11.30.07
Winners: Gotham Awards ‘07
Best Feature:
Into The Wild
Best Documentary Feature:
Sicko
Breakthrough Actor:
Ellen Page – Juno
Breakthrough Director:
Craig Zobel – Great World of Sound
Best Ensemble Cast:
Talk To Me/Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Best Film Not Playing At A Cinema Near You:
Frownland
Tributes were given out to Javier Bardem, Roger Ebert, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Friedberg, Jonathan Sehring and Mira Nair.
Doomed: “Charlie Wilson’s War”
I read the script – it was good. Not sure if it is great. I have not seen the film, but some of those who have, say it’s good but not great. What’s more, it has been placed in the Comedy category for the Golden Globes. That is right. COMEDY. After reading the screenplay, I wondered if this might happen. This and Sweeney Todd have been the only two films that have been buzzed like crazy with no screenings, and Charlie was quickly put into the front runner seat, unfairly so?, I’m not sure, have to wait until I see it. I am going to be optimistic. I have to.
Nominations: Film Independant’s Spirit Awards ‘07
Best Feature
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Jon Kilik
I’m Not There, Producers: Christine Vachon, John Sloss, John Goldwyn, James D. Stern
Juno, Producers: Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich, Mason Novick, Russell Smith*
A Mighty Heart, Producers: Dede Gardner, Andrew Eaton, Brad Pitt
Paranoid Park, Producers: Neil Kopp, David Cress
Best Director
Todd Haynes, I’m Not There*
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park
Best Screenplay
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages*
Fred Parnes & Andrew Wagner, Starting Out in the Evening
Adrienne Shelly, Waitress
Mike White, Year of the Dog
Best First Screenplay
Jeffrey Blitz, Rocket Science
Zoe Cassavetes, Broken English
Diablo Cody, Juno*
Kelly Masterson, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
John Orloff, A Mighty Heart
Best Lead Actress
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Sienna Miller, Interview
Ellen Page, Juno*
Parker Posey, Broken English
Tang Wei, Lust, Caution
Best Lead Actor
Pedro Castaneda, August Evening
Don Cheadle, Talk To Me
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages
Frank Langella, Starting Out in the Evening*
Tony Leung, Lust, Caution
Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There*
Anna Kendrick, Rocket Science
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Margot at the Wedding
Tamara Podemski, Four Sheets to the Wind
Marisa Tomei, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Best Supporting Actress
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Talk To Me
Marcus Carl Franklin, I’m Not There
Kene Holliday, Great World of Sound
Irrfan Khan, The Namesake
Steve Zahn, Rescue Dawn*
Best Cinematography
Mott Hupfel, The Savages
Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly*
Milton Kam, Vanaja
Mihai Malaimare, Jr., Youth Without Youth
Rodrigo Prieto, Lust, Caution
Robert Altman Award
(Given to one film’s director, casting director and its ensemble cast)
I’m Not There, Director: Todd Haynes
Casting Director: Laura RosenthalEnsemble
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Bruce Greenwood
The Awards will be given out the day before the Oscars…Can’t Wait!
* indicates my prediction of who/what will win.
11.29.07
Annie Hall…La Di Da, La Di Da
The film that beat Star Wars for Best Picture in 1977. Big surprise. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton’s labour of love, a masterpiece. The way the story was handled was magical. The history behind the two shines through and the result is a masterpiece i will never forget. I am so getting it on DVD!
Fatac Rating: ***** (not that rating a classic is fair)
Feeling For Ruffalo
Let’s All Jump On The Kiera Bandwagon….
Kidman Reveals Crush on Jennifer Jason Lee….
I know Margot has no chance of returning to the Oscar race, and i have yet to see it, but I still love Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Lee….and they share a special relationship too, not to start any lesbian rumours….
And they look great here too in the November issue of Interview…
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a prick of note!
Personal opinion of course….
Flipping through my mothers December issue of Elle Magazine South Africa, paging my way to the article of the lovely Reese Witherspoon, I came across a quick 
interview with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In the introduction to the interview, it was written that in the interview, “the actor was not always amused,” and neither was I. I was in fact a little shocked at his attitude. Arrogant and cocky, neither bordering on humorous. I suppose as a rising star, and being a
nother actor quick to jump on the bad-boy-from-Ireland bandwagon, he’s entitled to his attitude. He perhaps thought he was too big for the interview, too big of a star to waste time being compliant. In the end it just made him look immature and unfriendly. I never did like him much anyway, I felt nothing for him in ‘Match Point’, he was barely good in ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, I will never watch ‘The Tudors’, and I thought he was perfectly used in ‘Mission Impossible III’, he should stay clear from anything that requires any real acting capabilities. But all that is just my opinion, after all that is almost all I am entitled to in this life. Plus, when I met him a while back, he was so rude to me. I was like “Dude,you are not even famous!” Now he is and I still hate him.
