Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Nostalgia Tripping

Curbed has been tripping for weeks on the redo of the LES into a '60s psychedelic wonderland, and it seems we might finally be about to peak:

It's almost time for the Lower East Side's pyschedelic closeup as shooting day for Julie Taymor's Across the Universe draws neigh. ... With less than 24 hours until shooting begins, the crazed squad of neighborhood refurbishers are hard at work this morning turning the Clinton/Rivington nexus into even more of an Haight-Ashbury wonderland.

So who is Julie Taymor and what is Across the Universe, you ask? Julie Taymor is a babyboomer theater actress and a "puppet artist." If that wasn't enough to kill any interest I might have in this flick, here's the clincher:

Across the Universe is a romantic musical told mainly through numerous Beatles songs performed by the characters. A young man from Liverpool comes to America during the Vietnam War to find his father. He winds up in Greenwich Village, where he falls in love with an American girl who has grown up sheltered in the suburbs. Together they experience the sweeping changes of America in the late 60's.

Puppets on a psychedelic trip, singing Beatles songs -- now that I would go see.