Word: taymor
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...difficult to not remember director Julie Taymor’s last effort, the much-lauded big-budget adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus. That film was notable for, if nothing else, its brash and overwrought self-indulgence; it was a true exercise in almost surreal stylization. It marked Taymor as a new visual force in American cinema and was simultaneously criticized for its over-the-top severity. Strangely enough, the occasionally laughable audacity of Titus is sorely missed in this lush but uninspired production...
Both are capable actors, particularly Molina, but their performances harbor an undercurrent of misdirection, as if in every take Taymor almost got it. Whenever the two of them aren’t arguing over Rivera’s adulterous behavior, their relationship seems forced at best, and at times almost cheesy. Taymor can’t seem to decide at times whether she’s making a story of a torturous and long-lasting love affair (and one that’s not very interesting to watch in this particular adaptation), or a serious analysis of the motivations...
...Metamorphoses takes a tougher, more rewarding tack. It doesn't turn away from human troubles and tragedy; it looks for their larger meaning, their place in the divine scheme, the way they can lead to understanding, acceptance and (with luck) redemption. They also make for great stories. Like Julie Taymor's The Lion King, Metamorphoses is avant-garde theater at its most vital and ingratiating. Disney, take note...
...Like Taymor's theater work, Zimmerman's harks back to these innocent, childlike reactions. "I'm from Nebraska, and Willa Cather is the great Nebraska author whom I've ignored until this age," she says. "But in [Cather's] Song of the Lark, there's a character who says she will never be the artist she was as a child. I have very much that same feeling: that the ability to take something banal or simple and make it into something else is a skill that is in the realm of childhood...
...Fellowship, the $500,000 "genius grant" awarded for brilliance above and beyond the call of duty, a prize never before given to a classical performer. (Previous arts fellows include avant-garde jazzman Ornette Coleman, modern-dance choreographer Mark Morris, indie filmmaker John Sayles and The Lion King's Julie Taymor.) "It was a complete surprise and a total shock," he says, with happy amazement warming up his well-bred English accent...