Something Good

Let us not focus on the negatives. I may, indeed, come to post something about the abomination that is Flashbacks of a Fool (because, really, the alignment of Craig. Daniel Craig. is just too perfect to pass up), but there is a silver lining: it introduced me to Roxy Music's AMAZING song If There Is Something. And here it is for you to enjoy too.

Showdown: British Young Thing Period Piece

The Young Victoria and The Duchess are currently scheduled to be released on the same day- the 29th of August 2008- here in the UK. Surely this will lead to some kind of horrific implosion? Two young British actresses starring in period biopics of upper class people. So what else is there to do but examine which is most likely to succeed? Yes, it's the British Young Thing Period Piece Showdown, 2008. Let's have a look at our contenders.

THE YOUNG VICTORIA
Who's it about?
Queen Victoria, the Queen of England from 1837 to 1901 (yes, I knew that without looking). As the title intimates, this covers the "turbulent first years" of her rule, according to IMDb.
Who's the British Young Thing starring in it?
Emily Blunt, who was generally considered the also-ran in 2006's Best Supporting Actress race at the Oscars for her comic turn as Meryl Streep's assistant in bitch-com The Devil Wears Prada. Her breakthrough came a couple of years earlier with her joint-lead turn alongside Nathalie Press in My Summer of Love.
Who's playing that classic older, controlling woman role?
Miranda Richardson plays Victoria's domineering mother, The Duchess of Kent, who was relegated to separate accomodations on Victoria's becoming Queen but later welcomed back, upon the Queen's first child being born.
And the love interest?
Rupert Friend plays Victoria's eventual husband Prince Albert. The film focuses on their relationship.
Who's directing?
Jean-Marc Vallee, the Quebecois director thus far most famous for his 2005 Quebec feature C.R.A.Z.Y., which was slightly off-the-wall but showed great promise, especially with regards to handling performers. [See my review, and read my praise of C.R.A.Z.Y.'s lead actor Marc-Andre Grondin.]
Who wrote the screenplay?
Julian Fellowes, actor and writer who won the Oscar for his screenplay for Robert Altman's Gosford Park back in 2001. He was also part of the team who scribed Mira Nair's adaptation of Vanity Fair, and wrote and directed his own feature, Separate Lies, in 2005.
Any other big names involved?
Martin Scorsese and Sarah Ferguson (that's Fergie, Duchess of York, to you and me) are both producing. Paul Bettany is playing Lord Melbourne, who was a close friend and father-figure to the Queen. Jim Broadbent is playing Victoria's uncle, King William IV, and Thomas Krestchmann (of The Pianist) is another uncle King Leopald of Belgium. And Sandy Powell (The Aviator, Far From Heaven, Shakespeare in Love, Velvet Goldmine) is costume designer.
Where has it been filmed?
Lincoln Cathedral has stood in for Westminster Abbey, although scenes have also been filmed at the Abbey itself; while Blenheim Palace, Arundel Castle and Belvoir Castle have also been used. Wilton House, used in recent period pieces Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mrs. Brown, is also featured. [full IMDb list here.]
Yes, but when does it open in America?
It's currently scheduled for release just a week later than the UK, on September 3rd. However, the film is currently without a distributor in both countries, so changes are highly likely.
And is there a trailer?
Not as yet, probably because of the lack of distributor. So judgments are purely speculative.

THE DUCHESS
Who's it about?
18th Century aristocrat Georgiana Cavenish, Duchess of Devonshire, a scandalous socialite and political campaigner who lived from 1757 to 1806.
Who's the British Young Thing starring in it?
Keira Knightley, everyone's favourite pirate, more noted in cinematic circles for her two period collaborations with Joe Wright, Pride and Prejudice (which got her an Oscar nom) and Atonement (which didn't). Her breakthrough was also in a low-key British film, the football comedy Bend It Like Beckham.
Who's playing that classic, controlling older woman role?
Well, who knows if she's controlling, but The Duchess has Charlotte Rampling playing a Lady Spencer, who I believe is the Duchess's mother. She does have a little moment in the trailer (see below), but whether she's domineering or simply concerned remains to be seen.
And the love interest?
Ralph Fiennes plays her husband, William Cavenish, although the sex-factor will likely be provided by Dominic Cooper (The History Boys), as Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey (and it is this Earl Grey whom the tea was named after), with whom her affair almost caused the Duchess' husband to divorce her. And Hayley Atwell, who starred in Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream and is also appearing in Brideshead Revisited this year, is playing the Duchess's confidante Bess Foster, who was the Duke's mistress for many years and became his second wife.
Who's directing?
Saul Dibb, who wrote and directed British gangster film Bullet Boy (which recieved mediocre notices) in 2004, and directed the mini-series adaptation of Alan Hollingsworth look at 1980s gay London The Line of Beauty for television in 2006 (which, from the bits I saw, was quite good).
Who wrote the screenplay?
Jeffrey Hatcher (who co-wrote Lasse Hallestrom's reviled Casanova, and adapted his own play for the dull Stage Beauty) and the Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen, who won an Oscar for his short film Valgaften, and worked with Susanne Bier on Open Hearts, Brothers and After the Wedding, have adapted Amanda Foreman's biography.
Any other big names involved?
Nope.
Where has it been filmed?
Locations include Chatsworth House, Kedleston Hall, and Somerset House.
Yes, but when does it open in America?
IMDb has the American release date as September 12th.
And is there a trailer?
Since Pathe (UK and France) and Paramount Vantage (US and Australia) are on board for distribution, we have been given a trailer, which you can watch at youtube.

