London Film Fest: "360" and "Shame"

Dave here with my first report from the London Film Festival, which Craig introduced you to on Thursday. We'll start with the Opening Night Gala.

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as unfaithful marrieds.

Fernando Meirelles' 360 seems a fitting selection to open a film festival, sold as a "dynamic and moving roundelay" that takes us across the spectrum of people on the globe. But this is globalization for the West; just forget, for two hours, that Asia and Africa and Australia exist and that people might have sex there too. Peter Morgan's script works like a daisy chain, flimsily linking together a collection of character shells who spread out across Europe and America, reverberating off one another. Mirka (Lucia Siposova) ventures into prostitution to the disapproval of her sister Anna (Gabriela Marcinkova); Michael (Jude Law) is her first client, whose wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) is having an affair with Rui (Juliano Cazarre), whose girlfriend Laura (Maria Flor) has uncovered his lies and sets off back to Brazil, meeting John (Anthony Hopkins) on the plane...You get the idea.

Evidently, this is a film about how globalization has connected people across the globe, a decision from one changing the life of another, six degrees of separation, etcetera etcetera. It takes a delicate hand to make a daisy chain, and Peter Morgan is entirely too thick fingered and clumsy, forcing coincidence and connection between characters he forgets to give any identity to. Oddly sprightly culturally specific music crudely emphasizes the differing nationalities. Occasional split screens hilariously exaggerate the narrative parallels. Crafty editing connections verge on the farcical. Rachel Weisz is given a bad wig, Anthony Hopkins a bad monologue, and Ben Foster a luridly filmed introduction thanks to his character's sex offender status.

more 360° and Steve McQueen's Shame after the jump

Click to read more ...

London Film Fest: "Pariah" and "Weekend"

Craig here (of Take Three fame) reporting for Nathaniel from the BFI London Film Festival which opens today. I started my festival with two gay themed dramas from a couple of emerging filmmakers from the US (Dee Rees) and the UK (Andrew Haigh). They've both made invigatoring narrative debuts. 

Dee Rees’ New York coming out drama Pariah shows its mettle from the start: we’re dropped right in the thick of it, headfirst into a lesbian strip club (we hear, “♪ Lick my neck, my back, my pussy and my crack... ♪” on the soundtrack), and introduced to feisty Brooklyn girl and poetry student Alike (Adepero Oduye) thoughtfully yet gingerly sizing up her surroundings.  She’s going through identity issues and is finding it hard to open up to her warring parents about her sexuality. Solace comes through friendship with Laura (Pernell Walker) and the possibility of love with local girl Bina (Aasha Davis).

It’s an affecting if familiar story, tinted with romantic longing and full of the kind of sorrowful spirit that often goes hand in hand with this kind of urban indie debut. But it’s incredibly likeable and there are no needless lulls in the narrative or indulgent first-timer pitfalls. The camera rarely veers away from the main drama at hand. The highs and tribulations of city life come through the attitude of the characters more than via establishing shots to indicate environment or insert shots to give reflective pause. The camerawork’s tightness on the actors – their faces, mannerisms, actions – help ground the characters as the film’s key revelatory component; it’s an actors’ piece. Rees understands this and gets both amicable banter and fraught temper from her cast who are never less than are solidly engaging not least Oduye who is excellent as Alike. It’s wonderfully shot (by Bradford Young) with a vivid, melancholic intimacy that brings out the hard-earned warmth and heart inherent in the lives of all the characters. Rees has a bright career ahead of her. (B+)

Pariah is showing at the LFF on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October

Tom Cullen and Chris New in "Weekend"

Another gay-themed tale of burgeoning love, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend (after documentary Greek Pete), makes its way to the LFF this, ahem, weekend.

more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

the link i live in

Animation Magazine Have you heard that Steve Jobs wanted Aaron Sorkin to write a Pixar movie? It's be more interesting if he wrote a movie about Pixar. How would his sharp sometimes cynical wit mesh with Pixar's self-promoted internal cheer as the happiest workplace on earth?
Towleroad I say a few words about Pedro Almodóvar's latest
IndieWire interviews Elena Anaya on her role in The Skin I Live In. *mild spoiler alert*
New York Times "The Formula of Melodrama" brought on by Almodóvar's gripping The Skin I Live In.
My New Plaid Pants more pics from the set of Steven Soderbergh's flesh fest Magic Mike plus JA's hilarious commentary. 

Gold Derby finds fun elected trivia about Meryl Streep's upcoming nomination for The Iron Lady (what do you mean "if") 
Awards Daily pontificates about Olivia Colman's Oscar chances for Tyrannosaur. I saw the movie much earlier this year and she is brilliant in it. 
Culture Map Austin Kristen O'Brien shares memories of George Harrison, whose back in the cultural ether (not that the Beatles ever leave it) given Martin Scorsese's documentary. Love this bit about Madonna and Shanghai Surprise (which Harrison provided music for) of all things.

On this last visit to Friar Park we met first to view footage from the film Shanghai Surprise. I joined Dad to watch the dailies with Harrison and the principal actors in the film, Madonna and Sean Penn. After the screening, we went back to Friar Park for dinner. However, before dinner was served, we gathered in the TV room so that Madonna could get Harrison’s feedback on her latest as-yet-unreleased video. It was "Live to Tell," and she shyly played it for all of us, looking earnestly to George for his approval. After the video we watched The Muppet Show, and I remember thinking it was funny, but yet perfectly natural, to be sitting here with Madonna laughing over Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog.

