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Othello

Blu-ray

Criterion

1952 / Black and White / 1:33 / Street Date October 10, 2017

Starring Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir

Cinematography by G.R. Aldo, Anchise Brizzi, George Fanto, Alberto Fusi, Oberdan Troiani

Written by William Shakespeare (Adapted by Orson Welles)

Edited by Jenö Csepreghy, Renzo Lucidi, William Morton, Jean Sacha

Produced by Orson Welles, Julien Derode

Directed by Orson Welles

Shakespeare didn’t invent Orson Welles but he did define him; it can be said that if any one director took arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it was the man behind Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight. The 1952 production of Othello is exhibit A.

Filmed over a turbulent three year period in and around Morocco, Venice and Rome, Welles was bedeviled by an ever-changing cast and crew resulting in reshoots by five different cinematographers and assembled by four different editors. The sound recording was a joke.

“Great art is always speaking to the time it’s in,” David Oyelowo tells Et. The actor, previously seen in Selma and HBO’s Nightingale, is currently starring opposite Daniel Craig in New York Theater Workshop’s sold out, limited engagement of Othello. In the wake of the presidential election, #OscarsSoWhite controversy and the Black Lives Matter movement, William Shakespeare’s play feels as relevant as ever -- especially considering it was written over 400 years ago.

“No writer has so beautifully and consistently and in such a complex way understood the human experience like Shakespeare. Othello is hitting people square between the eyes,” the actor says. The play’s core theme of racial prejudice is magnified by the “political climate we are in, the gender climate we are in, the relational climate we are in.”

More: How David Oyelowo Is Challenging Himself and the Status Quo

In the play directed by Sam Gold, Oyelowo plays the...

New York Theatre WorkshopNYTW Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Jeremy Blocker has just announced its complete 201617 Season. The season will kick-off in Fall 2016 withNAT Turner In JERUSALEMby Nytw 2050 FellowNathan Alan DavisDontrell, Who Kissed the Sea, directed byMegan Sandberg-ZakianThe Convert. It is followed by the previously announced production of William Shakespeare'sOTHELLO,directed by Nytw Usual Suspect and Tony Award winnerSam GoldFun Home and featuringDavid OyelowoRoyal Shakespeare Company'sThe Histories, Selma in the title roleandDaniel CraigBetrayal, Spectreas 'Iago', in Winter 2016. Spring 2017 will bringTHE Object Lesson, byGeoff Sobelleall wear bowlers, directed by Nytw Usual SuspectDavid NeumannRestless Eye, with scenic installation bySteven Dufala. The season will conclude with Nytw Usual SuspectMfoniso Udofia'sSOJOURNERSandHER Portmanteau,presented in repertory, directed by Nytw Usual Suspect and former 2050 FellowEd Sylvanus IskandarThe Mysteries. Performance schedules, casting and full creative teams will be announced at a later date.

American Sniper: Last year, Bradley Cooper starred in American Sniper, which came under fire because of a brief moment featuring an artificial baby. Now the actor can laugh about the scene and the furor it raised. In an appearance on the talk show Ellen, he admitted he "couldn't believe that we were working with a plastic baby...I was just, like, this is nuts." Watch the full clip to hear Cooper's impression of director Clint Eastwood, too. [THR]   Othello: Daniel Craig (Spectre) and David Oyelowo (Selma) will appear together in an Off-Broadway production of William Shakespeare's Othello. Oyelowo will star in the titular role, while Craig will portray the villain, Iago. Plans now are to stage the play in a theater that seats 199 people for a...

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Android sci-fi flick The Machine is becoming a TV show at Universal, as are two more comics - El Pantera and Kill Shakespeare...

Universal Cable Productions' push into geeky genres was already massive (see: their alliance with Dark Horse Comics, for a start), and now it’s got even bigger. Reports yesterday from Comic-Con enlightened us about three new geek-friendly properties on Universal’s TV slate.

First up – The Machine. The low-budget British sci-fi film from writer-director Caradog James, which starred Caity Lotz, will be adapted into a television series for Syfy. As The Hollywood Reporter puts it, The Machine ‘follows a brilliant computer programmer, desperate to save his terminally ill daughter, who creates the first-ever piece of self-aware artificial intelligence. But things go terribly wrong with the technology.’

(If you haven't seen The Machine yet, it's extremely good and well worth tracking down.)

Secondly, popular 1970s Mexican comic...

Maeve Dermody will play Olivia, a free-spirited Aussie girl living in Italy, in romantic drama The Space Between.

The debut feature from writer-director Ruth Borgobello is in pre-production and the shoot will start in northern Italy on May 7

Flavio Parenti (To Rome with Love, I am Love ) is the lead, Marco, a 35-year-old who has a dispiriting job as a factory worker in Udine despite his skill as a chef amid the deepening economic crisis in Italy.