So...?
Well, it's hard to really make any firm judgments at this point, especially since The Young Victoria is without a trailer and it's impossible to get any feel for what it will be like. But it does seem to have more pedigree- (ex-)royals on board (Princess Beatrice also has a cameo), reliable British stalwarts like Broadbent and Richardson in the background- than The Duchess, and besides, the latter's trailer is decidedly discomfiting. Keira does NOT look comfortable wearing that tall wig, and, if the trailer is representative of the film as a whole (which is isn't necessarily, granted), it seems to be going majorly for the sex factor. I get the feeling that The Duchess is playing the raunchy card, while The Young Victoria will go more for the cerebral, intelligent, low-key route. And isn't it just more exciting to think of Emily Blunt finally getting her due rather than Keira Knightley stealing the limelight yet again?

Feel free to correct me on any incorrect details. I'm not an historical expert, so I may well have got some details wrong.

The Performance That Changed My Life

This is for Emma's blog-a-thon, if you didn't know, and you should get on over there and read all the other posts, after you've read this one.

I thought long and hard about who to write about here, the major problem being that I couldn't think of anyone- sure, there are a ton of performances that I love, but could I really honestly say that any of them changed me? (I take things very seriously as you see.) I didn't think I could. Until my brain finally looped round to a performance that it always went to, a seminal moment in my film-watching canon. It's a distinctly unconventional and even obscure choice, but be sure it's one that surprised even me in the way it affected me and stuck in my head. And here it is...

Jodhi May as Alice Munro
in
The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann, 1992)

Let's get one thing clear first. I don't like The Last of the Mohicans. I think it's boring and long and visually dull (although that may be the video copy we own, for some unknown reason). And, for most of the film, I barely even noticed that Alice Munro even existed, sidelined as she is as the sister of lead character Hawkeye's (Daniel Day-Lewis) love interest Cora (Madeleine Stowe). Various native American parties are assisting on either side of the colonial French-British battle in colonial America (why, I'm not sure), and Hawkeye is an independant man reared as a Mohawk who ends up, with two friends, guiding these sisters through various difficult and dangerous situations (including one sequence involving a canoe chase which is about the only excitement I got out of the vast part of the film). Naturally, Hawkeye falls for Cora, but what interests us here is what's going on in the background.

This is never exactly made clear, and it took reading after seeing the film to clear up what had actually been going on. As the film nears the end, the group progresses up a precarious waterfall, one of Hawkeye's friends, Uncas (Eric Schweig) is killed by the men tracking them, and he falls off the edge of the waterfall. Suddenly, surprisingly, Alice gives a look to her sister and jumps off after him.

Basic description does not do this moment justice. Perhaps what I'm going to say is hyperbolic, but it is also the truth. Have you ever experienced a moment you can't explain, where something affects you in a way you never expected, in a way it will probably never affect someone else, in a way it may not ever affect you yourself again? This is what happened to me here. The look that Jodhi May gave to the camera in that tiny second of film startled me, made my heart stop, made me weep- and I didn't understand why. There had been no build up, no groundwork- it was simply a sudden, unexpected moment. It was overwhelming in its despair, its sorrow, its harrowing hopelessness. I've never had a moment like it since. I've never watched the film again for fear that I would lose the remnants of the feeling. I doubt that you, if you watched it, would feel the same, for I can only feel that it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. It is MY moment. Is there anyone else in the world who felt so strongly, from feeling so disinterested, in that piece of film? I doubt it, and, more importantly, I hope not.

Jodhi May's performance changed my life because it made me realize that performances don't always need deep groundwork to function, that someone can swoop in for barely a second and be as affecting as three hours of a performance. Jodhi May's performance is emotion in a captured frame, and, in a rare moment of foresight for me, I captured it in a photo. (From my tv, isn't it good!) (Oh, and search google for "Jodhi May Mohicans" and this image, my image, is the first to come up, on my Rotten Tomatoes page. Wicked.)

