April Showers: Diane & Viggo 'Busy Being Free'

waterworks weeknights at 11 in April

Have you ever wondered why people don't talk more about Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon (1999)?  It's one of those pictures that contains all sorts of stuff people came to love afterwards in embryonic or transformational stages. It was here that Diane Lane practiced the mesmerizingly guilty adulteress act that she'd be Oscar nominated for in Unfaithful (2002). It was the moment when Viggo Mortensen, so often backgrounded in pictures till then, revealed that he was a Star. It was also the mainstream bridge between Anna Paquin's sexually curious wicked child (The Piano) and sexually wicked curious psychic (True Blood) since she played one of her most ordinary roles as a teenager struggling with all the hormones swirling around inside her and outside of her as her screen mother (Lane) was also experiencing a sexual awakening.

It was even in A Walk On the Moon that Liev Schreiber played the uptight wronged husband and, perhaps learning that Sex-On-A-Stick-Wife-Stealer was the better role, flipped parts for The Painted Veil (2006),  bedding Naomi Watts (onscreen) which he's been doing ever since offscreen. Now, maybe we're reading too much into it. But the point is this: We like A Walk on the Moon.

Mostly it's an enjoyable picture because Diane & Viggo were at the arguable peak of their screen beauty and looked even more sensational paired. Certain star pairings just elevate everything, right? And does any actress do 'aroused but totally conflicted about it' as well as Diane Lane? There are moments in this performance that are just mesmerizing like the one pictured above wherein she shyly lets Viggo give her a necklace, briefly daring to meet his gaze before dropping her head into his chest in submission. Her shyness is fascinatingly mixed in by the actress because the repetitive act of visiting his mobile clothing store is rather brazen; she knows instinctively what awaits her therein. Viggo is such a smooth and hypnotic ladykiller that her legs are over his shoulders before she's realized she's horizontal. Next thing you know, she's let her hair down metaphorically enough to experience sex in the outdoors. Under a waterfall, God's own high pressure shower.

More after the jump [mild nudity] including a question for film historians with a minor in sex scenes.

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Review: Water For Elephants

He almost can't believe she's real. The young veterinarian Jacob (Robert Pattinson) confesses this to the audience in voiceover, as we stare through his eyes at Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) reclining across her ailing horse. (He's talking about Marlena but that horse is a vision, too.) Marlena's equine slumber is the strangely serene finale to what is otherwise a typically busy circus act. In Jacob's defense, she is quite a vision; Reese's hair is nearly Harlow blonde, her innate starpower reflects as much light as her shimmery costume, and the horse ain't bad either. Marlena is almost musical, really, riding into the tent on the ripple of black and white stallions. It almost makes you wish that Water For Elephants were a musical. It thrives on these heightened moments, the ones that feel half imagined rather than remembered, and both musicals and epic period romances, a related endangered species, need these to induce the swooning.

Water for Elephants is adapted from the bestseller of the same name which introduces us to a nursing home escapee Jacob who tells a stranger in the circus business his life story. He ran away to the circus when tragedy struck and signed on as their vet, quickly proving indispensable. Naturally the young ivy league dropout falls for the star performer (Marlena) who is stuck in an abusive relationship with her older ringmaster husband. A new addition to the circus, an elephant named Rosie, strains their already tense triangular working relationship.

The unmistakable mistake within the the adaptation by Richard Lagravenese is its timidity. It's almost as if the screenwriter and possibly the director were afraid of breaking the spell that the #1 bestseller had on its audience. It's frustrating really that they were so shy. "Water For Elephants" in literary form, wasn't anything like a masterpiece to coax gingerly with reverence toward the screen. What it had going for it was the incredible images it conjured up; as books go it was practically already a movie. It needed a team that would corral it from big top to big screen with a merciless showman's precision, tossing its less wieldly bits off the train at the first opportunity. It needed to be an August rather than a Jacob. Take the framing device, for instance. It's awkward but enough in the book but justifies its presence somewhat with a good deal of meatiness. Truncated to screen form it's virtually character-free, the definition of inelegant structure. Why not toss it out altogether? (Sorry Hal Holbrook and Paul Schneider but you didn't have characters to play anyway!). Young Jacob's opening act tragedy is also entirely mangled by truncation. Few things are less interesting than waiting for a movie to get where you know it's going and few things are more exciting than entering a movie mid scene and running to catch up. Better to have kicked off with a despondent young man hopping aboard a moving train. Who is he? Why is someone this well educated and richly dressed acting like a hobo? Let key dialogue moments but mostly the skill of the actors (you hired pricey ones) suggest the back story. With best sellers the audience will fill in more than you should ever tell.

