Bob Dylan's gotta be a Shakespeare guy: He took the title to his 1997 album Time Out of Mind from the Queen Mab monologue in Romeo and Juliet ("Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut/ Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub/ Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers"). But it's the one-off to Othello in "Po'Boy" – a song off of his next album, Love and Theft – that has been driving me crazy since its 2001 release. This is a spectacular tangent, but I've been waiting seven years for a public forum in which to vent, and I'll be damned if I'll let the opportunity slip through my fingers now. The offending lyrics, according to bobdylan.com: "Othello told Desdemona, 'I'm cold, cover me with a blanket/ By the way, what happened to that poison wine?"/ She says, "I gave it to you, you drank it." Now what bothers me here isn't that he's mixing methods of death and the roles of victim and executioner – Othello, of course, was the one who offed (the entirely blameless) Desdemona, and he did it in the bedroom with his bare hands.

Olivier versus Branagh is the obvious battleground for a debate about the merits of old versus new – and we'll get to them in due time. But I think the more fun place to start, and probably the more polarizing, is with Romeo and Juliet. We've had two iconic productions in 30 years' time – Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 faithful adaptation and Baz Lurhmann's wildly re-imagined 1996 version. I'm gonna hold off on saying much about Zeffirelli's take until you chime in – other than to note that 1) about 30 seconds into watching it, I flashbacked to high school (the last time I watched it) and immediately started to nod off, and 2) isn't Leonard Whiting, who plays Romeo (and plays him like a sniveling twerp, I might add), a dead ringer for Jared Leto? So on to Baz. I have to say, before I rewatched the film (for the first time in five years or so) I thought I'd have to do a whole song and dance about how I was a freshman in college when I first saw it – perfectly ripe for its charms – and that no matter its faults, or its datedness, and even if I'd long outgrown having an R+J poster on my dorm room wall, it would still hold a place in my heart. Eff the song and dance. There's no need. Turns out I still love it. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT. How do I count the ways?

The Austin Film Society is launching on Sept. 1 a program that will help offset travel costs for Texans whose films are invited to prestigious film festivals and events around the world, with small travel stipends given out on a rolling, year-round basis. Time to pull that short I made about Slinky worship out of the closet and aim for Cannes! For more info, see austinfilm.org.

It's been in the works for a solid nine years, with frequent rumors it would shoot in Austin. Now an HBO film about Temple Grandin, who found success despite suffering from autism, is slated for an October shoot at Austin Studios. Claire Danes is in talk to star as Grandin, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Grandin suffered abuse in high school for the outward symptoms of her autism, but went on to earn several college degrees and to become an influential writer and speaker on both autism and the humane treatment of livestock. These days she is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She has compared her mind to a computer search engine that only brings up visual images.

I’d like to wish you all a good morning, but to be honest, “good morrow” leapt to mind first. That's because I’ve been ingesting a steady diet of Shakespeare for three weeks’ straight and my brain is now unconsciously spitting out words like "thither" and "nonny" and "bonny" and "strumpet." (It sounds like an annoyance, I know, but I'm kind of loving it. My conversation companions, maybe not so much.) So why so much Shakespeare? Because my colleague Josh Rosenblatt and I are endeavoring in this, our second Film Fight, to take on film adaptations of the Bard. If you want to know more about this crazy thing called Film Fight – about the rules of engagement and the Happy Hour we’re hosting next week at Spider House – go here. And, as always, we'd love to hear back from you, dear reader, and the added incentive is that registered commenters are eligible to win prizes. So let's dive right in, shall we? For those of you who were with us for the first Film Fight, you’ll remember that Josh and I tend to keep different hours. So I’m gonna toss a few posts out into the ether this morning, Josh will respond in the afternoon, and then we’ll both do some typing tonight. There's a lot to tackle here, and Josh and I previously agreed to focus today's posts on old versus new adaptations – all of which retain the original language of the Bard (we'll get to works simply inspired by Shakespeare tomorrow).

I'm not too keen on dipping my toe into this particular powder keg, so let's go with just-the-facts-ma'am, shall we? Tropic Thunder is a new comedy that opens today. In said film, the word "retard" is used multiple times. There is now a national movement to boycott the film, led by the National Down Syndrome Congress and Special Olympics, among others. The Down Syndrome Association of Central Texas is spearheading a local boycott, with a protest happening today at 6pm at the Regal Westgate Theater (4477 S. Lamar). DSACT president Lori Tullos Barta said this in a press release issued this today: “Stiller and company are no different than actors Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Isaiah Washington, or Charlie Sheen, who have been very publicly criticized for using derogatory comments against minority groups including African-Americans, Jews, and gays. That it is still permissible to use the “R” word against a portion of our population who cannot defend themselves is incomprehensible.” For more information about DSACT, go here. You can read Marjorie Baumgarten's review of Tropic Thunder here. On a totally unrelated note, how cute has Undeclared's Jay Baruchel gotten?

Yes, it's time to submit entries for the 23rd South By Southwest Film Conference and Festival, which is coming up March 13-21. The early submission deadline is Nov. 14. And fans can register now for the 2009 event and guarantee a cheaper rate and choice hotels. Speaking of SXSW, "Peter and Ben" by Pinny Grylls is the grand prize-winning short of the SXSWclick competition. More at the newly redesigned sxsw.com/film/.

Mix fanboys, LucasFilm, and conspiracy theory, and you've got something of a perfect storm, which is what's been brewing over at Harry Knowles' Aint It Cool News site. Readers have been sounding fury ever since Knowles' pan of the upcoming animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars was pulled from the site. Actually, "pan" is pretty gentle – a copy of Knowles' review was re-posted in the forums over at fark.com, and after some dilly-dallying and a lustful aside about Hasbro's new Millennium Falcon toy, he finally gets down to business: "I hated the film. HATED IT. REALLY HATED IT." The famously un-self-censoring TalkBackers (commenters in AICN's online forum) speculated wildly about the review's abrupt disappearance, and the story quickly caught on in the blogosphere. AICN's Moriarty responded yesterday evening, saying that Knowles pulled the review voluntarily after he was "was contacted and told about the embargo by [distributor] Warner Bros." Another review, this time by Massawyrm, was posted Tuesday morning, and it too was pulled shortly afterward. Moriarty chalked the situation up to "poor communication behind the scenes" and stressed that, as he understood it, "LucasFilm did not directly contact the site."

HBO's Hard Knocks series did something last year that I thought would never happen, it made me interested in the Kansas City Chiefs. While that feeling didn't last long, this year's installment follows media darlings the Dallas Cowboys as they prepare for their 2008-09 campaign and should entertain their fans and detractors equally. The first episode aired Wednesday night at 9pm (its standard time slot) and is being rebroadcast during the week leading up to episode two. Hard Knocks lives up to the high standard viewers expect from HBO and should be added to any NFL fan's TV schedule posthaste.