These are my notes for this week's screening:
An Education
UK 2009 (95 minutes)
Director: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike and Emma Thompson
Awards and Nominations
• Nominated for three Oscars: Best Film, Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby)
• A further 18 wins and 45 nominations including a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for Carey Mulligan and seven further nominations including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Outstanding British Film
In 1961 London Jenny Millar (Carey Mulligan), a 16 year old schoolgirl in the process applying to Oxford, meets a charming older man David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) who starts taking her out and then charms her parents into accepting the relationship. Jenny eventually realises that Goldman is a con man, but nonetheless accepts his proposal of marriage and drops out of school – and then she discovers that he is already married. Jenny returns to school to renew her studies and next year is accepted at Oxford.
The film is based on an autobiographical memoir by the journalist Lynn Barber who as a schoolgirl had an affair with conman Simon Prewalski, an associate of Peter Rachman before reading English at St Anne’s College Oxford. The script is by Nick Hornby, better known as the author of novels such as Fever Pitch, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, who explained in an interview what drew him to the story:
“She’s a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ‘n’ roll band.”
The story also has echoes of the kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s like Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey although the trouble that Jenny gets to is the – potential – loss of her Oxford career. The film concludes with Jenny at Oxford remarking in a voiceover: “I probably looked as wide-eyed, fresh and artless as any student. But I wasn’t.” This is, if anything, an understatement: as Lynn Barber revealed during a recent appearance on Desert Island Discs, she managed to sleep with more than 50 men during two terms at Oxford.
Carey Mulligan received unanimous praise for her performance as Jenny in what was only her second film appearance. She played Kitty Bennet in Joe Wright’s version of Price and Prejudice (2005) and then spent three years playing leading roles in a number of TV programmes including Ada Clare in Bleak House and Sally Sparrow in Blink (one of the best Doctor Who stories ever). Following the international success of An Education she was cast in a co-starring role in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street (1987) and will appear shortly in a starring role with Keira Knightley in Never Let Me Go (2010), from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, which will receive its first screening at the 2010 London Film Festival.
Showing posts with label 2009 Film Notes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2009 Film Notes. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Planning Meeting
We closed our last season with the AGM, and as we held it before the screening everyone kept it pretty short. The good news is that we are still solvent, but the bad news is that we have been dependent on external grants to purchase the big ticket items like projector and sound system, and in the current age of austerity I do not think that the local auythority will look kindly on a grant application to upgrade/replace the kit.
We made money on most of our Thursday screenings, but for many of our Sunday screeenings the audience was solely committee members and family members. The other major source of revenue is the bar, and it is clear that our audience is generally thirsty. I was only half-joking when I suggested that we sould set ourselves up as a Wine Club that also screens films.
It's difficult to coerce people into attending, but we intend to harness the power of the internet to send out reminders to members - or at least to those of our members have email access - and also intend to run a raffle for our "free" introductory film. We agreed to have DVDs as prices and I volunteered to find something appropriate for the good folk of Highclere: after a quick trawl through Amazon I bought a box set of Billy Wilder films (including Some Like It Hot - which I saw many years ago on the big screen at the PPP while at Oxford) and another set starring Orson Welles (including The Third Man).
My plan is to blog for the full season and to intersperse updates on our progress with the notes that I prepare for each screening. Hopefully our choice of Up In The Air will get the season off to a good start.
We made money on most of our Thursday screenings, but for many of our Sunday screeenings the audience was solely committee members and family members. The other major source of revenue is the bar, and it is clear that our audience is generally thirsty. I was only half-joking when I suggested that we sould set ourselves up as a Wine Club that also screens films.
It's difficult to coerce people into attending, but we intend to harness the power of the internet to send out reminders to members - or at least to those of our members have email access - and also intend to run a raffle for our "free" introductory film. We agreed to have DVDs as prices and I volunteered to find something appropriate for the good folk of Highclere: after a quick trawl through Amazon I bought a box set of Billy Wilder films (including Some Like It Hot - which I saw many years ago on the big screen at the PPP while at Oxford) and another set starring Orson Welles (including The Third Man).
My plan is to blog for the full season and to intersperse updates on our progress with the notes that I prepare for each screening. Hopefully our choice of Up In The Air will get the season off to a good start.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Boat That Rocked
These are the film notes for our final screening of the 2009/2010 season:
UK 2009 (135 minutes)
Director: Richard Curtis
Starring: Tom Sturridge, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth
Branagh
Following his expulsion from school Carl (Tom Sturridge) arrives on Radio Rock, a pirate radio ship, to stay with the ship’s Captain Quentin (Bill Nighy) who is also his godfather and meets the disc jockeys who crew the ship. A government minister (Kenneth Branagh) takes offence at the ship’s output and creates the Marine Offences Act in order to close the station down. Quentin and the crew decide to defy the ban, but an attempt to move the ship causes its engines to explode and the ship sinks, but without any loss of life.
The story is based on the real life pirate radio station named Radio Caroline, which broadcast from international waters off the coast of South East England in the 1960s, although Richard Curtis (as both writer and director) was keen to point out that he did not intend to depict the real story of offshore broadcasting; rather he wrote the film solely for entertainment purposes.
