Ophelia’s character and justifies her character as more than just a love interest in Hamlet, while also highlighting Gertrude’s character. Overall, it shows the importance of women for Hamlet, the person and the play/movie.

Source: Mabillard, Amanda. “Shakespeare’s Ophelia.” Shakespeare Online. 10 Dec. 2000. (Dec. 14, 2008)    < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/opheliachar.html >.

Did Almereyda really get the audiences attention? Did he leave an impact on the audience, fulfilling their expectations and leaving them desiring for more? Did Ethan live up to his role as Hamlet even after being coached by a previous actor who played the role of Hamlet? Well, these questions can certainly be answered on the third link provided below. It provides a juicy review on Michael Almereyda’s article on Hamlet in the New York Times from 2000. It surely seems a little old now, but it was definitely fresh when the movie first came out. This review helps us better understand Michael Almereyda’s accomplishments and failures. It gives us a deeper knowledge about Ethan Hawke’s performance and also Michael Almereyda’s decisions about his cast? So what if Almereyda wanted to cast someone young as Hamlet. The question that still remains is, doesn’t young just mean less experience?

I have also posted an article on Hamlet by Michael Almereda in the New York Times. This article was written before the movie was released. It allowed the audience to get a firm understanding of what they might expect in the movie. Almereyda explains in his article the purpose behind his decision of casting a young actor as Hamlet. His goal of noticing how “thoroughly Shakespeare can speak to the present moment”. It also provides a deeper understanding of the casts’ point of views towards their role, the story of Hamlet and also their accomplishments throughout the shooting of the movie. Almereyda clarifies why he wanted to relive Hamlet but in a postmodern form and also why Almereyada believes that imagining a parallel visual language was his main job behind the camera. These and more interesting facts can be seen in the second link provided on bottom of the page.

Some Versions of Hamlet. January, 8 2005. VMI Department of English and Fine Arts.

15 December 2008 <http://academics.vmi.edu/english/hamletversions.html>.

“DAILY TELEGIRAFFE: Ghosts of Hamlets Past and Present.” The Daily Telegiraffe. November, 7 2000. New York Times. 15 December 2008 <http://members.tripod.com/DailyTelegiraffe/ghostsofhamletspast.html>.

“DAILY TELEGIRAFFE: Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet.” The Daily Telegiraffe. November, 7 2000. New York Times. 15 December 2008 <http://members.tripod.com/DailyTelegiraffe/almereydahamlet.html>.

“Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) is entreated by his mother (Diane Venora) as his uncle Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan) watches in the background in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet” (Picture taken from EBSCO cited below)

Michael Almereyda’Hamlet a modern day adaption of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is reviewed by Nochimson Martha P. of Cineaste. It writes about general information of the movie such as cast, genre, settings and the plots. It also provides us some specific thoughts to help us understand the plots as well as differences from the original Hamlet play. This is specialy useful for the people who struggle to understand Shakespearean language. Although the movie is suppose to represent modern day such as capitalism in place of monarchy, there are places where we get out of touch as Dr. Nochimson says:

Well, there has certainly been a lot of variation in the representation of the Ghost. But the revenant of Old Hamlet is always impalpable and just out of Hamlet’s reach, in keeping with its insubstantiality, the elusiveness of justice, and the difficulty of meeting standards of rational proof, especially in the case of a murder about which only the victim can speak.

However, Michael Almereyda’s choice of postmodernism approach to Hamlet is very unique among Shakespeare’s adapters, which in away makes it interesting to watch the movie.

Works Cited

Nochimson, Martha P. “Hamlet (Motion Picture Review).” Cineaste 25.4 (Sep. 2000): 37. Canadian Reference Centre. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 14 Dec. 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rch&AN=3719346&site=ehost-live>

For those students who don’t know the password to EBSCO:
Login: tdsb
Pass:   second

The link which I found is a short summary of why Michael Almereyda uses a younger version of hamlet, while many other directors used an older version of hamlet for example Laurence Oliver whom was forty one years old by Laurence Oliver. One of the reasons he did this was because he wanted a larger audience to relate to hamlet’s character and the dilemmas he goes through because they are very similar. He wanted to relate the problems of everyday life to the problems of hamlet, which he thought to, target the broader view of people. Michael Almereyda allows the audience to experience in a new way and treat it not as some old dusty thing that is very precious but to break down those walls and let the character’s emotional life live in a new way. This information will be helpful for our film study because it shows how Shakespeare wrote about problems which are still affecting the world now, with greed.

“Interviews With Actor Ethan Hawke And Director Michael Almereyda of Hamlet” Interviews With. 4 Mar. 2004

http://www.rossanthony.com/interviews/hawke.shtml

The link which I found is a short essay on different essays of the delay that Hamlet took in murdering his uncle Claudius. It talks about why hamlet had a conflict with his mind, and how that relates to humanism. It talks about how the problems which hamlet face are similar to the problems we face in our daily lives, and how a state of mind, or perspective can have a different outcome on a situation. The link states how the problem that we face in our daily lives is a problem of identity, which will help us understand the conflict with Hamlet and his mind, especially since we have already discussed about identity when we were discussing In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje. Since it relates to humanism it is even better because not only will this help us with our test on Tuesday it will help us with our ISU assignment as well (it also helps confused readers like me to understand what’s actually going on).

“Hamlet As A Comment On Humanity”. Anti Essays. 14 Dec. 2008
http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/1407.html

You have to sign up to read the full essay, but it is available on the following website, I just could not find the author for it so I did not understand how I should cite it:

http://www.field-of-themes.com/shakespeare/essays/Ehamlet1.htm

Also I thought this would be interesting this is The Simpsons version of Hamlet:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/54549/detail/