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“William Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy gets the aggressive visualization treatment in Julie Taymor’s big screen debut. To watch Titus is to discover a film that argues that the limit does not exist for what constitutes “over the top.” This doesn’t just shake the rafters, nor does it bl” read more
Great Performances: Oedipus Rex
“A filmed performance of Julie Taymor’s variation of the Igor Stravinksy opera, Oedipus Rex originally aired as part of PBS’ Great Performances series. If you’re still with me after that introductory sentence, I suggest you seek this out for its artistic daring and soaring theatricality. Some o” read more
“Produced as a part of PBS’ American Playhouse, an independent producer of high-quality television films for first-time filmmakers, Fool’s Fire is something of Julie Taymor’s entire career in microcosm. There’s an obsession with using puppetry and masks, the ostentatious imagery, the general ” read more
Vital Pop: 50 Essential Pop Albums
ALL-TIME 100 Revisited
“Winnie Mandela tries to have it both ways as a conventional biopic and as a warts-and-all glimpse into a contentious figure, but it fails at being both by never digging deep into the material. It’s all handsome surfaces, Clint Eastwood style cinematography (so much blue filter), and a solid lead p” read more
“A culmination of sorts of an artistic life, and the most deeply personal and revealing film that Jean Cocteau ever made. Testament of Orpheus is the final film in his Orphic trilogy, only this time Cocteau is Orpheus and the underworld is his own mind as we examine both the birthplace of his creativ” read more
8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements
“A collaboration between Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau, 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements is a quirky, avant-garde glimpse of a bunch of premiere artists having a lark. Shame that they didn’t invite the audience along with them. The title reveals the structure, a chessboard is a” read more
“A 16mm documentary of sorts made by Jean Cocteau at the titular villa, a vacation spot that would eventually feature prominently in his Testament of Orpheus, that surface textures is all about his “tattooing” of the walls but actually provides a glimpse into his artistry and process. Many of Coc” read more
““A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place.” So says Jean Cocteau in a written prologue for his most direct wrestling with the Orpheus myth. Here, he makes not only edits and additions, but entirely new wrinkles and full scale revisions to the myth, these add layers of strangeness, p” read more
“After the storied highs and artistically daring work of Beauty and the Beast, Jean Cocteau’s follow-up is something of a drastic comedown and a minor work. It’s the odd man out in his small canon. There’s no flights of poetic lyricism, no smoke-and-mirrors special effects that enchant with the” read more
“If adversity and strife make for great art, then that perfectly explains why Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is one of the towering greats of cinema. As the rubble and dust settled from WWII, Cocteau created this pristine and immaculate piece of fantasy cinema to rouse the collective spirit of” read more
“The Blood of a Poet is surreal, artistic film that moves and breathes like a piece of diegetic poetry and synthesizes mythology. The film builds itself around an artist’s creativity and the myth of Orpheus, chops itself into four chapters, and a series of oneiric images add disorientating flavor. ” read more