Curio: Big on Bigelow
Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 9:30AM Alexa here. Kathryn Bigelow turns 61 today (really?), and she is just all kinds of awesome, no? Determined and intelligent while blowing past all considerations of gender, she makes films with meticulous pace and atmosphere that always rise above the mass. Zero Dark Thirty, her latest, opens on December 19th but is already enjoying rave reviews. I'm simultaneously glad she was the first woman to win a directing Oscar and appalled that it took that long for a woman to win one.
To wish this most formidable lady a happy birthday I dredged up some celebrations of her two best-known films.
Posters by voagar, Felix Schlater, and bd designs.
Curio objects (not posters) celebrating Point Break (1991) are after the jump
Bodhi commemorative plate by David Shafei.
Bodhi love card, available here.
Also, why not watch The Weight of Water, a somewhat-hidden treasure of her oeuvre and Near Dark, her vampiric cult classic, before Zero Dark Thirty arrives?
Reader Comments (5)
I am one of her biggest fans and can pretty much say that The Weight of Water is most certainly not a "hidden treasure." The movie is an absolute mess. That being said, it's always irked me a little bit that people call Point Break a guilty pleasure. Ain't nothing guilty about loving a masterclass in action directing.
I'm in shock that she turned 61! She looks two decades younger. Looking forward to Zero Dark Thirty!
Yeah, jtagliere, many people agree with you. I just thought there were many, many strong things about The Weight of Water, first and foremost Sarah Polley's performance.
Alexa, I'd be really interested to hear what you thought were the strengths of the movie. I, too, liked Sarah Polley's performance but I thought besides some lovely cinematography during the storm sequences, there were just too many misses instead of hits. I'd love to hear your opinion on why you feel the reverse: hits > misses. I couldn't believe the horrific Elizabeth Hurley performance/characterization, and I thought Sean Penn was equally terrible. I am a fan of the book the film was based on, and was thrilled to see Bigelow with the rights to the adaptation. At the time the movie came out, I was still running a Kathryn Bigelow fan page with a Sarah Polley pull quote about Bigelow's tenacity as a director running on the front page. I couldn't have been more disappointed with the film I saw. Maybe I need to revisit it.
Admittedly I came to it with low expectations, and I am a bit of a Sarah Polley fangirl, but I thought especially the period sequences were strong and convincing, mostly due to Polley. I found Penn and Hurley's characters trying, but that seemed to be the point, no? I actually thought they were both well-cast. Some of the images have stayed with me, certainly aided by the strength of the cinematography. But I agree with you that the film does lose it at the ending; the strands don't come together and it felt abrupt and confusing.