I'm well aware I'm about to pop the top on a whole can of worms here, and don't take this as a blanket endorsement of the picture, but... My point: Art inspires art. Art informs art. Why put Cole Porter on a pedestal and and say, your work here is done? Why put the Police in a box and say no else can take what you've done and try to make new meaning from it? And why, why, why would you want to put Shakespeare behind glass and tut-tut at anyone who has the audacity to put their own idiosyncratic print on a play?

First let me say that watching all this Shakespeare is having an odd effect on my brain. There was a moment the other night when some actor was soliloquizing on love or murder or truth or beauty or footwear, and all those antiquated words just turned to jelly in my ears. I could have sworn I was listening to Hungarian. A few quick things about Love’s Labour’s Lost before I go to the dentist. Then I’ll be back, grouchier than before. It’s amazing to me that anyone could look at that clip you put up and not want to thrown him or herself off a bridge. I don’t know how he does it, but somehow Timothy Spall actually manages to out-ham his costar Nathan Lane. I didn’t realize that was possible. In a movie that prides itself on chewing its beautiful scenery to dust, Spall is the undisputed heavyweight champion of scenery chewing, a living, breathing testament to the extremes of human behavior, a theatrical canary in the coal mine gauging just how far an actor can go into the realm of the antic before audiences riot in their seats. I love musicals – love them – and I’m perfectly fine with the notion that they often come with outsized characters doing outsized things on outsized soundstages. But there’s a difference between playing things broad and playing them omnivorous. And Spall, under Branagh’s watch, has created a character that goes beyond cute and into the realm of the cartoonishly absurd, a giant and terrifying beast of musical comedy, crying out for attention and willing to beat its audiences into laughter and enjoyment if it has to.

The quality of that clip is terrible – if you gave up on it, here's the gist: it's the terrific character actor Timothy Spall zipping through "I Get a Kick Out of You" (he's singing about the country wench who stole his heart, anti-women proclamation be damned). It's one of the better production numbers of the film, and I think it's fairly representative of the charms of the piece. It's silly, yes, but also funny and inventive and affectionately recalling the old MGM spectacles of the 30s and 40s. Despite the era/costume tweak, it's Branagh's most literal adaptation. Case in point: In case you didn't get it, post-monologue, that he totally loves the lady Rosaline, he slips into the "Cheek to Cheek" to hit the point home, and in case you still didn't get it, when he gets to the line "Heaven, I'm in heaven..." he actually sails toward the ceiling on an invisible wire. It's impossible to watch the scene without a good guffaw... and also a gentle twinkling in the heart. Like I said, it's an imperfect film, but it's got a remarkable spirit about it – and it's funny, sometimes really funny. Nathan Lane plays Costard the clown as if Groucho Marx took a wrong right turn into Shakespearia, and he nails it, using sight gags and cheeky asides to help us along in getting humor that plays more woodenly on the page.

"But, I know you’ll protest that Shakespeare’s language, though elegant on the page, becomes heavy and purple onscreen and that otherwise likable actors become bloated and declamatory when they’re forced to speak it." Actually, I would argue the opposite: that, yes, Shakespeare's language is elegant, but on the page it reads rather heavily, so bogged down with words that have fallen out of favor (I suppose "cock-a-hoop" had to go if the OED was gonna make room for "thingamabob"). While I get a kick out of all those old words, it doesn't always make for an easy read, checking the footnotes every few lines... which is why Shakespeare feels so alive and so relevant when transposed to screen (and stage, of course). Hearing the cadences, coupled with visual cues, the language stops feeling faintly foreign. The comedies, especially, I think, benefit from being loosed from the page. I wasn't very familiar with Shakespeare's comedies prior to this little experiment of ours (I've only read Much Ado About Nothing). After weeks of cramming the tragedies – one after another after another – all that murderous plotting and tortured speechmaking had sent me into something of a tailspin of dour, which is why it was such a blessed relief to watch two modern takes on the comedies.

I know I’m a snob. In my defense, I came by it honestly. My father was a snob; his father was a snob; his father’s father was a snob, and on and on, traversing time and space, to Brooklyn, to Minsk, to Russia, to Palestine, through vast history to the Garden of Eden, which a relative of mine chose to leave because it “lacked imagination.” Speaking of snobbery, I’m here, at this late hour, to introduce round three, in which our heroes battle it out over the relative value of tragedy versus comedy. Being a snob (and a morbid soul) I’ll be defending tragedy, which would seem, in the case of Shakespeare movies, to be the lighter load, as I don’t know anybody – anybody – who likes Shakespeare’s comedies. But, since you’ve been brave enough to take the burnt side of this particular piece of toast, the least I can do is provide you with fodder for your morning post. And here it is:

