"He's an aging rent boy. He's an ex-con Poet Laureate. They fight crime."

I seem to be toying with that Ben-Jonson-as-detective story.  (Not hardboiled but ill-roasted?)  This may well fizzle out—don't hold your breath—but it's being enjoyable.

Meanwhile:

"The American screenwriter John Orloff may have wished for a muse of fire,but unfortunately he's been given an ear of cloth, and his film would hardly pass muster as a sixth-form end-of-term romp."

Philip French quotes "Leslie Howard's great second world war comedy-thriller, Pimpernel Smith, in which one of Hitler's ideological henchmen ... claims that Shakespeare was really a German, and Howard's Smith retorts: "But you'll have to admit, the English translations are rather good."

The Observer (with a sidebar of links)

****

Oh dear. No coat-tails.

"Sony’s limited-release newcomer, Anonymous (Tomatometer 45%),
directed by Ronald Emmerich, failed to make a name for itself, with a
scant $1 million on 265 locations, good for a paltry $3,774 per screen
average. The $30-million film’s lackluster opening suggests a lack of
interest, at least to the movie-going public (as opposed to academics),
in the question it poses: was Shakespeare a fraud? That, coupled with
no big-name topliners, proved the film’s early undoing."

Nyah.

Nine