Are you one of those people who could just never get into Shakespeare? Did you pound your head against your desk when you had to read him in school? Doze off when you had to watch that acting major you were dating sophomore year of college perform in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Well maybe Avengers director Joss Whedon making a screen version of a Shakespeare play, complete with a cast of familiar faces from all of his cult TV shows, is the thing that can finally be your gateway into The Bard. Still skeptical? No problem, because now there’s a trailer out for Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, so you can give it a try without having any fear of committal. As you can see from the ad, not only does this film look like a vibrant, fun, and modern adaptation done in the Baz Luhrman tradition, but it’s also a great opportunity for genre geeks to live out dreams like watching Agent Coulson rub elbows with Captain Mal, or finally getting the chance to see Wesley Wyndam-Pryce properly romance Fred. There’s something here for everyone.

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani went to Rebibbia Prison to cry. Years ago, the pair took a trip to an all-inmate performance of selections from Dante’s Inferno that made them weep more than any professional theater. A trip through Hell, after all, is an appropriate choice for a theatrical production conducted in a maximum security prison. One of the inmates read the tale of Paolo and Francesca, perhaps Italian literature’s greatest narrative of doomed romance. Yet in the context of the prison it was even more potent. The man paused to tell the audience his own story, asserting that no one knows the tragedy of impossible love like an inhabitant of Rebibbia, locked away from his beloved for the rest of his life. Between their tears, Paolo and Vittorio decided to shoot their next film behind those walls. The result is Caesar Must Die, Italy’s official submission this year for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The Tavianis worked with the prison and its arts program on a production of William Shakespeare‘s “Julius Caesar,” filming the rehearsal process and final performance. More than that, however, the brothers scripted around the play itself and created a semi-documentary film that follows the internal life of the prisoners alongside their theatrical performances. The inmates not only perform as Shakespeare’s Romans but also as fictionalized versions of themselves. The result is a 76-minute tour de force that packs more punch than many a three-hour adaptation of “Hamlet” or “Henry V.”

What can one truly say about Shakespeare? He’s a writer whose work has survived centuries of history, and his stories are still being adapted, both directly and indirectly. While his dramatic work is what’s most delved into by filmmakers, his comedies are what’s most fascinating. The plot of Much Ado About Nothing centers on Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) serving as matchmaker to a few lovers in waiting. Pedro’s job involves matching not only the compliant, Hero (Jillian Morgese) and Claudio (Fran Kranz), but also the not so compliant, Beatrice (Amy Acker) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof). He sees what many do not and with the use of a few simple tricks to help push each couple in the right direction, he’s able to create a scenario in which love finds its way. Not focused on depth, Joss Whedon‘s take offers comedy gag after gag, and there’s barely any time when a joke doesn’t land perfectly. It helps to have the likes of Nathan Fillion, Clark Gregg, Denisof and Kranz in your cast. The actor spotlight begins early in the film, where a character calls for music, they turn to the iPod and Gregg starts swaying – creating an inextricably funny moment solely from his expression intertwined with his movement. So many comedies are unable to have more than a handful of memorable moments like this, but Much Ado About Nothing has dozens.

With the entire original run of The Twilight Zone available to watch instantly, we’re partnering with Twitch Film to cover all of the show’s 156 episodes. Are you brave enough to watch them all with us? The Twilight Zone (Episode #120): “The Bard” (airdate 5/23/63) The Plot: A talentless writer begs his way into an TV writing opportunity, but it requires knowledge of black magic. He finds a book on the dark arts, or at least it finds him, and soon he’s conjured up the most famous writer in history. The Goods: Julius K. Moomer is a very determined television writer. Unfortunately he’s not a very good one. His persistence pays off though when he convinces some folks to give him a shot at writing the pilot to a pre-approved TV show. The subject is black magic, so armed with a complete lack of knowledge on the subject he heads to a local bookstore for inspiration. A magical tome literally jumps towards him, and soon he’s playing around with powers beyond his comprehension. And by that I mean he conjures up William Shakespeare to write a TV script.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr walks around his apartment naked, rents out hookers of various shapes and sizes then tries to pick up married women on a subway. He figures if it’s good enough for Michael Fassbender in Steve McQueen’s Shame, then it’s good enough for anyone. Of course, this leads Kevin to spending most of the rest of the day weeping in his birthday suit. Shaking off the humiliation, he decides to take in some culture and give Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus a gander, being one of them Shakespeare pictures and all. Unfortunately, he never stops giggling about the name of the movie long enough to decipher all of the fancy Elizabethan language, and Kevin ends up weeping again, curled up naked in his shower.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr puts on some 3D glasses to look at some puss… in boots, that is. He proceeds to rewrite fairy tale fiction to include more bodily function humor, an egg-shaped Zach Galifianakis and a hairy but still sexy Salma Hayek. Then, he heads to the reference department of his local library to discover who really wrote the complete works of William Shakespeare. When all signs point to Neil Miller as the real author, Kevin gives up, realizing he’s out of time. So he brings sexy back and heads out to kidnap Amanda Seyfried so he can occupy Hollywood and start a revolution together… or get arrested.

