From the Wilds of Woody-land

JA from MNPP here. I was looking up pictures of Peter Sarsgaard on Tumblr - don't tell me you haven't yet seen that shot of him jogging in shorts shorts making the rounds - when I stumbled upon some pics from the set of Woody Allen's new movie currently filming in San Francisco that seemd worth sharing.

What continues being delightful even when Woody's movies don't - yes I'm looking at you To Rome With Love - is seeing him mix up all the famous actors he gets to play with in surprising ways - why sure, I'd love to see Judy Davis play Allison Pill's mother! How astute of you, good sir. (TRWL needed more cast interaction - imagine if Greta Gerwig and Penny Cruz had fallen under Roberto Benigni's haphazard charms while managing their own plots!)

Seeing Sally Hawkins and Bobby Cannavale and Cate Blanchett and Louis CK all standing around gives me hope this next one will toss some of Woody's specific sort of thespian frission our way. Woody gets whoever the heck he wants in his movies - make use! (And hire Diane Keaton next time, dammit!)

Sudden Flashback: Ladies in Waiting

I always forget that Emily Mortimer and Kelly Macdonald were Cate Blanchett's right-hand (and left-hand) girls in Elizabeth (1998).

(And Daniel Craig was in it, too!)

None of those ladies had to wait long for their careers to blossom... though in the case of Emily & Kelly maybe the careers should've blossomed more spectacularly. Aren't they great? Lovely & Amazing Emily can next be spotted in the comedy Our Idiot Brother (opening in August) and Kelly is playing "The Grey Lady" (aka Helena Ravenclaw) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (opening... well, you know when.)

Cinema de Gym: 'Bandits'

Kurt here from Your Movie Buddy. In my attempt to tone up and shed a few (as I feared, the life of a writer can be waistline-hazardous), I've found new inspiration. The gym I attend has a theater in the back where, instead of watching The View with headphones, you can do your cardio in the dark with a daily film that plays on a loop. It's surely not the place to go if you're looking to catch up on your Bergman or Powell & Pressburger, but, by god, at least it's something. Even with a trainer who kicks my ass and drafts a new routine each month, I'll take all the incentives I can get.

On that note, I've opted to use this extra motivator as a writing opportunity – a chance to chime in on the gym's staff picks and voice the opinions that brew while I'm huffing it on the elliptical. Fitness and film writing – it's my kind of win-win.

For the inaugural "Cinema de Gym" post, we have Barry Levinson's Bandits, a 2001 love-triangle crime comedy I'd never seen. In this setting, catching things for the first time is fun in that I'm forced to draw as much as I can from a 20-30 minute snippet (okay, sometimes it's 15). Besides, I dare say a lot of these flicks are not of the must-see-it-from-end-to-end sort. With Bandits, I entered during a barroom scene where a red-headed Cate Blanchett is consoling the bar's only other patron, a characteristically un-dashing Billy Bob Thornton, who's suffering from some fatiguing ailment. Rather than whiskey, Cate wants to get some warm milk for this milquetoast, who, it turns out, is lactose intolerant.

Bandits: Bruce, Billy Bob and Blanchett

Enter Bruce Willis, all smirks and hubris, who breaks up the excessive appropriateness of Grover Washington Jr.'s "Just the Two of Us" playing on the soundtrack (err, in the bar). From the interactions (and, hell, from the casting), it's clear Bruce is the leader of the Bruce-Billy Bob criminal duo, and that Cate is the third wheel whose affections they're fighting over. Cate and Billy Bob hit the dance floor, a brotherly brawl ensues, and Bruce and Billy Bob crash through a glass window onto the ground outside. "I can't do this anymore," a desperate Cate says, peering down at them. "Together, you're the perfect man."

Well, to each her own, Ms. Blanchett. 

Garity squares off with JonesCut to: January Jones? The soon-to-be X-villain plays some type of accomplice to our lead quarrelers, along with Troy Garity, Soldier's Girl star and son of Jane Fonda. The crew is gearing up for their One Last Job, which, naturally, still attracts Cate for some reluctant involvement.

Where the film goes from here is, well, to its end, and I'll spare you the spoilers even though I don't recommend. Let's just say there's a haphazard bank heist, but Dog Day Afternoon this is not.

Conclusions?

1. Seeing early Blanchett is fun.
2. Billy Bob really needs to get back to work.
3. Bruce Willis has never tired of playing Bruce Willis (shocker).
4. Barry Levinson is a hugely recognizable name, but hardly one that guarantees quality.
5. You've seen Bandits before, even if, you know, you haven't seen it before.

Have you seen it before?

Reader Spotlight: K.M. Soehnlein

Are you still enjoying the reader spotlights? I hope you've found a few kindred spirits in the featured readers thus far. Today, I'm talking to K.M. Soehnlein in San Francisco who is a longtime reader and also a novelist. Discovering that novelists read you is a bit humbling. Anyway... let's talk!

Nathaniel: So... earlier this year you received the Warren Beatty book "STAR" from a Film Experience contest. What's your favorite nugget so far?
K.M. SOEHNLEIN: There’s a nugget on every page of “Star,” if by nugget you mean hot steamy chunk of gossip: “He made love to [Joan] Collins relentlessly, although every now and then he would accept calls while he was inside her.” In the Introduction to the book, Peter Biskind, the author, says he’s interested in Beatty as “one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation…at the intersection between politics and culture.” But he also talks about how difficult Beatty was to get interviews with, and you start to suspect, as the negative characterizations of Beatty pile up, that maybe Biskind is enacting some kind of revenge on his “star.”

But! There are absolutely page-turning stories about film production. I just finished reading the chapter on Bonnie and Clyde. I had no idea it was so difficult to get this film or that it was the vehicle that saved Beatty from a string of flops that would have sunk his career before he was 30.
 
You've written books yourselves and graciously sent me two. I'm really enjoying "The World of Normal Boys" and especially love the movie references, duh! How autobiographical are they?

Soehnlein's book references three huge musicals of its era

I’m glad you like the book! The scenes in my novel are mostly fictional – I never went to a drive-in to see Saturday Night Fever with the sexy older boy next door – but the music, the setting, the flavor of the times, that’s all from experience. Yeah, I’m a child of the 70s which meant we had one “stereo system” in the house. My parents had lots of soundtrack albums, so that was the first music I listened to as a kid: The King and I, Funny Girl, Godspell (we were Catholic), and the one I got completely obsessed about, West Side Story. I had every lyric memorized before I'd ever see these movies. I don’t think I could overstate the phenomenon of Grease when it came out in 1978. Kids were OBSESSED with it. I used to walk around with the girls in my neighborhood playing the soundtrack on portable cassette player, acting like the Pink Ladies.
 
Your three favorite actresses. Go.
Old school: Natalie Wood would be my first answer but that’s not because she was the best actress – in fact she’s often pretty terrible – but just because of my West Side Story obsession. When she cries those tears of injustice at the end of the film – “How many bullets left in this gun? Enough for you, and you, and you?” – I think some kind of tragic template lodged in my blood that has never quite left. Reigning queen: Julianne Moore. It might be a redhead identification thing, but I love her in everything. I especially like her in comedies, from The Big Lebowski to The Kids are All Right, though my favorite performance is in Far From Heaven. Rising star: Give me more Michelle Williams. (Meek’s Cutoff recently opened in San Francisco.)

Take an Oscar away. Give it to someone else.
Only one? Didn’t one of your recent readers get six? OK let’s take away Cate Blanchett’s Oscar for that hammy imitation of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator and give it to any of the four women she was nominated against: Laura Linney in Kinsey, Virginia Madsen in Sideways, Sophie Okonedo in Hotel Rwanda, or Natalie Portman in Closer. (Maybe if Natalie had won that year we could have seen Michelle Williams win this year… Sorry, wishful thinking.) Just for the record I love me some Cate Blanchett but I’d have given her the statue all the way back for Elizabeth. Sorry, Gwyneth.

