Hamlet (2000)

US, Miramax
Director / Screenwriter: Michael Almereyda
Cast: Ethan Hawke (Hamlet), Kyle MacLachlan (Claudius),
Sam Shepard (The Ghost), Diane Venora (Gertrude),
Bill Murray (Polonius), Liev Schreiber ( Laertes),
Julia Stiles (Ophelia), Karl Geary (Horatio)

Very good adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Set in New York, 2000, but keep all the language in the play. The ancient language beautifully blended into nowadays modern settings (including well-designed offices and of coures, the Guggenheim). It seems that the eternal story of Shakespeare is so powerful that what language it use doesn't matter anymore. Or thanks to the nature performance of the actors (maybe not Ethan Hawke and Julia Stiles, sometimes, monologue indeed is not easy), the story did come alive in it's reincarnation in 2000.

Though it is kind of wired to hear Hamlet doing his famous "to be or not to be" speech while walking among the aisles of Blockbuster (among other product placement), the young and perished images of actors in background videos do show the unique power of using the new media to express the classic. Beautiful photography with clips from other films used in Hamlet successfully transfer written words into images.