[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to five Minute Film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer Library System.
[00:00:14] Speaker C: Hello, and welcome to five Minute Film Finder, a Pioneer Library System podcast where we talk about movies that you can watch with your Pioneer Library System library card. My name is Tracy, and today I am joined by Coral. Hi, Coral.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Hello. We're back.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: We're back. We truly just spent a whole weekend together, and now we're here in the podcast booth to talk about movies yet again.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I mean, that's like 90% of our conversation anyway, so.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: It is.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: It's fine.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: It's a great basis for our entire friendship. We really enjoy it.
But today we are here to talk about more literary adaptations. The last episode you and I did, we did an entire Jane Austen episode. We actually did just Emma.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: And now we're going to do Shakespeare adaptations.
Are you a big Shakespeare fan, Coral?
[00:01:04] Speaker A: You know, I really like seeing Shakespeare, you know, like, on stage and things. I think there's a lot of fun to it.
Not a big, like, Shakespeare reader. Like, you're not gonna catch me just, like, reading the play.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: But I'm not gonna catch you at the coffee shop.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: You're not gonna catch me with my.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: You know, with your copy of Hamlet the First Folio.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: You know, I'm not just sitting there with the first folio.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: The First Folio of Hamlet. You should.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: But I do. Every time I go see a Shakespeare show, I have a lot of fun. They're just. Once you're into them and you just accept the nonsense that is Shakespeare, you have so much fun.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: I totally agree. I studied a lot of Shakespeare in college. Not as much the plays. I did a lot of the sonnets. But then I, not to sound like a total dork who has no friends, got into reading the plays for pleasure. Oh, no. Oh, no. Admits she's a dork.
And they're really enjoyable once you're like, actually, this is populist nonsense. Positive.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: They're a great time. So we're going to talk about a traditional staging of a Shakespeare play and then a truly wild adaptation of a Shakespeare play today.
But you said you wanted to start out with the traditional, so I'm going to let you take the reins on our first film, and we will have Wilhelm start our timer.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: All right, So I watched for the first time Much Ado About Nothing, the 1993 film directed and starring Kenneth Branagh.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: Yes, it is Kenneth Branagh.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Branagh, yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: I'm a huge Kenneth Branagh guy.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And so it stars him and his, at the time wife Emma. Thompson, where they play the lead couple. Yeah, they're the lead couple.
[00:02:43] Speaker C: They're the lead couple.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: They're the lead couple.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Which also, I found a fun fact when I was researching this, that the other, like the television version that come out years also starred a married couple. And then they also later divorced.
[00:02:56] Speaker C: I saw that it was Maggie Smith and her husband at the time, which is really. Yeah. This movie causes you to get divorced. So does Helena Bonham Carter.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: I'm gonna be real nervous if I ever see a celebrity couple I really like, decide they're like, let's do Much Ado About Nothing. Like, bad, bad, bad choice. It also has Robert Sean Leonard, who is fantastic in this film.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: I love him.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: He just. He has such a sweet little face.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: This is like just post Dead Poets Society.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Pre House.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Pre house.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: Far Pre House.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Which is what he'.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: Those are the two films.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Denzel Washington, who is the highlight of this movie for me, I just. Every time he's on screen, I'm like, he's here.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: He's so good in this movie. He plays Don Pedro. The prince.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: The Prince.
And then Keanu Reeves is in it. And I love Keanu. This.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: He's terrible.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: He's terrible. He did receive a Razzie nomination for.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: This film, which I think is kind of mean.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: It is kind of me.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: He didn't win.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: He didn't win.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Good, good. But he was apparently discovered doing Shakespeare. And you watch this movie, you say, how, how, how?
He's so bad. He's so handsome.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Though, of course, Michael Keaton is also in this movie as the most nonsense character in this movie.
[00:04:08] Speaker C: Okay. I want to spend seven years talking about Michael Keaton in this movie. Okay. Can I tell you the IMD plot synopsis of it real quick?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:15] Speaker C: It says, young lovers and soon to wed. Hero and Claudio conspired to get verbal sparring partners and confirmed singles Benedick and Beatrice to wed as well.
