Not seen much of this fella except Notting Hill (in which he was hilarious) but I thought he was fantastic in this.
His voice, the way he carried himself, the menacing look in his eyes.
I also laughed out aloud when he tells Shakespeare a Sonnet is being published, and Shakespeare is none the wiser, Ifans pauses and decides not to elaborate: great acting!
OK acting, retarded writing and directing. Such a missed opportunity at that moment--it distills why this film is such a total, boring, directionless failure. "None the wiser"--oh yeah, that's dramatic! Let's put a radical, unfounded, supposedly provocative theory on the screen and then undermine it by filming subtle fishing expedition moments in which this total idiot fraud is "none the wiser." Even the total idiot fraud filmmaker couldn't commit to his own premise.
In so many ways, it's a worthy contribution to the player-hating tradition.
I for one really enjoyed this movie. I don't believe in any of the alternative authorship theories, but I found this movie to be very entertaining. I especially liked Rhys Ifans as DeVere and Rafe Spall in a very humorous depiction of Shakespeare. Looking over the posts on this board, it seems people have become too preoccupied with the whole Oxfordian/Stratfordian debate. Remember, Shakespeare himself was not shy about twisting historical narrative to fit his own. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it seems many of the people who post here take the notion (in a piece of fiction no less) that Shakespeare wasn't the author of his famous works waaaaay too personally. It's just a move after all. One I found to be well acted and with a compelling story full of twists and turns.
My brother was eaten by wolves on the CT Turnpike
I'd be less inclined to go along with the oxfordian/Stratford debate if it wasn't part of the film-makers agenda.
regardless, I though the film was incredibly poor
1 mark deducted for not being Curse of Fenric. Insert 'The' into previous if you are Ant-Mac