Podcast: Being Macbeth's Lost Daughter (Who Has No Time To Die)
Monday, January 17, 2022 at 8:43AM Nick and Nathaniel reunion part two (of three!). This past weekend we had a mammoth talk trying to cover everything we've been catching up with or watching again. So we've split this podcast into two. Apologies that it ends on an ellipses but we live in franchise culture so you're used to it by now!
62 minutes
00:01 Indie critical darling Test Pattern
07:40 The ensemble work in Mass with a shout-out to Martha Plimpton's revelatory work
15:50 Admiring The Tragedy of Macbeth ...especially Kathryn Hunter
24:20 Nick is obsessed with The Lost Daughter and tells us why. We particularly dig into Maggie Gyllenhaal's direction and how hot smart people are
42:00 An unexpected defense (albeit with several reservations) of Being the Ricardos. We both love Nicole Kidman in it (sorry haters) but we wish Aaron Sorkin would stop directing his own stuff
49:23 No Time To Die... franchise culture, changing times, and the Daniel Craig era.
1:01:30 To be continued...
You can listen to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify or download the attachment below. If you missed our previous recent discussion covering a full dozen 2021 movies, that's here.
Reader Comments (13)
I think it's unfair to call people haters regarding their opinion whether they like Kidman in BTR or not,I am a longtime Kidman fan I was there watching when Bangkok Hilton premiered in the uk in 1989 but she failed to convince me this time round but i'm no hater of her or her work in the film it just didn't do it for me.
Now Martha Plimpton on the other hand simply floored me and the film itself,she was definitely the best out of the 4 and they were fantastic too,why no awards for her.
Thanks for the comments on BTR. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I'm not a Sorkin fan, but I still find the discourse on it so odd. People seem to insist on a comedy, as if Lucille Ball in real life was tripping and madcapping her way through life.
Looking forward to listening to this! It might just be me, but the podcast wouldn't play or download on apple podcasts for me, even though it appeared on my list hours ago!
@Carlos - it's not just you! I'm having the same issue, can't play or download the new episode. It's happened to me a few times with this (and only this) pod. Not sure what the issue is!
@ Mr Ripley79: I can't speak for Nat personally, but I don't think he calls people who don't like BTR or Nicole's performance in it as haters. I assume it's for the people who exaggerate their hate toward both and I don't blame him.
I like Nicole's performance but even I can acknowledge that BTR is average; however if you read the pans even on some well regarded publications like NY Times, it reads like as if it's one of the worst movies made and for me, the criticism reads way over the top. You can not like a movie or performance but it's how you present it. Like I don't care for Stewart or Spencer but I won't go on and on trashing them in over the top manner.
sfenton24 & carlos -- sorry. i dont know what's going on with apple and I haven't been able to figure out who to connect / how to contact them. They have so many issues with this podcast but the other services seem to work fine which is why i embedded spotify here.
Drew -- thank you. that is indeed what i meant. It's fine to not think it's one of her very best performances (i don't) but to say it's terrible strikes me as really having some performative hatred/somethign against the movie / casting at all and not actually reacting to what's onscreen. Because, let's be honest, Nicole Kidman's second tier work is often better than a lot of people's first tier work.
"To say it's terrible strikes me as really having some performative hatred/something against the movie / casting at all and not actually reacting to what's onscreen.
Sorry but it has nothing to do with that at all,I think it's lazy writing to dismiss people as haters when it's just the opinon of one against another,what I saw onscreen just did not convince me she was Lucille Ball just like Michelle Williams didn't as Marilyn or Kristen as Diana and certainly not in the way Angela Bassett did despite looking unlike Tina or Daniel Day Lewis did as Lincoln,I enjoyed the recreation scenes,it was Bardem,the costuming of Nicole,the much better Nina Arianda and the fact Kidman and the movie weren't very funny apart from Simmons and Arianda,I didn't expect a laugh riot but some humour would've helped.
@MrRipley: I hear Nathaniel's tongue firmly in his cheek when I read "sorry, haters," maybe because I've heard him use that line in life (which usually makes me laugh), but I hear what you're saying. Not meant to cast aspersion on any individual reaction, from love to hate. I think we've been enjoying these weekend conversations of trying as much as we can to approach these films and performances for how we see them working, away from the often intense and sometimes (including from us, I'm positive) inflaming or distorting contexts of first release AND of awards season, and all the more so when certain artists and genres tend to polarize, as Kidman, Sorkin, and Ricardos all seem to do. It's one of the reasons I stopped reading and posting so much, on my own site and others I loved; increasingly caught this habit in myself. So please.take anything we say on this score, even in a toss-off phrase meant to be funny, as an ironic j'accuse to ourselves as well!
Thank you for this thoughtful talk! I've now tempered my expectations for The Tragedy of Macbeth, and "Mary McDonnell-ing" is EXACTLY what Dakota Johnson is doing in The Lost Daughter, wow.
I'm eager for you two to watch France, which shows Léa Seydoux to far better effect than the Bond. And The Novice!
To me, "Being the Ricardos" is an abomination, simply put.
The (lack of) directorial creativity, the screenplay, the makeup, the acting, everything.
The gap from Best Actress 2021 (McDormand) to Best Actress 2022 (Kidman, possibly) will be without parallel.
"Because, let's be honest, Nicole Kidman's second tier work is often better than a lot of people's first tier work."
Haha...I can say that about Blanchett and some others as well.
I don't hate Kidman at all but I just hated her performance in BTR and it's not something I intellectualize or analyze at depth. It's instinctive and how I reacted to her gestures, her voice, her 'chemistry' with Badem (that performance is even more intolerable to me), etc. Same thing with Lady Gaga in HOG or Vicky Krieps in Bergman Island. Whereas I was immediately drawn to say, Ruth Negga in Passing or Renate Reinsve in WPITW or to a lesser extent Stewart in Spencer. I think when it comes to actressing, we're all touched by wildly different aspects and nuances.
Finally and belatedly got to listen to both this and part 1 - what a delight! You guys really should do this more often.
Interested to hear your thoughts on THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which I personally loved but y'all make good points about the truncation and the sudden dialing up. It didn't bother me so much (and I actually thought McDormand was quite good) because I'm not sure the play itself really explains the sudden turn - it's like the Macbeths fucked around & found out, so to speak. Agree, though, that this adaptation was much more about the design, staging, and mood-setting than the language per se.
Conversely, I admired but didn't love THE LOST DAUGHTER as much as you guys, but you make me want to watch it again.
As for BEING THE RICARDOS, I'm in the camp that's decidedly meh on both the movie and Kidman's performance - fine, but not Oscar-worthy - though the hatred is definitely overstated. I don't mind that it wasn't all comedy all the time, but it (and she) was just so dour for most of it, it ended up feeling tonally one-dimensional. (At least Bardem flexed some real charm, even though I wouldn't nominate him for anything either.) And while you're right that I don't think anyone involved with the movie was cheering J. Edgar Hoover - that part of the podcast made me LOL - the insertion of a phone call directly from him was just so...cheesy. Anyway, my overall take on the movie is that it was dealing with interesting material in a not very interesting way.