News like this is what I wait for when writing about movie news -- announcements that merge so many good things that you can't help but get the tingle of excitement. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Julie Taymor is taking on William Shakespeare yet again, and with one starry-eyed and stellar cast. Strike that ... THE stellar cast.

This time around, we get The Tempest, but with a spin -- there's a bit of gender bending. Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan who became a sorcerer, is getting a sex change so that Helen Mirren can play the part. The lovely Mirren will be joined by Jeremy Irons, who will play Prospera's brother Alonso, Djimon Hounsou, who will tackle Caliban, Russell Brand as the jester Trinculo, Alfred Molina, who will be the drunken Stephano, Ben Wishaw as the spirit Ariel, and Felicity Jones as Prospera's daughter, Miranda. Oh, but that's not all -- Geoffrey Rush is in negotiations to play Prospera's ol' ally and adviser, Gonzalo. Since things are being changed up a bit, here's how THR describes it: "Shakespeare's play mixes romance with fraternal politics and the supernatural. As revised for the screen, it will center around Prospera, her daughter Miranda (Jones) and a shipwrecked crew full of Prospera's enemies."

After seeing Taymor's Titus, I never dreamed another Shakespeare adaptation could compare, until now. I say this having seen every single one of Will's plays performed at least once, and thinking that Patrick Stewart's Prospero was practically untouchable. But now, with this cast? I'm in love.

But still, Taymor is changing things up, so sound off below: Taymor, gender-bending, and The Tempest -- yay or nay?

Some might question whether Brideshead Revisited, the classic novel by Evelyn Waugh, needed to be revisited in a film adaptation; the novel, after all, has been adapted once before in a lengthy and well-beloved British television serial. Fortunately for fans of Waugh's work, this film version of Brideshead, directed by Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane) off a screenplay written by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, is beautifully shot, painstakingly directed, and well worth watching. For the most part, the filmmakers avoid mutilating Waugh's work, although the end result does place a greater emphasis on certain aspects (romance) and limit or eliminate others altogether (the brilliantly written discourses on religion and love that permeate the book).

The film is shot in Castle Howard, also the setting for the miniseries version, and Brideshead itself is a majestic, imposing character that looms over all who encounter it. The screenplay is rather a masterful adaptation; the film handles the compression of years through the storyline with a bit of book-ended time-jumping to both introduce us to the lead characters and close out the story, and Brock and Davies do an able job of whittling the story down to meet the needs of a cinematic experience without losing the feel of Waugh's novel in the process.

One of my favorite classic novels, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, is coming your way in a new adaptation starring what looks to be a perfectly suited cast. Matthew Goode, (Match Point, The Lookout) stars as Charles Ryder, the tale's protagonist and narrator, who befriends the wealthy Sebastian Flyte (Ben Whishaw). When Sebastian brings Charles for a visit to his family's estate, Brideshead Castle, Charles meets Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell, Cassandra's Dream).

Emma Thompson plays Lady Marchmain, Sebastian and Julia's aristocratic mother, a Roman Catholic for whom her husband, Lord Marchmain, converted his faith from Anglican; in the book, at least, Catholicism is an influence on both the lives and conversations of the characters, especially Lady Marchmain, who uses the duel thumbscrews of guilt and manipulation to control others ... this is a character Thompson can really sink her teeth into, and I look forward to seeing her take on the role.

I loved Tom Tykwer's Perfurme: The Story of a Murderer, starring Ben Whishaw as a sociopathic serial killer. Whishaw's performance in that film -- in which he had very little dialog and had to convey almost everything through facial expression and body language -- was just outstanding. In poking around IMDb a bit while writing some Sundance reviews, I found out that Whishaw (most recently seen in Todd Hayne's I'm Not There) has three new projects lined up, and I'm excited about all of them.

First up is The Restraint of Beasts (currently in post-prod), an adaptation of Magnus Mills's first novel. The film is being directed by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, whose film My Summer of Love back in 2004 first brought Emily Blunt to notice.The darkly comedic story is about an unnamed supervisor (presumably Whishaw) working with two Scottish high-tensile fence builders in the countryside and "accidentally" killing people along the way by day and hitting the local pub at night. I have the book on reserve to read before the film comes out -- I like Mills's work but I've not read this one yet. If this film does well, perhaps it will be the beginning of a series of adaptations of Mills's books.

Todd Haynes is one of the most intelligent filmmakers our country has to offer. The question remains, however, whether his intelligence allows for any emotion to come through in his films. I think it does, but it's not an obvious, worn-on-your-sleeve type of emotion; it's the type that takes a little self-analysis to discover. For example, his great film Safe (1995), which was voted the best film of the decade in the Village Voice poll of 1999, left me feeling queasy and unpleasant, and my initial reaction was to blame the film for it. But those were precisely the types of emotions I was supposed to be feeling after seeing a story about a sick woman. Haynes deliberately designed the film with a kind of emptiness -- and refused to answer the question as to whether or not his heroine was actually sick, and when the lead character joins the "cult" in the film's final stretch, Haynes does not invite us to go with her, so we're left in the lurch, so to speak.

