And In The End, The Love You Make / Is Equal to the Love You Take

The idea of a Shakespeare In Love sequel is hideously stupid, and does a dishonor to one of the great romantic comedies of the last decade. The whole thing that made Shakespeare in Love terrific is that ultimately, it's a story of love denied, it gives a lie to the idea that the story ends happily. More romantic movies would do well to emulate that, to acknowledge the truth that most relationships don't end in permanent relationships, or even in permanent happiness, but that the temporary peace you find with someone is no less powerful for it.

If someone is going to make a Shakespeare movie, though, I wish they'd take a shot at adapting the Shakespeare narrative from The Sandman. Neil Gaiman's masterpiece is nigh unfilmable: the cast is too big, the narratives too numerous, and most of them don't make it from beginning to end, and honestly, some of them are just too strange to make it with a mass-market audience (I'm thinking largely of The Kindly Ones). It would reduce Gaiman's work to make Dream merely the agent of Shakespeare's genius, but it's probably one of the only ways to condense a movie out of the material. Otherwise, a high-budget television show is probably the only way to go. But I'm still not sure how anyone would pull it off.