Merchant of Venice

First up, I don't like Shakespeare that much. Seems over-rated and more of a sycophantic love affair by those who rave about him. I could rant a bit about the stories and the forced story-telling, but hey, let's keep that for later!

So Al Pacino as a Shylock the Jew in Merchant of Venice, does it work? Hell yeah it does - great casting choice that. It's the best performance I can remember seeing of Pacino's, again not a favourite actor of mine, but damn this is great. Indeed the rest of the casting seems pretty much spot-on - using a number of well known (although not A-grade) British actors. Best of all was seeing John Sessions outside of QI !! Even if we did giggle a bit remembering Sessions and Fry banter.
the quality of the movie seemed a bit dodgy in places, the sound was like a low quality mp3 - where you get that faint 'water sloshing' sound during speech/music. The movie was underlit and all rather dark - which worked given the subject, but wasn't great visually. Shylock did rather get done over, with the interesting affect of all sympathy going to him since he really wasn't doing anything wrong. Damn lawyers. Oohh I could rant about David Bain...maybe later.

Recommendation: go see. It's definitely worth it.

Love, me