The link, here, behind the image, by the way, is to a youtube clip that includes the moment, which I haven't watched but managed to check for it's veracity. Watch it. I don't expect you to feel the same, and perhaps you won't have a clue what I'm talking about. But this moment is one that I can honestly say changed me: changed the way I look at film, change the way I understand it, change the way I see emotions. It is one of the few moments of my life that I can't understand, can't explain, can't put down to any earthly description.

A Mighty Movie?

Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart has been making news in the past couple of days- it premiered to a positive reception in Cannes (good news for my entry in Nat's Actress Contest), but, more than that, the subject of the movie Mariane Pearl's presence at the press conferences has caused great interest- especially after a reporter asked her if she'd forgiven him. A Mighty Heart may well be a press-stirrer, but thankfully, it looks as though it won't be because it's a bad movie. Here's the trailer for the movie, scheduled to be released on June 22nd in the US, and 28th September in the UK.

The Many Talents of Toni

Toni Collette does more than just act. This is a revelation I have only recently come across. Stale Popcorn recently posted about this, but I've just become so obsessed that I had to echo him. I was shocked to find that her album with her band The Finish is actually available on British iTunes... so buy it if you can! My favourite is the song in the video above- their latest single 'Look Up'- but the entire album is truly fantastic. And now I just love Toni about ten times more, which I thought was wholly impossible. I'd love to show you the scene from The Sixth Sense when Cole tells his mom (Toni) what he can see... but, dangit, there isn't one online. So a screencap shall have to do. It's one of my absolute favourite tear-jerking moments ever.


- She wanted me to tell you...
- Cole, please stop...
- She wanted me to tell you she saw you dance. She said, when you were little, you and her had a fight, right before your dance recital. You thought she didn't come see you dance. She did. She hid in the back so you wouldn't see. She said you were like an angel. She said you came to the place where they buried her. Asked her a question? She said the answer is..."Every day." What did you ask?
- Do... Do I make her proud?

And now, given that it's a quarter past two in the morning and I have to get up at seven, I'm finally going to go to bed.

A Not-So-Famous Second Take On Capote

After a bit of coverage around last year's Oscars, where Capote was a towering figure, no one really seemed to care when Douglas McGrath's unintentional-sister film Infamous was actually released, bar perhaps a bit of tittering when it was discovered that Toby Jones and new Bond Daniel Craig lock lips in one scene. Infamous is a lot more than that moment, although, sadly this lot is not worth a whole lot. I wasn't the biggest championer of Capote, but watching Infamous made me wonder why I wasn't more impressed by Capote's laudable subtlety and rich, downcast atmosphere- for Infamous, by contrast, overstates practically everything, and it's tone is rather more confused.

Where Capote purposefully eschewed focus on Truman Capote's Manhattan lifestyle, Infamous practically revels in it, casting an array of familiar faces as Capote's "Swans" and other friends. The disturbing descent of Capote's obsession with murderer Perry Smith (here played by Craig) does not make the same impact this time around precisely because Douglas McGrath always returns him to his New York home and companions- both worlds exist together here, nothing has been lost, as it was in Capote. An awkward interjection of later interviews with Capote's friends serves only to jar the film even further, and McGrath's direction often can't help being too obvious and pandering.

Nevertheless, there's some good stuff here. Toby Jones isn't nearly as good as Philip Seymour Hoffman was, but he still offers an interesting new riff on the character and is usually precise in his voice and mannerisms. Sandra Bullock is excellent as best friend Nelle Harper Lee- from her poignant readings of McGrath's often studied dialogue in the interview sections to her awkward plodding walk, Bullock captures Lee's uncomfortability with the situations she finds herself in while retaining a true sense of Lee's friendship with Capote. As for the Swans, only a virtually cameoing Isabella Rossellini truly convinces- Hope Davis seems far too modern, while Sigourney Weaver and Juliet Stevenson both demonstrate an unfortunate tendency to overact.

It's ironic, perhaps, that the film's best moment comes right at the start. Gwyneth Paltrow is Kitty Dean (read: Peggy Lee), singer at the nightclub Capote and Babe Paley (Weaver) are frequenting, and, after knocking a few verses of 'What Is This Thing Called Love' out of the park, she suddenly stops. The music stops, and Kitty sadly sings something acapella, making the entire club stop, transfixed. Kitty stops again, and gestures to the band to strike up again- she's back in the swing of the song again. Paltrow's gorgeous voice and point-perfect epitomization of the period almost ends the movie before it's started, and nothing in Infamous ever reaches the glorious highs of that scene.

And to prove my point, here's that moment (or half of it):