He passes his time in an empty relationship and after his best friend Claudio is killed in a car accident he tries to keep Claudio.s struggling bookshop business alive. Then he encounters Olivia, an aspiring furniture designer who is visiting Italy, the land of her father and grandparents.

Dermody recently finished shooting Paul Currie.s romantic thriller 2.22, playing the ex-girlfriend of an air traffic controller in New York (Game of Thrones. Michiel Huisman...

Writer-director Ruth Borgobello is casting her debut feature, a cross-cultural romantic drama set in northern Italy.

Remarkably, The Space Between will be the first official co-production between Italy and Australia since the two countries signed a treaty in 1996.

.We.ve worked really hard to develop this relationship and have created a very strong network here that we hope to carry into further projects,. the Melbourne-based Borgobello told If via email from Italy, where she is scouting locations.

Flavio Parenti (To Rome with Love, I am Love ) will play the lead, Marco, a 35-year-old who has a dispiriting job at a factory in Udine despite his skill as a chef, amid the deepening economic crisis in Italy.

Eschewing real love, he passes his time in an empty relationship. After his best friend Claudio is killed in a car accident, he tries to keep Claudio.s struggling bookshop business alive. Then he encounters Olivia,...

Blair Underwood has signed on to play the Moor of Venice in the William Shakespeare tragedy Othello, as part of the summer season at the Old Globe in San Diego. Staged by the company's artistic director, Barry Edelstein, the outdoor production will run June 22 through July 27 in the Old Globe's Lowell Davies Festival Theatre in Balboa Park. Underwood joins Richard Thomas (FX's The Americans) as the villainous Iago and Kristen Connolly (Netflix's House of Cards) as Desdemona. This is not the first alfresco Shakespeare outing for Underwood, who appeared with Lisa Gay Hamilton and Kevin Kline in 1993 in the New York Shakespeare

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Back in April of 2010 we announced the first issues of Idw Publishing's Kill Shakespeare and Pantheon, and coincidentally this week some news involving both properties has arrived with one becoming a board game and the other being adapted as a TV series.

Kill Shakespeare Board Game Description:

Idw Games has signed J.K. Woodward and Dave Dorman to be the art team for its launch title, Kill Shakespeare. Woodward's work has been a mainstay at Idw since 2005, where he helped relaunch Fallen Angel before moving on to various Star Trek series, including last year's bestselling Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who maxi-series. Dave Dorman is an Eisner Award-winning artist known for his extensive work in the fantasy genre, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and much more.

"We've long respected the art that both J.K. and Dave have produced over the years," said Idw CEO Ted Adams, "and...

While Tom Hiddleston effortlessly oozes sex appeal whether he’s battling hunky on-screen brother Chris Hemsworth in the Thor and The Avengers films or, more recently, singing ‘Bare Necessities” at this past weekend’s D23 Disney Expo, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything hotter than Hiddleston letting the written word of William Shakespeare fall from his oh-so-divine lips.

While playing Loki in the Marvel Studios films may get him buckets of exposure these days, spend some time sitting across from the engaging Hiddleston talking about his role as King Henry V in PBS’s Great Performances: The Hollow Crown miniseries next month, as this reporter did recently, and you’ll see the Brit’s eyes light up and his enthusiasm become more than a little intoxicating.

The Hollow Crown, which begins September 20th on PBS, features productions of Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 and Henry V.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

House of Cards:…an expression which dates back to 1645 meaning; a structure or argument built on a shaky foundation or one that will collapse if a necessary (but possibly overlooked or unappreciated) element is removed.

Francis “Frank” Underwood (Kevin Spacey) isn’t a man you cross. Betray him and make no mistake, you’re going to hear about it one way or the other. Betray him enough, and he’ll take everyone around you down as well. President-Elect Garrett Walker is going to learn this lesson the hard way, as he’s just reneged on his promise to make Frank his Secretary of State. With the help of eager young reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara), his wife, Claire (Robin Wright), and various politcal hostages and underlings, he’ll put a plan into motion that will make those he holds responsible pay for what they’ve done.

The 1995 film version of William Shakespeare's Othello didn't light the box office on fire and was quickly forgotten as soon as it came out. Not that it's a bad film, but it seems to lack the certain spark necessary to make a classic. But when it came out, it was considered quite important, since it was declared to be the first time that a black actor, Laurence Fishburne, played the role in a film version of the play, along with Kenneth Branagh as Iago, and Irene Jacob as Desdemona. Until then, of course it was always white actors in blackface, like Lawrence Olivier or Orson Welles in the part. However, the thing about this is that it wasn't exactly true. ...

