Now is the winter of our discontent...

This opening line seems appropriate as I now have Richard III, starring Ian McKellan, in my possession while the weather reports warn of incoming snow storms. Perhaps I'll get snowed in, and then I can check this one off my Great Movies list (hopefully with little to no discontent).

I remember watching Siskel & Ebert review this film back in 1996. I think this was the first time I had heard of someone adapting one of Shakespeare's plays to another time period and setting. In this case, from the Middle Ages when Richard III lived (or the Elizabethan period in which Shakespeare wrote and staged the play) to an alternate England of the 1930s, one ruled by fascism.

Of course, the same year would bring Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann and set in modern-day "Verona Beach." Though Shakespeare had never truly gone out of style, Luhrmann's film made The Bard suddenly hip. There followed a slew of film adaptations set in present day: 10 Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew) in 1999, then Michael Almereyda's Hamlet a year later, then O (Othello) and Scotland, Pa. (Macbeth) in 2001. (Incidentally, why was the exceedingly bland Julia Stiles cast as Kate, Desdemona, and Ophelia? Who anointed her as the leading interpreter of The Bard for an entire generation?)

Of course there was also A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in the Victorian era for no discernible reason except that it allowed the characters to ride bicycles and wear a lot of extra clothing, and Titus (Titus Andronicus), both from 1999. It seems wrong to call Titus, or anything directed by Julie Taymor, "traditional," but the fact that this film adaptation retained the play's historical setting would make it seem so. There was, too, Love's Labours Lost in 2000, which was also set in the 1930s, but this time with considerably fewer fascists and a lot more dance numbers.

I could keep listing films, but the simple fact is that while Shakespeare may not always be as hot as he was in the late 90s, his work will never grow stale as long as creative writers and directors find new ways to present them and to make them relevant to modern audiences. It's not always successful (She's the Man a.k.a. Twelfth Night for Teens), but sometimes you get something Great.

Read Ebert's "Great Movies" review of Richard III here.