i am waiting for my hair dye to finish setting....

...so i figured now would be a good time to post...

so, today i watched the movie titus, julie taymor's adaption of Shakespeare's titus andronicus. i'm doing a project on taymor and so i thought i'd watch one of her films.

the movie was terrifying, horrific, violent and absolutely beautiful. taymor explores different aspects of violence - domesti violence; lustful violence; war; nihilism; etc. she's doesn't stylize the violence at all. on the dvd, there is an q&a session she did with columbia students who saw a screening of the movie. she said this:

“All of those productions, which had been theatrical, I had done stylized versions of violence. And finally I read this play and I thought “You can’t do that with this play.” First of all there’s so many acts that are of violence…There is a lot of stylization in the movie, but my thoughts were if you completely stylize it, yes you get to distance yourself in order to look at the action but it doesn’t get you on a gut level….
I immediately wanted to deal with the violence on two levels and to unsettle the audience by never knowing on what level you are experiencing something so that you don’t become numb by the elegant beauty of the stylization and you don’t become numb from the visceral reality which is what we do television.”

I don't know. The movie was beautiful done. She is definitely talented and she definitely got her point across. I'm not sure if I would recommend it. There were times i had to physically get up and walk away. but i also think its something people should think about. taymor's not afraid of showing the gore - but it isn't gore for gore's sake. It's truly exploring this side of our culture.

on a happier note - harvest garden vegetable wheat thins are amazing. as are mashed potatoes, which i am having for supper.

and school is going well. i'm done with college three months from yesterday. weird.

time to wash the hairdye out!