THR Actress Roundtable Final Thoughts

But what she really wants to do is laughSee Part One for the full video and commentary on first half hour

The Hollywood Reporter's Actress Roundtable has become an event I impatiently await more than any other non-awards part of the season. It's how I used to feel about Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue before too many dud covers and too many other types of issues using that template. But I digress. Though I am deeply thankful for actresses on every day of the year it IS Thanksgiving so I'm eager to get to the festivities with my family of friends. So just a few quick final notes on each actress before turkey and pie!

Naomi Watts
Her palpable terror about auditions is fascinating when you pause to connect it with the exact moment that essentially made her a star: her persona-switching audition scene in Mulholland Dr. Unlike Anne Hathaway my tendency is not to go pollyanna and I completely don't believe that 'everything happens for a reason' as most people are so fond of saying in a soothing way when bad things happen but maybe those years of career trauma were worth it because Mulholland Dr just wouldn't have been so special without her absolute genius in that dual role. (I do not find her amnesia about I ♥ Huckabees amusing. That movie is so great and she is quite funny in it. "Fuckabeeeees!")

Helen Hunt
The Sessions star flips the questioning on to the reporters who completely lie through their teeth 'Yes, we'd ask the men the same questions'  LOL. (I've never heard that 'when were you last victimized?' school of questioning toward male actors that the "when did you feel forced into doing something you didn't want to do?" question belongs to.)

Helen Hunt is a smart one. "would you ask the same question of the men?"

Sally Field

It's cute the way she's so embarrassed about how much she hogs the conversation but if you're a good raconteur, as she is, hog away. I'm desperate to see this spy movie that Anne Hathaway wanted to write for her and how random is that?!

Anne Hathaway & Marion Cotillard
I will think of little else for the next hour than which movies they were talking about when they expressed that they were in over their head and can't even watch it (Anne) and so miserable and in hate with the director that they couldn't perform (Marion)... though I suppose Marion's will be easy enough to figure out given the clues.

Amy Adams
Still looking like she doesn't want to be there in this Part 2. What gives?

Rachel Weisz
The most surprising contender in the roundtable and, quite possibly, the most fun to have a drink with afterwards. I'm really pissed to hear that the studios responded with "no one makes movies like that" about her proposed very solitary Julia Butterfly-Hill movie. Um... Cast Away? 127 Hours?

Let's end with a poll.

Each actress was asked to share a role she really wanted to play or write or make happen somehow. Which of their imagined movies do you most want to see?

"I would like to play a monster. Like the Gollum."

poll by twiigs.com

THR Actress Roundtable - Part 1

Live Blogged via Tape Delay! Woot 

I've embedded the whole hour at the bottom of this post. Please to enjoy.

00:01 Photoshoots. We begin with a lot of hand to throat or chest or hair gesturing. And... pose! This year's models in order of first solo shot in the montage: Marion Cotillard, Sally Field, Naomi Watts, and Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway and Helen Hunt . Weirdly Rachel Weisz does not get a solo shot. Don't they negotiate every second of these things: "AGENT!!!"

00:38 One thing that's immediately clear about this latest edition of the Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable -- now one of the best Oscar traditions -- is that they're upping their game. The camera work is more expressive, and the spacious well designed interior with white couches is less corporate bland than I remember and more conducive to the group therapy session that follows. Psssh, it is so group therapy!. I mean they start with a question about fear and move straight into rock bottom trauma of careers the "should I give up?" moment before the big break. 

00:43 Helen Hunt's "I'm thinking about the question" face is hilarious. PONDERING in all caps. [Lots more after the jump.]

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Summer Movie Survey. We Celebrate! (Part 1)

How was the summer for you? Did you shove tips in Magic Mike's loincloth at the Xquisite or strap on utility belts to fight for Gotham's soul? Maybe you freaked out in outer/auteur space with Ridley Scott, or demonstrated super popcorn-eating powers with Joss Whedon and The Avengers or devoured art house offerings as enthusiastically as Hushpuppy cracked those crab shells in Beasts of the Southern Wild? 

We totally want to hear your great takeaways from summer movie season, so we'll go first. Sharing Time! I sent my frequent contributors a little questionnaire -- a "Summer Report Card" if you will -- to get the thingie about their summer at the movies to get this comment party started and here's what I got back.  I had such fun reading these and I hope you do too. This weekend I'll be joined by my podcast mates Joe Reid and Nick Davis on a two parter answering these same questions. If you answer these questions on your blog I'll link up. Or just use the comments as your own "what about me?!" personal space.

So here we go...

AMIR
Best Movie I Saw All Summer: 
Beasts of the Southern Wild, closely followed by those wild beasts of the south dancing at the Xquisite

Moment  I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
It wasn't just my heart bursting, it was all my insides spilling out as Noomi Rapace cut herself to deliver her baby monster in Prometheus. 
At Least The Theatre Was Air Conditioned:
Killer Joe
Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : 
Though I ended up missing that episode of HMWYBS, thanks to Nathaniel I finally caught up with Dog Day Afternoon. What a superb actor Al Pacino used to be.
 