Jean-Luc Godard, another intelligent filmmaker, once said that the best way to critique films was to make one. Haynes did precisely this with Far from Heaven (2002), which more or less used a Douglas Sirk framework to discuss Sirk's films as well as a more modern look at racism and homophobia. (The critics' group I am a member of, the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, gave our 2002 Best Director award to Haynes.) Now Haynes does it again with his exceptional new I'm Not There, a deconstruction of the biopic as well as a fascinating look at the cult of celebrity, and, on a deeper level, the celebrity as a godlike being with answers to all our questions. Whereas most biopics are made solely for the purpose of providing a rich centerpiece role (and, hopefully, an Oscar) for an ambitious actor, Haynes deliberately subverts this by casting seven different actors -- of all different ages, races and even sexes -- to play Bob Dylan.

You probably aren't familiar with him just yet, but Ben Whishaw is an actor worth taking note of. He was nominated recently for the BAFTA Rising Star award (Eva Green won it), mostly for his starring role in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which was one of my favorite films of last year. He's also been racking up roles in which he plays famous people (one day he could even catch up to Val Kilmer and Gary Oldman). Last year he was Keith Richards in Stoned, this year he can be seen as one of many Bob Dylans in I'm Not There and now he's in negotiations to portray the poet John Keats in Jane Campion's Bright Star.

The period romance takes place in the early 19th century, focusing on Keats' romance with Fanny Brawne, who has already been cast with Australian actress Abbie Cornish (who is rumored to also be in talks for the next Bond film.) The couple's romance only lasted a couple years before Keats' health deteriorated due to his suffering from tuberculosis. He died a year after they separated, at the age of 25. As much as we could do without another tragic, tear-jerking romance film, with Campion behind the camera this could be one of the better ones. And in addition to further boosting the careers of both Whishaw and Cornish, it could, as many Campion films are good for, garner some acting nominations for the pair as well. Next up for Whishaw is a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Casting bites for this past weekend:

• Earlier this month, Erik brought news of Lindsay Lohan backing out of her role in the upcoming Oscar Wilde adaptation, A Woman of No Importance. Now, according to a slew of sources, Lohan has been replaced with none other than Jessica Biel. A few years ago this might have seen like a strange replacement, when La Lindsay wasn't boozing it up, and Biel was more known for screams and underwear dancing. However, after a surprising stint in The Illusionist, this could very well be a blessing for Importance. At the very least, it should have much less production drama and gossip.
• I'm sorry fans of the original miniseries, but Brideshead Revisited is getting definitely getting made, and the film has found its leading men. As I previously reported, Julian Jarrold was looking to bring the Evelyn Waugh novel to the big screen. Now The Hollywood Reporter has shared the stars of the film -- Matthew Goode (Heck from Imagine Me & You) and Ben Whishaw (Stoned, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer). Goode will be Charles Ryder (previously played by Jeremy Irons), and Whishaw will be Sebastian Flyte (previously played by Anthony Andrews).
• A whole slew of names and roles have been added to the international film, Adam Resurrected. In December, we brought you news of the upcoming film, which had already signed Jeff Goldblum in the lead, and Willem Dafoe as a co-star (his role has since been released -- that of a concentration camp commandant). German actress Veronica Ferres, who has been added to the cast, says of the film: "There have been many movies about the Holocaust, but this is the first one where Americans, Israelis and Germans have worked together." And she's right -- the rest of the international cast include: Hana Laszlo, Evgenia Dudina, Joachim Król, Juliane Köhler, Ayelet Zurer and Moritz Bliebtreu from Run Lola Run.
  

According to Screen Daily, Todd Haynes is finally finished casting I'm Not There, his weird-ass Bob Dylan biopic. The movie, which is actually going into production on this very day in the rather pedestrian location of Montreal (it was originally reported that the shoot would take place in Romania), has gained attention because a rotating cast will be playing Dylan, and names from Oprah Winfrey to Michelle Williams have been bandied about as possible Bobs. Disappointingly, it turns out that only a handful of the slew of names already connected to the film will actually play Dylan (a different actor will represent each "different period or artistic phase of his life"): Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett and Ben Whishaw will be joined by young African-American actor Marcus Carl Franklin in the role -- and that's it. While David Cross, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood, Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams ARE in the film, they're sadly not going to get to play Dylan. Which, honestly, totally sucks. I'd give anything to see David Cross singing Lay Lady Lay.

We haven't heard much about Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer since the cast was announced last March. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, and Ben Whishaw, the film is an adaptation of a German novel of the same name that has been "hailed as one of the most influential works of German literature in the past two decades." The novel tells the unendingly bizarre story of an 18th century man (Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, played by Whishaw) who has remarkably sensitive sense of smell but lacks any discernible personal scent. His career as a perfume artist "take a dark turn" when he becomes obsessed with bottling the scent of "a young virgin." I don't want to spoil anything here, but what with the title and everything, I'm a little worried about the virgin's lifespan.

Out of nowhere, a German teaser for the film has emerged, and it's creepy as hell. Something about the way she pauses before screaming makes it much, much scarier than the normal shrieking any woman would do when she finds she's being sniffed by a random guy she didn't even know was there. Yikes.

The movie opens in Germany in September and in other European territories in the late fall and early winter. There is currently no US distributor.

[via AICN]