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Apr. 27th, 2011 06:49 am
Julie Taymor's "The Tempest"
Get this out on DVD so you can just watch Helen Mirren as Prospera, Chris Cooper as Antonio. David Strathairn as Alonso, Alan Cumming as Sebastian and Tom Conti as Gonzalo. Whilst Alfred Molina gives a great performance as Stephano, he does it in the company of Russell Brand's Trinculo.
Reeve Carney as Ferdinand is completely out of his depth - it's like he won some kind of competition in drama school.
The CGI (mainly Ben Wishaw's Ariel - which has reasonable performance under the pixels) is sometimes good, sometimes risible and Taymor cannot prevent herself from shouting her themes from the rooftops BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WITH ART AIMED AT AMERICAN AUDIENCES!
If Mirren's performance wasn't so good, I'd say it's not worth seeing (unless you're curious, of course.) But Mirren is excellent, her Prospera survives being drowned out by Taymor's directorial sound and fury, so this adaptation is not entirely missable.
But it wasn't as good as the first Tempest I'd seen with a female Prospero.
Reeve Carney as Ferdinand is completely out of his depth - it's like he won some kind of competition in drama school.
The CGI (mainly Ben Wishaw's Ariel - which has reasonable performance under the pixels) is sometimes good, sometimes risible and Taymor cannot prevent herself from shouting her themes from the rooftops BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WITH ART AIMED AT AMERICAN AUDIENCES!
If Mirren's performance wasn't so good, I'd say it's not worth seeing (unless you're curious, of course.) But Mirren is excellent, her Prospera survives being drowned out by Taymor's directorial sound and fury, so this adaptation is not entirely missable.
But it wasn't as good as the first Tempest I'd seen with a female Prospero.
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