(click on the picture with the article to read it for yourself….)
11.25.07
Writer’s Strike – A Cause I Support
11.24.07
On Set: “In Bloom”
“In Bloom,” which has a new title pending confirmation, is a new film based on Laura Kasischke’s novel of the same title, and the story goes a little something like this…A wife and mother begins questioning her life – that being suburban and perfect, on the anniversary of a school shooting during which, her best friend (Eva Amurri) lost her life. The wife is played by Uma Thurman, and Evan Rachel Wood plays her younger self when she starts seeing flashbacks. She is transported into her life as a teenager again living life as any other teenage girl, thinking about boys, dreaming about the future and make a pack to leave their good-for-nothing hometown as soon as possible. The older Diana (Uma) is haunted by the strain she had with Maureen before the shooting. These memories obviously disrupt Diana’s now perfect life with her husband and daughter Emma. The more her current life unravel, so does the mystery surrounding the fatal day Maureen was killed.
Looks like a winner to me, but then again, I’m biased towards almost everything Evan does, she can do no wrong by me. Besides, she is the best at playing teen angst, is she not?
11.16.07
Festival Review: “La Vie En Rose”
After seeing this film twice now, I think my idea of the film has become clearer. I had never heard of Edith Piaf before seeing this film, and I am ashamed of that. After seeing the film the first time, I decided to read up about her, her life and her career. One thing became very clear to me, and that was that she lived a very hard and sad life, but she was able to build this incredibly confident persona and this huge career, which is soaring now, after her death, more than ever.
Director Olivier Dahan had to go to great lengths to sift through the facts of Edith’s life from her exaggerated tales, which she loved to tell. Even without the dramatised fiction, the story is very much a tear-jerker.Edith’s parents were street performers. Her mother was a singer and her father was a contortionist. She was born into a family where performing was a way of making a living. This was also an impossible lifestyle to raise a child in, so she was dropped off with her paternal grandmother, who just happened to run a brothel in Normandy.
One thing many people are criticizing the film over is its non-linear way of story telling. She didn’t live a normal life; it was full of emotional chaos and disorder. The film doesn’t try to make sense of a life but is structured to revolve around her music, her emotions and voice. It would go against every thing Edith stood for to try and show clarity or order when it never existed. This is not a conventional biography. It is an experience of the life of an artist and how this artist used music as a stable force in her life. Some say it is a biography of her talent.
Piaf’s magical voice could not be recreated by anyone, let alone Marion Cotillard, who manages to embody everything that was Edith Piaf, with the exception of her voice. They used original recordings and recreated them digitally, and the results were lip-synced in a way I have never heard. Marion Cotillard physically resembles Piaf in the film, but also gives a credible impersonation of her voice. Something within her as an actress just shines through, she is able to channel Piaf in every sense, and she gives one of the best screen performances of the year, in one of the best biographies in recent years.
Fatac Rating: ***½
Review: “A Mighty Heart”
Michael Winterbottom, the director, has a fascination with addressing the conflict between America and Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. This was shown in his previous films “In This World” and “The Road to Guantanamo”. As well-made and compelling as they were his latest offering, “A Mighty Heart” is a far lesser film. The film is more concerned with the plight of the victim versus the aim of the terrorists, than it is with staying in any specific genre.
It focuses on an American victim of the crisis of the Middle East. Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) is kidnapped by terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan, held to ransom and beheaded. The experiences and emotions of his pregnant wife, Mariane (Angelina Jolie) are dealt with in the film, which is exhilarating to watch. She has to deal with the fact that her husband disappears from the face of the Earth, and no-one, not the authorities, the Americans, the Pakistanis, can find a way to rescue him or figure out who the terrorists were.
As an audience, we know how the film ends, that is if we pay attention to current events. I knew a fair deal about the situation and happening before I saw the film, so I didn’t expect to be wowed or anything, even though the film is full of suspense and trill which, if I hadn’t known about, would have kept me on the edge of my seat. What I was looking for were genuine performances that could lift the story higher than a re-enactment of a hot event that it could have easily turned out to be if the talent involved wasn’t so committed to the story at hand.
The script by John Orloff is based on Mariane Pearl’s book which she wrote after the kidnapping, and the film was shot on actual locations, where possible, and this makes this film genuine and emotionally gripping.
