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Is there anyone on my list who lives in Australia or thereabouts? (I don't know who's active around here and who's not anymore.) I'm looking to get a DVD that was released there and am trying to figure out if it would be cheaper to get it from Amazon (where it's going for over $30US) or from someone who's actually in Oz. The DVD is "12 Angry Men", the 1988 remake starring Jack Lemmon.

Anyone?

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From Amazon.com:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated "The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)" or other films in the ( M ) > McKellen, Ian category, you might like to know that "Acting Shakespeare" will be released on January 12, 2010. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $6.99 by following the link below.

Acting Shakespeare

Ian McKellen

List Price: $29.98
Price: $22.99
You Save: $6.99
(23%)

Release Date: January 12, 2010

To learn more about Acting Shakespeare, please visit the following page at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002SF9YMU/ref=snp_dp


OMG, how cool is this?? I got to see that show back in 1984, and again in 1986, when McKellen brought it to the U.S. on tour. It was at the Geffen Playhouse, a wonderful little theater-in-the-round in Westwood. He was not a very well-known actor in the States back then, but I'd seen him in a couple of BBC productions, and it was in the middle of my Renaissance Faire days when I was steeped in learning about Elizabethan culture and Shakespeare, so I was WAAAAYYYY jazzed to get tix to this show.

It was SO FABULOUS. An entire evening of hearing him teach about Shakespeare. I learned so much from that show - about the history, the speeches, the language. About creating a character from Shakespeare's words, and how to take apart the lines and mine them for emotional information.

Here's how the show started. (Keep in mind that the first time I saw it, I had front row seats in this little 300-seat theater, so I was about eight feet away from him.) He's sitting in a beautiful old armchair, kind of lolling with one leg propped up on the arm, very casual/disdainful/sexy. He looks slowly around the theater, and begins to do Richard III:

Ay, Edward will use women honourably.
Would he were wasted, marrow, bones and all,
That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring,
To cross me from the golden time I look for!

Beautiful. He swung his foot idly as he did this, with a little half-smile on his face, and you almost got the feeling that he'd had a bit to drink and was having fun murmuring to himself. It was fascinating hearing him roll the words around, how much he obviously loved the language. And then he got to this bit:

Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;
What other pleasure can the world afford?
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap,

And right there, on that line, he turned his head and looked STRAIGHT AT ME. And yowza, lemme tell you I damn near MELTED in the seat cushion. It was quite direct, his gaze very piercing. Of course I knew what he was doing, picking a random audience member to play with and acting the hell out of the moment. But it was certainly a ton of fun to get that gaze and give it BACK full measure with a nice lascivious smile. This is the absolute irreplaceable brilliance of theater, something that films cannot possible ever achieve - a moment of connection with a character, with an actor, with another human being.

And then came an even more amazing thing. As he continued on with the speech, he pulled his leg down off the arm of the chair, and slowly got up. And we saw that what we'd taken for a languid, sensual pose was actually the deformity of his spine, so as he rose his body stayed in the same bent, hunched posture. It was an exquisite transformation, the more so because it only happened in the audience's mind. He'd been twisted and crippled all along, we just didn't know it. His character had such force and intensity that we'd never questioned what we saw. So amazing. I'll never forget it.

There were other wonderful things about that night. So many fantastic anecdotes from his career (which at the time was almost all stage work), including the one about John Gielgud that still makes me laugh. In one section, he presented Macbeth's speech about his wife, "She would have died hereafter...", first in the manner and cadence of an actual Elizabethan actor such as Richard Burbage, and then he took some time to take the speech apart, line by line and word by word, telling us how he and his fellow thespians approach the beautiful language, and all the complexities that exist in it, and how the colors and shades and intricacies inform a performance. And then he did the speech again, but this time as he himself would perform it, and the contrast was truly extraordinary. I learned so much about the evolution of theater from that one section of the evening alone.

And then the finale! He asked how many people in the audience would like to come up onstage and act with him. O'course my hand flew up along with a bunch of others. He picked out about 12 of us, and invited us up. Then we went into a huddle and he explained what he wanted us to do, which was to place ourselves randomly on the stage and stand quietly until he signalled with his hand behind his back, at which point we were to drop like a sack of potatoes and lie dead on the floor. He introduced an anecdote to the audience about what happened to an actor friend of his who had to play a scene (I think it was from Henry V) where he was supposedly standing on a field of battle and would read a long list of the names of the dead, but when he opened the scroll found it blank, so he had to improvise the names. He then signalled, we dropped, and then came the hard part - trying like hell not to laugh as he re-enacted his friend's utter consternation and bumbling attempts to come up with a long list of plausible names. I cannot tell you what a fun and fitting ending that was to such a great, great evening.


So yeah, you better believe I'm gonna be buying this DVD. *runs to pre-order*

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I'm spending some time with a valued friend and mentor, Sister Wendy Beckett. On Monday I picked up the DVD's of Sister Wendy's American Collection, and am now happily roaming the halls of six of America's great museums, in the company of this graceful, unassuming, deeply educated woman, who delights in the creativity of humanity. Her economy of words and richness of ideas are such a boon, and help me see art always in a fresher, more encompassing and meditative way. It's hard not to be captivated by her enthusiasm and fall into it with her, because she's right - art is a supreme way of escaping the individual minutiae of our lives and entering the larger realm of community with everyone who has ever lived.

See? I'm even talking like her.


Sister Wendy's American Collection - Netflix link, where you can see a trailer for the series


She should be required viewing for anyone who loves art, but especially for people who want to love it, but don't know how. She's accessible, charming, and surprisingly frank at times. (You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw her talk about the "lovely fluffy pubic hair" in a nude painting - not something you'd expect to hear from a contemplative nun, that.) She speaks about her involvement with the pictures, how they influence her thinking, and about the process of getting to know a piece and slowly uncovering its secrets. She's not a critic, she's a lover of art, and that's what sets her apart from so many, and makes her such a joy to watch.

Check out her shows. You won't regret it.