Director Julie Taymor will have some interesting press duties this winter: On the one hand, she’ll have to talk about how she tackled Shakespeare, and on the other, she’ll be explaining how she adapted Stan Lee. It’s the latter project, her Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, that has everyone buzzing (endless delays, a score by Bono, and some deliciously insane costume choices will do that for you), but she’s also got her big-screen adaptation of The Tempest coming in December, and a new trailer has come out to serve as a reminder. Though The Tempest wasn’t that well-received at its Venice Film Festival premiere, at least in trailer form there’s plenty of eye candy, including (but not limited to) a wand-happy Helen Mirren, beautiful Hawaiian scenery, a romance involving Taymor’s Spider-Man lead Reeve Carney, and a floating, naked Ben Whishaw. (Your mileage may vary, however, on how tolerable you find Russell Brand’s constant mugging or the green-screen effects and in-frame embellishments that make the film look like an educational CD-ROM devised by Peter Greenaway.)
