Spoilers ahead!
Source: CC2K
This unearthed blog post post has not been revised since its original posting.
This blog entry is an unearthed blog post, pulled from one of several sources: my old personal blog; the pop-culture website CC2K; a now defunct website dedicated to my novel The Odds; or my now deleted Facebook account. A few entries may even be cobbled together from threads lifted from my now deleted Twitter account. My hope is to explore some of my old writing as I try to reclaim my focus and my mind. I plan to revisit, revise, and revamp each unearthed blog.
Despite some excellent performances, Julie Taymor’s take on Shakespeare’s swan song doesn’t quite work.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
I love Julie Taymor. I don’t always love her movies.
Watching her lavish new adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest brought me back to a lot of things — my adoration of the play, my impatience with the play, my early days writing for CC2K. I also found myself reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of film versus theater and how they challenge filmmakers who try to usher Shakespeare’s plays onto the screen.
I also found myself contemplating the role of special effects in moviemaking and how computer-generated effects still have the capacity to fail so utterly. I hate to shine so harsh a light on the special effects in a Shakespeare movie, but The Tempest is packed with some jaw-droppingly bad ones. They got in the way, when they should have helped the movie soar.
Continue reading “Review: Julie Taymor’s The Tempest”