Live-action, animation, puppetry -- set to Beatles tunes

August 14, 2007 [...] upcoming Sony musical, "Across the Universe," Taymor is once again teaming with her frequent collaborator, composer Elliot Goldenthal -- the pair is best known for 1999's Shakespearean adaptation "Titus" and 2002's Academy Award-winning biopic "Frida." For more than two and a half years, the duo, along with music producer T-Bone Burnett, have been working on the project, which uses Beatles songs as the centerpiece of a unique love story. Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess play young adults torn apart by the turbulent political landscape of the 1960s, but Taymor says it was the notion of upholding the integrity of the world's most beloved pop music -- rather than recreating a specific era -- that proved the most daunting.

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