Love Scenes: An Ode to St. Valentine

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, providing one more love scene to close out Valentine's Day.

The opening credits sequence of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock takes place, fittingly enough, exactly 111 years ago. To the tune of Gheorghe Zamfir's doleful panpipe, the pupils of Appleyard College in late-Victorian Australia rush around, preparing for their Valentine's Day excursion—washing their faces, tying on corsets, brushing their hair, and in one special case, declaring their undying love through poetry.

The poet is Sara (Margaret Nelson), an introverted orphan who feels a deep but ill-fated love for her achingly beautiful classmate Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), a girl later compared by a teacher to "a Botticelli angel." Sara's affections may be obsessive and naïve, most likely stemming from both her loneliness and the lure of Miranda's divine, ethereal beauty, but they manifest themselves in a long, painfully sincere poem she calls "An Ode to St. Valentine," which contains lines like these:

I love thee not because thou art fair,
softer than down, smoother than air,
nor for the cupids that do lie
in either corner of thine eye.
Wouldst thou then know what it might be?
'Tis I love thee 'cause thou lovest me.

Miranda reads it aloud from a card while Sara gazes out into space and swoons. Then, as the morning progresses, Russell Boyd's camera drifts around the girls' rooms, across a sea of blond hair and white nightgowns. It's an entrancing sequence that, by focusing so heavily on Sara's intense, unreciprocated love, sets up the longing and anguished curiosity that drive the film after Miranda and three other girls disappear at Hanging Rock.

Poor Sara never has a chance. Miranda is just too mystical and airy of a creature to stay in this world, and Sara never learns to follow her instructions: "You must learn to love someone else apart from me, Sara. I won't be here much longer." She waves Miranda goodbye as the carriage drives off and never sees her again, then spends the rest of the film pining for her before meeting a tragic fate.

But Sara, in that quiet, wispy opening sequence, is still there to remind us of what love can be like in adolescence, before we're mature enough to know what's wise or appropriate. She may not be mature and she may not be a great poet, but at the very least, Sara is a romantic.

Contest Winners: Warren Beatty "STAR"

Warren & Natalie at the April 1962 Oscars.While Hollywood is busy celebrating Annette Bening's latest big screen triumph, we thought we'd celebrate her husband Warren Beatty with a giveaway of the biography "Star. How Warren Beatty Seduced America" . It's out on paperback finally. I asked contestants to tell me about their favorite Warren Beatty film and I was actually surprised at the breakdown (I expected Bonnie & Clyde to capsize the competition but it did not.) In fact, the contest entries were pretty evenly spread among the top three.

The Holy Trinity...er, Quadrilogy
1. Splendor in the Grass (1961)
2. Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
3. [tie] Shampoo (1975) & Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Reds, Dick Tracy, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Parallax View and Bulworth, in that order, lagged behind. Those nine films are a pretty smart snapshot of the cream of his crop reminding us once again that Film Experience readers are awesome. (Duh!) The rest of Beatty's thin but substantial filmography wasn't mentioned; Beatty only made 22 movies over his 40 year career. Of the 13 that weren't name-checked the most interesting is probably Lilith (1964) about an institutionalized woman (Jean Seberg) and the most infamous is undoubtedly the adventure comedy Ishtar (1987) with Dustin Hoffman.

The classic Bonnie & Clyde (1967) with Beatty & Dunaway

Contest winners and notes on Bonnie & Clyde, Reds and Dick Tracy with Madonna after the jump.

Click to read more ...

'Bright Star' and Love's Cool Breeze

Kurt here from Your Movie Buddy, ready to spread a little love on Valentine's Day.

The dreamy feeling one gets while watching Jane Campion's Bright Star is encapsulated in two successive images in the film, both of which are included at the end of this post. But WAIT!! Don't scroll down yet!! There's still plenty to say about this gorgeous telling of the romance between poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and poet's muse Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). It's by far 2009's finest love story and by leaps its most beautiful movie.

I haven't exactly chosen a Valentine's Day love scene – as per Nathaniel's instructions to his contributors – though I could've easily devoted a few hundred words to the tender, sexless sex scene that caps the lovers' fleeting fling (just as I could have devoted a few thousand to the absurdity of Cornish's near-universal snubbing in the '09 awards race). What I picked is the exquisite sequence that shows the spark of the pair's courtship.

