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Tonight's Shakespeare Play on Film was The Taming of the Shrew starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Excellent, as I had expected from what I had read. It's certainly a stripped down version as most filmed versions of Shakespeare plays are, but this one feels even moreso, which a lot of action and non-dialogue scenes which add dimension to the film but makes me wonder exactly how much was stripped from the play, for it sure seems to be a lot.
This play always reminds me of the Moonlighting version, which was really quite good for all that it was very tongue-in-cheek.
I picked up Merchant of Venice at Fred Meyers, and generally did nothing much of anything else today. I hope to reach level 34 in WoW, or work on a story, or maybe log into Second Life.
I did read a book today too. It's funny, last week I read Ruth Plimly Thompson's "The Gnome King in Oz" (Oz book #20), in which the former gnome king Ruggedo escapes from an island prison, reclaims his throne, and plots revenge upon all of Oz. He is of course, thwarted and in the end forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness, which causes him to forget everything.
Now, this is notable for two reasons. One, the gnome king Ruggedo is notorious for escaping and plotting revenge on Oz and the Emerald City over and over and over ad nauseum, and two, really bad villians are often forced to drink from the pool of forgetfulness, which seems like a cruel fate but also a safer (and cheaper) way to deal with bad guys than anything we've devised in the real world. Or so you would think.
The reason I bring this up is because the book I read today was The Magic of Oz, the 13th of the original 14 books written by L. Frank Baum himself. And this book too involves Ruggedo the gnome king coming back to Oz and plotting revenge on the Emerald City. And in this book too, he's captured and forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness. Most signifigantly, it's explained that the LAST time he tried to plot revenge on Oz he had been forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness, but since he'd been dropped back in his old kingdom (just outside of Oz), this had allowed him to eventually remember everything. But this time we're assured that he'll be left inside Oz and therefore nothing will remind him of his old life.
Which is fine, except that apparently he does remember, because by the 20th book he's been given a new punishment and confined on an island... but when this fails, he's forced to drink from the pool again... which has apparenlty already failed twice to reform him...
...and we know, of course, that he's going to pop up again. He's the favorite villian in the Oz books.
So it seems their criminal justice system isn't any better than ours after all. Maybe they should call it the Pool of Very Temporary Memory Loss, or the Pool of I Forget Who I Was, Oh Wait Now I Remember.
This play always reminds me of the Moonlighting version, which was really quite good for all that it was very tongue-in-cheek.
I picked up Merchant of Venice at Fred Meyers, and generally did nothing much of anything else today. I hope to reach level 34 in WoW, or work on a story, or maybe log into Second Life.
I did read a book today too. It's funny, last week I read Ruth Plimly Thompson's "The Gnome King in Oz" (Oz book #20), in which the former gnome king Ruggedo escapes from an island prison, reclaims his throne, and plots revenge upon all of Oz. He is of course, thwarted and in the end forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness, which causes him to forget everything.
Now, this is notable for two reasons. One, the gnome king Ruggedo is notorious for escaping and plotting revenge on Oz and the Emerald City over and over and over ad nauseum, and two, really bad villians are often forced to drink from the pool of forgetfulness, which seems like a cruel fate but also a safer (and cheaper) way to deal with bad guys than anything we've devised in the real world. Or so you would think.
The reason I bring this up is because the book I read today was The Magic of Oz, the 13th of the original 14 books written by L. Frank Baum himself. And this book too involves Ruggedo the gnome king coming back to Oz and plotting revenge on the Emerald City. And in this book too, he's captured and forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness. Most signifigantly, it's explained that the LAST time he tried to plot revenge on Oz he had been forced to drink from the pool of forgetfullness, but since he'd been dropped back in his old kingdom (just outside of Oz), this had allowed him to eventually remember everything. But this time we're assured that he'll be left inside Oz and therefore nothing will remind him of his old life.
Which is fine, except that apparently he does remember, because by the 20th book he's been given a new punishment and confined on an island... but when this fails, he's forced to drink from the pool again... which has apparenlty already failed twice to reform him...
...and we know, of course, that he's going to pop up again. He's the favorite villian in the Oz books.
So it seems their criminal justice system isn't any better than ours after all. Maybe they should call it the Pool of Very Temporary Memory Loss, or the Pool of I Forget Who I Was, Oh Wait Now I Remember.
