I do like the pithy summaries of the Bard's plays by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (shakespeare.org.uk)
Here's a few favourites...
A Midsummer Night's Dream: "People get lost in the woods. Puck manipulates their romantic affections and (in one case) anatomical head shape. They put on a play."
Twelth Night: "Viola thinks her brother is dead. He thinks she is dead. Everybody thinks that she is her brother. Everybody thinks that her brother is her. Shenanigans ensue."
King Lear: "King divides kingdom snubs daughter, goes mad. There's a storm and everyone dies."
Troilus and Cressida: "Troilus loves Cressida, but she betrays him. Achilles loves Patroclis, but he is killed. The Trojan War goes on. No one is happy."
The Merry Wives of Windsor: "Falstaff tries to pursue two married women. The women are smart; they put him in a river, dress him as a woman, and bring him to a haunted forest. Everyone is happy."
As You Like It: "All brothers hate each other for some reason. Rosalind dresses up as a boy and convinces her crush to hit on her while she's a boy. Everyone is married by a Greek God."
Henry VIII: "Cardinal Wolsey is shifty. Henry divorces Katherine and marries Anne. Queen Elizabeth is the most extraordinary being ever to be been, praise her."
Today in pulp I try to discover what the Bra Of The Future will look like... courtesy of Thrilling Wonder Stories!
Ever since the dawn of time Man has pondered the bra. What will it be like in the future? Will it even be needed?
And one magazine did more pondering than most. Thrilling Wonder Stories not only probed the mysteries of the future, it also tried to guess the evolution of the humble brassiere.
"The gun is GOOD! The Penis is EVIL!" bellows a huge stone head floating over the Irish countryside. It's quite a strange start to any film, but it's about to get even stranger.
This is the story of John Boorman's 1974 sci-fi spectacular Zardoz...
In 1970 director John Boorman began work on a Lord Of The Rings film for United Artists. It would be an unusual adaption; The Beatles would be the Hobbits and Kabuki theatre would open the movie. Alas the studio said 'No', but the idea of making a fantasy film stuck with Boorman.
So in 1972, following the commercial success of Deliverance, John Boorman started work on Zardoz - a fantasy film into which he would cram many unorthodox ideas. Initially Burt Reynolds was to play the lead role of Zed, but pulled out citing other filming commitments.
"Fear is the mind-killer," but movie production is a close second. As Denis Villeneuve's epic movie adaptations of Dune pull in audiences worldwide, I look back at an earlier struggle to bring that story to the silver screen.
This is the story of David Lynch's Dune...
Dune is an epic story: conceived by Frank Herbert after studying the Oregon Dunes in 1957 he spent five years researching, writing, and revising it before publication. He would go on to write a further five sequels.
Dune is a multi-layered story and a hugely immersive novel. It's about a future where the mind rather the computer is king, aided by the mysterious spice melange. It also has more feuding houses than Game of Thrones.
Detective stories have always been a staple of young adult fiction. I guess every young person wants to be a crime fighter at heart.
The Hardy Boys (Frank and Joe Hardy) are possibly the longest-serving teenage detectives. Their first adventures began in 1927, published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and they've been in print pretty much ever since.