Angelina Jolie’s performance as Mariane is devastating, and she is able to portray a woman who is an accidental hero, not on the battle field, but an ordinary person who was able to overcome devastation and still find it in her heart to forgive and never lose faith. Her love for her husband was extraordinary, and it truly comes across in the film. As much as I loved her performance in “Girl, Interrupted,” which won her an Oscar, her turn here is just as deserving for every accolade or nomination it receives.
Fatac Rating: ***
A Mighty Heart. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Written by John Orloff. Starring: Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman. Running Time: 108 minutes. Rating out of five stars
First Thoughts: 3:10 To Yuma (2007)
The western. The re-make. Two things I am generally sceptical about in this day and age. Well, not anymore. James Mangold, who has directed two of my favourite films Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted, delivered again.
The cast consisting of Russel Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, Dallas Roberts and Peter Fonda, were really good in an intense character study that is more focused on morality than being an action- packed roller coaster ride. It is one of the strongest cast performances of the year, and I would go as far as to say, look out for this come the SAG nominations. Ben Foster is (almost) able to steal the show as one of Wade’s gang members, he is phenomenally able to make one fear him, even though doesn’t appear to be anything worth fearing.
The story is about Ben Wade (Crowe), an gang member and outlaw who is captured and will be sent away to a prison, on a train, specifically, the 3:10 to Yuma. Dan Evans (Bale), a dignified rancher who is coming on hard times financially, and his two sons come across Wade and his gang as they are preparing to ambush an armoured stagecoach. After Wade is captured, Dan offers to take Wade to the train and therefore personally see that justice is done. He does this with a price. At the same time, Wade’s gang is off on a mission to rescue Wade, and this mission is lead by Charlie Prince (Foster). This conflict if interest sets off an intense character-driven plot that is far from being merely a shoot ‘em up film.
Fatac rating: ***½
3:10 to Yuma. Directed by James Mangold, written by Halsted Welles ,Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, staring Russell Crowe, Ben Foster, Christian Bale, Peter Fonda and Dallas Roberts, cinematography by Phedon Papamichael. Running Time: 117 minutes. Age Restriction TBC. Year: 2008. Rating out of five stars.
Festival Review: “Atonement”
This is one of the best films I have seen this year. Funny, heartbreaking, visually beautiful…What a knock-out of a film. Basically the film is about Briony (Saoirse Ronan), witnesses her sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) engaging in some rather compromising positions in two situations, and sees it as some sort of sexual abuse. Her curiosity and naiveté get the better of her when she is instructed to give her sister a letter on behalf of Turner, apologizing to Cecilia. Turner gives Briony the wrong letter, which spoke of Turner’s rather explicit wishes to perform a sexual act with Cecilia.
The drama cleverly shows events from several different points of view, and never once borders on anything less than magnificent. There is not a single scene one can define as a low point, but so many I can label a high point, especially the Turner’s scenes in Dunkirk and when an older Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) tells the truth about what happened to Cecilia and Robbie in the end.
Kiera is more mature in this role than ever before, even better than her role in Pride and Prejudice, meaning she may secure a second Oscar Nomination. Every actor/actress in the film performs to the best of their ability (especially Saoirse Ronan and Romola Garai). Joe Wright’s direction push this truly British masterpiece beyond anything Pride and Prejudice ever was.
Fatac rating: ****½
Atonement. Directed by Joe Wright, adaptation from Ian McEwan’s novel by Christopher Hampton, cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, edited by Paul Tothill, original music by Dario Marianelli, staring Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Brenda Blethyn, Vanessa Redgrave and Romola Garai, running time: 130 mins. Festival of Festivals 2007. Rating out of five stars.
Festival Review: “The Savages”
Jon and Wendy Savage (Hoffman and Linney) are estranged. In almost every sense of the word. From each other, their mother, their father, society…I could go on. After the death of Lenny’s (Phillip Bosco) girlfriend, the siblings fly to Sun City to see how things are going.
They discover that their father signed a prenuptial type arrangement and is now homeless. It is from this point that Jon and Wendy begin their transition in to true maturity and end up in the unenviable position of having to care for the father who never cared for them.
The performances by the entire cast are spot on great, aided by the direction of Tamara Jenkins, one of the many female directors making their mark in film this year.
It has been said by many that it seems to be the Noah Baumbach film he failed to make this year. There is nothing with this film that I can label as badly done, it’s almost perfect, more in touch with reality than even Little Miss Sunshine, an all time favourite of mine. And that is the closest thing to indie perfection in a long time.