Earlier this month in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Denzel Washington let slip that he’s planning to return to Broadway “next year.” As for what show he’ll do, the actor gave the vague, “Don’t know yet.” The star, who’s in the hunt for his third Academy Award this year for his performance as a drug- and alcohol-addicted airline pilot in Flight, has starred in two hit productions on the Great White Way in the last decade: He played Marcus Brutus in a sold-out 2005 revival of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and then had a memorable...

Update: The interview has now been updated as follows: "Editor's Note: There have been some questions about one of the quotes in this interview. We have checked the interview tape and the quotes are accurate, but Mr. Hiddleston is joking about his performance in Thor."

In a recent interview, the actor Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in Thor and The Avengers, as well as being some other films that don’t involve superheroes, underplays his celebrated performance, saying:

“And I also felt like I’d been rubbish in Thor [laughs] – there was no way I was going to come back.”

If he’s not exaggerating, this is quite remarkable. As most fans will be well aware, Tom Hiddleston’s performance as Loki in Thor is a brilliant, breakthrough role, with plenty of nuance and charisma.

But a lot of very talented people often have self-doubt. For instance, J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t...

The elusive playwright's genius is examined again in Roland Emmerich's new film. But while the debate about who wrote the plays rages, only one thing remains sure: by his works shall we know him

During an age of conspiracy theories, nurtured by the world wide web, none perhaps is as persistent as the mystery of William Shakespeare. How could one man write such universal plays?

Anonymous, a forthcoming film by Roland Emmerich, the director of disaster movies such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, addresses the Shakespeare authorship question in a mash-up of fact and fiction that will reignite the perennial fascination with an elusive genius, some say the greatest writer who ever lived.

It's always the frustration of Shakespeare that, although his words are everywhere, the man is invisible. Anonymous exploits this, inviting audiences to entertain the ultimate plot: that the writer of Macbeth or The Tempest is not,...

Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, My Week with Marilyn Once upon a time, Kenneth Branagh was hailed as the new Laurence Olivier. Back in early 1990, Branagh was nominated for two Academy Awards for directing and starring in Henry V, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play that back in early 1947 had earned Olivier a Best Actor nomination and an Honorary Award for "his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen." More Olivier comparisons followed as Branagh went on to tackle Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), and Hamlet (1996). The latter two had served as prestigious Olivier vehicles: Best Picture Oscar winner Hamlet (1948) earned Olivier a Best Actor Oscar and a Best Director nomination; the originally made-for-television Othello (1965) received several special big-screen showings and ended up earning Olivier his seventh Best Actor Oscar nod. (Note: Olivier had the title role in Othello; Branagh played Iago...

Long-time friends and collaborators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col have taken Shakespeare's greatest characters and tossed them into a literary food processor.

The result is a comic book thriller called Kill Shakespeare, a 12-part series that combines classic literature and pop culture.

The first six issues have now been collected into a trade paperback called A Sea of Troubles, published this month by Idw. A teaser trailer for the project is included below.

"We know there'll be some controversy, 'How dare we bring Shakespeare to comic books,'" says Del Col. "We think it's a great way to spark interest in the greatest writer of all time, from young people and beyond."

In the story, Hamlet (the hero), banished from his home country for the murder of Polonius, is attacked by pirates at sea. He survives and awakens in the castle of Richard III (the villain) who sends him...

Creators Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col with George Zotti at The Silver Snail

In this dark tale, the Bard’s most famous heroes embark upon a journey to discover a long-lost soul. Hamlet, Juliet, Othello, Falstaff, and Romeo search for a reclusive wizard who may have the ability to assist them in their battle against the evil forces led by the villains Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago. That reclusive wizard? William Shakespeare.

Any English majors reading that synopsis feel their heads exploding yet?

Those who survive this initial assailment on First Folio canon will want to check out Kill Shakespeare, the planned 12-issue comic book series from Idw Publishing co-created by Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. I sat down (okay, leaned against some short book shelves) with them last weekend at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. They were attending as part of Transmission X’s entourage (Kill...

Idw Publishing is unleashing four new horror-infused comic series this month, and we've got the cover artwork and story details for you on all of them!

Kill Shakespeare #1

Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col (w) • Andy Belanger (a) • Kagan McLeod, Belanger (c)

What Fables does for fairy tales, Kill Shakespeare does with the greatest writer of all time. This dark take on the Bard pits his greatest heroes (Hamlet, Juliet, Othello Falstaff) against his most menacing villains (Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Iago) in an epic adventure to find and kill a reclusive wizard named William Shakespeare. This debut- featuring a full 32-page story - will change the way you look at Shakespeare forever. (2 regular covers will be shipped in a 1-to-1 ratio.)

The Pilgrim #1

Mark Ryan (w) • Mike Grell (a & c)

Artist Mike Grell (Jon Sable Freelance, The Warlord) teams up with writer/actor Mark Ryan (the Transformers movies) in an...