Which I guess is technically right. But it feels like it centers Claudio and Hero, who are the. Robert Shawn and Kate Beckinsale, who we didn't say is also in this movie.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yes. And this was her first film debut. And also she was on summer break from college when she filmed this movie.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: Cause she's, like, fully 18 or 19 in this movie. She's adorable.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: This movie.
Everyone looks great.
[00:04:47] Speaker C: This is one of the reasons that I love this movie and I talk about this movie all the time, is I say if you want to see some actors at truly the peak of their attractiveness, which some of them, it's not true for Kate. Beckinsale is still beautiful to this day, but it is full of deeply beautiful people just running around in Italy being mean to each other in verse.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: I mean, they filmed this in eight weeks in Italy. And I'm like, man, if I was an actor, I'd be calling up all my friends and be like, wanna go to Italy for eight weeks and like film a Shakespeare adaptation and nail it and just have a great time. You can tell they're having fun.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Well, and this movie is really fun. I was talking to my co worker, I finished up this movie this morning at work and she was like, oh, well, I bet finishing up the traditional Shakespeare isn't as fun as watching the modern Shakespeare we did. And I was like, it's actually great.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: They're just. The plot is kind of wild. You have Claudia, or Claudia who just looks at hero and is like, we're in love, we're getting married. And Hiro's like, yes.
And then they're like, well, we gotta wait a week. So what are we gonna do for a week? Oh, let's kinda low key bully trick our friends into.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Into also getting married.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Into also getting married. Which produces the best scene in this movie, which is when they trick Kenneth Branagh's character into thinking that the other the woman is in love with him.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: Yes. So this is the scene where I'm like, Kenneth Branagh is a ham sandwich and he loves being Kenneth Branagh. And he's like, I brought you a gift. It's me, Kenneth Branagh.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: And he's the director. So no one can stop him.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: No. And sometimes we should. There are times where I say, actually we need to stop Kenneth Branagh. It's not in this film.
The scene with the folding chair is.
It's just him being unable to open a folding chair while hiding from his friends.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Him the bird call.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Cause he's hiding behind a hedge as his friends are like, Beatrice is definitely in love with Benedick and she is just fawning over him, but she'll never tell him. And so he gasps at one point and he goes. And then they hear him, but of course they know they're performing.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: But he just goes, come like multiple times.
And I was watching this movie and my jaw was on the floor. I was like, what is happening? But please keep doing it.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: It's so wild and it's so funny.
It's truly, I think, the most accessible version of Shakespeare on film. A super accessible version of Shakespeare on film. I think Wilhelm has screamed, but we could Go a little over.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: It's us. We're gonna go over.
[00:07:25] Speaker C: I break the rules of this podcast every single time I'm on it, but Kenneth Branagh's great.
Emma Thompson's amazing.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: This is another Shakespeare play where, plot wise, a priest goes, what if we pretend a girl is dead? Which Shakespeare loves to.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Shakespeare loves that Shakespeare.
One of my favorite scenes in this movie, which.
Spoiler alert for a play that was written in the 1500s.
They go to the tomb because Claudia.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Thinks Hero is dead because they have slandered her.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: They have slandered her and she is wrongly. Yes. And so they're like, go mourn her at her tomb. So he brings all of his friends along and also.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: And a band.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: And a band who sings a little song. And I'm like, you know, if you are gonna go to a tomb of the woman you slandered and now is dead because of what you've done, you know, I guess you gotta bring the Spotify playlist.
[00:08:25] Speaker C: Do it live.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: He's like, which? The man who's singing that scene. Here's our trivia for this one. He was the man who wrote the score of the movie. Oh, so that is him. Great work. So he's like, yeah. And so they're like, okay. Just to stand here with your little.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: With your friend.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Is it a lute player? I don't know.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: And he's like, let me just play you a little song to talk about how sad we are that she's. It's really.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: They hang a sign.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Incredible work.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: It's so wild. You wanted to. I want to talk about Michael Keaton. You want to talk about Michael Keaton? We can talk about him for just a second. Before we wrap on this movie, he is doing Beetlejuice. Come Shakespeare. In this movie, he's a constable who finds the men who have framed hero for no longer being a maiden.
And it's so insane.
I didn't know you could act with your teeth.
And he does a lot of that in this movie. And it's so weird. And I liked it a lot, but also every time he would come on, I was just like, oh, here we go. What is Michael Keaton doing? He's so weird. It's so fun.
