The Bard of Venice (VIDEO)

On September 23, 2011, Sony Pictures will be releasing a big-budget popcorn movie called Anonymous. As blogged on this page, the movie tells the tale of Edward de Vere as "Shakespeare" -- parts of which will be highly fictionalized, of course.

And so for the first time in history, a broad cross-section of the moviegoing public will be open to hearing out the factual story of Edward de Vere's epic life. And already primed for the many connections between his life and the Shakespeare plays and poems.

This is the (brief) opportunity that Nothing Is Truer Than Truth is poised to seize.

Filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan needs to raise $12,000 by December 1 to fund the final phase of her film -- shooting at the many Italian locations immortalized in the Shakespeare canon.

Please post this to your blog or facebook page. Please email your friends and English professors. Please tweet. (One possible suggested tweet is below.) And for those so inclined and enabled, please donate.

Thank you.

TWITTER-READY BLURB:
#Shakespeare lived in Venice and toured Italy. His Italian plays trace his travels precisely. http://kck.st/9DJB46 #PleaseRT

Celluloid Update - London-to-Venice edition

Big and small, Oxfordian-themed movie projects move ahead with an eye toward 2011.

We recently learned (h/t reader DE) that Sony Pictures' Roland Emmerich-directed Oxfordian movie Anonymous will now be on screens nationwide in September 2011. Screenwriter John Orloff tells fan-site Collider.com that they didn't want to rush to meet their previously announced March release date.

Tantalizingly, Orloff also tells about CGI shots of Elizabethan London that sound pretty amazing.

"When you see a movie like Elizabeth, which is a lovely film, it’s all inside and it’s all interiors because you couldn’t build London," Orloff says. "But, we don’t do that. We literally have helicopter shots, in 1600 London. We have crane shots. You just can’t believe it. Nobody has made a period movie like this, ever before."

And speaking of exteriors, Boston documentary filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan tells the SBAN blog that her Oxfordian documentary Nothing Is Truer Than Truth -- now aiming for completion in time for submission to the film festival circuit next fall -- has begun fundraising to do springtime on-location photography in Venice, northern Italy and southern France.

"Oxford was an A-list party boy who took this grand tour of Europe," Eagan-Donovan said in a press interview last month. "He was all about collecting experience, art and music and all of that. And he came back with the experiences that were the material for the canon."

Edward de Vere's Italian adventure in 1575-'76 -- whose ports of call happen to coincide almost exactly with the settings for the Shake-speare Italian plays -- is an incredible story unto itself.

It was my favorite part of "Shakespeare" By Another Name to write. And its byways and grand canals have all the potential to be quite a yarn onscreen too.

(Full disclosure: Eagan-Donovan has optioned "Shakespeare" By Another Name and retained your correspondent as an advisor for Nothing Is Truer Than Truth.)

Creative Commons image by Kent Mercurio