Kick 'em right in the...

Coriolanus last night, on Netflix.  I truly love modernized Shakespeare productions; I love to see the lengths they go to to adapt the text to a contemporary environment, what they can put on TV news shows and Skype, how they can use an old word to mean a new thing (like the pistols brand-named Sword in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, allowing the Duke to say "Put up your swords" without silliness.)  Coriolanus is mightily stripped of text, but what remains is really powerfully done.  The war in a seeming Balkan environment is highly realistic (except of course for the commanders personally duking it out with knives) and potent as criticism of heroic manly courage and its consequences -- more than Shakespeare intended, I'd say, who was more conflicted about the values of heroism vs. its destructiveness than we are able to be.  But Fiennes was great, the political scenes were splendidly managed (lots of TV talk-show things) -- though Menenius lost his big speech about the stomach and the body.  The greatest thing though was Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia:  she was, literally, awesome (yes I mean both words).  She also gets the best scenes and the best lines:  "I would the gods had nothing else to do/But to confirm my curses!"  And whnw Menenius tries to get her to go away and sup with him: "Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself/And so shall starve with feeding."  You've never heard that line till you hear her say it.