Richard Curtis started his career as one of the writers on Not The Nine O’Clock News before creating the Blackadder series with Rowan Atkinson. He made his film breakthrough with his screenplay for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) which became the highest grossing British film to date and which made Hugh Grant a global superstar. Curtis followed this with the screenplay for Notting Hill (1999) as well as collaborating with Helen Fielding on the screenplays for Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), all of which starred Hugh Grant. In 2003 Curtis directed Love Actually from his own screenplay, once again starring Hugh Grant, and this time in a strangely prophetic role as a “posh boy” Prime Minister. In addition to Grant all the films included a regular group of British actors including Colin Firth, Rowan Atkinson and Bill Nighy in their casts.
In parallel with this successful film career Curtis also created The Vicar of Dibley, which ran from 1994 to 2007, as a vehicle for Dawn French. He followed this with the screenplay of the TV version of The No. 1 Ladies Detection Agency which he co-wrote with Anthony Minghella (who also acted as director) before returning to film with The Boat That Rocked in 2009. His most recent project is a story – Vincent and the Doctor - for the current series of Doctor Who which despite an amusing cameo role for Bill Nighy as an art critic lecturing on Van Gogh failed to reach the standards of recent stories about historical characters such as The Unquiet Dead (Dickens), The Shakespeare Code (Shakespeare – inevitably) or even The Unicorn and the Wasp (Agatha Christie).
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Soloist
These are my notes for the film we screened last night. It was the last film of the season and although it was good we had a pretty small audience. next year we plan to end the season before Easter.
The Soloist
USA 2009 (117 minutes)
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr. and Catherine Keener
Awards and Nominations
Four nominations including Best Actor nominations for both Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.
While at the Juillard School Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx) developed schizophrenia and after becoming homeless is reduced to playing a two-stringed violin on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Steve Lopez (Downey) is a journalist, and after meeting Ayers he decides to write a column about him and his homelessness. The column is a great success, and as Lopez continues both to write about Ayers and to help him he is forced to grapple with the complex issues of the thousands of mentally ill who live on the streets of Los Angeles.
With its subject matter the film seems to be a close companion to Shine (1996), which was based on the life of the pianist David Helfgott who spent years in institutions after a mental breakdown. However Philip French, somewhat idiosyncratically, links it to Marley & Me (2008) and Julia & Julia (2009) in that all three films started as newspaper columns which their authors then turned into books.
The film is based on a true story that Steve Lopez told in a series of columns that eventually became a book called The Soloist. Since the success of the book Lopez has maintained a relationship with Ayers and has become his mentor. But Lopez always saw Ayers as more than one individual with a story to tell:
“I was told early on that this was a rare opportunity to humanise thousands like him. This story took me into a whole world, a world so close... to City Hall. Without him, without the evolving drama of his life, nobody would have cared about the public policy of it.”
As his relationship with Ayers continued Lopez became both an expert and an advocate for mental health and homeless issues and speaks regularly on the lecture circuit.
After beginning his career in television Joe Wright made his name in the cinema with an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (2005) which won him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and which starred Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett. He worked with Knightley again on the multi-Oscar nominated Atonement (2007). The Soloist marked a clear change of direction and helped Wright escape from being seen as a director of prestige adaptations of literary classics. His current project is another change of direction: Hanna is a story about a teenage assassin from Easter Europe who escapes from her background when a French family take her in.
The Soloist
USA 2009 (117 minutes)
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr. and Catherine Keener
Awards and Nominations
Four nominations including Best Actor nominations for both Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.
While at the Juillard School Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx) developed schizophrenia and after becoming homeless is reduced to playing a two-stringed violin on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Steve Lopez (Downey) is a journalist, and after meeting Ayers he decides to write a column about him and his homelessness. The column is a great success, and as Lopez continues both to write about Ayers and to help him he is forced to grapple with the complex issues of the thousands of mentally ill who live on the streets of Los Angeles.
With its subject matter the film seems to be a close companion to Shine (1996), which was based on the life of the pianist David Helfgott who spent years in institutions after a mental breakdown. However Philip French, somewhat idiosyncratically, links it to Marley & Me (2008) and Julia & Julia (2009) in that all three films started as newspaper columns which their authors then turned into books.
The film is based on a true story that Steve Lopez told in a series of columns that eventually became a book called The Soloist. Since the success of the book Lopez has maintained a relationship with Ayers and has become his mentor. But Lopez always saw Ayers as more than one individual with a story to tell:
“I was told early on that this was a rare opportunity to humanise thousands like him. This story took me into a whole world, a world so close... to City Hall. Without him, without the evolving drama of his life, nobody would have cared about the public policy of it.”
As his relationship with Ayers continued Lopez became both an expert and an advocate for mental health and homeless issues and speaks regularly on the lecture circuit.
After beginning his career in television Joe Wright made his name in the cinema with an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (2005) which won him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and which starred Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett. He worked with Knightley again on the multi-Oscar nominated Atonement (2007). The Soloist marked a clear change of direction and helped Wright escape from being seen as a director of prestige adaptations of literary classics. His current project is another change of direction: Hanna is a story about a teenage assassin from Easter Europe who escapes from her background when a French family take her in.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The White Ribbon
These are my notes for the film we are screening this Sunday - and this is the film I've been most looking forward to seeing all year. From everything I have read I do not expect to be disappointed.
The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte)
Austria 2009 (143 minutes)
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz
Awards and Nominations
Winner of Palme d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
Winner of the 2009 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for 2 Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film
A further 15 wins and 30 nominations
A series of mysterious incidents occur in a Northern German village in the 12 months preceding the outbreak of the First World War. The pastor, doctor and baron rule over the women, children and peasant farmers of the village, but although they exercise stern discipline over the members of their own families - the pastor forces his children to wear the white ribbon of purity as a punishment for wrongdoings – they are unable to identify the perpetrators.
