Distant Relatives: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blue Valentine

Robert here with my series Distant Relatives, which explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blue Valentine explore the same territory but come at it from entirely different angles. Woolf is deliberately theatrical, full of delightfully big performances, long monologues, and crescendoing clashes. Everything that's wrong with George and Martha's relationship gets said and said again. Blue Valentine is insistently realistic, filled with small moments and quiet regrets. All that's wrong with Dean and Cindy's relationship is encompassed by things gone unsaid. Ultimately though, both are marriages on the brink of collapse, a subject covered many times since the invention of film, or the narrative story itself. What makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Blue Valentine interesting companion pieces is that both juxtapose a middle-aged couple with a young couple.

A Tale of Four Couples

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, introduces us to the middle-aged collegiate couple George and Martha (Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, of course) as they're introducing themselves to a younger couple Nick and Honey (George Segal, Sandy Dennis). Nick is a new teacher at the school, filled with ambition. George is not. Honey is a fragile little thing. Martha is not. Over the course of one night filled with lots of booze and BS, both relationship, but particularly George and Martha's, for that's the important one, will be bent to their breaking point. The middle-aged couple in Blue Valentine are Dean and Cindy (Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams). Dean is a bit of a layabout and treats life as if it were as easy as he wishes it were. This leaves the majority of the work to fall to Cindy who can't really find the time in her schedule for anything resembling fun and at this point has pretty much given up on wanting to. And the young couple in Blue Valentine are the same Dean and Cindy, at the beginning of their life together, filled with love and optimism. It's not a "feel-good picture."

This isn't to say that the young Dean and Cindy are directly equatable to Nick and Honey or that the older Dean and Cindy are the same as George and Martha... (more after the jump)

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "My Week With Marilyn"

Visual information was a long time coming with My Week With Marilyn, but now at last the trailer for the film has arrived giving us a peek at Michelle Williams as Hollywood's most famous blonde bombshell and the story of a diversion with a reporter during the filming of The Prince and the Showgirl.

Dougray Scott and Michelle Williams as Mr & Mrs Arthur Miller

In the trailer we see lots of Michelle as Marilyn and a pissy Sir Kenneth Branagh as Sir Laurence Olivier. Judi Dench seems starstruck, Dominic Cooper annoyed, and Eddie Redmayne appropriately in over his head as the young man she takes up with.  Let's break it down. Do we wanna see it and why?

Breakdown and full trailer after the jump.

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Interiority vs Exteriority. Olsen vs. Knightley

Anecdote / Conjecture time. I finally caught the Sundance hit Martha Marcy May Marlene (thoughts forthcoming but definitely in the "must-see!" division) which is the star-making, or at least actress-making, debut of 22 year-old Elizabeth Olsen who is the younger sister of the famous/infamous Olsen Twins.

Critics screenings at the New York Film Festival often end with a mini press-conference and the writer/director Sean Durkin and Olsen (who seems to go by "Lizzy") were on hand today to answer questions. If you've ever been to a Q&A you'll know that most people preface their question with some sort of comment about their own feelings for the movie -- usually ass-kissing praise since the stars are present and stars have wondrous heinies.

One reporter, justifiably thrilled by Olsen's work as Martha says this to Lizzy:

I wanted to compliment you on the interiority of your characterization. You didn't externalize it the way some people do by being "insane" visually and that interiority was very engulfing and very convincing in comparison to some of the performances we've seen... it was a relief, actually. 

LOL. I wonder who on earth she could be dissing... 

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

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RIP "The Playboy Club" (Sept 2011- Oct 2011)

The peacock network brings us the TV season's first cancellation. And whaddya know? It's their new show with the brightest plumage, "The Playboy Club". I've been soaking up the general response to this show and "Pan Am" with some interest since they're the two shows that Mad Men spawned, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and the most flattering form of theft.

It's unkind to speak ill of the dead so I want to thank The Playboy Club for shining such a bright spotlight on Broadway babe Laura Benanti as she sang onstage and bitched backstage. She was the show's indisputable MVP for its very short run so some other series would be smart to snatch her up. I normally don't wish "series regular" status on Broadway's headlining musical stars because it makes them vanish from the stage but my friends and I have held a comic grudge against Benanti for years since it took us four times of paying for her shows to actually see her perform. Maybe we had terrible luck but... well, let's just say it seems like her understudies go on... A LOT.

[Updated Editor's Note: There's a reasonable explanation in reader comments as to why Benanti was absent from shows so much in the Aughts. Terrible injury.]

Though Pan Am is appreciably better as reviews suggested, the emphatically polarized 'two thumbs up/all thumbs down' greeting is something I couldn't really get behind as they have/had some of the same strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: Great, sexy, and showy choice of milieu in that it's a potentially fine breeding ground for multiple stories and visual pizazz, a sassy leading brunette that's fun to watch (Laura Benanti / Christina Ricci), and super attractive men in suits.
Weaknesses: Period setting plays all cosmetic with no soul, depth, or nuance (don't get me started on the dialogue in either show... way too modern), beautiful leading blonde who is dull to watch (Amber Heard / Margot Robbie ... is the actress just not bringing it or are these characters too blank) and uneven acting.

So what's the decisive factor in one show winning instant fans and the other a speedy cancellation? I'm thinking confidence, both behind-the-scenes (who knows what executives are thinking) and onscreen. Pan Am struts through its airport like it owns the world and that dead bunny had something of a nervous twitching tail. Confidence in your own voice, even if you're still finding it, goes a long long way towards being heard.

"Link, I Am Your Father"

This doesn't need an entire post to itself but if you haven't heard you should know that SHAME, the eagerly awaited Hunger follow up from visionary Steve McQueen will open on December 2nd. That's the one that stars the naked raw talents known as Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. Yay! I'd tell you that I'm seeing it this week but the press screenings at NYFF this year have been more difficult than in past years... so I plan to see it this week.

LINKS
Rope of Silicon has first pic of Russell Crowe as Superman's father in Man of Steel. I get why the capes are that muted color but it's still weird to think of SuperPeople with muted color palette costumes.
Movie|Line Awesome inimitable director/personality Werner Herzog will play the villain in the Tom Cruise vehicle One Shot. As TFE's unsung hero Michael put so well on twitter "The only thing that would make that Werner Herzog news cooler is if he's playing Werner Herzog."
Hollywood and Fine  on the shifts of star generations and how that plays into The Ides of March with Ryan Gosling vs. George Clooney. It's a smart piece though some of the claims are suspect (like DeNiro and Pacino still having great work in them...uhhhh)  
MNPP Luke Evans Seven Times 

The House Next Door Jaime N Christley is a dissenting voice on Mexico's critic's darling Miss Bala 
Frankly My Dear.... War Horse newbie Jeremy Irvine already has his follow up picture. He'll be in the umpteenth Great Expectations adaptation. This one for director Mike Newell.

Vanity Fair Johnny Depp is the new cover boy and apparently he hates being photographed (uhhhh) and he says yes to all the stupid money for his kids (Uhhhh... what kids need $300 million dollars? Isn't becoming  a hack really for your kid's kid's grandchildren at this point? $300 million for the Pirates franchise alone.) Unsolicited advice: Take a challenging role soon, maybe by a new visionary writer/director who nobody would think to bankroll without you, do it for scale and rediscover your gift. Just sayin'. 
Antagony and Ecstasy Mr Brayton, one of the best critics on the net and a twentysomething cancer survivor, reviews the twentysomething cancer comedy 50/50.

Today's Recommended Watch
The making of that infamous nippley The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo poster set to the film's score.