Top Ten Shakespeare spin-offs

Who doesn't love a good ol' Shakespeare spin off?

#s 9 and 1o. Ten Things I Hate About You and She's the Man-- Two sterling tween movie adaptations of classic Shakespeare comedies, namely The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. Set in modern (or what was modern in 1999 and 2006) highschools, these movies are charming, some-what-ridiculous, spin offs on Shakespeare.

#s 7 and 8. West Side Story and Kiss me Kate-- Although both are Broadway Musicals, these two adaptations could not be more different. West Side Story (by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim) is a tragic retelling of Romeo and Juliet through the lives of West Side gang members. Cole Porter's Kiss me Kate, on the other hand, is a comic story of the lives of two sets of actor couples as they all four star in a new musical based on The Taming of the Shrew. With posters like the ones above, how could they go wrong?

#6. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead-- This play by Tom Stoppard is a retelling of Hamlet from the point of view of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Alternately comic, baffeling, and poignant, there is no denying that this play really rocks.

#5. Millais' "Ophelia"-- this painting speaks for itself.

#4. "They All Want To Play Hamlet"-- This poem by Carl Sandburg gives me the shivers.

#3. Rufus Wainright's "Sonnet Twenty Nine"--breathtakingly beautiful.

#2. Sassy gay friend-- These hillarious Youtube videos by the second city theater company show what would have happened had various tragic heroines had a sassy gay friend to cheer them up.

The ones for Desdemona and Ophelia are also well worth watching.

#1. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet-- If you haven't seen this... I don't even know what to say to you.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
-Hamletmachine, by Muller
-Shakespeare in Love

Top Ten First Sentences

10. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger


9. "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath


8. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice" 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriell Garcia Marquez


7. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith


6. "Mr and Mrs Dursley of number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, JK Rowling


5. "Whomsoever could do the Most Incredible Thing was to have the hand of the king's daughter and half the kingdom" The Most Incredible Thing, Hans Christian Anderson


4. "Mother died today." The Stranger, Albert Camus


3. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy


2. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen


1. "For a long time I used to go to bed early." Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

Please feel free to add your own favorites in the comments! (if you exist...)