It begins with a frozen-in-time tableau that, among other things, brings to life Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte. 

It's the morning after a ballroom event, where Fanny first introduced Keats to the extents of both her fashion sense and her pseudo-feminist pluck. Fanny's young sister, Toots (Edie Martin), wants to play on the swing, which is just as well, since Fanny and Keats have plans of their own. They stroll along a planked path that bisects an ocean of reeds, and Campion all but lets you feel the plants brush across your cheek. Each lover catches the other catching a glimpse in that playful way that anyone who's ever been crush-struck can recognize.

They set down on a grassy patch in the woods, where Keats tells Fanny of a dream he had the night before in which his lips were attached to those of a beautiful figure. “Were they my lips?” Fanny asks with characteristic forwardness. And with that, we ease into the couple's first kiss, which Campion deftly delays for maximum effect.

Of course, what Campion does throughout Bright Star is create her own kind of poetry. She renders a timeless romance with lyrical beauty, not to mention visually translate the oft-unfilmable writer's process with remarkable, graceful success. Her movie is across-the-board romantic, giving a great deal of weight to an under-documented love story, using the classically sexy device of love letters as vessels of longing and joy, and enveloping you in the uncluttered comfort of nature.

The first kiss is followed by three wondrous, indelible shots, in which Fanny and Keats share their newfound glee in love, then revel in it individuallly. Playful and unbroken, the first sees them freeze in place and play it cool (three times) as Toots glances back to catch them mid-smooch.

The second, set in Fanny's bedroom, and the third, atop a flowery tree, illustrate the very sensation this whole movie creates – that of a smooth breeze that bowls you over...

...and leaves you in bliss.

Let these stills settle in, then tell me: were you as taken with Bright Star as I was?

and you can't link me down...

Nick's Flick Picks extensive thoughts on Jennifer Lawrence's (Winter's Bone) career to date.
IndieWire "a modest proposal" a chilling essay about how the new Justin Beiber movie is more of a time capsule for the here and now than The Social Network is.
Acidemic retraction. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World racks up more points.
Roger Ebert apparently if you guess ALL of the Oscar winners correctly, you can win 100,000 bucks courtesy of Ebert and MUBI. Though strangely the article has no link to an actual contest. Curious.
ABC News Elizabeth Taylor very ill in hospital. I can't deal when thinking about losing La Liz. I really can't. It'll be the end of a monumental Hollywood era. GET WELL SOON.
Movie|Line I knew that Andy Rooney 60 minutes King's Speech endorsement I mentioned earlier was going to spread online.
Vulture Channing Tatum on The Eagle and his bromance with Jamie Bell. Fun interview
Scott Feinberg on the recent new arguments that The Social Network can still win Best Picture

Finally, I saw this video at Critical Condition and wanted to share it since I know many of you reading are "Wicked" fans. An artist Heidi Gilbert storyboarded it imagining it as a movie. This was done in September I guess but if it's new to me, it's  new to some of you, too. And who can't use a bit of "Wicked" to brighten a Monday?

Defying Gravity Storyboards from Heidi Jo Gilbert on Vimeo.

16 BAFTA Moments. Helena Was Queen.

Since we all saw the BAFTAs on tape-delay, live-blogging seemed pointless. So SAG will have to stand as the last live-blog of the season. But here are my ___ favorite moments from BAFTA in chronological order. What were yours?

01.  Helena Bonham Carter on the red carpet, when the red carpet reporter describes her as Brit Movie Royalty (which she is).

In fact, this is the year of queens for me. I do big headed queen, then medium sized, maybe next year I'll do pinheaded queen. It's always fun to play queens because people do start treating you like royalty, it's a bit hilarious.

Helena is the only person alive that doesn't make me cringe when they're referencing Alice in Wonderland. She uses this joke again in her acceptance speech but it works both times.

02. Emma Stone on the red carpet joking that Andrew Garfield has been trying to kill her on the set of Spider-Man (2012). I still think it's pointless to reboot that movie but at least the principle cast is heaven.

