Saturday 5 September 2009

Getting School Stuff Ready

This evening I previewed a possible contender for "Modern take on Macbeth for possible showing in school."  When I show a Shakespeare, movie, I want it to be very good or very bad (it really doesn't matter.)  This one turned out to really be both, so might qualify, though the nudity is giving me pause.  My thoughts while watching it went like this:

a 2006 Macbeth movie set in present-day Australia with Macbeth, a rising figure in the street gang scene, working his way to the top, aided by his zoned-out, coke-snorting wife and the drug-induced visions of the prophecies of a hissing trio of high school wiccans in private school uniforms, including berets and kneesocks.  

It seriously looks like all of Jesse Spencer from House's third and fourth cousins picked up a used video camera at a pawn shop and said "Jisse's doing OwKuy in Americah, ind thet Baz Luhrman fella did olroight with thet blowke Shikespeah's Rawmeoh 'n Jehwliut, sow lit's mayke owre awn McBith videow ind sill it! OlROIT! We kin edit it et Mick's ind put loads a guns ind hot noikkid sheilas innit!" It's like a very slow-paced, very hip hop/rock video version made with handheld video cameras, dutch angles, and all sorts of riced-out cars and extras from Fallout Boy videos. The Australian accents make the quietly mumbled (and growled) Shakespearean dialogue hiLARious, but I think school kids might absolutely LOVE it. (Mcbith stabs Dunkin with a pair of bowie knives, and clearly feels the need to stab him about 28 times to moike sure e's comploitly did.)

The thug who kills Macduff's family and Banquo looks EXACTLY like Peter Jackson. And the witches deliver their prophecy about Macduff completely naked with occult-looking sigils painted on their bodies, 'rooting' Macbeth and thrashing around as they declaim their lines. And Lady Mcbith's freakout occurs while she is wearing only diaphanous panties ("Kin thou nut MINistah to a moind disOIsed?"). And Macduff takes a silenced, nickel-plated automatic and kneecaps both Peter Jackson and his co-thug so's he can shoot them through the back of the heads while they're trying to crawl away. And "Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane" in the form of Macduff's men storming MacBeth's house in a fully-loaded logging truck which has, not "Birnam Wood" painted on the door, but "Birnam Lumber."  

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