I Wanna Be Linked By You... Just You...

Self Styled Siren graphs a two line fever chart on My Week With Marilyn.
Guardian Great actress Olivia Williams (The Ghost Writer) on what she sees in the mirror. (It only makes us love her more.)
My Portis Wasp offers 8 reasons you should watch American Horror Story, the new series from Ryan Murphy (Glee, Nip/Tuck)
Low Resolution has issues with Lars von Trier's miserabilist smugness in Melancholia.
Fanboy Gamer [nsfw] a Rice Krispies Human Centipede.

Stale Popcorn nice piece on What's My Number? and Crazy, Stupid Love and the necessity of "charm" in the ever flailing rom-com genre.
La Daily Musto did you know these celebrities were only children?
Fandor starts a conversation about the Chicago International Film Festival. I hadn't even heard of this other Marilyn Monroe related picture Nobody Else But You.

Drive. I loved it so much I had to illustrate my review!

Finally, have you heard this dumbass story of a Michigan woman so upset about the misleading trailer for Drive that she filed a lawsuit?:

Drive bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film ... having very little driving in the motion picture".

God, imagine what she must have thought of P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood ! If you ask me there's more than enough driving in Drive. There are three car chase scenes that are ALL better than about 30 years worth of other movie car chases and they're all in the same movie!  But, it's true that there's all that "European" movie around them. Critics love it. She thought it was shit. 

NYFF: "My Week With Marilyn"

Poor Marilyn. The press hounded her. Fans would tear off pieces of her soul if they could. Co-stars and directors dissed her. Men wouldn't leave her alone (not that she wanted them to). And now Simon Curtis is holding yet another Monroe seance -- her soul will never rest in peace -- with his feature film debut My Week With Marilyn (2011),  a "true" story about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

True must come with quotes. The film is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, the third assistant director on the "lightest of comedies" directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). Can we trust the awestruck account of a young movie dreamer's version of his friendship and quasi-romance with the world's most famous actress? My Week With Marilyn emphatically does despite the amusingly placcid (if repetitive) moonyness with which the talented Eddie Redmayne portrays him, as if he's just as doped up as Marilyn, but much smarter about his cocktails of choice.

"Surprise!" Marilyn escapes with Colin Clark, lowly third assistant directorClark was 23 going on 24 when he met the immortal bombshell while hustling into the movies, landing his first job on a set through the help of his father's connections, despite the fact that the father did not approve of him 'running off to the circus'. The details of Clark's adventure in the movies are both acted out and explained to us in voiceover in the film's inelegant screenplay, which prefers for the characters to state the obvious or speak their psychologies aloud. Sometimes they even speak Marilyn's aloud; in the great transitive powers of true celebrity, everyone on earth is her psycho-therapist. Sometimes this obviousness of speech has comic payoffs (the film works best as a comedic clash between proper British theatrical training and idiot-savant American stardom) and once it even pays off both dramatically and comedically in a sadly funny scene where Colin Clark tells it like it is, succinctly, to Marilyn. He understands Marilyn and Olivier's mirrored goals and prophesies the failure of the movie.

Thought Balloons as dialogue and Michelle's performance after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Box Office: Hugh Jackman Punches In At #1

I'm sorry I've been away today -- couldn't be helped -- but tomorrow I'll share my thoughts on My Week With Marilyn and update the Oscar charts.

For now, the weekend box office. It's unfortunate and bizarre to recall this or to type it out loud but the surprisingly solid opening to Hugh Jackman's ridiculous-looking Real Steel is actually not his top non-mutant opening weekend. That honor belongs to Van Helsing of all things. 

Box Office (U.S.) Baker's Dozen -actuals
01 REAL STEEL new $27.3 
02 IDES OF MARCH new [capsule] $10.4 
03 DOLPHIN TALE  $9.1 (cum $49)
04 MONEYBALL [review] $7.4 (cum $49.2)
05 50/50 [review]  $5.6 (cum $17.4)
06 COURAGEOUS  $4.8 (cum $16.1)
07 THE LION KING 3D [review] re-release $4.5 (cum $414.5... $85.9 of that in this rerelease)
08 DREAMHOUSE  $4.4 (cum $14.4)
09 WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? $3.1 (cum $10.3)
10 ABDUCTION [review] $2.8 (cum $23.3)
11 CONTAGION $2.9 (cum $69)
12 KILLER ELITE $2.2 (cum $21.6)
13 THE HELP [review] $2.9 (cum $162.6)

King of the Box Office JungleTalking Points
• The Help is on its last legs with a low per screen average now. But what strong legs those were. 

• You can tell it's October because the grosses are way down. Despite the typical fall dip family fare is still impervious to seasonal recessions; Real Steel opened big, Dolphin Tale is a hit, and wasn't this Lion King Redux only supposed to play for two weeks? 

