I Want To Squeeze You, Please You

JA from MNPP here - I don't want to speak for Nathaniel, but I can't imagine him having to do one of his patented "Yes No Maybe So" takes on this here first teaser for Pedro Almodovar's next flick, a comedy called I'm So Excited - as in The Pointer Sisters' big hit song, which we see some male flight attendants perform therein. I can't imagine Nat having to to a "Yes No Maybe So" since this is Almodovar, and it is always HELL YES with Almodovar. 

So I will just present it unto you, in hopes it can maybe put a smile on your face on this dreary horrible day. And I will add this informational nugget - I stole pizza from a pizza party that The Pointer Sisters were having during a drag show I attended when I was in college in the late 90s, and that's all this song ever makes me think of. So thanks for the pizza, ladies!

[UPDATE: The comedy about a flight where passengers begin to reveal their secrets to one another when the plane runs into trouble will feature familar Pedro regulars Javier Cámara (Talk to Her), Lola Dueñas (Volver) Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother), Carmen Machi (Broken Embraces) and a lot of new blood. Actors doing just their second tour of duty for the great auteur including Paz Vega ("Amparo" in Talk to Her), José Luis Torrijo (a doctor in All About My Mother), Antonio de la Torre ("Paco" in Volver) and Blanca Suarez ("Norma" in The Skin I Live In). We will also see quite a few Pedro virgins, most of them male: Hugo Silva, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Raúl Arévalo, Willy Toledo, José María Yazpik, Carlos Areces, and the lone new actress Laya Martí. What's more, according to Fotogramas, the comedy will also feature Pedro's movie star darlings Penelope Cruz & Antonio Banderas though they don't appear in this 47 second look.]

Jodie's high-low profile in 'Maverick'

Hi Lovelies. Beau here with a look at a fascinating performance from an actress we've been celebrating this week. The Fantastic Ms. Foster.

Jodie Foster gets a bum rap for comedy. A consummate actress who has long been championed for her dramatic talents, Foster is rarely recognized for her comedic efforts, a scant few that round out an already impressive career. It’s not that the criticisms don’t carry some validity; her work in last year’s Polanski vehicle Carnage was an example of taking the clearest path in interpreting an admittedly difficult character. The piety and self-pity comingling with textbook liberal martyrdom is a fine line, a high-wire act that few could tiptoe across seemingly without any effort. (Emma Thompson is one actress that comes to mind. But then, what can’t Emma Thompson do?) 

And this brings me to a point, in that few actresses can so easily traverse the heavy terrain between genres and come to their destination relatively unscathed. Foster struggles, but so does [MORE...]

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Just Act, Naturally

Parker Posey teaches Emmy Acceptance Speeches. There's still time to enroll before the big night! Only $899.

Best Shot: "The Royal Tenenbaums"

In the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series anything with a webspace is invited to join us in choosing a single "best" shot from pre-selected films.

When I first saw The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, I loved it but wondered quietly if it didn't lose a little steam as it went. That'd be a bittersweet but fitting artistic fate for a movie that's about a family of child prodigies who can't escape the long shadows of their early promise and exist in a kind of static bewilderment at their present emotional state(s). As it turns out The Royal Tenenbaums, unlike the Tenenbaum children, only improves with age. It's looking more and more like Wes Anderson's indisputable masterpiece.

Still, it's easy to see where my initial feeling sprang from. The movie opens so well, with unimproveable voiceover work by Alec Baldwin (clinically observant but never unfeeling) detailing the overachieving childhoods of Chas (Ben Stiller), Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Richie (Luke Wilson), followed by endearingly deadpan "22 years later" character cards that it just has to be downhill from there? 

Not so.

The movie keeps reintroducing us this eccentric troubled clan. I don't normally choose iconic familiar shots as "best" both out of fear of cliché and out of the archaeological instincts of the cinephile -- always looking for new things to admire in a beloved film. But I give up here. Whenever I think of The Royal Tenenbaums, I think of Margot and the greenline bus.

We've already met Margot twice: Once as a precocious unhappy child playwright. Then as a beautiful miserable adult in a brilliant two-part scene wherein Anderson invites us to compare the omniscient narrator's observations about Margot with her detached relationship to her husband (Bill Murray, besotted and baffled and hilarious) and her instant regression with her endlessly supportive mother Etheline (Anjelica Huston, perfect throughout). "Why does he get to do that?" Margot whines about her brother moving back home.

This, my choice for Best Shot is our third major introduction.

