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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Pop Shakespeare

Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, 1996.

What film adaptation of Shakespeare to throw on your television? Channeling Romeo, it’s a question of picking your poison. There are always the classics: Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948), and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar (1953), to name three. More recently, directors have taken liberties with dress, dialogue, and settings, and in many cases have turned out movies that maintain the spirit of their source material but with innovative spins. In its new streaming collection, “Pop Shakespeare,” the Criterion Channel has focused on modern and inventive takes. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1979), and Kenneth Branagh’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000) are on the menu. As you like it! —Jack Sullivan

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox