April Showers: Don't Flirt With Pierce Brosnan!

waterworks each weeknight at 11

Have you ever seen the British gangster drama The Long Good Friday (1980)? I had never heard of it until a few years ago. It starred Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins before I knew who they were and was released well before I started seeing R rated movies that only adults would like. I was wildly in love with the TV show Remington Steele (1982-1987) as a kid but back then I never considered whether actors had existed before I knew who they were (unless they were older actors and clearly MOVIE STARS like Liz Taylor & Jane Fonda and those types.) Pierce Brosnan existed before Remington Steele!!! Who knew?

26 year old's Pierce Brosnan's film debut "The Long Good Friday"

But there he is pre-Remington Steele, pre James Bond, pre Mamma Mia!. This is his big screen debut and he is billed as "1st Irishman" He has two scenes and no lines. He doesn't even utter a sound in the movie. (A mute Pierce Brosnan! Why didn't the makers of Mamma Mia! think of that?). But you don't need vocal chords when you look like this.

The Long Good Friday is a pretty tense crime movie all told and it uses that out-of-fashion tactic of keeping you in the dark about what's going on for at least one reel (today's movies love exposition too much to do this frequently anymore). The first 20 minutes are very disorienting as there's virtually no dialogue for half of that and we see a theft, a gay bar pickup, three murders, a funeral, an old woman spitting in the face of a young man and a yacht party thrown by Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren all of which have little context or connective tissue that we can make sense of.

But the man who lifted the money in the first scene, Colin (Paul Freeman) goes swimming whilst young Pierce keeps leering at him. To complete the cruising bait, Pierce heads for a literal April Shower, it being Good Friday and all. More after the jump.)

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "The Change-Up"

If Freaky Friday, 17 Again, Switch and Freaky Friday (again) are your four all time favorite movies, but they aren't quite manly enough for you, you're going to be so excited for the latest body switcheroo comedy. It's called The Change-Up and the people switching bodies are Green (as in Horny) Lantern Ryan Reynolds and straight man (as in comedy) MVP Jason Bateman.

How do you think this will fare against that other August comedy Crazy Stupid Love (see previous post)

YES, NO, MAYBE SO.

Let's break it down after the jump with the red band trailer. Warning: relatively mild nudity and a super classy urination sequence follow.

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Stage Door: Kathleen Turner in "High"

The Film Experience has always loved talking up theater, the true 3D experience. So let's do it weekly, even if it's brief. We'll make it movie adjacent: films adapted from stage, movies hitting the boards in a new form or worthy crossovers of any sort... that sort of thing. The lines in entertainment are much blurrier these days, aren't they? Many actors now do all three (tv, film, theater) with increasing regularity, don'cha know, no longer defining themselves as one medium actors.

Kathleen Turner on Opening Night | Turner w/ Evan Jonigkeit in "High"

I recently had the opportunity to see one of my all time favorite actresses on stage again: Kathleen Turner. Her major film career dwindled in the 90s but she's become a regular on Broadway and she's now starring as a foul-mouthed nun in Matthew Lombardo's drama "High". But not for much longer. It was announced yesterday that the show is closing Sunday after only 8 regular performances. Ouch. We're two weeks away from Tony nominations and we'd assumed that Kathleen would be nominated. But maybe not.

So is the play really that bad? The answer is a simple no. But it is a play that lacks the mythic enormity that you sometimes just have to have to fill up a big house with energy if not ticket buyers. Lombardo's last play "Looped" about the final movie performance of Tallulah Bankhead (played by Valerie Harper) had a similar problem though it was a much stronger show all told and was really helped by a transcendent sequence in the second act that was creatively staged as Tallulah remembers performing Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Both Looped and High are very simple in format -- which is not really a problem if the writing or story are superb -- but they rely too entirely on the star charisma of the lead actress, who is often monologuing, to really push them over.  High recounts the counselling sessions between a recovering alcoholic nun / social worker who is working with an unrepentant gay hustler and drug addict who has recently been involved in the overdose death of a teenager. How involved he was he won't say. The show has only three characters and while the nun and the drug addict have somewhat meaty if very traditional arcs, the Father character who pushes them together, just doesn't work in the writing or performing.

I'm glad I saw it and I hope Kathleen is Tony nominated being much stronger than the show but even she of that inimitable arresting rasp and considerable star charisma is unable to elevate it beyond its limitations. It might have worked far better as a made for TV movie, not for the subject matter exactly but for the intimacy that that medium can bring to small human struggle stories.