With each introduction Anderson gives us not just more character details, but reenforcing self-referential humor (how great is the "no smoking" sign on the bus in a scene that at first feels devoid of the usual cluttered wit of the Anderson frame?), and fresh ways of thinking about these indelible characters. In our third introduction, though we're already as baffled by her as Raleigh and as worried for her as Etheline, we're suddenly seeing her through Richie's eyes; her sad-eyed beauty is intact but she's lit up by sunshine and meant to be loved obsessively... or even incestuoustly. Who can blame Richie? 

The movie's obsessive accumulation of introductions, its front loaded feeling, are a gorgeous almost spiritual mirror to the Tenenbaums own experience, continual promise trapped in static adolescent pain. It takes something as jarring as weddings and deaths to nudge them forward.

These are the other two shots I considered, both of them because of Margot. In truth when I'm watching the movie it feels perfectly balanced as an ensemble piece (and I love every character... especially Pagoda and Etheline) but outside of the actual experience of watching it, Margot tends to absorb my imagination.

Wes Anderson understands, as too few modern directors do, that two, three, four and even five-shots can sometimes give you more information about a single character than a closeup of that same character can; you need to see how they fit into the world they live in. Margot internalizes her otherness as the adopted child and the movie beautifully finds its way in to this girl's notoriously secretive headspace.

This view of Margot apart from her family is repeated in the hospital scene where she leans against a door while the other characters huddle near Richie's bed, barraging him with questions about his suicide attempt. She's inside the "Recovery Room" but she's not healing.

Of course it's dark, it's a suicide note."

This time Wes Anderson and his cinematographer Robert Yeoman move the camera in for a heartbreak closeup. Margot is further away from Richie than anyone in the room but she's the closest to him. They're just going to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that.

Armchair Audience [Best Shot First Timer. Welcome!]
For Your Speculation [Best Shot First Timer. Welcome !]
Intifada "died tragically rescuing his family..."
Serious Film "wounded zebra"
Antagony & Ecstasy "in all honesty, my second favorite shot"
Amiresque 
Low Resolution "...well, it can't be very good for your eyes anyway"
Okinawa Assault
Film Actually [Royal Tenenbaums Virgin!]
Pussy Goes Grrr "Wes Anderson never wastes a frame." 
Movies Kick Ass "group hug"
Against the Hype [Welcome him back!]  
Encore Entertainment ...

Final 4 of "Hit Me" Season 3 (Join us!)
August 1st How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
August 8th Sherlock Jr (1924)... only 44 minutes long and available on Netflix Instant Watch. 
August 15th Singin in the Rain (1952) for Gene Kelly's centennial month!
August 22nd Dog Day Afternoon (SEASON 3 FINALE - 40 years ago this very day the events in the film take place)

Q&A: Working Girls, Two-Time Winners, Generational Comedy

It's time to answer reader questions again! Roughly once a week I'll throw up an "Ask Nathaniel" post and then select the questions that trigger something in me. There are often great questions I don't answer because they'd require a whole book. Or a top ten list and we save the listing mostly for other features. Let's go.

CARLOS: I recently came across Working Girl (1988) on TV by chance. I think Griffith and, especially, Weaver are great and the costumes (unintentionally) hilarious when seen today, but what's YOUR opinion on the movie and Griffith? Do you think she could have a comeback? What would it take?

Working Girl is a total time machine for the late 80s. But truth: the costumes were intentionally funny. Or at least those worn by Griffith and the adorable Joan Cusack who were meant to be absurdly dressed. Most readers won't be aware of this because there's no reason to talk about her now, but Melanie Griffith was, for me in the 90s, the equivalent of Swank and the Zeéeeee in the 00s (i.e. actresses who I just can't with). My friends in college used to hide pictures of her in my dorm room to torture me with when I discovered them. Once, a huge poster of Melanie was staring at me from the ceiling when I jumped in bed!

I like the movie well enough but at the time it was wildly overawarded -- one of those AMPAS Christmas crushes that plays so well in the moment but is hardly better than earlier releases that it temporarily shoves out of favor during the crucial nomination period.  When I look back at 1988 I'm always pissed that Bull Durham (a summer hit 1 nomination), Running on Empty (a September critical darling, 2 nominations) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (a June smash with 6 nominations and better than nearly every one of the Best Picture nominees) didn't get various big Oscar props that they deserved. I blame Working Girl because it's the easiest film to blame that year. And I especially blame Griffith because Susan Sarandon's "Annie Savoy", one of the greatest performances of the whole decade, was snubbed to include her!

JAMES: Many lament the onslaught of remakes/reboots/re-imaginings, but what film(s) would actually benefit from a remake? As an example, I ask you to consider Rosemary's Baby. While the acting stands up, much of the rest of the film is pretty creaky. What are your thoughts?

&

STEVE: What cinematic, television or literary character do you think should be revisited?

[Remakes, Chris Nolan, and Oscarables AFTER THE JUMP]

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