According to Haneke, the film is about “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature”, but his film refuses to offer up easy answers or even resolve the events it portrays. The story is narrated by the local teacher, looking back in old age, who announces that these events “could perhaps clarify something that happened in this country”. It is not clear what motive the narrator has for remembering – or misremembering – the events: possibly after surviving two world wars and achieving some social standing in Germany his own hindsight is now questionable.
Michael Handke started his career on German television and came to international notice when The Piano Teacher/La Pianiste (2001) with Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel won the Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, while its stars won the Best Actor and Actress awards. Handke won the same award at Cannes for Hidden/Caché (2005) which was also nominated for the Palme d’Or. The White Ribbon received its first screening at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won both the Palme d’Or and the international film critics’ prize.
The Guardian included The White Ribbon at number five in its list of the best films of the noughties (sic) where Peter Bradshaw described it as:
"...a ghost story without a ghost, a whodunnit without a denouement, a historical parable without a lesson, and for two and a half hours this unforgettably disturbing and mysterious film leads its viewers alongside an abyss of anxiety."
The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte)
Austria 2009 (143 minutes)
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz
Awards and Nominations
Winner of Palme d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
Winner of the 2009 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for 2 Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film
A further 15 wins and 30 nominations
A series of mysterious incidents occur in a Northern German village in the 12 months preceding the outbreak of the First World War. The pastor, doctor and baron rule over the women, children and peasant farmers of the village, but although they exercise stern discipline over the members of their own families - the pastor forces his children to wear the white ribbon of purity as a punishment for wrongdoings – they are unable to identify the perpetrators.
According to Haneke, the film is about “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature”, but his film refuses to offer up easy answers or even resolve the events it portrays. The story is narrated by the local teacher, looking back in old age, who announces that these events “could perhaps clarify something that happened in this country”. It is not clear what motive the narrator has for remembering – or misremembering – the events: possibly after surviving two world wars and achieving some social standing in Germany his own hindsight is now questionable.
Michael Handke started his career on German television and came to international notice when The Piano Teacher/La Pianiste (2001) with Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel won the Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, while its stars won the Best Actor and Actress awards. Handke won the same award at Cannes for Hidden/Caché (2005) which was also nominated for the Palme d’Or. The White Ribbon received its first screening at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won both the Palme d’Or and the international film critics’ prize.
The Guardian included The White Ribbon at number five in its list of the best films of the noughties (sic) where Peter Bradshaw described it as:
"...a ghost story without a ghost, a whodunnit without a denouement, a historical parable without a lesson, and for two and a half hours this unforgettably disturbing and mysterious film leads its viewers alongside an abyss of anxiety."
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Star Trek
In the great Star Trek versus Doctor Who debate I've always sided with the latter - even before its triumphant renaissance under Russell T Davies. However I have to admit that the film we screened on Sunday was pretty good, and that it deserves its five star review from Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.
Here are my notes:
Star Trek
USA 2009 (127 minutes)
Director: J J Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana and Simon Pegg
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Makeup
A further 11 wins and 45 nominations
James T Kirk meets the half-human Spock while training at the Starfleet Academy. Kirk stows away on the USS Enterprise and together with other cadets like Nyota Uhura, Hiikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekhov has an adventure at the final frontier.
Star Trek first appeared in 1966 as a TV series that ran for three seasons before spawning four more spin-off TV series based in the same universe but with different sets of characters. In the cinema there were 10 Star Trek films featuring initially the (ageing) cast of the initial TV series followed by the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There are also many novels, comic books and video games, although purists consider these to be non-canonical.
The commercial failure of Star Trek Nemesis (2002) effectively killed the official Star Trek franchise in the cinema and it was not until 2005 that Paramount chose to reboot it with a story featuring the cast of the initial TV series portrayed by a new cast. The script is by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzan who previously had worked with J J Abrams on Mission: Impossible III (2006) – another successful film franchise based on a hit TV show from the 1960s. Initially Abrams had intended only to produce the film, but decided to direct it as soon as he read the script as “I would be so agonisingly envious of whoever stepped in and directed the movie”. The writers were keen to avoid a complete reboot and thus it was important to them to cast Leonard Nimoy in the film. His performance as the older Spock is one of quiet dignity; and it is his voice over the final credits speaking the legendary words about the mission to seek out new life and new civilisations - amended to meet the politically correct requirements of a new millennium - where no one has gone before.
J J Abrams made his name as a writer and producer of eight films before making his debut as a director with Mission: Impossible III (2008). He followed this by producing the science fiction film Cloverfield (2008) before reverting to the role of director for Star Trek. His current future projects include producing Cloverfield 2 and Mission: Impossible IV as well as a possible commitment to direct an as yet untitled sequel to Star Trek. He has a parallel career in television where his credits include co-creating, writing, producing and directing Lost (2004-2010).
Here are my notes:
Star Trek
USA 2009 (127 minutes)
Director: J J Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana and Simon Pegg
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Makeup
A further 11 wins and 45 nominations
James T Kirk meets the half-human Spock while training at the Starfleet Academy. Kirk stows away on the USS Enterprise and together with other cadets like Nyota Uhura, Hiikaru Sulu and Pavel Chekhov has an adventure at the final frontier.
Star Trek first appeared in 1966 as a TV series that ran for three seasons before spawning four more spin-off TV series based in the same universe but with different sets of characters. In the cinema there were 10 Star Trek films featuring initially the (ageing) cast of the initial TV series followed by the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There are also many novels, comic books and video games, although purists consider these to be non-canonical.
