The Tempest

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan, Amberly

Julie Taymor makes some strange stuff. Her take on that play by that guy is no exception. It is of course, very theatrical despite the awesome location shooting.

It looks very cool. Bizarre costumes, elizabethan but they have zippers all over them, like a punk rocker or something. Same goes for the music, suitably haunting and mysterious ethnic island sounding and then some off putting outbursts of hard rock.

It has a very good cast, I even really liked Russell Brand. Djimon Hounsou can be hard to understand at times but then I'm not entirely sure everything he is saying is english. But he has awesome make up. Helen Mirren is pretty cool as what used to be the male lead. Her introduction is like something from a 70's horror film though.

Ben Whishaw, who has usually been my favourite thing in everything he's in plays the androgens spirit Ariel. The way his effects work and his make up is... a little off-putting. Sometimes he has a male chest and sometimes a female. Not my favourite thing in this film.

Oh yeah and it's a musical now. Well maybe that's a bit too far, but there's quite a few bits of text that have been put to music. Ben Whishaw can sing?! Cool.

There are parts of this film that work fine but they are all so disparate, when placed together they don't form a very cohesive whole. Curious.