That's so great. All the performances are great. Everyone's beautiful.
I'm very pro. Much Ado about nothing. Yeah.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: And I think this is a great. A great choice for people who want to try a Shakespeare and are like, Shakespeare, because it's a comedy, it's lighthearted. There are some scenes where you're like, what is happening? What is happening in this movie? But like, it's under two hours.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: It's under two hours.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: It's straightforward.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: It's beautiful.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Everyone is beautiful. The scene is. Or the setting and the scenery and all of it is just beautiful. Very Italy. It's a good time.
[00:10:03] Speaker C: It's a great time. It's PG13. It's on canopy. Check it out.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Go watch it.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Okay. Give us a minute and then we'll be back with our second movie.
Okay. And welcome back to Five Minute Film Finder. We are covering Shakespeare adaptations today and I will be taking the lead on our second film. So Wilhelm can start the timer.
And we will be talking about 2006's she's the Man, starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum in our lead roles. This is considered the breakthrough role for Channing Tatum. He'd been in a few small parts before that. I do think he won breakthrough actor at maybe like the MTV Movie Awards for this.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yes, it was the Teen Choice Award.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Teen Choice. Oh, thank you. And this also won a Teen Choice Award for best comedy.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: This did want to teach her story.
[00:10:58] Speaker C: It also has comedian David Cross in it, who I thought was doing the Lord's work in this film.
And also to bring up a thing from our friendship, her ex boyfriend in the movie is played by Robert Hoffman, who is from my beloved Step up to the Streets. Oh, Step up to Step up to the Streets.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Oh, sorry, I forgot Cease's full legal name.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: It's important that you use his full legal name. So the IVD plots it up of this I also thought was weird. It's when her brother decides to ditch for a couple of weeks. Viola heads over to his elite boarding school disguised as him and proceeds to fall for his school's soccer player. And soon learns she's not the only one with romantic troubles.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: That is not what this movie is about.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: Not really, no. It's.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: She has a much more dominant role in what she is doing in this movie.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: She has a hugely dominant role. So this is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which is a movie in which a woman disguises herself as her brother. Because I think in the play there's a shipwreck. She's been shipwrecked and she thinks her.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Brother is dead and she needs work because she has. No way. I've seen this play. I love Twelfth Night.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: I've read Twelfth Night and love Twelfth Night.
[00:12:07] Speaker A: And so she disguises herself to work in a duke's home yes.
[00:12:12] Speaker C: And falls for the Duke. So in this case, it is a boy named Duke, played by Channing Tatum, who is the star of this private school soccer team. And it's very much one of the girl power movies from 2006, which I think we should bring back.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: 14 comedies in general.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: I did want to talk about this as part of our thing on it. But she is blocked from playing on her school soccer team because they've gotten rid of the girls team.
She asked to play for the boys team. Her boyfriend, the guy from Step up to the Streets, who is the captain, like, laughs her off. And as her boyfriend or as her brother, goes to London to go perform with his band, which I'm like, if you're a high school senior, how are you getting into a London music festival? Different issue.
She disguises herself as him so that she can make the boys soccer team beat their rivals who are her regular school.
But then also she learns about life, love, friendship, being a debutante, applying fake sideburns.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: There's so many scenes in this movie where she. Her character Viola explains herself out of these bizarre scenarios. And sometimes they really work. And you're like, wow.
There was a couple moments where I'm like, yeah, you sold that. I fully believe you. And there are a few moments where I'm like, girl, come on, you gotta pull it together.
This movie stresses me out.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Modernizing this play was such a crazy choice because it's just not something that you can do. I think it works because Amanda Bynes was a thousand watt star at the time. Also, the commitment, she's so funny in it. And just the way she reacts to things with her face, it's bizarre. It's stunning.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: She's really good at using her body for humor and using her.
It's very good.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: She's so good at physical comedy. And she does the dumbest I'm a boy voice in the whole movie.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: There are so many great quotes from this movie. The.
The one that I used to say all the time to my friends is she's breaking up with her brother's boyfriend as her brother. And it's the. When I close my eyes, I see what you are for what you are on the inside, which is ugly.
It's so.
