List Price: $34.98You Pay Only: $27.99 You Save: $6.99 (20%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0794051289025
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: BBC Warner
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: BBC Warner
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 24, 2007
Running Time: 360 minutes
Sales Rank: 11489
Studio: BBC Warner
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Editorial Review:
Description:
The four cutting-edge productions in this collection bring Shakespeare alive for a 21st century audience. Macbeth is the chef in a three-star restaurant, slicing apart his celebrity boss, Duncan. Beatrice and Benedick are rival co-anchors on a nightly newscast whose open hostility masks passion of a different kind. Titania and Bottom carouse together in a tawdry theme resort called Dream Park. And the eccentric aristocrat Petruchio sets out to tame the conservative MP Kate in a politically incorrect marriage of convenience. Playful, cunning and passionate, these adaptations breathe new life into four classic plays, perfectly complementing the great BBC Shakespeare tradition.
Amazon.com:
Shakespeare Retold, BBC's four-episode Shakespeare project, is more fulfilling when compared to past filmic adaptations of the maestro's plays, since its experimentation ventures well beyond previous versions of the same stories. In the past, adaptations relied on strict adherence to the original scripts (see Orson Welles' and Polanski's Macbeths, or Franco Zefferelli's lavishly accurate renditions of The Taming of The Shrew and Romeo and Juliet). Though Welles as Macbeth and Liz Taylor as Kate are stiff competition, however, these parts are ever open for reinterpretation. But not until Leonardo di Caprio as Romeo dropped a hit of ecstasy on screen did adaptations stray so far into the narrative experimentation that this series relies on. The stories retold, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night's Dream so loosely keep their Shakespearian frameworks that unassuming viewers may miss the link. For example, in Macbeth, Joe (James McAvoy), the ambitious sous chef, kills his restaurant's owner to inherit the kitchen's three Michelin stars. Does this mean now that every movie about murderous jealousy is Shakespeare Retold? In The Taming of the Shrew, conservative politician Kate, valiantly portrayed by Shirley Henderson, is coerced into marriage by her political advisor to win Prime Minister votes. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck (Dean Lennox Kelly) is a hippified nerd who drops onto the camera lens something like liquid acid before spinning a mundane tale of broken engagement. Shakespeare modernized without his language, or original settings, hardly feels like Shakespeare at all. Shakespeare Retold, will undoubtedly please some fans and enrage others. Though Shakespeare professors will relish this new attempt to contemporize Shakespeare, the four films comprising Shakespeare Retold not only diminish the potency of these classic tales, but also beg the viewer to question what Shakespeare tales really are. —Trinie Dalton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Taming of the Shrew Retold
I have watched Taming of the Shrew multiple times and find it entertaining each time. Although I originally purchased it because of Rufus Sewell, I find all the actors entertaining and the story fun to watch in now time. Shirly Henderson is fabulous.
Rating: - Tell me again, Will
Ever since catching portions and episodes by chance of this wonderful series two summers ago, I lamented not TiVo'g in time. This DVD was a find. More than anything, the stories Retold underscore the universality and timelessness of Shakespeare's themes and the human condition. Macbeth is brilliant (McEvoy cooking is hot), finally a watchable and touching Midsummer's, Much Ado About a so-so serial, and a wildly redemptive Taming. A funny, bittersweet, horrible and amusing ride, all four stories. Master entertainment retelling.
Rating: - Shakespeare Retold
The item was as promised in perfect condition. Arrived on time. Wonderful show with an amazing twist on the classic Shakespeare.
Rating:  - Good fun
This stories are fun new takes on familiar Shakespeare tales. There did seem to be some over-the-top acting that took me out of the stories at some points, but overall a welcome addition to the shelf of any Shakespeare enthusiast.
Rating: - "Shakespeare RETOLD - Exactly That"
This BBC Video of 4 plays stands head and shoulders above numerous of the so-called authentic Shakespearean productions I've had to endure in many years of theatergoing. First of all, it has an integrity forecast in its very title, "Shakespeare Retold." Thus we expect to be and happily are spared those half-baked, clueless productions that set an Elizabethan play with its original language intact, say, in 19th-century Tierra del Fuego, believing that the universal can be achieved through the set and costume designer's contempt for historical particulars.
The plays in this DVD set, on the contrary, have all been reconceived and rewritten as contemporary works, sharing to some extent Shakespeare's stories, but not his plots and only glimmers now and again of his grand language. In their own right, they are undeniably entertaining, if ultimately small scale, melodrama or farce. "Macbeth," hewing most closely to its incomparable predecessor, is in my view the finest of the lot. James McAvoy and Keeley Hawes, as an ambitious, future celebrity chef and his enabling wife, turn in ferocious performances which call to mind the best of film noir. Theirs is great acting in melodrama.
Teachers may find it useful, by the way, to set this version next to Shakespeare's and have students discern the differences between expert melodrama and sublime high tragedy. Many will quickly see that all the blood and gore that grabs their interest in the melodrama is part and parcel of the Shakespearean ... Read More
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