3 Notes on New Photos: J Edgar, Hunger Games, Pines

You may have noticed that I don't post every "exclusive" new photo!video!thingamajig! the second it's released. I figure you can get them in 760,000 other places and if I post too many of them there will be no room for the words which is why we do this thing they call blogging. And this: I'd prefer to get paid advertising on the site than give free advertising. That said, I'm thinking we should include more so maybe roundups like this?

Here we go...

• I want that tie. I want it windsored up in my business immediately. Would it be unprofessional to beg Deborah Hopper for it first chance I get to interview her?
• Despite the Oscar friendly nature of the bulk of Clint Eastwood's modern filmography, none of his movies have ever been nominated for costume design. Could this be the first?
* Armie Hammer is very handsome.

to see more click on this photo

• Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne looks just like Patrick Bateman which... well, may the costume designer never put him in a transparent splatter protection jacket. 
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a cop suit does nothing for me. I prefer him in Slim Jim Joe Inception suits. 
•  Those extras in the background are really given it their all! You know they were so excited to get the gig. "I'm going to be in a Batman movie!!!!!"

Hunger Games and The Place Beyond the Pines after the jump

Click to read more ...

The Whole Nine Links

Hollywood.com Frightening visual fusions of voice actor and cartoon characters
Stale Popcorn on Melissa McCarthy doing Divine for EW. He doesn't mention it but two Drag Race alums are in the ensemble photo. Go Pandora Boxx!
Boy Culture Madonna and Lola promote the new "Material Girl" contest. If I liked reality TV I would die from wishing they had one.
In Contention looks back at the Oscar glory of Titanic before it's 3D rerelease
Grantland interviews character actor Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Rum Diary, Norman)
Film Studies For Free collects academic essays on the "philosophy of horror". I may definitely read some of the links offered if I can find the time because, as someone who has always been puzzled by the ardent love of this genre, I should look for answers to this question: "Why are those of us who enjoy the genre so attracted to watching things that, in real life, would be repellent to us?"
Gemma Correll "the neverending circle of creative woe" -- so perfect!

Bullett Mary Louise Parker is not ready to quit Nancy Botwin (Weeds). Writes a letter to her signature character instead. 

I hope you are doing better than the last time I saw you. I can't imagine you have changed much despite incarceration, fetching little recidivist that you are. You know I mean that with love. 

This is fun but I wish she was ready to quit her. Would love to see her do something new -- MLP not Nancy.

Indiewire honors Like Crazy with this top-grossing indie romance list in the US. Revealing. That'll be a tough list to crack, I think. Notice how 80% of them are Oscar nominees of some sort. I added the global gross since IndieWire didn't.

1. My Big Fat Greek Wedding - $241 (worldwide $368)
2. Brokeback Mountain - $83 (worldwide $178)
3. Atonement - $50 (worldwide $129)
4. Lost in Translation - $44 (worldwide $119)
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  - $34 (worldwide $72)
6. Amelie (2001) - $33 (worldwide $173)
7. (500) Days of Summer - $32 (worldwide $60)
8. Garden State - $26 (worldwide $35)
9. Vicky Cristina Barcelona - $23 (worldwide $96)
10. The Kids Are All Right (2010) - $20 (worldwide $34)

Ugh, I hate being reminded that Eternal Sunshine wasn't the #1 blockbuster of 2004!

London: "The Deep Blue Sea"

David here with one last report from the London Film Festival. Master British filmmaker Terence Davies provided a suitably British closing film, with Rachel Weisz lost in The Deep Blue Sea...

"Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea," Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) remarks at one point, naming the title of Terence Davies' latest feature, an adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play. It's Hester's voice that opens the film, too, disembodied over the dark blue background of the credits, reading a suicide note to her lover, Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston of Thor fame). Hester is drowning in the deep blue sea of her own adoration, because Freddie's love isn't strong enough to reciprocate and pull her back to the surface.

The Deep Blue Sea betrays its theatrical origins from the first shot, panning smoothly across the front of a row of houses, the edges of the frame misty as though the smoke machines have been humming for hours. Davies has never been one to shy away from formalistic filmmaking, though, and like his best work, this film finds emotional power in and despite of the thoroughly artificial surface, which cracks itself between theatrical mannerisms and the sort of dissolution of temporality that dominated Davies' feature debut Distant Voices, Still Lives. The couple's flat houses much of the action, lit with a curiously indistinct glow through the windows, and the dialogue, particularly Hester's verbalisation of her feelings, is more narrational than conversational. But only minutes in, her memories spin, and black dissolves glide through her memories with a ghostly implacability.

As we meet her, Hester is trying to commit suicide - an indication that her story is not set to be a cheerful one. Handy with the sort of observational intimacy he practiced in Distant Voices and The House of Mirth, Davies again tells a deeply personal story without giving his filmmaking over to a singular point of view. It's due to Weisz's superb performance - besting her Oscar-winning work in The Constant Gardener - that we understand the moments of worldly perspective, from every mention of the war to the words of her landlady Mrs. Elton (Ann Mitchell), are Hester's own realisations of how selfish and narcissitic her dramatic emotions are. Despite the stilted dialogue, Weisz's is a very physical performance, the overwhelming nature of Hester's love and her attempts to quash it apparent in the cadences of her voice and the limits she puts on her movements.

