The new Shakespeare film that has just come out, Hamlet, is surprisingly fine: the sort of thing that should be done to Shakespeare -- push it imaginatively. It updates the play to the year 2000 (the sort of thing that is usually done badly and I always hate) -- the Denmark Corporation and its troubles with the slacker son of the dead CEO. The film cuts the play to ribbons (a 4 and a half hour play down to less than 2 hours), and almost nobody in the film has the slightest idea how to speak Shakespeare's poetry -- but it still works -- just because there is some imagination at work. The translation into visual equivalents is particularly neat, and there are lots of nice visual jokes. The best thing is that the film captures the total ghostly weirdness of the play: its only flaw is that it refuses to push the ideas it is working with in about 50 other directions. It is certainly far better as a pure film than any of the other Hamlets.

yours, Peter T.