Stage/Screen News of the Moment
New York City Opera remember that Oscar nominated 60s movie Seance on a Wet Afternoon? It's now an opera by Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz. Should I see it and write about it?
Playbill an unauthorized musical parody of The Silence of the Lambs comes to Off Broadway in June.
Rama's Screen has the breakdown on the Rock of Ages cast -- who is playing who -- including a new character to be played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. So happy about this one as we needed Velma in another musical. I haven't seen the show -- I was put off by the American Idol stunt casting at the opening -- but now I'm curious and I have heard that it's very funny.

First and Last, Painting

Andreas here with one more First and Last challenge.

The first and last images from a motion picture:

Can you guess the movie?

Answer after the jump.

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Nashville: Chatting with Sam Jaeger and Sarah Hagan

I'm back in NYC, yo. So let's wrap up Nashville coverage with some odds and ends, starting with two familiar television actors who had movies in the festival, Sarah Hagan and Sam Jaeger.

Sam Jaeger, you may recognize as "Joel" from Parenthood or series regular stints on short-lived series like Eli Stone and Girls Club. We spoke in the late afternoon on a day when the VIP tent was strangely empty. Without competition for attention (his world premiere was the next evening and he'd just arrived) I yanked him my way, verbally. He was super amiable, funny and made no attempt to escape the conversation. (Ha! See, I always wonder if actors dread the constant need to be "on" while they talk to press, fans, or industry types.) We talked about his directorial feature debut Take Me Home, which is about a down on his luck photographer who ends up on an emotional roadtrip with a stranger in his part time gig as a cab driver. I revealed my surprise to him that when I got to the end of the screener I was surprised to see his name everywhere: writing, directing, producing in addition to acting. (The best thing about festivals for me is seeing films without any buzz, hype or information clouding the experience.) He had a self-deprecating sense of humor and revealed that he figured no one else would star in it with the amount of money he was planning on paying the lead. Heh.

From there we talked about Parenthood and I told him about my skeptical initial reaction to his character: 'oh i know exactly where this is going. TV is so conservative and the stay-at-home dad always morphs into a cheating villain' (see Brothers and Sisters for a recent cliche example). To my great surprise his character didn't turn out like that at all. He was not suddenly a "recurring" character instead of a regular. He laughed...

I'm glad they didn't fire me, too!

Parenthood is still awaiting word on renewal for its third season but he says he's feeling confident that they're getting picked up. If you watch Parenthood, you should read this piece at Vulture about what it does right and a few areas where it needs more work. I rarely agree so whole heartedly with an indepth analysis such as that. (Though I fear any attempt to "complicate" the Joel & Julia characters would result in some clichéd cheating that I have no interest in seeing as a plot development.)

Sarah Hagen I didn't recognize quite as immediately. But when she walked past me I did one of those 'I know this person' double takes. It took me a few seconds before I was like "Slayerette! Millie!" Though she's always a welcome small screen presence she is one of those actors who looks quite different offscreen, more traditionally glamorous and pretty than she ever is in onscreen since she's often playing "geeks" (hence: Freaks and Geeks).

Sarah Hagan in (fromt left to right): Buffy, Freaks & Geeks, and Jess+Moss

After we chatted briefly she walked me over to meet her director Clay Jeter, who is originally from Tennessee (hence the "Spirit of Tennessee" award announced yesterday). I congratulated him on Jess+Moss's recent festival win (Dallas) and asked if they'd found distribution yet. They hadn't but the awards notice and reviews had them feeling positive about a pickup. Her director wanted to know how I'd recognized her. I told him Buffy the Vampire Slayer and he said that's the number two response but he hears Freaks and Geeks most often. That was the clincher, I tell him, a one-two punch. And only two of the best television series of all time, lucky girl! Hagan, who turns 27 next month, plays Jess, a recent high school graduate in a memory piece film about a shared summer with her cousin Moss (Austin Vickers).  I asked her if she's eager to move on from the mental association we have of her as a highschooler. "Play young as long as you can, right?" she says with a smile and shrug and I guess that's true for actors of all ages. Unfortunately I was unable to fit a screening in before I had to catch my plane back so Jess+Moss remains unseen... for now. But it certainly looks intriguing in stills and was apparently shot on degraded film stock.