Major Summer Crush(es)
Few things in the world are as attractive as women riding motorcycles, or women dressed in spandex. Few people are as attractive as Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway riding a motorcycle wearing spandex? *faints*
 

Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

The law says you cannot touch, but I think I see a lotta lawbreakers up in this house tonight."
-Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) in Magic Mike

JOSE
Best Movie I Saw All Summer:
Prometheus
Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye?
Katniss!
Thing I Actually Learned (at summer movie camp! ;): 
Rachel Weisz is not the poor man's Kate Winslet anymore even if she was doing Revolutionary Road redux in The Deep Blue Sea.
Major Summer Crush(es): 
Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron in Prometheus; Princess Merida in Brave; Emma Stone in The Amazing Spider-Man; Thor's biceps in The Avengers
 At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned: 
Total Recall 
If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...
...everything in Dark Shadows, except for Chloe, Eva and Michelle. 

Moment I ♥  So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst:
"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" as performed by CZJ in Rock of Ages. Don't judge.
Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : Les Diaboliques.
Line Reading That Stuck In My Head...

Peter Parker: "I've been bitten"

Gwen: "So have I"

MICHAEL

Best Movie I Saw This Summer:
Moonrise Kingdom

Moments  I  ♥ So Much I Thought My Heart Would Burst: 
The floating brothel from Beasts and the Wal Mart shopping trip from Queen of Versailles

Thing I Actually Learned (at summer movie camp!)

If you are fighting with a guy who relies on an elaborate face mask to live you should probably punch him in the mask

Major Summer Crush:
Alison Brie from Five Year Engagement. Just when I thought I couldn't be more in love with her she goes and adds a flawless English accent.
Princess Merida, Katniss or Hawkeye? 
Merida. Better form than Hawkeye. Better personality than Katniss. Better hair than anyone, ever.

If Only "Hulk" Had Smashed...:  
That pale humanoid guy from Prometheus. Right when he came back to life and had the smug look on his face. How satisfying would that have been?

Mash-Up ~ Summer Movie Characters I'd Like to Introduce (and why): 
David from Prometheus and The Avengers. David deserves a better franchise and The Avengers could use someone who is not such a drama queen.

Best Old Movie I Saw For the First Time This Summer - Go Me! : In researching a post about cinema's greatest cinematographers I watched Mikhail Kalatazov's The Cranes are Flying, 1958's Cannes winner and Wow. How did I miss this film for so many years? A stunning masterpiece that should be talked about more.

At Least The Theater Was Air Conditioned:
Snow White and the Huntsman. No more movies where the lead character is "the chosen one". I'm begging. 

Line Reading That Stuck in My Head...

After you die I'll go to your grave and eat birthday cake all by myself."
- Beasts of the Southern Wild

...also, all the lines Charlize Theron randomly YELLED in Snow White are still ringing in my ears but I don't think that's what you mean.

 

Continue to the answers from Katey Rich from Cinema Blend & JA from My New Plaid Pants

P.S. I heartily endorse Michael's love for The Cranes are Flying, Amir's hot and botheredness for attractive chicks on motorcycles, and I wanted to second Jose's endorsement of CZJ in musical form again but the movie let her down!

London: "The Deep Blue Sea"

David here with one last report from the London Film Festival. Master British filmmaker Terence Davies provided a suitably British closing film, with Rachel Weisz lost in The Deep Blue Sea...

"Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea," Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) remarks at one point, naming the title of Terence Davies' latest feature, an adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play. It's Hester's voice that opens the film, too, disembodied over the dark blue background of the credits, reading a suicide note to her lover, Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston of Thor fame). Hester is drowning in the deep blue sea of her own adoration, because Freddie's love isn't strong enough to reciprocate and pull her back to the surface.

The Deep Blue Sea betrays its theatrical origins from the first shot, panning smoothly across the front of a row of houses, the edges of the frame misty as though the smoke machines have been humming for hours. Davies has never been one to shy away from formalistic filmmaking, though, and like his best work, this film finds emotional power in and despite of the thoroughly artificial surface, which cracks itself between theatrical mannerisms and the sort of dissolution of temporality that dominated Davies' feature debut Distant Voices, Still Lives. The couple's flat houses much of the action, lit with a curiously indistinct glow through the windows, and the dialogue, particularly Hester's verbalisation of her feelings, is more narrational than conversational. But only minutes in, her memories spin, and black dissolves glide through her memories with a ghostly implacability.

As we meet her, Hester is trying to commit suicide - an indication that her story is not set to be a cheerful one. Handy with the sort of observational intimacy he practiced in Distant Voices and The House of Mirth, Davies again tells a deeply personal story without giving his filmmaking over to a singular point of view. It's due to Weisz's superb performance - besting her Oscar-winning work in The Constant Gardener - that we understand the moments of worldly perspective, from every mention of the war to the words of her landlady Mrs. Elton (Ann Mitchell), are Hester's own realisations of how selfish and narcissitic her dramatic emotions are. Despite the stilted dialogue, Weisz's is a very physical performance, the overwhelming nature of Hester's love and her attempts to quash it apparent in the cadences of her voice and the limits she puts on her movements.

The Deep Blue Sea is often too mannered, too ponderous, and Davies' technical mastery of the camera has the faint scent of pomposity to it. The pitch of Weisz' vivid passion is never as apparent as it needs to be in this environment;  a breathless swoop of the camera onto her face is notable for its alertness, a crack in the fusty air around her. But finally, though rooted in British history (as the final shot insists), this is an irrefutably personal story in a world that emphasised the communal. Hester, unfamiliar with the song the patriotic drinkers around her sing, softly sings the chorus only to Freddie, shifting the words into her own narrative. Selfish, but after all, her passion is just a drop in the deep blue sea. (B)

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

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