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Artist, musician and Italian horror actress Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni takes a stab at Macbeth. Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday, he being perhaps the greatest and most influential writers and dramatists in human history. Indeed, we own much to the man. Certainly, the horror genre owes its shirt to his often perverse pen. …

The post Demons 2 Star Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni Becomes Lady Macbeth in Lady M 5.1 appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender are on fire in Justin Kurzel’s searing Macbeth, Robert Zemeckis takes us up on to Philippe Petit’s high wire, and Dane DeHaan is James Dean

A question: how is it that we seem to get a new screen version of Hamlet once a decade or so, yet Macbeth (Studiocanal, 15) has remained largely untouched since Roman Polanski’s hefty 1971 version? If it wasn’t already the most wildly cinematic of all Shakespeare plays, Justin Kurzel’s stripped-back, blood-caked and fire-breathing new version is certainly out to prove the point. Some have complained that it loses too many words, yet in their place are vivid, scorched-in images: snow and sparks, heaving bodies in tangled states of violence, skies that bleed in saturated scarlet.

I honestly can’t remember which passages are missing. Kurzel finds such an intuitive visual language for the Scottish play that I...

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the Macbeths: It seemed to be perfect casting. Which is what makes this adaptation of William Shakespeare’s bloody tale of ambition spun out of control all the more disappointing. The latest film adaptation of the Scottish play, which premiered at Cannes this year and opened in U.S. theaters last weekend, boasts plenty of smart choices. It’s gorgeously shot, with the mud-soaked battles and the moody fog of the Highlands setting just the right foreboding tone. Director Justin Kurzel delivers a striking new take on Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane that thankfully avoids the inevitably silly image of soldiers approaching a castle whilst hiding behind tree branches. But (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?) the approach to the lead performances, especially Fassbender’s, is misguided. This is a very quiet “Macbeth,” one without the sound and fury the text demands.

Lady Macbeth: She’s one of William Shakespeare’s most iconic characters, a scheming, ambitious woman. You can see her as a manipulative temptress who pushes her husband to go to murderous lengths to steal the Scottish crown, or you can see her as a mother who’s lost her child and, in her loss, pours her love and her longing into her husband and guides him to his full potential — or as some mixture of both. In crafting the character of the two leads, the latest film adaptation of “Macbeth” embraces the Macbeths’ apparent childlessness and the death of their child, which is hinted at in just a few places in the text. The very first shot of the film shows the Macbeths’ dead child on a pyre. Directed by Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel (“The Snowtown Murders”), this “Macbeth” takes place in 11th century Scotland, transporting the 17th century...