No one can accuse visionary director Julie Taymor of lacking ambition. Her strained take on Shakespeare's purported last play, The Tempest, starts by giving Prospero a sex change. The banished wizard eager to be reinstated as the Duke of Milan is now Prospera and played by the great Helen Mirren. The feminist angle works on a cerebral level, but never moves persuasively to the heart.

Peter Travers' Best (and Worst) DVDs of 2010

In an effort to (over)compensate, Taymor pours on the special effects. But the thunder and lightning are computer generated. The human touch Taymor brought to her stage production of The Lion King and her impressive 1999 film of the Bard's Titus Andronicus is curiously in absentia. The acting is — how to put it? — all over the place. Ben Whishaw's Ariel scores; Djimon Hounsou's heavy-tongued Caliban does not. Russell Brand gets laughs — the wrong kind — as Trinculo and Ferdinand never comes fully to life in the interpretation of Reeve Carney, who plays the title role in Taymor's Broadway musical version of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. I found myself wishing that Taymor would turn off the sound and fury and let The Tempest speak for itself. My wish wasn't granted.

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“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.