Still, the movie version has a few moments just as magical as Marlena's horse act most of them springing from the colorful alien milieu. The 1930 traveling circus is very well executed by the A list production team including production designer Jack Fisk (There Will Be Blood), costume designer Jacqueline West (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain). On occasion the performances get to be the show, courtesy mostly of Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds). His blazingly confident command of the camera is impossible to miss as are his efforts to elevate the archetypal Svengali character, by leaning hard into August's vulnerable moments, the aftermath of his rage or control. A fine pachyderm actor by the name of Tai is also wonderful as "Rosie".

Water For Elephants is smart enough to understand that it's closer to a romantic quadrangle (3/4ths human, 1/4th other) than a typical romantic epic. It wouldn't work without the aggressive push of August or the mysterious pull of Rosie but the young lovers are still crucial. In some ways Pattinson, a far more limited actor than Witherspoon, is better at the romantic grand gesture of this particular vehicle because he's not at all strong with specificity. (Though to be fair the book had this problem too, Jacob refusing to prove as dimensional as the supporting players.) Perhaps it's the cost of being the storyteller? Witherspoon acquits herself well, reminding us why she's a star, but her relationship with Waltz is so ably defined by both actors and involves more tenderness than you might expect from a movie portrayal of an abusive marriage so her turn towards her young savior feels slightly unfocused; It's arguably a sketch where bold romantic strokes might have helped. But in both the circus and at the movies, eye candy is the star attraction. Jacob and Marlena look great together in their romantic clinches, all sharp angled faces struggling to make room for soft feeling.

B-

Oscar Calendar and Today's Linkage

A note before we get to the links. Here's the new Oscar calendar. I'm updating the clock (downloadable) in the side bar as we speak.

• 12/27/2011 - Nomination Ballots mailed
• 1/13/2012 - Ballots Due
• 1/24/2012 - OSCAR NOMINATION MORNING! (aka Christmas!)
• 2/1/2012 - Voting Ballots mailed
• 2/6/2012 - Nomination Luncheon
• 2/12/2012 - All Ballots due
• 2/26/2012 - OSCAR NIGHT (aka New Year's Eve!)

Links!
Boy Culture SPOILER ALERT writes up the finale party of RuPaul's Drag Race. With video interviews of the cast. (This is the first time I've been happy about the winner of any season. Not only was Raja my favorite contestant but she was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the most obviously movie-aware, referencing Carrie, Heathers, and other movies and classic stars throughout the competition.
Scene Stealers Top Ten movies about Runners. Apparently Track and Field isn't my thing. I was shocked to realized that I've only seen [gulp] 10% of this list. Which is not something I normally can say about top ten movie lists.
Sociological Images asks "who goes to the movies" the answers, given what Hollywood makes, may surprise you.
Marvel commemorates the start of The Avengers production with a set photo. Logo chairs!
My New Plaid Pants commemorates the same by offering up costume design of his own for Chris Evans' Captain America.
Serious Film condemns and defends The King's Speech now that it's out on DVD; Oscar winners have a tough time defending their reputations as history marches on.

Finally...
IFC will make you scroll through five pages for the full list but they're naming the Top 25 Best Female Characters From TV. It's an all time list rather than a current list so don't get too excited about seeing, like, "Tami Taylor" on the list (I'm so obsessed with Friday Night Lights. Final season airing right now). 30 Rock's Liz Lemon is the highest ranking contemporary character (#9) and we can fully get behind #1, especially if it's night time, we're outside, and fanged creatures are approaching us.

Curio: Celebrating 25 Years of Pixar at Planet-Pulp

Alexa here.  Planet-Pulp bills itself as an "Intergalactic Online gallery on a mission to orbit a pulp-culture theme every 30 days."  Last month they hosted a show of illustrations celebrating 25 years of Pixar (it looks to have spilled a bit into April, too).  I caught wind of it after Steve Dressler submitted a couple of wonderful illustrations, and I was soon thrilled to see that two of my favorite Pixar characters, Edna Mode and Colette Tatou, were part of the fun.  Here are some selections from the show.  You can catch all the pulpy fun here.

