Take Three: Alfre Woodard

A great 1990s duet: PASSIONFISH with McDonnell & WoodardCraig here with Take Three. Today: Alfre Woodard

Take One: Passion Fish (1992)
After dismissing a string of unsuitable nurses, recently paralysed TV actress May-Alice (Mary McDonnell) opts to hire Alfre Woodard’s mysterious Chantelle in John Sayles’ Bayou drama Passion Fish. Chantelle enters the film out of nowhere, off a bus and into May-Alice’s house. She doesn’t let on any overt details about her life, but there’s a hint of intrigue about her, something amiss and troubling. It's evident in the slightly trembling nervous manner in which Chantelle goes about her new position. McDonnell’s icy actress will gradually thaw as a result of her dependency, but not before she attempts to make life miserable for Chantelle – who’s having none of it.

Chantelle is headstrong and defiant and she doesn’t suffer defeat readily. Woodard embodies these traits, but never adheres to over-familiar actorly tics in the way she conveys them. When wheeling May-Alice outside for exercise, Chantelle leaves her to fend for herself with a sarcastic motivational response.

Mary Alice: I want to go back inside!...It’s uphill!
Chantelle: So's life!"

Instead of merely showing us McDonnell’s abandoned reaction, Director John Sayles shows us Woodard's nurse pensively thinking in a swing chair. Chantelle is not the concrete-hard carer she likes to make everyone think she is. [more on Passionfish and two more takes after the jump]

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Curio: Posters by Daniel Norris

Alexa here.  Daniel Norris is a graphic designer and illustrator out of the UK who is also a film buff.  Lucky for us, in his free time from working on packaging for Kettle Chips and tomato sauce he works on film posters.  He's used a signature inkblot-silhouette style to create quite a portfolio of onesheets, looking to everything from Sci-Fi to indie to classics. (His style reminds me a bit of Peter Strain, another illustrator I'm a fan of.)  You can see more of Daniel's designs on his tumblr, where you can also find information on purchasing prints.  Here's a selection of my favorites.

Click for Weird Science, The Machinist and Rear Window...

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"I said, 'What kind of link are YOU?' "

Lists and Miscellania
Comics Alliance 50 comic book characters that resonate with LGBT audiences. Very few of them have made the trek to the movies. Just sayin'. Hopefully some day some of them will.
The Wrap wonders if Beasts of the Southern Wild can become a commercial hit. 
Hollywood Elsewhere on the Philistines who aren't into Magic Mike. 
Tom Shone on Brave Pro: the hair; Con: bear slapstick. Awww, I loved the bear slapstick.  
Thelma Adams interviews Michelle Williams on Take This Waltz 
Pajiba "Love is Dead Forever!" because the only appropriate response to the impending Tom Cruise / Katie Holmes divorce is total hysteria.
Scene Stealers  the ten most deliciously awkward moments in Wes Anderson's filmography? Written pre Moonrise Kingdom obviously because that's loaded with them.

Into the Future
/Film Screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive) will direct his first feature, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Two Faces of January with Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac. I have actually read this novel which is a rare thing when we're talking up "future movies". Sadly I don't remember it at all so I can't comment on the casting other than that I find that either of those faces is good for any month.
First Showing Luc Besson may follow up the De Niro / Pfeiffer Malavita with the adaptation of sci-fi French comic book Valerian. 

My Favorite Reviews / Essays o' The Moment
Wesley Morris on Moonrise Kingdom -Wes Anderson finally comes through
Norman Buckley on Birth like Vertigo, it will only gain in stature

Halfway House 2012. Lead Actress (Thus Far)

Don't you love to take stock every six months? At the very least it's a good excuse for list-making. Lists! Wheeee. If all Academy members did this before they sent in their nominee ballots in January, we might end up with a spread of nominees that wasn't so December slanted. I never decide who to vote for this early but I do draw up lists of performances I enjoyed /  respected to consider again later in the year when all the advertising rushes in an effort to shape the highly malleable collective subconscious and thus, votes.

If I had to draw up a ballot right now:

• Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  The movie is considerably less broad once it's reigned in by her warmth, laughter, and subtlety
• Valerie Donzelli, Declaration of War (France's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  She still has raw wound access to what must have been a highly traumatic experience (she and her ex-boyfriend play fictionalized versions of themselves trying to save their nearly fatally ill child) but the turn has a wide range of feeling and levity via mischievous romantic impulses and gallows humor.
• Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
  How soon till she's back at the Oscars? Maybe not for this... directly. 
• Stephanie Sigman, Miss Bala (Mexico's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  Wonderfully naturalistic. She just vibrates with impotent terror. 
• Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild 
  A force of nature even while nature is whipping up mythological force all around in "the bathtub" 

Oscar thoughts and other fine performances after the jump...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Silver Linings Playbook"

I apologize ahead of time for not including the trailer we are about to discuss in the post but I have a firm policy against ads ON ads. So when movie trailers come with ads SAY NO. I will not watch a commercial in order to see a commercial. Hollywood has tricked people into thinking that trailers are free cliff-note movies but no, they are just commercials. So, I won't. I won't! And all the embeds without ads were fuzzy so I can't. I can't.

Wait, I found one just as I was about to post this. Okay embedded. For you.

"Calm down crazy," quoth Jennifer Lawrence (and the Sassy Gay Friend before her)

But yes Silver Lining Playbook trailer is upon us and so we must break it down with the Yes, No, Maybe So™ system.

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