The commercial failure of Star Trek Nemesis (2002) effectively killed the official Star Trek franchise in the cinema and it was not until 2005 that Paramount chose to reboot it with a story featuring the cast of the initial TV series portrayed by a new cast. The script is by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzan who previously had worked with J J Abrams on Mission: Impossible III (2006) – another successful film franchise based on a hit TV show from the 1960s. Initially Abrams had intended only to produce the film, but decided to direct it as soon as he read the script as “I would be so agonisingly envious of whoever stepped in and directed the movie”. The writers were keen to avoid a complete reboot and thus it was important to them to cast Leonard Nimoy in the film. His performance as the older Spock is one of quiet dignity; and it is his voice over the final credits speaking the legendary words about the mission to seek out new life and new civilisations - amended to meet the politically correct requirements of a new millennium - where no one has gone before.
J J Abrams made his name as a writer and producer of eight films before making his debut as a director with Mission: Impossible III (2008). He followed this by producing the science fiction film Cloverfield (2008) before reverting to the role of director for Star Trek. His current future projects include producing Cloverfield 2 and Mission: Impossible IV as well as a possible commitment to direct an as yet untitled sequel to Star Trek. He has a parallel career in television where his credits include co-creating, writing, producing and directing Lost (2004-2010).
Friday, March 19, 2010
State of Play
These are the notes for the film we screened last night:
State of Play
USA 2009 (128 minutes)
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn and Helen Mirren
Awards and Nominations
Won International Award Best Actor (Russell Crowe) at the Australian Film Institute
Two further nominations, including Kevin Macdonald as Best Director
Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is leading an investigation into PointCorp, a private defence contractor whose operations involve the supply of mercenaries, when he hears that that Sonia Baker, a lead researcher in his team has apparently committed suicide on the subway. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) had been at college with Collins and as he investigates the death with his colleague Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) they begin to wonder whether Sonia Baker had been murdered.
The film is based on the six part TV drama by Paul Abbott first broadcast in 2003 which was set in London in the early days of New Labour. The film transposes the action to contemporary Washington under a Republican Administration, and the need to distill the core story into two hours means that what it loses in terms of character development it gains in terms of pace. Kevin Macdonald said that it was the complex blend of fiction with journalism and politics that had initially attracted him to the story, adding that he wanted to examine the ways that societies learn what is going on in the world and the extent to which people can trust what they read in the papers. He cited a series of key 1970s films – The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and especially All The President’s Men - as a major influence on State of Play.
The initial screenplay was by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who previously wrote the screenplay for Lions for Lambs (2007), Robert Redford’s most recent film as director) with further contributions from both Tony Gilray (scriptwriter for all three Bourne films and writer/director of Michael Clayton (2007) and Duplicity (2009)) and Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplay for The Last King of Scotland (2006), Kevin Macdonald’s debut feature as a director, as well as the screenplays for The Queen (2006) and Frost/Nixon (2008). Despite Paul Abbott’s role as Executive Producer he had no involvement in the screenplay.
Brad Pitt had originally been cast as Cal McAffrey, but he left the production a week before production began as a result of differences over the script which could not be resolved due to the 2007-2008 Screenwriters Strike, and Russell Crowe took on the role at the last minute after a personal approach from Kevin Macdonald. This cast change delayed production and had the knock on effect of Ben Affleck taking over the role of Collins from Edward Norton, who had to leave due to scheduling conflicts. Fortunately Helen Mirren was able to adjust her own filming schedule to retain her key cameo role of Cameron Lynne, the editor of the Washington Globe - although some UK critics wondered why DCI Tennison had suddenly taken up a second career in journalism.
State of Play
USA 2009 (128 minutes)
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn and Helen Mirren
Awards and Nominations
Won International Award Best Actor (Russell Crowe) at the Australian Film Institute
Two further nominations, including Kevin Macdonald as Best Director
Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is leading an investigation into PointCorp, a private defence contractor whose operations involve the supply of mercenaries, when he hears that that Sonia Baker, a lead researcher in his team has apparently committed suicide on the subway. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) had been at college with Collins and as he investigates the death with his colleague Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) they begin to wonder whether Sonia Baker had been murdered.
The film is based on the six part TV drama by Paul Abbott first broadcast in 2003 which was set in London in the early days of New Labour. The film transposes the action to contemporary Washington under a Republican Administration, and the need to distill the core story into two hours means that what it loses in terms of character development it gains in terms of pace. Kevin Macdonald said that it was the complex blend of fiction with journalism and politics that had initially attracted him to the story, adding that he wanted to examine the ways that societies learn what is going on in the world and the extent to which people can trust what they read in the papers. He cited a series of key 1970s films – The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and especially All The President’s Men - as a major influence on State of Play.
The initial screenplay was by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who previously wrote the screenplay for Lions for Lambs (2007), Robert Redford’s most recent film as director) with further contributions from both Tony Gilray (scriptwriter for all three Bourne films and writer/director of Michael Clayton (2007) and Duplicity (2009)) and Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplay for The Last King of Scotland (2006), Kevin Macdonald’s debut feature as a director, as well as the screenplays for The Queen (2006) and Frost/Nixon (2008). Despite Paul Abbott’s role as Executive Producer he had no involvement in the screenplay.