• Cowboys and Aliens is probably in agony over its gross. Even though the would be blockbuster was a failure in relation to its (very large) budget there's a certain general bragging-rights allowance for all films that crack the magic $100 million mark. C&A's gross currently stands at $99,766,000. But that $244,000 will be hard to bridge when it's only earning $17,000 on weekdays and down to 206 theaters already. Tragedy!

• Drive crossed the $30 million mark so at least it doubled its production budget in theaters, despite not truly catching on. I'm not happy to say that we predicted this but at least the prediction came with a silver lining.

What did you see this weekend? I'm sort of dying to know if anyone of you went ringside for Hugh Jackman... or if most of you campaigned with Clooney & Co in the Oscar Primaries.

NYFF: "Shame"

Michael C. from Serious Film here with fresh dispatches from the New York Film Festival.

For all there is to chew over in director Steve McQueen's Shame, follow up to Hunger his stunning feature debut, my thoughts keep returning to Carey Mulligan's potent supporting work as Fassbender's irresponsible sister. She plays a drifter/lounge singer who disrupts his physically and emotionally empty life when she shows up to crash on his couch for an open-ended visit. For a film about walling yourself off from life until you're numb, Mulligan is at the opposite pole, a person so open to everything that she can't help leaving an emotional mess in her wake. It's a performance that is so unlike anything we've seen from her before it is hard not to get excited anticipating the long career of performances she has yet to give.

As for the film itself, even if I can't join in the chorus shouting "Masterpiece!", there is still much to recommend here. Mulligan plays Sissy, sibling to Michael Fassbender's Brandon, a slick New York City lady killer to the world and a joyless, self-abusing sex addict in private. We follow Brandon as his life begins to slip from its holding pattern and begin a rapid descent towards rock bottom. His work computer is hauled away teeming with viruses. He almost sabotages his chances at a healthy relationship with a beautiful coworker before it begins, and his sister's presence is a constant reminder of things he'd rather not think about. 

After giving a similarly glacial performance in A Dangerous Method Fassbender is much more effective this time out, successfully suggesting the vast oceans of conflict churning beneath the placid surface. The performers are so electric, in fact, you could be forgiven for not noticing they are never much developed beyond being players in the familiar tale of addiction's downward spiral. 

Yet even if Shame isn't saying much about addiction that Billy Wilder didn't say sixty-five years ago in The Lost Weekend, it is worth riding that night train to Hell again just to experience it through McQueen's lens. The director once again shows a rare skill for pacing and composition. The film lingers over moments with far more patience and attention than most filmmakers are capable of. As a result, McQueen and company transform what could have been an attempt to liven up tired subject matter with lurid material into something vital and alive.

10 Word Reviews: The Ides of Miss Pina Bala's March of Shame

I think you'll agree that we've had our best festival coverage ever with our NYFF write-ups (thanks to Kurt & Michael for their continued input) but even with the speedy pace of full reviews that we've been hitting, it's all too easy to fall behind. So here are super short notes on films seen recently during the festival and outside of it since we can't get to full reviews yet (or ever probably in some cases). After the ten word reviews I'm adding Oscar Thoughts since all four of these films have golden dreams.

Shame (Steve McQueen)
Fucked up siblings Michael Fassbender & Carey Mulligan self-destruct in New York through sex & despair.
10 WR: Brilliant sense of ghostly city, personal demons. But too obvious. B+ (B?)
Oscar?: Frighteningly committed acting but will voters see it? It'll surely be NC-17

Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo)
A beauty pageant contestant falls prey to drug cartel in escalating war.
10 WR: Easy indulgent nihilism elevated by smart construction and thematic visualizations. B-
Oscar?: The things it does very well are easy to see/love (or overpraise depending on how you see it). Will almost certainly make the pre-nomination finals in Best Foreign Language Film.
P.S. Michael reviewed this one and liked it much more than I did it. 

Pina (Wim Wenders)
A performed documentary on Pina Bausch, the late legendary German choreographer.
10 WR: 3D amplifies choreography's spatial genius. Bit noncommittal: Performance? Doc? Decide! B
Oscar?: Unless you count Waltz With Bashir, Oscar's foreign committee has never nominated a documentary. But this one is very very easy to enjoy (the dancing is like heaven) and could be a novelty exception to "rule". 

Ides of March (George Clooney)
Clooney adapts the stage play about dirty politics and betrayals of spirit, body, and ideals
10 WR: Involving and handsome but few great scenes. Weird "scene-change" pacing. B
Oscar?: Seems very likely on several fronts but particularly Supporting Actor (Clooney, Giamatti or Hoffman, though?) and score (Desplat's work gets a lot of "air time" if you will.) Though Evan Rachel Wood (major role) and Marisa Tomei (minor role) are both marvelous, Supporting Actress seems less likely for a wide variety of reasons.

Quick takes. Finis! In short it's been a good run of super enjoyable or at least interesting movies lately. Other than that Abduction fluke. Your turn in the comments.