A lot of people don’t know how much stage work Heston did. Based on his autobiography he seemed to prefer it to film, and he adored Shakespeare, playing in many, many productions. As a spear carrying extra, pre movies, he was a Roman soldier who captured Katherine Cornell’s Cleopatra, and he wrote a funny anecdote about that.
Or was I wooshed by **Zebra **?
Speaking of that Scottish play…
Macbeth, wasn’t it?
(Coincidently I watched that episode last night.)
I noticed there is a new action movie version of it when I was shopping for videos last week. Really.
The Zefferelli Hamlet, with Mel, is pretty l.c.d., imho; made as mainstream-palatable-unchallenging-marketfriendly as possible. imo. The Branagh is pretty good, although the celebrity spotting gets hilariously annoying; it’s like watching a Very Special Love Boat: you expect Liberace to pop out of a muddy grave.
Alas, poor Yorick. Would that his brother George was here.
I’ll post a dissenting view here; I thought it was quite good. I liked it for the reason you hated it: I saw no reason for the actors to assume fake English accents for a movie set in New York, based on a play set in Denmark. It was a gutsy call to have them use their own accents, and I can certainly understand it rubbing someone the wrong way, but after the weirdness wore off I really liked it. And casting Bill Murray as Polonius was a stroke of brilliance.
I also liked the way Almereyda updated the story while keeping a lot of the themes that were crucial to the original. The sense of paranoia, created in the stage play by having someone spying on nearly every scene, was done instead with video surveillance cameras, people wearing wires, etc. The play that Hamlet sets up to catch Claudius, “The Mousetrap,” is instead an avant-garde art film that young Hamlet, philosophy student that he is, has made himself. And so on. I thought it was terrific.
One big problem, though: The final scene. The adaptation completely collapsed there. As soon as you see them pull out the fencing gear, just shut it off.
(If the OP is actually looking for Macbeth, he should take a gander at Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, which is Macbeth set in feudal Japan. No original dialogue, of course, but an incredibly good film.)
Seconded. There are changes in there that are actually improvements on the original, and I can’t think of another Shakespeare adaptation for which I’d say that. Lady Macbeth is a hardass, but Asaji is worse. And I prefer the ending in Throne of Blood.
Has anyone here seen the Richard Burton Hamlet, and, if so, any comments on its quality?
Yeah, ToB is one of my 2 or 3 favorite Kurosawas, and definitely in the top 3 Shakespeare adaptations of all time.
Yeah. A few years ago, Chole and I were staging a production of Hamlet and watched every version we could find. This was by far the one I hated the most (the Nicol Williamson version was almost as bad, but was somewhat redeemed by Anthony Hopkins’ performance as Claudius). In the Burton staging, the actors kept giving great Shakesperian readings of their lines, getting smug looks on their faces, and giving smarmy little curtsies waiting for the sychophantic audience to applaud them for sounding so pretensious. For weeks Chole and I could make each other crack up with just the word “CORRRONATION!!!”
But it was staged in rehearsal clothes, so it was essentially modern dress. If that’s your criteria, have a ball. I wish I could have seen the Peter O’Toole staging that was running concurrently in London at the time. Olivier directed that one, I believe.
He’s in the freezer at Wendy’s.
He was “okay”…but Bill Murray forced me to stand up and throw the DVD player across the room.
I’ve seen plenty of actors speak Shakespearian without an English accent and make it come across as natural. Charlton Heston for one.
Not even Walken? I know he’s quite the Internet darling but even without all that nonsense he stole that picture out from under the entire rest of the cast.
In short, I quite liked Scotland, PA and thought it was a good take on the MacBeth concept.
Not to answer for somebody else, but since we’re of the same viewpoint: there wasn’t that much to steal. 
And I’m just not in on the Walken-gasmic love.
I haven’t been around a whole lot, but I’m still here. Nice to see you too.
Kevin Kline did a very good Hamlet back in 1990. You can get it on Netflix. I highly recommend it.
If you are into Hamlet, do not miss Slings and Arrows Season 1 .
If you then have a hankering for a similar treatment of the Scottish Play, why, there’s Season 2 .
You can thank me later. 
ETA: The first two seasons are available on youtube, starting here:
The performances of the few Americans in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet run from oddly silly (Robin Williams’ Osric) to unspeakably bad (Jack Lemmon’s Marcellus). Billy Crystal’s Gravedigger is somewhere in the middle. The Americans’ amateurishness is embarrassing and doubly glaring when set in the midst of so many superlative perfomances from the Britishers. I began to suspect Branagh cast Americans in his film just to humiliate us.
So I was hanging my head when Charleton Heston began his Player King speech, expecting no good to come of it. I was so nervous for him I could hardly watch. He is not young, and the camera tightly frames his face in a close-up throughout. But as his speech gains momentum I relaxed, realizing I’m in the hands of a consummate master of his craft and a true artist. By the end of the speech my mood had changed to elation. I felt so much gratitude and respect toward Heston for demonstrating that at least one American is the full equal of the Brits when it comes to acting. I no longer suspected Branagh of purposely marginalizing us either – Heston’s close-up increases the power of his perfomance.
Crikey, yes he did. I’ve got a fair deal of respect for Branagh - and I’m not a Keanu-hater, but he really, really sucked in that film - Start a thread entitled “Awful miscasting”, or “Acting performances that ruin your enjoyment of an otherwise great film” and this will always be one of the first replies.
laughing Okay, he *mostly *sucked, I grant you that. But it’s an awfully hammy role, and rather rubbish writing from our estimable Mr. Will, don’t you think?
"I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied
but I am a plain-dealing villain. "
Really, I’m not sure what even Mr. Heston would have been able to make of that.
You and me both, Miller. I prefer this version to Branagh’s. People usually look at me funny when I tell them Gibson’s version is my favorite.