Buy-N-Large by Steve Dressler

Violet by Brett Parson

Woody, Colette, Edna and other legends after the jump.

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Reader Spotlight: Ester

The TFE reader community investigation continues. Get to know more about the other people reading this site! Maybe they're reading what you're reading at exactly the same time! Today we're talking to Ester in Brooklyn who is also a writer.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first movie experience or obsession?

ESTER: My father took me to see the theatrical re-release of Song of the South in 1986, when I was four. I'm sure he gave me a lecture afterward about historical inaccuracies but all I remember is the animated "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah" bluebird and being enthralled by the big screen. A little later on, I became obsessed with Jack Nicholson. It started with "Chinatown," which I would watch anytime I was sick because it was guaranteed to make me forget what hurt, and "Terms of Endearment," because I adored his relationship with the ballsy, hilarious Shirley MacLaine.

Imagine yourself as supreme empress of the cinema. What would you do?

I would...

• declare a moratorium on anything to do with superheros, vampires, or superhero vampires. (Exceptions may be given for pre-adolescent Swedish vampires and Lisbeth Salander.) Sequels would have to be justified in a five-page paper about what their purpose is beside the making of more money to be spent on more sequels. 
• have Pixar lead workshops on Film 101 that are mandatory for any director, writer, or producer whose movies score in the red on Rotten Tomatoes or MetaCritic. 
• take away all of Tim Burton's CGI toys.
• double the budget of Focus Features (and appoint myself to their development department).
• bench Michael Bay and divert his money to Amy Pascal to produce several strong, smart, female-driven comedies.  

How to decide? Categories?

Three favorite actresses. Go

I could have a favorites list that's all "Kates": Hepburn, Blanchett, Winslet, with runner up Catherine Keener. Or one that's all TV actresses: Edie Falco, Mary Louise Parker, and Allison Janney. Or just redheads: Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Julianne Moore. For all-time favorites, I probably have to go with the stars, classic women who manage to be incisive, funny, and mesmerizing over numerous roles: Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep. But I am not happy about having to leave Kate Winslet off the list. 

On your blog you list Quentin Tarantino, Nora Ephron and Charlie Kaufman as influences. I was curious about seeing all three names in the same list. What do you love about their work?

What I love in a movie is some combination of chemistry, intelligence, creativity, audacity, and truth (in the sense that the film is true to itself and its own internal rules, not to any objective standard). Charlie Kaufman is the kind of writer I trust completely because he has thought through every important aspect of a movie: what kind of world does he want to create? What kind of message does he want to send, and how can he communicate it without being didactic? How will characters, dialogue, and visuals all combine in service of that message?  Charlie Kaufman movies aim to please the eye, the ear, the heart, and the brain. They're not very sexy but eventually he'll aim for the loins too. (I hope.)

Meanwhile, no one does vengeance better than Quentin Tarantino. In his hands, vengeance is not a mindless act of good against evil: in Kill Bill, viewers are encouraged to sympathize with the human targets, even Bill himself. Elle Driver is the exception, the only cartoonishly villainous character, and even she is so great that you don’t want to see her die. This is why Tarantino, in Inglourious Basterds, gently raises the question of whether even Nazis deserved to be gunned down, roasted alive, scalped, mutilated, and otherwise inconvenienced. Of course the Third Reich needed to be brought down (and what a job he does of it, too). But no one, no matter how despicable, should have their head bashed in by Eli Roth. Watching Inglourious Basterds, you simultaneously get to enjoy the fantasy and let the fantasy go.

QT is not as abstract or theoretical as CK, but he understands that the smartest movie must still be fun, and vice versa.

Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally often gets dismissed as a chick flick, which is too bad, because it's psychologically astute and laugh-out-loud funny, even on the twentieth viewing. None of her other movies are as strong but I also love the dry sense of humor that shows up in her essays and the fact that she continues to make herself relevant & a force to be reckoned with. If failing really is not the falling down but the staying down, she has never failed.

Wow, I love that. I may start employing it as a mantra. Okay final question: Have you ever dressed up as a movie character for Halloween?
The closest I've come is trying to be Joan Halloway from "Mad Men". I had the boobs but not the poise.