The Deep Blue Sea is often too mannered, too ponderous, and Davies' technical mastery of the camera has the faint scent of pomposity to it. The pitch of Weisz' vivid passion is never as apparent as it needs to be in this environment;  a breathless swoop of the camera onto her face is notable for its alertness, a crack in the fusty air around her. But finally, though rooted in British history (as the final shot insists), this is an irrefutably personal story in a world that emphasised the communal. Hester, unfamiliar with the song the patriotic drinkers around her sing, softly sings the chorus only to Freddie, shifting the words into her own narrative. Selfish, but after all, her passion is just a drop in the deep blue sea. (B)

Worst News of New Movie Century? Brett Ratner for "Wicked"

I wish I could tell you that Brett Ratner's recent grab for the director's chair on Wicked (yes, the Wicked) was a perfect gotcha Halloween scare joke but it's actually true according to the New York Times. Ratner calls it his dream project.

Begone Brett Rattner, you have no power here!

But this quote actually upset me more.

I’ve always challenged myself, and whether I failed or not, I didn’t fail in my mind. I went through the experience, and it prepared me for the next time I’m going to do it.”

What many egotists fail to grasp when they attempt non-private things beyond their talents is that there are other people in the world besides them. Whether you fail out or not is an actual issue. It matters. If you fail you ruin other people's dreams. You ruin the dreams of the fans of Wicked. You ruin the dreams of fans of the movie musical genre itself, which is always under attack by lazy thinking, deep ignorance of its functionality and which needs a real Hollywood hero to champion it, not an egotist who'll just move on to the next thing once he fails (but not in his own mind!). Musicals, and this is true of all specialty genres, DESERVE artists who understand and respect their peculiarities and who can bring new inspiration. There's nothing in Brett Rattner's filmography -- at least that I've seen though perhaps his short segment in New York I Love You was amazing? -- that suggest he could handle the extremely complicated task of serving up Wicked's joyful grandiosity with a light touch (a line even the over-produced Broadway show trips on occasionally). How could Rattner, who has only directed very standard forgettable movies imbue it with colorful stylized beauty, and make it soar with girlish melodrama and sweetly corny comedy? 

What has he done to deserve this?

One would assume that if Brett Rattner does make it -- you can never trust these things until movies are actually filming and Movie|Line is right that his future projects list is ever-changing -- that he will be given the job because he could a) talk himself into it and b) his films have generally done well at the box office. But Wicked the musical on stage has already grossed more than all but a few dozen movies in the history of the cinema; it's its own bankability. The producers could completely change the fate of future musicals here by taking a risk (which would pay off) on a director with big vision, a unique skill set and, above all, musical comedy aptitude. Rattner's imagination is too earth-bound to defy gravity. His films don't dance. He even made a parade of bizarrely powered mutants feel as mundane as an everyday crowd queueing up for a sports event.

Oscar Horrors: In (Mild) Defense of Linda Blair

In Oscar Horrors, Team Film Experience explores Oscar nominated contributions to the horror genre. Here is new contributor Mayukh Sen.

HERE LIES...Linda Blair’s reasonably complex turn in The Exorcist, slain by the prodigious work of fellow pubescent Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon). 

Brian de Palma apparently hated The Exorcist, and it’s not difficult to see why.  I generally fall on the unimpressed side with the film, because none of the psychological trauma undergone by the characters finds aesthetic articulation.  Everything is so clearly, obviously constructed on a Hollywood set that it borders on the parodistic. What is superlative about a director like de Palma is that he understands the trappings of genre conventions and mocks the notion of film as a classically escapist, populist medium, managing to extract a modicum of truth out of such a framework.  Friedkin doesn’t understand this.  Interpreting what should be perfunctory entertainment as a parable of human suffering – that’s dreary city.         

I won’t waste a second pretending Linda Blair’s performance is any great shakes.  Her nomination was largely the product of inertia – The Exorcist (1973) was just a cultural phenomenon that the Academy couldn’t ignore, Dan.  Yet reading Glenn’s wonderful piece on Sissy Spacek’s performance in Carrie made me realize the extent to which Blair’s performance has become underrated.  Spacek’s performance is a masterpiece because of her fearless, but still graceful, physical expressivity.  She is a performer who understands body language.  The way she continually destructs, contorts, and fractures her body often acts as a reflection of the character’s emotional distress. 

Somewhere along the line, it became fashionable to oversimplify Blair’s performance as a lot of “sitting there” caked with makeup.  Those in defense of her performance often point to the luminosity of her earlier pre-possession scenes, rightly claiming that she is replete with youthful charm.  I agree.  She’s wonderful there, and she sets up a foundation for the supposed tragedy that occurs later in the film. 

Beyond Mercedes McCambridge’s voice, plastic turning heads, body double controversies and other stunts that may not have much to do with acting talent, though, Blair’s work is solid.  She demonstrates remarkable control over her facial expressions and body language, subtly communicating the “devil’s” continual torment, lack of patience, and frustration.

How does one externalize the psychological state of demonic possession?  I’m not quite sure, but we can say that Linda Blair succeeded, to a degree. Her work is highly gestural but still controlled, and this degree of expressivity works wonders. I’ve noticed a tendency of certain critics to dismiss horror film performances as merely “acting scared” and “being terrified”.  Though Blair’s performance is ultimately a cheap narrative trope, it shouldn’t be evaluated so lazily.  I’m not a fan of praising performances because of the sheer amount of work put into them (see Meryl Streep’s string of performances in the 80s), but, in this case, the physical work is brutally effective.  There is increasingly little appreciation for what actors communicate through physical gestures, and this might be part of why Linda Blair’s nomination is something of an afterthought these days.

Previously on Oscar Horrors