Titus: The Illustrated Screenplay

Richard Corliss, Time
[Julie Taymor] takes Shakespeare's goriest play and makes it vivid, relevant, and of elevating scariness. . . . [It is] a complex weave of word and image, and an early clue to where film might go in its second century.


Book Description
Featuring more than 80 photos (most in full color), the director's own production notes, and the complete shooting script-here is the stunning pictorial record of the extraordinary movie written, directed, and coproduced by Julie Taymor, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. This mesmerizing retelling of Shakespeare's comic tragedy Titus Andronicus is as visually stunning as it is theatrically charged. Filmed in Italy, with elaborate sets and the grand scale of real historical monuments from the Roman Empire and the Mussolini era, Julie Taymor's Titus is a work already being hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. The movie stars Academy Award(r)-winning actors Anthony Hopkins as the honorable but flawed Titus and Jessica Lange as Goth queen Tamora, as well as Alan Cumming, Colm Feore, James Frain, Laura Fraser, Harry Lennix, Angus Macfadyen, Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. The creative production team includes five-time Academy Award(r)-nominated production designer Dante Ferretti (Kundun); two-time Oscar(r)-winning costume designer Milena Canonero (A Clockwork Orange); two-time Academy Award(r)-nominated composer Elliot Goldenthal (Interview with the Vampire); director of photography Luciano Tovoli (Reversal of Fortune); and Oscar(r)-winning editor Francoise Bonnot (Missing).


About the Author
Julie Taymor, the director, screenwriter, and co-producer of Titus, is the two-time Tony Award winner for The Lion King (for directing and costume design), establishing her as the first woman to receive a Tony for directing a Broadway musical. One of the most imaginative, prolific, and respected directors and designers working in the performing arts today, she is also the recipient of an Emmy Award, two OBIE Awards, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, the first annual Dorothy B. Chandler award in theater, and numerous other accolades. A book of her work, Playing with Fire, was published by Abrams; Hyperion recently published her book The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway. A major retrospective of 25 years of her work will be touring nationally in 2000.


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Brilliantly realized and imaginatively staged, and featuring stellar performances by Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming and Harry Lennix, Titus is being hailed by critics as a masterwork and one of the most thrilling adaptations of Shakespeare ever filmed. This is the only book to feature Taymor's complete screenplay -- highlighted by stunning color movie stills, collages, production designs and behind-the-scenes photos -- most of which have never before been published. Accompanying the screenplay are the director's notes, describing the challenges of conceptualizing the play as a film for the big screen. This stunning pictorial record of the extraordinary movie also includes an introduction to the play and Taymor's work by Jonathan Bate, editor of the Arden Shakespeare Titus Andronicus and author of The Genius of Shakespeare. As he states: "Through her combination of fidelity and invention, Julie Taymor has made a movie of rare integrity.... She has fully respected both an ancient work of art and a modern company of screen actors. Where so many movies impress at the time but fade in the instant you walk out of the theatre, Titus keeps on growing in the imagination."


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