It's such a tightrope walk. I think it didn't work for a lot of people. But also it was like a movie that cost like $15 million to make and made $50 million roughly. So I'm like, bring back the teen comedy.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And there's so much nostalgia for this film. I mean, very similar to when we discussed Clueless.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: It's a cult classic.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: People love it.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: It's super fun.
And I think that also I wanted to give a quick ode to the loss of the art of the montage.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: So the montages were my favorite part of this movie.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: They were so good. They had such great needles. There are two All American Rejects songs, Needle dropped in this movie. There are. There's also a Goldfrapp song, needle dropped.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: In at the very end of this movie. I hadn't seen this movie in, like, 15 years.
When they did the Ray Montague hold you'd in my arms, I was like.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: But it was.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: I ascended. I ascended. I love that song.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: It's such an art. There are probably no less than 7. We are past our time. Sorry, Wilhelm.
I figured there are probably no less than five to seven montages in this movie.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: So many.
[00:15:59] Speaker C: They work, though. They're super fun. There's like the Learning to play soccer montage, the makeover montage, the Falling in love montage, the.
And they work, and they're super fun. And so I don't know if I'm just not being marketed teen films anymore because I am old and they are all going to Netflix.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: But, yeah, maybe that's our issue, is they're all going to streaming me and you live at the movie theater, and.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: That'S probably what it is. But I'm like, bring back the teen comedy to the movie theater. That was an important part of my.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Childhood to, like, base them off of classics.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: Because that's fun to get dropped off at the movie theater and see a movie.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: I feel like maybe your English teacher might play them in class.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Yes. Give the children something to watch in English when their teachers are homesick, please. Okay, there is one more thing that I had to talk to you about with this movie. So the director of this movie is a guy named Andy Fickman. I'm going to give you a list of other films that he directed.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:16:54] Speaker C: He directed the Game Plan, the rock movie where he's a football player.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: A heartwarming film.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Then he also directed the rock film Race to Witch Mountain.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Oh, I remember that one.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: So do I. He directed you again, which was a, like, a female buddy comedy with Jamie Lee Curtis and the lady from the Good Place, whose name I can't think of right now, I think.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker C: He directed One True Loves, the recent Taylor Jenkins Reid adaptation starring Philippa Sue. Oh, and are you ready for the real piece de resistance of this?
[00:17:33] Speaker A: I'M scared.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: He directed Paul Blart Mall Cop 2. 2? No.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: I was so excited that he said 2.
I did not see the sequel to Paul Blart Mall Cop.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: I have seen Paul Blart markup 2 and I have not seen Paul Blart Mall Cop.
The first one. You haven't seen the first one? I've only seen the second one.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Our list is already too long.
[00:17:55] Speaker C: Tracy, you're saying we have to watch Paul Blart Mall Cop?
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Maybe not together. I don't know if I ever need to see Paul Blart Mall Cop again, but I'm just offended you've only seen the second one.
[00:18:06] Speaker C: It's so wild. We'll have to do a deep focus episode on Paul Blart Mall Cop too.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Whatever it Canopy don't have to watch the other one.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: I say watch she's the man.
It's also PG13. It is also on Canopy. I think it's a really good time.
There's definitely some things in it that are very 2006, but I think it's for the most part really fun. Yeah.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: And 20th anniversary next year, that film. Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: There we go. We should have saved it. Oh no, I jumped on it too soon.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: We had to be the first ones out there.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: We had to be the first ones forgetting get ready for Put on your soccer shorts for the entirety of 2026 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of she's the Man.
Well, hey Quirrel, thanks for coming out and talking about a few films with me today.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: This was I love to talk about a film.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: I love to talk about a film. We're gonna continue to talk about films even when we stop talking into these microphones. So just know that we are constantly doing episode of five Minute Film Finder, but you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. You can send us an email with your comments, Questions,
[email protected] and be sure to check out what's on hoopla on Canopy this month. Thanks for hanging out with me, Quirl. Bye Bye.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Five Minute Film Finder is a digital program brought to you by Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma. All opinions expressed in this episode are those of the host and not those of the organization.
Five Minute Film Finder is produced, recorded and mixed by Ben Si Theme music by Ben Si.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please email podcastioneerlibrarysystem.org Remember to, like, review and subscribe.
Thanks for listening.