Brad Pitt had originally been cast as Cal McAffrey, but he left the production a week before production began as a result of differences over the script which could not be resolved due to the 2007-2008 Screenwriters Strike, and Russell Crowe took on the role at the last minute after a personal approach from Kevin Macdonald. This cast change delayed production and had the knock on effect of Ben Affleck taking over the role of Collins from Edward Norton, who had to leave due to scheduling conflicts. Fortunately Helen Mirren was able to adjust her own filming schedule to retain her key cameo role of Cameron Lynne, the editor of the Washington Globe - although some UK critics wondered why DCI Tennison had suddenly taken up a second career in journalism.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Harry, He’s Here To Help (Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien)
Harry, He’s Here To Help (Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien)
France 2000 (117 minutes)
Director: Dominik Moll
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Mathilde Seigneur, Sergi Lopez and Sophie Guillemin
Awards and Nominations
BAFTA nomination for Best Film not in the English Language
Nomination for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival
A further seven wins and 12 nominations
On a hot summer day Michel Pape (Laurent Lucas) is driving south from Paris with his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigneur) and three young daughters to a remote farmhouse they have bought in order to renovate. While they stop at a service station a stranger introduces himself to Michel as Harry Balesteros (Sergi Lopez) a school friend whom he has not seen for twenty years. Harry slowly insinuates himself into the life of the family and then sets about reorganising Michel’s life with advice and manipulative acts.
The key motif of the plot – a charming sociopath inveigles his way into a stable relationship before wreaking havoc – is a key plot device from films like Strangers on a Train to The Talented Mr Ripley. However it is the former that is the key to this film, which consciously echoes a whole series of Hitchcock classics: Harry is the corpse in The Trouble With Harry and Balesteros is the name of the innocent victim in The Wrong Man. Philip French has also noted a more subtle Hitchcock reference: Hitchcock is said to have abhorred eggs, but Harry eats them raw and Michel starts writing a story called Les Oeufs.
All four actors perform well in the leading roles, but it was Sergi Lopez who won a Cesar for Best Actor. Since this film he has worked with a number of major European directors and has portrayed villainous characters in films such as Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and, more famously, in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), in which he played the psychopathic Captain Vidal.
Dominik Moll was born in Germany, studied film in New York and now teaches film at the French National Film School. After the success of Harry, He’s Here To Help, for which he also wrote the screenplay, Moll directed Lemming (2005) a psychological thriller starring Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, once again from his own script. His next film will be The Monk, based on the classic Gothic novel by Matthew Lewis and starring Sergi Lopez.
France 2000 (117 minutes)
Director: Dominik Moll
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Mathilde Seigneur, Sergi Lopez and Sophie Guillemin
Awards and Nominations
BAFTA nomination for Best Film not in the English Language
Nomination for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival
A further seven wins and 12 nominations
On a hot summer day Michel Pape (Laurent Lucas) is driving south from Paris with his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigneur) and three young daughters to a remote farmhouse they have bought in order to renovate. While they stop at a service station a stranger introduces himself to Michel as Harry Balesteros (Sergi Lopez) a school friend whom he has not seen for twenty years. Harry slowly insinuates himself into the life of the family and then sets about reorganising Michel’s life with advice and manipulative acts.
The key motif of the plot – a charming sociopath inveigles his way into a stable relationship before wreaking havoc – is a key plot device from films like Strangers on a Train to The Talented Mr Ripley. However it is the former that is the key to this film, which consciously echoes a whole series of Hitchcock classics: Harry is the corpse in The Trouble With Harry and Balesteros is the name of the innocent victim in The Wrong Man. Philip French has also noted a more subtle Hitchcock reference: Hitchcock is said to have abhorred eggs, but Harry eats them raw and Michel starts writing a story called Les Oeufs.
All four actors perform well in the leading roles, but it was Sergi Lopez who won a Cesar for Best Actor. Since this film he has worked with a number of major European directors and has portrayed villainous characters in films such as Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and, more famously, in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), in which he played the psychopathic Captain Vidal.
Dominik Moll was born in Germany, studied film in New York and now teaches film at the French National Film School. After the success of Harry, He’s Here To Help, for which he also wrote the screenplay, Moll directed Lemming (2005) a psychological thriller starring Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, once again from his own script. His next film will be The Monk, based on the classic Gothic novel by Matthew Lewis and starring Sergi Lopez.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Australia
These are my film notes for last week's screening of Australia - an attempt to break the record for the number of other films mentioned in a single set of notes.
Once again I wrote the notes before I'd seen the film, and now after the screening I can report that although it had a few impressive set pieces, the overall effect was some considerable way less than the sum of its parts.
Australia 2008 (165 minutes)
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Hunter, Bryan Brown and David Wenham
Awards and Nominations
• Nominated for an Oscar
• A further 7 wins and 19 nominations
In September 1939 Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) flies to Australia where her errand husband is running cattle station. After the murder of her husband she and Drover (Hugh Jackman) drive 2,000 head of cattle on a journey of several hundred miles across the desert to Darwin where they will be sold. Several years later Lady Sarah returns to Darwin to look for a young half-aboriginal boy whom she regards as her adopted son, and while she is there she witnesses the Japanese attack on the city.
The cast includes actors such as Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and Bill Hunter who all made their names in the great period of Australian cinema in the 1970s and 1980s when directors such as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi were exploring the history of their country and their national identity in films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Gallipoli (1981). From this strong beginning subsequent generation of film makers moved away from such major themes, focussing instead on contemporary subjects and producing films such as Strictly Ballroom (1992), Luhrmann’s first film which became a global success after winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Luhrmann built on this legacy of anti-heroic cinema in his next two films, with Romeo + Juliet (1996) being set in Latin America and Moulin Rouge (2001) in fin-de-siècle Paris.
