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I’ve always thought that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deserve their own alchoholic beverage. Turns out they do in fact have their own brand of popcorn – the “Rosencrunch and Guildenpop” popcorn, available at your local Trader Joe’s. Alas for me, as that list of locations shows, they’re only in the USA. I can’t quite justify a huge family holiday merely to get my hands on some and taste-test it for y’all…here's another description of the snack, and here's a photo.

Cafepress T-Shirts - “What would Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do? 1 – toss coins 2 – play word games 3 – die.” You know you need one of these t-shirts. Or note books. Or mouse mats. Or fridge magnets. Can you even contemplate living without one?!

Pop culture

Wikipedia has a list of various random references to the pair

The Simspson’s answer to Hamlet was “ Tales from the Public Domain” (season 13, episode 14), starring the talents of Rosencarl and Guildenlenny. You can watch the Hamlet section here. Good for last minute English revision! PS – do those costumes seem at all familiar?

The episode spawned a band name – Rosencarl and Guildenlenny are Dead. The band have this to say about it:

“RAGAD is basically Shakespeare meets Stoppard meets Groening meets two guys with limited musical sense. We call it "dumb" techno. Nothing to get hopes up about, just something to have fun with…It would be great to say that the band formed in the spirit of Tom Stoppard's humorous-yet-deeply philosophical style, that we are using a popular culture reference to make a point about something, to use the name recognition for something other than a simplistic joke, but that's just not true. Actually the band is quite lazy, and it was the first name we came up with while trying to find a suitable location to set up their state of the art recording equipment.”

Fangirl stuff

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Love - their slash community. If that’s your sort of thing (and times being what they are…J ) this is a wonderful, wonderful place, with a lot of well written fic on there. And even if it isn’t, I recommend it as a good place to find lots of nice people who love the film loads. I consider it my second home. Plus, I’ve never found a better spot for decent wallpapers, icons, fan art and mindless screaming dedication.

...and if you liked that, then the very inactive Rothman_love community needs a whole whackload of new members

Marry your favourite character online – does anyone else agree with me that this is plain wrong? I mean, some films yeh, but R and G? They’re certainly adorable, (and Tim and Gary are certainly fair game) but fanciable?! Anyway…link’s here if you want it…

Flip coins online.

A few weeks, three prototypes and several Amazonian rainforests were all that I needed to come up with a design for Rosencrantz' biplane. The full instructions are here. There are few things harder than writing from-scratch instructions aimed at amateurs for something you can do in your sleep - and this was my first bash at making an how-to guide for origami. Consiquently, if you get lost or confused or accidentally end up with a model Batmobile instead, it's my fault for being too obtuse. Email me with the step you're stuck on, and I'll rewrite it clearer. And if you print, print in colour. I use coloured lines in the instructions. If anyone succeeds, then I'd be interested to see a photo of what you end up with.

Coming as soon as I have the time...how to make paper boats...

And…

It might surprise you to learn that Tim Roth and Gary Oldman have acted together before (or, then again, it might not surprise you at all…you never know…) The earlier TV-movie Meantime stars the pair.The film is a downbeat, gritty social realism flick about nowhere characters doing nothing in particular while being unemployed in 80s Britain. It's relentlessly grim story of a family, particularly the two kids Mark and Colin, played by our Tim. He's a bit on the slow side, as well as being utterly adorable in a quiet, slow way. Gary Olman plays their skinhead buddy Coxy, and puts on a great, albiet unhinged, performance. Does anyone smile for the duration of this uber-bleak social realism flick? This is neither an easy nor enjoyable film to watch. All of the characters are lethargic and irritable, making this a stressful yet boring film to watch. But it has its merits. Probably. This is about as far from “my sort of thing” as it gets, but people who do like this type of thing claim it’s the best of its type. Best watched for a) good acting b) naturalistic filmmaking or c) downbeat-ness. eually wonderful GO stars as the slightly unhinged skinhead Coxy, and gets to leap on tables and have arguments in lifts. Aside from th4e lift bit, I did want to strangle him every time he was on screen. Which I suppose is very good acting. TR is adorable as Colin, the slow younger brother. It is ultimately touching once you get into it. A world of quiet tension. I had to put something else on afterwards to cheer up. All 11 chunks can be viewed on youtube.

~Part 1~ ~Part 2~ ~Part 3~ ~Part 4~ ~Part 5~ ~Part 6~ ~Part 7~ ~Part 8~ ~Part 9~ ~Part 10~ ~Part 11~

They also seem to have spent the rest of their careers narrowly escaping a third film together: Tim Roth was originally offered the part of Snape in the Harry Potter films. He turned it down to do Planet of the Apes (Gary Oldman, as you’re probably aware, played Sirius). He also turned down Johnny Rotten in Sid and Nancy (in which Gary Oldman played Sid). Come on, guys! We can only hope...

Both have directed their own film - Nil by Mouth and The War Zone, both bleak, hard to watch cheery-cheery movies starring Ray Winstone. He had this to say about comparing the pair: "The differences are that they are totally different directors. And the similarity is that they are very talented people. And neither of them is as good looking as me."

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