03. Yay for Useless Trivia: Hailee Steinfeld reveals that the BAFTAs are one year to the day of her True Grit audition. And Darren Aronofsky reveals that Black Swan wrapped one year and one day before the BAFTAS.

04. Paul McCartney saying "I get to the pictures quite often". I love calling movies "the pictures."  It feels so Old Hollywood Magical. The Social Network is McCartney's favorite.

05. Amy Adams LOLing heartily at a joke about Sex & the City 2. The joke went like so:

Two of my favorite movies of the year aren't even nominated. Sex and the City 2 and The Expendables. What's not to love there. A band of old mercenaries get back together taking no prisoners -- you know where I'm going with this don't you? --  laying waste to everyone standing in their way. And The Expendables was great, too.

06. Discovering that Alexandre Desplat is a winker. He winked at no less than three people on his way up to the stage to accept Best Score.

07. The hokey joke of playing Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" instead of The Inception score when it won Best Visual Effects.

08. Helena's acceptance speech. Pretty great. I'd quote it but they let her talk for five minutes.

09. Jessica Alba's intro to Best Supporting Actor just because it's so illustrative of the "supporting" problem.

Robert DeNiro in the Godfather Part 2. Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspect. Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Time and again history remembers the supporting actor as much as the lead. Sometimes more so.

And then she goes on to list 5 nominees only one of whom, Pete Postlethwaite (The Town), is in a purely supporting role. The rest you can argue till the end of the day about whether they're leads in their films or not. OF COURSE THEY'RE REMEMBERED AS MUCH AS "LEADS" heh.

An Education reunion: Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike flubbing their lines.

10. Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper having MULTIPLE problems delivering the Original Screenplay. It just keeps getting worse. Pike almost reads the winners before the nominees .  As it cuts to clips, Dominic mumbles  "It's gone well"

11 Stephen Fry, a national treasure in Britain but basically an international treasure to those paying attention, introduces the Harry Potter tribute. He does a stunning job of balancing effusive praise with cutting wit so as not to make the tribute a total "HarryPotter!ZOMG!!!" gag-fest. And the plug for his audio readings of the same was pretty funny.

12 The intro to Aaron Sorkin's Adapted Screenplay acceptance speech.

Under more normal circumstances I would be very excited about this but sitting in the seat in front of me is one of the Beatles. Sitting in the seat in front of him is Julianne Moore and in the seat in front of her was Annette Bening so I'm maxed out.

Awwwww. Don't you love it when celebrities get all thunderstruck by otehr celebrities? I know I do. 'Stars! They're just like us!!!'

13 TILDA SWINTON.

...wait, you didn't need anything more specific than that did you? She's always a favorite moment.

14. The cognitive disconnect I felt when Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg accepted for David Fincher "He's busy making his next gift for all of us in another country." I experienced it as "He's busy making his next gift for all of us, Another Country" which would be quite quite something else entirely. Could you imagine a David Fincher remake of that homo-laced British Boarding School drama? But Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg... who gets to play Colin Firth and who would gets to play Rupert Everett? The other option would be an adaptation of James Baldwin's novel which would be something else, too! Especially since Jesse and Andrew would be all wrong for that one.

15 Gerard Butler introing Best Actress without commas

a lesbian couple with a dragon tattoo take up ballet to avenge their father's death.

Speaking of movies one could have fun inventing in one's head!

poll by twiigs.com

16. It was wonderful to see 88 year old Christopher Lee getting a tribute, and from one of his own directors too (Tim Burton, who he has worked with four times). He seemed genuinely touched and even moreso than many honorary winners of such things. Plus he was amusing: "I'm grateful that I don't follow in the steps of the great Stanley Kubrick whose award was posthumous."

That's it!

P.S. By the way Darren Aronofsky calling Natalie Portman the most focused committed actor he'd ever worked with kind of weirded me out. Not that I don't think it could be true but EVER? His films aren't exactly lacking for great performances or great actors.

P.P.S. How are YOU doing out there, quiet people in the dark? Speak. And by speak I mean type.

P.P.P.S. all the BAFTA posts in case you missed the nominees, fashions or winners.