Luhrmann decided that his next film would be about the history of Australia, and after six months of research he settled on a story set just before the Second World War in which he could combine a historical romance with a story about the Stolen Generations, mixed race Aboriginal children who were removed from their parents and integrated into white society. Luhrmann wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Stuart Beattie, whose work ranges from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to 30 days of Night (2007), and Ronald Harwood, best known for his screenplays for The Pianist (2002) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
With this complex pedigree of screenwriters and with two Australian actors who made their names in Hollywood in the leading roles, rather than returning to the style of the founders of the new wave of Australian cinema Luhrmann imposes a Hollywood sensibility on the film which contains two distinct parts: a so-called “wallaby western” and then a war movie. The first part of the film echoes two famous John Wayne westerns, Red River and The Cowboys, while the sound track evokes the music that Elmer Bernstein wrote for films such as The Magnificent Seven. In the second part there are scenes which are reminiscent of From Here to Eternity, Gone with the Wind (the burning of Atlanta) and Tora! Tora! Tora!
Luhrmann is currently working on another adaptation of The Great Gatsby, although no details of any casting have been announced.
Once again I wrote the notes before I'd seen the film, and now after the screening I can report that although it had a few impressive set pieces, the overall effect was some considerable way less than the sum of its parts.
Australia 2008 (165 minutes)
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Hunter, Bryan Brown and David Wenham
Awards and Nominations
• Nominated for an Oscar
• A further 7 wins and 19 nominations
In September 1939 Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) flies to Australia where her errand husband is running cattle station. After the murder of her husband she and Drover (Hugh Jackman) drive 2,000 head of cattle on a journey of several hundred miles across the desert to Darwin where they will be sold. Several years later Lady Sarah returns to Darwin to look for a young half-aboriginal boy whom she regards as her adopted son, and while she is there she witnesses the Japanese attack on the city.
The cast includes actors such as Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and Bill Hunter who all made their names in the great period of Australian cinema in the 1970s and 1980s when directors such as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi were exploring the history of their country and their national identity in films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Gallipoli (1981). From this strong beginning subsequent generation of film makers moved away from such major themes, focussing instead on contemporary subjects and producing films such as Strictly Ballroom (1992), Luhrmann’s first film which became a global success after winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Luhrmann built on this legacy of anti-heroic cinema in his next two films, with Romeo + Juliet (1996) being set in Latin America and Moulin Rouge (2001) in fin-de-siècle Paris.
Luhrmann decided that his next film would be about the history of Australia, and after six months of research he settled on a story set just before the Second World War in which he could combine a historical romance with a story about the Stolen Generations, mixed race Aboriginal children who were removed from their parents and integrated into white society. Luhrmann wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Stuart Beattie, whose work ranges from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to 30 days of Night (2007), and Ronald Harwood, best known for his screenplays for The Pianist (2002) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
With this complex pedigree of screenwriters and with two Australian actors who made their names in Hollywood in the leading roles, rather than returning to the style of the founders of the new wave of Australian cinema Luhrmann imposes a Hollywood sensibility on the film which contains two distinct parts: a so-called “wallaby western” and then a war movie. The first part of the film echoes two famous John Wayne westerns, Red River and The Cowboys, while the sound track evokes the music that Elmer Bernstein wrote for films such as The Magnificent Seven. In the second part there are scenes which are reminiscent of From Here to Eternity, Gone with the Wind (the burning of Atlanta) and Tora! Tora! Tora!
Luhrmann is currently working on another adaptation of The Great Gatsby, although no details of any casting have been announced.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Eat Drink Man Woman
Notes as follows:
Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shin an nu)
Taiwan/USA 1994 (124 minutes)
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang and Chien-lien Wu
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
A further four wins and seven nominations
Senior Master Chef Chu lives in a large house in Taipei with his three unmarried daughters: a school-teacher nursing a broken heart, a career woman and a student who works in a fast food restaurant. As each daughter encounters a new man and the relationships flourish, their traditional roles within the family evolve. Chu has lost his wife, is losing his sense of taste and is aware that he is getting old. Reminiscing with an old friend Chu comments that the two main human desires are “to eat and drink and to have sex” and the film includes numerous scenes displaying the technique and art of gourmet Chinese cooking for the family’s Sunday dinner, the intricate preparations for the family meal expressing its members’ unspoken feelings for each other.
Ang Lee studied film in New York but made his name in his native Taiwan with two studies of Chinese American relationships in Pushing Hands (1992) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), the second of which was nominated as Best Foreign Film in both the Golden Globes and Oscars. Lee returned to Taiwan for Eat Drink Man Woman, a study of traditional values, modern relationships and family conflicts in Taipei, and after its international success moved to Hollywood.
Lee has subsequently directed a diverse series of films which include Sense and Sensibility (1995) from the novel by Jane Austen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) based on the Chinese wuxia (martial arts and chivalry) genre, Hulk (2003) a blockbuster based on the Marvel Comics character, and Brokeback Mountain (2005) a small budget independent film based on a short story by Annie Proulx. To date Lee’s films have won seven Oscars, eight Golden Globes and 12 BAFTAs. He is currently working on Life of Pi, based on the award-winning novel by Yann Martel.