Supporting Actress 2004

Name your favorite in each of the following 4 genres: Drama, Horror, High School, Woody Allen.
Drama Something by Mike Leigh, probably Naked or Secrets and Lies. Horror Carrie. High School The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which was my good friend Maria Maggenti’s debut back in the mid-90s and which I have a huge sweet spot for. (Plus: Dale Dickey in an early role.) Woody Stardust Memories.

They put you in charge of the movies. How do you wield this awesome power?
Well if I can be completely self-interested the first thing I’d do is green-light the film adaptation of The World of Normal Boys which I’ve been trying to get made for ten years.

Then I’d wield my awesome power to dump money on all the filmmakers I love: Mike Leigh, Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Kelly Reichardt, Spike Lee, John Waters, etc. etc. etc. I’d put limits on the amount of money any single film could cost. I’d set up some kind of incredibly well-funded National Film Agency, maybe run by a cabinet-level Secretary of the Arts, (how about Meryl Streep?). I’d make sure artists had health care. Socialism. Yes please.

previous spotlights

Reader of the Day: Murtada

Since yesterday's Reader o' the Day was someone I'd met, let's make it a double feature. But afterwards we go back to people I haven't met which is 99.99% of you. Today we're talking to Murtada who lives here in NYC. I've only been recognized in public (at least to my knowledge) like 6 times so I've never gotten used to it. It is... strange. Murtada was one of those (unlucky) sharp eyed people. We were at a gay bingo event of all things.

Nathaniel: I'm still so embarrassed about our meeting. My friends were so mad at me... they were all "Why were you so rude to that nice guy?" I was just shocked/disoriented. I have no idea what I even said. Can you ever forgive me?
MURTADA: Of course I forgive you……as long as you promise to come back to gay bingo. I haven’t been back since that day, have you?

Haven't been back, no. LOL. Do you remember your first moviegoing experience?
I grew up in Sudan and there were not a lot of movie theatres there. I consumed movies on VHS. But there was an outdoor summer theatre that played mostly Bollywood movies. I remember seeing a Jaws revival on a very hot summer night sometime in the 80s and hiding under the seat for most of the movie because I was so scared.

Your 3 favorite actresses. Go!
The two C/Kates, Blanchett and Winslet. I can’t get enough of either. Blanchett was love at first sight when I saw her in Elizabeth but I love her most in The Talented Mr. Ripley, so casually snobbish.. delicious. And her big grand gestures in The Good German are even better than her Hepburn. Winslet was more of a love built over time and accumulated because  she just kept getting better and making better movies. My fave of hers is probably Revolutionary Road, she was combusting with emotion in that. And recently Michelle Williams took my breath away in Blue Valentine.

I know you're an Oscar obsessive. Take away one person's Oscar and give it to someone else.
I could play this game all day: Angelina Jolie’s (Girl, Interrupted) to Toni Colette (The Sixth Sense); Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s (Capote) to Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain); Rachel Weiz (Constant Gardener) to Maria Bello (A History of Violence); And don't even get me started on Hooper/Fincher, the wound is still raw.

But if I was given one chance I will have to take Kevin Costner best director Oscar (Dances With Wolves) and give it to Martin Scorsese. I know, obvious. But that doesn't make it wrong. In fact it will right maybe one of the biggest wrongs in Oscar history. GoodFellas is a fantastic movie that has endured and is now a big part of movie and pop culture history. In my opinion it's Scorcese's peak as a storyteller.

Who are you really rooting for over the next few years of cinema?
I am so glad that Darren Aronofsky is not doing Wolverine and whatever his next movie becomes I hope it's an original story of his. He is the most exciting American filmmaker out there.