Last movie you watched......

He's not a tailor. He's a cutter.

This is such a fun - and dark - film. One note I'll add is it's on Prime, not Netflix.

 

Just found the Julie Taymor Tempest streaming.

 

That's gorgeous! Thanks!

What do you think of Derek Jarman's Tempest?

 

The Jarman is currently on Tubi . . .

The Tempest (1979)

Like the Taymor, I'm not sure it succeeds entirely.

But none of them ever has. The Tempest is so fantastical it requires the active imagination of its audience. Once you limit the play to things you can see, things you can film, you're - pardon the pun - sunk.

Best production I ever saw was this Chicago Shakespeare version. Chicago Shakespeare Theater: The Tempest

That said, of the films I've seen, I probably liked Prospero's Books best, if only for the uncorseted late period Sir John not-a-fuck-to-give Gielgud.

 

Sometimes Taymor lapses into pure eye candy. Still enjoyable but yeah, it's eye candy.

Greenaway's films tend to feel like those densely illustrated children's books that were popular in the 80s and 90s. This is not a complaint. He works in detail the way Kubrick worked in scale and the result is a treat for the eyes even when the content can be horrific. Thinking of Pillow Book and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover.

I love Prospero's Books because he addresses the physical evidence of a life journey through the written word and at the same time there is this continual flux between the library as a living, dynamic thing in its own right and the libraries we keep in our heads and on the shelves as embodiments of who we are. Is it a paen to bibliophilia? I think it could be seen that way.

As I get older, my appreciation for Mazursky's Tempest grows. I can't remember if he broke the fourth wall or not. (It's been a while.) Maybe Caliban did? I bring this up because there is an intimate feel to this interpretation that so many filmed versions of Shakespeare's works lack.

 

The Mazursky's up on Apple TV. I'll give it a look and report back.

I haven't seen it in years.

And the answer to this, Is it a paen to bibliophilia? is yes.

 

I watched the most recent Thor the other night. Ugh. My least favorite of the Marvel films.

 

Barbarian; wow that was well done. Great story and social commentary.

 

Saw this today. Great movie, in some ways a hard watch.

 

I rewatched the Jarman, and my sense of it now is very much my sense of it then. Very 70s. Very hairy. Too mannered, too slow - but still dig the candlelit indeterminacy of the location - trapped in the mansions of Prospero's mind, etc. - but it lurches and drags from scene to scene.

Actor sidebar:

Karl Johnson, who plays Ariel in the Jarman Tempest, shows up 40 years later as the Fool in the Anthony Hopkins King Lear.*

Johnson is lowkey a great Shakespearean.


* which itself is better than average, with a great cast, including Emma Thompson and Jim Broadbent and Florence Pugh, Emily Watson and the aforementioned Andrew Scott.

 

Jarman doesn't mind making his audience wait for something to happen. Sometimes his movies border on anxiety-inducing. Agree with you about the cast.

Thinking of veering off into some silly fun with 10 Things I Hate About You. This is an instance when the sum of its parts almost, but doesn't quite, hold up. Julia Stiles and Larissa Oleynik are fearless in their respective anger and bubbly optimism. Too many versions of The Taming of the Shrew detooth the arch nature of these two characters in order to make a pretty, pretty love story. I really like their performances here. Larry Miller is a decent foil for them.

I have some misgivings about Heath Ledger's Patrick Verona. He seems to have wandered in from a John Hughes movie.

Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz should have had more time as the Greek Chorus.

 

My problem with most of the updates like these is the loss of the language.

If all you're keeping from the original play is the plot, I'm not interested.

Shakespeare lives mostly in the poetics rather than the dramatics.

I cop to my snobbery in this regard.