What in hell?

Inspiration struck on the couch this evening, in the form of a game for bored intellectuals. The challenge is to take a great dramatic work - play, movie, radio drama, what-have-you - and, using the most talented actors you can, make the worst fantasy cast possible. Age, race, and possibly gender can be ignored, as long as it's funny. Bad Hamlet, a game of mis-casting.

The original cast is, of course, Hamlet. Here's what we came up with:

Claudius: Morgan Freeman. MF is a charismatic, talented actor, and also completely non-threatening.

Hamlet: Toby McGuire. This is borderline, as I don't think he's that good an actor in the first place. Hamlet is such a broadly interpretable character that it's hard to find someone good who couldn't play him.

Polonius: Harrison Ford. "OK, kid, listen up: never a borrower nor a lender be..."

Laertes: Hugh Jackman. Jackman is actually very good for this role, except that it's too much of a background part for someone with his screen presence. Playing opposite Toby, he'll dominate every scene.

Horatio: Sean Penn. See Laertes, but with more scenery-chewing.

Ophelia: Hillary Swank. Someone much smarter than me could make a case that draws parallels between Hamlet and Boys Don't Cry, but I wouldn't listen.

Gertrude: Nathalie Portman. I really wanted Edie Falco for this, but the more I think about it the better she seems for the role, so that's no good. By the time Nathalie is old enough to play the Queen, she may well have the range to pull it off, but right now I don't see her doing it at all well.

Rosencrantz and Gildenstern: Young Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Wayne has already been famously mis-cast as MacBeth, and he would certainly be terrible here. Eastwood is debatable; he's not known for his subtlety, but I could see him playing one of these two as a "wait-and-see" kind of character, who talks like an ass but is actually pretty calculated. Maybe he should be replaced with Ronald Reagan?

Anyway, this is the original Bad Hamlet, my lasting gift to the world.

Current Location: Fort Victoria
Current Music: Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms

Something that I gripe about a lot to myself, but not to anyone else, is that my best writing, by far, seems to take place only in my head. Often on the last leg of travel (like today), but not always, I'll process the events of the day into something really nice and insightful - a poem that doesn't get written for a few days, or an essay that never comes out right. Tonight, inspired by conversations with R & E, as well as the first few paragraphs of an interview in last month's Believer, I had a meaty outline for a very convincing essay on video games as an art form, but now that I'm home it's late and I'm tired, so there's nothing for it. If it sticks around, I might try and put it down sometime this week, but if not, there's this paragraph as a reminder that I once compared "Shadow of the Colossus" to Monet's "Water Lillies."

Current Location: Fort Victoria
Current Music: Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken

( These should help you get past the Second Caverns. )

Current Location: Fort Victoria
Current Mood: amused

There has been an insane amount of busyness lately - new apartment (yay!), the best BSO concert I've ever sung (yay!), pending unemployment in December (booo!), promising job prospect in October (finished round 1 of interviews today - yay!), turning 30 tomorrow (gasp!), etc etc.

Naturally, this short post is about video games.

( Spore talk )

If anyone else is playing, look me up (ounceofreason) - I haven't made any buildings or vehicles, because my art is teh suck, but I've got some decent-looking creatures.

Current Location: ShaveLab 3000