Somehow, in the age of the Internet and information overload, Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has managed to complete production on a film that nobody ever knew was even in development. Apparently writing and directing Marvel’s upcoming, massive superhero team-up movie The Avengers hasn’t been keeping the creative visionary busy enough, because in his downtime he has penned an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, cast it, and put it in front of cameras. Wow, that shouldn’t help to make the Cult of Whedon any less fervent. Much Ado About Nothing is one of those Shakespeare comedies that takes several romantic couples and mixes up the pairings in order to produce momentary drama. I’m not sure if that’s really a legitimate way to categorize a work, but there are at least a few of them, I remember that much from college. The cast includes Whedon veterans Amy Acker and Alexis Denisoff playing the male and female leads Beatrice and Benedick, Franz Kranz and Jillian Morgese playing the secondary couple Claudio and Hero, and supporting roles by people like The Avengers’ Clark Gregg and additional Whedon vets like Nathan Fillion and Sean Maher. Maher himself confirmed on his Twitter account that this project isn’t a hoax by saying, “I promise you it’s the real deal and we’re VERY excited about it!” With those sorts of names put together in one cast, I’m sort of excited about it, too.

Does the world need another Romeo and Juliet? It’s unclear. The work is so heralded that it’s almost become a cliche, but there’s no denying the power of star cross’d lovers fighting against they’re own nature to make their secret marriage work. According to Variety, Hailee Steinfeld and Gossip Girl‘s Ed Westwick have already been cast – Steinfeld playing the iconic, title female role and Westwick playing Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin who ends up challenging Romeo to a crucial sword fight. Oscar winner Julian Fellowes is adapting the script from the play by Old Bill Shakespeare for director Carlo Carlei (who hasn’t done any directing since the mid-90s). Holly Hunter is also on board as The Nurse, so try and figure out what to make of all of this based on that list of names. It’s baffling, but sometimes that’s how great art gets made, right? Right?

This time a week ago I never would have imagined I’d stay up all night Thursday, having my own little tea and scones party, to watch a wedding of two people I didn’t know. Even if the festivities were thrown by the English Royal Family in honor of the most recognizable union of royal and commoner. It wasn’t until Wednesday that I caught the bug and started feeling a connection to these two genetically gifted kids who had the balls to get up in front of 15 billion people and pledge themselves to each other and their country. I had Royal Wedding fever, and I was going to do everything I could to make that moment last. The decision to keep many details of the wedding a secret and the media inflated love story spanning almost a decade was too much for even my cold heart to keep from melting. It was the real life movie version of all those BBC costume dramas and Jane Austen adaptations I spent years watching. The chaste, passionate love of two people who shouldn’t be together defying the odds, marrying, and starting a life so many of us will never experience. But at the same time it was relatable and sweet—just like Jane Austen always promised.

Every Sunday, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of James Cagney turning into a donkey, a jealous king who wants to steal an Indian child, an amateur acting troupe trying to present the story of a wall, and a group of young lovers who need a little help from the woodland narcotics to realize their undying emotions for each other. Plus, as a bonus, little Mickey Rooney cackles like a drunken hyena to no one in particular. It’s Shakespeare, so you know it’s smart.

Roland Emmerich loves destruction. If you can’t glean that little tidbit from his filmography — Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 — then you’re doing it wrong. The man loves to take something great, like Earth or humanity, and force us to watch it die in the most theatrical (not to mention implausible) ways. So it makes perfect sense that he will next tackle the work of William Shakespeare with Anonymous.