Overview: This modern retelling of William Shakespeare's final masterpiece is an exciting, mystical and magical fantasy with Academy Award(R)-winner Helen Mirren (Best Actress, The Queen, 2006) leading a star-studded cast including Russell Brand (Get Him to the Greek) and Alfred Molina (The Sorcerer s Apprentice).

Blu ray Verdict: Now, whilst I'm a HUGE fan of Helen Mirren, I was much less familiar with Julie Taymor, and not sure what I was in for. If you're the same, then you can relax - this is brilliant, and I wish that Mirren and Taymor would do some other Shakespeare plays with Helen in the (strong, male) lead!

Aside from a few minutes in the very beginning, where I thought the verisimilitude of the storm interfered with actually being able to understand what the actors were SAYING - there weren't any problems with either the language or being able to follow the plot.

Despite changing of the gender of the lead character, all the other elements we expect from Shakespeare remain intact: elevated, aristocratic figures bickering over their positions or inheritance, a love story featuring the younger generation of characters, a comedic subplot running alongside the primary plot, etc.

And the acting was great top to bottom - those who weren't aware that Russell Brand could actually act will be very pleasantly surprised, and we get the amazing performances we expected from the "known" names. Reeve Carney comes off least well, but that is the fault of the character having so little to do (and most of THAT being to look attractive and moon over the young woman).

All in all, I was very happy I was able to be asked to review this and I hope you all get the chance to own/watch a copy of this great film soon also. This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.35:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

-Los Angeles Rehearsal -- Features Julie Taymor, Dijmon Hounsou, Russell Brand & Alfred Molina
-Raising The Tempest -- Julie Taymor Documentary About The Making Of The Movie
-Julie Taymor Audio Commentary
-Annotated Shakespeare -- View The Tempest With Audio Commentary By Renowned Shakespeare Experts Virginia Vaughan & Jonathan Bate
-"O Mistress Mine" Music Video
-Russell Brand Rehearsal Riff

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