Film Corner!

Coming Soon: The Tempest


I honestly do not even know how to begin to do a transcript of this video that would do it any kind of justice, as it's cut more to highlight the inimitable and extraordinary visual direction of Julie Taymor. Broadly, it is a trailer for Taymor's upcoming adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, featuring a series of quickly edited images from the film, steeped in the rich saturation of color that's a hallmark of Taymor's style. In the trailer, we see that Helen Mirren has been cast as Prospera, Djimon Hounsou as Caliban, Russell Brand and Alfred Molina as Trinculo and Stephano, Chris Cooper and Alan Cumming as Antonio and Sebastian, and Felicity Jones and Reeve Carney as Miranda and Ferdinand.

I imagine that a lot of people are going to have the same reaction as Gabe (who gets the hat tip), which is "Shakespeare + Russell Brand = WHOOOOOOOOOOOOPS." LOL. And I can't say I blame him/them, because, hello, Shakespeare + Russell Brand really seems to = WHOOPS. But to brashly mix a math metaphor with a grammar metaphor, what (I hope) we have here is an I before E except after C situation, where C=Julie Taymor. (What?) What I'm saying is that she's a rule-changing variable. A wild card, if you will (for those of you who were waiting for one last metaphor so you could make a lovely autumnal metaphor soup).

What I'm saying is that Julie Taymor is kind of a genius, and I really loved Titus, and I think The Tempest could be, like, brilliant.

And I can't wait to see it.

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