Al Pacino to Star in a New King Lear

In addition to the new, Julie Taymor Lear starring Anthony Hopkins, we will soon have a version directed by Michael Radford and starring Al Pacino.

Radford directed Pacino as Shylock in his 2004 Merchant of Venice, and the producer Barry Navidi tells Variety that the new film will be "very similar to the classical look" of the earlier film.

Taymor to Film The Tempest

This month in Hawaii, Julie Taymor will begin filming The Tempest with Helen Mirren as a female Prospero. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Djimon Hounsou (from Blood Diamonds) will play Caliban, Russell Brand Trinculo, and Alfred Molina Stephano. Jeremy Irons will play Alonso.

Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo surrounded by "divers spirits in the shape of hounds."

From a Taymor-directed stage production of The Tempest.

(Image from the Theatre for a New Audience photostream.)

The Mudfight in Hoffman's Midsummer Night's Dream

Liane Bonin reports on the mudfight in Michael Hoffman's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

[T]he greatest misery was left to [Calista] Flockhart and costar Anna Friel. The two were set to engage in an elaborate mud fight, but no one had checked to see if the grittiness of the mud was costume-friendly. ''It got inside their corsets, so every time they moved, it was like sandpaper taking their skin off,'' says Hoffman. Worst of all, the women had to repeat the scene, which meant a four-hour process of cleaning up before getting tossed into the skin-searing mud pool for a second time. ''They had to be dragged to the mud pit, it was so miserable,'' says Hoffman. ''The last 45 minutes of those four hours was spent just coaxing them into it.''

Rescuing a Branagh Film

The Telegraph reports on the rescue of a film starring Kenneth Branagh: a version of J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country.

The tediousoldfools have posted a clip on YouTube.

Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh

in A Month in the Country

(image from details_later)