CBR has a list of unproduced superhero movie screenplays that might make good comic books. Though I knew that Tim Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer wanted to do a Catwoman movie after Batman Returns... I didn't realize that an actual screenplay was turned in (and rejected). Either that or I've just forgotten to block out the pain. 
Keyframe Nick, Timothy and Kevin (three of my four favorite Chicagoans) are arguing over the Chicago Festival fare in this ongoing conversation including The Kid With a Bike, Miss Bala, My Week With Marilyn, and The Artist, and Melancholia. I'm happy to see Nick appreciated Melancholia as much as I did. Where is my review? Funny you should ask. Why am I procrastinating it so? 

Finally, if you're young musical theater performer type -- I know TFE has readers of that persuasion -- you might want to consider auditioning for The Glee Project Season Two. In the past I've always been violently opposed to reality shows which cast productions of anything. Casting should not be a democracy. It should be left to the experts or the people who have to work with the people that are auditioning. I had NO intention of watching this show but I stumbled on it one day and was surprised at how interesting it was. The audience couldn't vote (yay!) and it became this behind the scenes expose (albeit heavily edited and undoubtedly self-censoring) of how show creators react to talent who would love to work with them, and what does or doesn't factor into their hiring decisions. It reminds you of how true it is that talent will only get you so far (i.e. a foot in the door) but there are so many intangibles in showbiz.

NYFF: "Hugo" A Work in Progress

The surprise screening of The New York Film Festival tonight was Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a 3D adaptation of the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret (a much better title for about a hundred reasons) which is about an orphan boy who inadvertently uncovers rich cinematic history while trying to repair a broken automatron that is his only cherished reminder of his father. Martin Scorsese introduced the film himself and seemed a bit embarrassed by the standing ovation before the screening. Perhaps he was thinking Calm down. What if you don't like it?!? 

Father and Son and Automatron in "Hugo"

Though you'll undoubtedly see several full reviews online tonight, we were given a finger wagging public reminder pre-screening that we weren't to do so. Scorsese warned us that the color correction was not finished, the score was a temporary rendition of the completed score which Howard Shore is currently recording, and some of the effects and the 3D still needed touching up. This was especially true of the opening pre-title segment which had a lot of computer graphics in lieu of actual people and objects. So absent an actual review, let it suffice to say that I was too caught up in it to take ANY notes (the only thing written on my pad is "still needs color cor..." yep, that's it!) and was very pleasantly surprised.  

Ben Kingsley as the mysterious Papa GeorgeI had found the trailer so manic and gimmicky that I assumed the film would be a noisy disaster but the completed -- excuse me, nearly completed -- movie is actually fairly gentle and lovely despite flirting with manic slapstick on a few occassions. Production designer and certain Oscar nominee (again) Dante Ferretti's clock motif on steroids should read garish since Hugo lives inside a train station which seems to house ten thousand of them, all of which he hand winds daily. Instead the sets feel like intricate beauties with tiny hand-crafted parts. The film is still settling in my mind and I heard everything from raves to loud but minor quibbling while briefly chatting with other moviegoers outside. But if you've ever loved France, Books, Fiddling With How Gadgets Work, or The History of Cinema, it's a love letter you'll most definitely want to read when it opens next month.

NYFF: "My Week With Marilyn"

Poor Marilyn. The press hounded her. Fans would tear off pieces of her soul if they could. Co-stars and directors dissed her. Men wouldn't leave her alone (not that she wanted them to). And now Simon Curtis is holding yet another Monroe seance -- her soul will never rest in peace -- with his feature film debut My Week With Marilyn (2011),  a "true" story about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

True must come with quotes. The film is based on the memoirs of Colin Clark, the third assistant director on the "lightest of comedies" directed by and starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). Can we trust the awestruck account of a young movie dreamer's version of his friendship and quasi-romance with the world's most famous actress? My Week With Marilyn emphatically does despite the amusingly placcid (if repetitive) moonyness with which the talented Eddie Redmayne portrays him, as if he's just as doped up as Marilyn, but much smarter about his cocktails of choice.

"Surprise!" Marilyn escapes with Colin Clark, lowly third assistant directorClark was 23 going on 24 when he met the immortal bombshell while hustling into the movies, landing his first job on a set through the help of his father's connections, despite the fact that the father did not approve of him 'running off to the circus'. The details of Clark's adventure in the movies are both acted out and explained to us in voiceover in the film's inelegant screenplay, which prefers for the characters to state the obvious or speak their psychologies aloud. Sometimes they even speak Marilyn's aloud; in the great transitive powers of true celebrity, everyone on earth is her psycho-therapist. Sometimes this obviousness of speech has comic payoffs (the film works best as a comedic clash between proper British theatrical training and idiot-savant American stardom) and once it even pays off both dramatically and comedically in a sadly funny scene where Colin Clark tells it like it is, succinctly, to Marilyn. He understands Marilyn and Olivier's mirrored goals and prophesies the failure of the movie.

Thought Balloons as dialogue and Michelle's performance after the jump...

Click to read more ...