Actually, I said I’d rather watch 10 Things I Hate About You over Zefferelli’s Taming of the Shrew, and I stand by that statement – for the reasons I mentioned earlier, about the sometimes-tedium of slavish adaptations high on their mightiness, and also because I’m more interested in watching how a modern film explores through humor a teenaged girl’s budding feminism in a genre too-often consumed with the particulars of how a teenage boy gets his cherry popped – and the crowd goes wild! – than sitting through another rehash of an utterly antiquated, utterly misogynistic play. The Taming of the Shrew was of a certain time – a long, long time ago, I might add – and why would anyone want to faithfully re-create that? 400 years on, can’t we do something a little more interesting than that? But no, my larger complaint is with your “Take note, world! Kim Jones likes crappy teen comedies!” I don’t have any insecurities about my taste, or my ability to differentiate between quality moviemaking and a more disposable entertainment. But I’m not gonna sniff at the value of plain old entertainment – I’m just going to feel especially blessed when the twain do meet. And since you asked: Say Anything, Fucking Amal (Show Me Love), Igby Goes Down, Brick, Flirting, Running on Empty, Murmur of the Heart, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Pleasantville, Heathers, Stand and Deliver, Hoosiers, Splendor in the Grass, Pump up the Volume, Hoop Dreams, But I’m a Cheerleader, Breaking Away, and – wait for it – Can’t Hardly Wait All ten fingers, and almost ten toes. You, sir, are a snob. Isn’t this fun?

Real quick: Kim and I are always looking for ideas for future Film Fights, and we'd love to hear any suggestions you might have. So please send us your ideas via the "comment" link at the bottom of each entry, and if we use one of them, I bet there'll be something in it for you. Not something you want, probably, but still ... Now, back to barracks ...

It would be hard to sit here and argue against Throne of Blood and say that simply because Kurosawa chose to ignore Shakespeare’s language, his movie isn’t as good as it could be. Throne of Blood is so beautiful and so terrifying and so intense and so dark and dreary and so totally idiosyncratic that to take a position against it would be pure folly. Not that I’m against pure folly, mind you. In fact some of my shining moments have been acts of pure folly (in fact, most of my moments in general have been acts of pure folly). But I’m no sucker, and I try not to walk into punches if I can avoid it, so I’ll leave Kurosawa alone. But that doesn’t mean that other, mere mortal filmmakers can take the storyline of a Shakespeare play and hope it will provide the framework for great entertainment. Like I said earlier this afternoon (when I was young), Shakespeare the storyteller leaves a lot to be desired, so it’s best when adapting his work to the big screen to rely on Shakespeare the poet, get yourself some actors who know what to do with his words, and go from there. It’s the surest way to glory. But, I know you’ll protest that Shakespeare’s language, though elegant on the page, becomes heavy and purple onscreen and that otherwise likable actors become bloated and declamatory when they’re forced to speak it. Which, of course, is true. But let’s face it: Any writer’s language is insufferable when the wrong actor is using it. Remember watching Kenneth Branagh stumble and stutter his way through Woody Allen’s Celebrity, trying vainly, and with all his customary classical bombast, to capture the stuttering New York wit and self-flagellation of the classic Allen schlemiel? It was as excruciating as listening to Keanu Reeves botch up Branagh’s own Much Ado About Nothing five years earlier ... and not half as funny.

First of all, Kim, let me say that it’s a dirty trick using what a man tells you in confidence against him on a public blog … and I applaud you for it. But now I have to take back my applause back because I don’t know how else to show my disappointment with someone who’d rather watch 10 Things I Hate About You than Romeo and Juliet. You’d rather watch 10 Things I Hate About You than Romeo and Juliet. I’m not even sure what to do with a sentence like that except hope it’s actually some foreign language I’ve never seen before. I’d like it written somewhere in the official record that Kim Jones – film critic, film fan, Film Fighter – likes 10 Things I Hate About You, a movie that stars Julia Stiles. Surely that’s got to be worth 15% of today’s vote in my favor. As for that scene you chose to broadcast, I can’t decide if it’s a bigger slander on Shakespeare or Frankie Valli. I’m going to say Frankie Valli because Shakespeare can take care of himself and because Frankie Valli could use the press. And also because “Sherry” is a fantastic song. As is “Rag Doll.” And because I’m big enough to look past “Grease.” To make matters worse, the scene takes place in a high school, and high school movies, I’ve decided, are the lowest rung of the cinema ladder, the dregs of the medium, right behind movies starring little kids. In fact, I think I could count the number of good high school movies on two hands if I had to. Which I guess I now do: Rushmore, Election, Rebel Without a Cause, Risky Business, Friday Night Lights, Back to the Future, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Blackboard Jungle, Dead Poets Society, Donnie Darko, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Dazed & Confused. All right, two hands plus two fingers. And I challenge you, and I challenge anyone reading this, to come up with any others. If anyone can make the argument that there are 10 more good high school movies out there, I’ll gladly concede today’s round; plus I’ll sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” on the floor of the Texas State Senate dressed as Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. Which reminds me: John Hughes movies don’t count … because they’re John Hughes movies and you all need to grow up.