The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused Loving Musical Gifted Intelligent Beautiful Tender Sensitive Haunted Passionate Talented Mr. Ripley.

Last night I posted the Best Shot group roundup of The Talented Mr Ripley, but not my own choice. Why? Well every time I began I wanted to start over. If this blogpost were a passport I would have been defacing my own photo. I chose eight shots - at least -- but each one seemed to beg for a wholly different article to accompany it. Which is not to say that the film is any more gorgeously shot than others we've covered in this series (though John Seale easily deserved the best Cinematography nomination he was denied) but that it is several films at once. Which is why I've titled this post with its less condensed but truer title. Those sixteen extra shuffling adjectives in the brilliant title design say it all. 

Light bulb! 

Not actual light bulbs but figurative ones (we'll get to the actual ones in a minute) though actual lights figure into this perfect shot of Marge, backing through a hallway in what would handily be my choice if I thought of this film as only a thriller. This moment is just terrifying, aided immeasurably by a virtuousic turn by Gwyneth Paltrow. [more...]

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Visual Index ~ The Talented Mr Ripley's Best Shot(s)

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, we stayed another summer in Italy. We didn't follow an American spinster this time but a young shapeshifter known as The Talented Mr Ripley. He was sent to Italy to fetch trustfund baby Dickie Greenleaf but he likes Dickie's life so much he fetches it for himself instead. 

Outside the film's actual narrative, based on the famous novel by Patricia Highsmith (whose work is oft-adapted - The Two Faces of January is next) things were just as dramatic. The movie was a Prestige Event since it was Anthony Minghella's (RIP) follow-up to his Best Picture winner The English Patient (1996). It wasn't quite a slam dunk with Oscar, despite the pedigree and the quality (I prefer it to Patient, myself), though it sure was a thing of beauty. The Talented Mr Ripley featured one of the most impressive collections of young stars at seemingly simultaneous points in their careers ever assembled; the world had just fallen for Gwyneth Paltrow (hot off Shakespeare), Jude Law (hot off stealing Gattaca), Matt Damon (still glowing from Good Will Hunting), and Cate Blanchett (hot off Elizabeth) and writer/director Anthony Minghella (RIP) managed to corral them all for the same movie.

Here are the 15 images that the 17 wide Best Shot club went a little mad for. Click on the link for the corresponding article and refresh your screens since more articles are bound to come in (including my own). Next week's film is Disney's grand 40s experiment Fantasia (special instructions here) and you should join us.

BEST SHOT(S)

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Link Grams

Today's Must Read
New Yorker Screenwriter Alan Zweibel on his two run-ins with Roger Ebert (who gave him his worst review)

More Links 
In Contention Melissa Leo's gone Hollywood. Are the new films beneath the LEOgend's skill set?
Open Culture Alfred Hitchcock masterclass on film editing 
Cartoon Brew Disney destroys its hand drawn animation division. Honestly I'm shocked that this only happened now. It's been so long since they were in the hand drawn business. (Sigh)
The Playlist Abbie Cornish, Colin Farrell, and Anthony Hopkins in a movie about FBI agents with psychic abilities. Sounds terrible. 

And Four For You, Glen Coco! 
Hollywood.com has an empirical breakdown of the seven women of Mean Girls and who is doing best for themselves 9 years later. I almost didn't link though because of the weird lapses in facts just to praise Rachel McAdams. Yes, Hollywood.com, she has also had flops. And more than one of them.
i09 on why the western/sci-fi mashup is such a hard sell for audiences
MovieLine wonders why there's no remake of Near Dark (1987) in the works. Ugh. So glad there isn't! There's no topping Bill Paxton's "finger lickin' good" vamp.
Entertainment Weekly Matt Damon's new physique for Elysium 

Link Wars Episode IV: A New Blog

MNPP on Keep the Lights On in 250 words or less. Good insights here - love the ending - though JA likes the film more than I do.
Deadline Upcoming 3D conversions of all Star Wars movies cancelled. Thank god. Every day I pray to the movie gods to take the plague of 3D and its conversions away from us!
Two Dollar Cinema heads to The Last Stand on account of a childhood spent with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies
The Film Doctor 10 questions about Silver Linings Playbook

 

Stale Popcorn takes in Xavier Dolan's Lawrence Anyways. I love Dolan but I'm scared of this one - three hour dramas are hard to pull off. 
Vulture interviews Steven Soderbergh who apparently really is retiring now.
Movie|Line is the upcoming Brad Bird/George Clooney feature Tomorrowland (previously title 1952) about early space travel?
In Contention will Argo be a Driving Miss Daisy or an Apollo 13? 
The Carpetbagger Mistakes were made on the marketing of Django and The Master 

And did you see Matt Damon talking to Nicole Kidman a few nights back on Jimmy Kimmel Live Jimmy Kimmel Sucks?

Hilarious. Nicole Kidman can steal my utensils any time she'd like. 

Box Office Quickie: Meryl Streep, The Right Choice

Remember that glorious bit on the sitcom Modern Family where Cameron sang the praises of Meryl Streep?

Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice from Kristian Møller Jørgensen on Vimeo.

Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice."

I kept thinking about that this weekend when Hope Springs hit theaters competing with all these new releases. Could Streep play a genetically mutated super spy like Renner? Could Streep play Catwoman as well as Hathaway? Could Streep play a disaster seeking political office like...Oh wait, that was last year. Whatever, one thinks of her range, she is a box office star as the opening weekend of Hope Springs indicates. Sure 4th place isn't great but when you stop to remember that it's a movie about senior citizens struggling with sexual intimacy than 4th place is basically 5 consecutive weeks at number one.

The Bourne Legacy's terrific opening weekend is interesting. Does this mean you don't need Matt Damon or that even just the memory of Matt Damon is bankable?

Top o' the Box Office To You
01 new THE BOURNE LEGACY $40.2 
02 new THE CAMPAIGN $27.4 
03 THE DARK KNIGHT RISES $19.5 (Cum. $390.1) Review
04 new HOPE SPRINGS  $15.6 Oscar Prospects?
05 DIARY OF AN ANNOYING FRANCHISE PT. 2 $8.2 (Cum. $30.5)
06 TOTAL RECALL $8.1 (Cum. $44.1) Review

Jeremy, Rachel, Meryl and Anne race away with the box office

Other box office notes of...uh...note:
Total Recall took a disastrous 68 percent drop in its second weekend suggesting that it probably won't earn back even half of its budget in domestic release;  Brave continues to climb the Pixar charts having just passed WALL•E with Cars in its sights next; After seven weeks Beasts of the Southern Wild appears to have finally hit the wall and will now descend *sniffle*. (It's done very well for itself but I was hoping we'd see braver moviegoers embrace it in larger numbers. It's always worth hoping that the general public will get a little more adventurous in their moviegoing... I mean THIS is available to them and they still want reheated superhero leftovers?); Farewell My Queen, my pet cause, has been inching towards the magic $1 million mark at the arthouse but I worry it'll fall short now... it'll need a couple more weeks to get there and those might be hard to come by.

Finally, Ruby Sparks couldn't drum up much interest in a big expansion so it's not much longer for this world... I have the guilt about not seeing this. I must go this week! Must you?