In 2002 Eat Drink Man Woman suffered the usual fate of a successful foreign language film in the US: an English language remake called Tortilla Soup about a Mexican chef and his family in contemporary Los Angeles. Peter Bradshaw described it as “a film so tooth-grindingly irritating you will feel your mouth filling up with enamel powder”.
Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shin an nu)
Taiwan/USA 1994 (124 minutes)
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang and Chien-lien Wu
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
A further four wins and seven nominations
Senior Master Chef Chu lives in a large house in Taipei with his three unmarried daughters: a school-teacher nursing a broken heart, a career woman and a student who works in a fast food restaurant. As each daughter encounters a new man and the relationships flourish, their traditional roles within the family evolve. Chu has lost his wife, is losing his sense of taste and is aware that he is getting old. Reminiscing with an old friend Chu comments that the two main human desires are “to eat and drink and to have sex” and the film includes numerous scenes displaying the technique and art of gourmet Chinese cooking for the family’s Sunday dinner, the intricate preparations for the family meal expressing its members’ unspoken feelings for each other.
Ang Lee studied film in New York but made his name in his native Taiwan with two studies of Chinese American relationships in Pushing Hands (1992) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), the second of which was nominated as Best Foreign Film in both the Golden Globes and Oscars. Lee returned to Taiwan for Eat Drink Man Woman, a study of traditional values, modern relationships and family conflicts in Taipei, and after its international success moved to Hollywood.
Lee has subsequently directed a diverse series of films which include Sense and Sensibility (1995) from the novel by Jane Austen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) based on the Chinese wuxia (martial arts and chivalry) genre, Hulk (2003) a blockbuster based on the Marvel Comics character, and Brokeback Mountain (2005) a small budget independent film based on a short story by Annie Proulx. To date Lee’s films have won seven Oscars, eight Golden Globes and 12 BAFTAs. He is currently working on Life of Pi, based on the award-winning novel by Yann Martel.
In 2002 Eat Drink Man Woman suffered the usual fate of a successful foreign language film in the US: an English language remake called Tortilla Soup about a Mexican chef and his family in contemporary Los Angeles. Peter Bradshaw described it as “a film so tooth-grindingly irritating you will feel your mouth filling up with enamel powder”.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Revolutionary Road
These are the film notes for last night's screening:
Revolutionary Road
USA 2009 (119 minutes)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton and Jay O Sanders
Awards and Nominations
* Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon)
* Won Golden Globe for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
* A further five wins and 21 nominations including BAFTA nominations for Best Actress (Kate Winslet) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Justin Hayes)
In 1950s Connecticut Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) works discontendely for a Manhattan computer company while his wife April (Kate Winslet) once had ambitions to be an actress but is now a housewife who takes part in amateur theatricals. In the throes of a quarter life crisis they plan to move to Paris to retrieve their lives, but while April becomes hooked on her pipe dream Frank gets cold feet.
There had been several earlier unsuccessful attempts to film the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, but it was only after Kate Winslet told her husband Sam Mendes that she would like to play the part of April Wheeler that he agreed to direct it, and only when DiCaprio had been cast as Frank Wheeler that the film actually went into production. Winslet and DiCaprio made their names in Titanic (1997), and since then both actors have had successful careers in a number of high profile films although this is the first time that they had worked together again. Nonetheless the friendship that they had developed while making Titanic endured, and this helped them portray a couple so convincingly in this film. Both actors received praise for their performances, but it was Winslet who won the awards (although as she had been nominated for Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Reader she was ineligible for a nomination for her performance in this film, and she competed against herself in the BAFTAs, winning the Best Actress award for her performance in The Reader). The shoot was so emotionally and physically draining for DiCaprio that he postponed his next film for two months.
Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, and was a finalist in the National book Award of 1961 (Catch-22 was also shortlisted). Despite being championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron and Tennessee William and receiving almost universal critical acclaim for his work, none of his novels sold well and all went out of print after he died in 1992. However in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in his work: in the UK Nick Hornby made one of the suicidal characters in his 2005 novel A Long Way Down carry a copy of Revolutionary Road so that it could be discovered on his corpse.
Sam Mendes made his name as a stage director with award-winning productions in both the UK and the USA. In 1999 as a novice film maker he directed American Beauty which won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. He followed this with Road to Perdition (2002) which included Paul Newman’s final screen appearance in a major role. It has just been announced that Mendes will direct the as-yet-untitled next Bond film, which is due for release in 2011.
Revolutionary Road
USA 2009 (119 minutes)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton and Jay O Sanders
Awards and Nominations
* Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon)
* Won Golden Globe for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
* A further five wins and 21 nominations including BAFTA nominations for Best Actress (Kate Winslet) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Justin Hayes)
In 1950s Connecticut Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) works discontendely for a Manhattan computer company while his wife April (Kate Winslet) once had ambitions to be an actress but is now a housewife who takes part in amateur theatricals. In the throes of a quarter life crisis they plan to move to Paris to retrieve their lives, but while April becomes hooked on her pipe dream Frank gets cold feet.
There had been several earlier unsuccessful attempts to film the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, but it was only after Kate Winslet told her husband Sam Mendes that she would like to play the part of April Wheeler that he agreed to direct it, and only when DiCaprio had been cast as Frank Wheeler that the film actually went into production. Winslet and DiCaprio made their names in Titanic (1997), and since then both actors have had successful careers in a number of high profile films although this is the first time that they had worked together again. Nonetheless the friendship that they had developed while making Titanic endured, and this helped them portray a couple so convincingly in this film. Both actors received praise for their performances, but it was Winslet who won the awards (although as she had been nominated for Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Reader she was ineligible for a nomination for her performance in this film, and she competed against herself in the BAFTAs, winning the Best Actress award for her performance in The Reader). The shoot was so emotionally and physically draining for DiCaprio that he postponed his next film for two months.
Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, and was a finalist in the National book Award of 1961 (Catch-22 was also shortlisted). Despite being championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron and Tennessee William and receiving almost universal critical acclaim for his work, none of his novels sold well and all went out of print after he died in 1992. However in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in his work: in the UK Nick Hornby made one of the suicidal characters in his 2005 novel A Long Way Down carry a copy of Revolutionary Road so that it could be discovered on his corpse.
Sam Mendes made his name as a stage director with award-winning productions in both the UK and the USA. In 1999 as a novice film maker he directed American Beauty which won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. He followed this with Road to Perdition (2002) which included Paul Newman’s final screen appearance in a major role. It has just been announced that Mendes will direct the as-yet-untitled next Bond film, which is due for release in 2011.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)
France 2007 (112 minutes)
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigneur, Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Cosigny and Max von Sydow
Awards and Nominations
France 2007 (112 minutes)
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigneur, Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Cosigny and Max von Sydow
Awards and Nominations
* Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood)
* Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay
* Won Best Director (Julian Schnabel) at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Palme d’Or
* A further 39 nominations and 32 nominations
In 1995 Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. He was paralysed apart from some movement in his head and eyes, and his sole method of communication was by blinking his left eye. With the help of transcribers who repeated the alphabet to him until he blinked at the selected letter, over a period of 10 months Bauby dictated a memoir of his life - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Bauby eventually completed his book and it was published to critical acclaim; shortly after its publication Bauby died of pneumonia.
The film was originally to be made in English with Schnabel as director working from Ronald Harwood’s screenplay and with Johnny Depp as Bauby. Depp withdrew from the film because of scheduling conflicts with other projects and Pathé took over as producer. According to Ronald Harwood Pathé wanted to make the movie in both English and French and that this is why bi-lingual actors were cast although everyone secretly knew that two versions would be impossibly expensive and that Schnabel had decided that it should be made in French – even going so far as to learn French in order to make the film.
Julian Schnabel made his name as an artist and after participating as the Venice Biennale in 1980 subsequently became a major figure in the Neo-expressionism movement before moving into film making. He insists that he is essentially a painter, although now he is better known for his films:
“Painting is like breathing to me. It’s what I do all the time. Every day I make art, whether it is painting, writing or making a movie.”
Both of Schnabel’s earlier films were concerned with artists: Basquiat (1996) is a biopic of the painter Jean-Michael Basquiat and Before Night Falls (2000) is based on the autobiographical novel by Reinaldo Arenas. Schnabel has subsequently directed a documentary film of a live concert by Lou Reed in New York as part of his Berlin tour, which Schnabel also designed.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Burn After Reading
This is one of the films I've been most looking forward to seeing this year. I bought a copy in the HMV sale but have not had a chance to watch it yet.
Over the holiday I caught up with In Bruges (brilliant), David Tennant's final performance inDoctor Who (alas) as well as his RSC Hamlet (to be able to purchase tickets for the first night was brilliant and for the RSC to open it on Susan's birthday was even better). After being snowed in this weekend we caught up with Goodnight and Good Luck, an excellent story about the fight against McCarthy with George Clooney, as star, director and co-writer.
Which brings me back to the notes for this week's film:
Burn After Reading
USA 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Starring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for two Golden Globes (Best Picture and Frances McDormand as Best Actress)
A further 10 nominations including BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay
When Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is fired from the CIA he begins to write his memoirs. Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) wants a divorce and at her lawyer’s request copies many of Osborne’s personal files on to a CD which Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) find at a local gym. Litzke is planning cosmetic surgery and decides to blackmail Osborne Cox in order to finance it. Meanwhile Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) is having affairs with both Katie Cox and Linda Litzke.
The summary of the plot reads like a classic farce, but it leads to mayhem on a huge scale that starts with a broken nose and ends finally with execution by CIA gunmen. The Coens described the film as “our version of a Tony Scott/Jason Bourne movie” and they wrote the screenplay while working on their adaptation of No Country for Old Men (2007). The brothers created characters with George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and John Malkovich in mind, and the script derived from their desire to involve the actors “in a fun story”. Tilda Swinton was the only main character who did not have a part written specifically for her, and the Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule for their A-list cast.
The Coens identified idiocy as a major them of the film and described Clooney and Pitt’s characters as “duelling idiots”. Clooney had worked with the Coens twice before and acknowledged that he usually played a fool in their movies:
“I’ve done three films for them and they call it my trilogy of idiots”.
The Coens told Pitt that they had written his role specifically for him and he did not know whether to fell flattered or insulted; he told them that he did not know how to play the part as the character was such an idiot:
“There was a long pause and then Joel goes...”You’ll be fine.””
In a career of nearly 25 years the Coens have produced a series of brilliant films that have been successful with both festival and multiplex audiences. In recent years they have reached new heights of success: No Country for Old Men won four Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film, and their most recent film A Serious Man (2009) opened to rave reviews at the London Film Festival.
The Secret Life of Bees
These are the notes for our last screening before the Christmas break:
The Secret Life of Bees
USA 2008 (110 minutes)
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Hudson
Awards and Nominations
10 wins and 14 nominations
In South Carolina in the early 1960s Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) is haunted by the memory of her late mother. In order to escape from her lonely life and cruel father Lily flees with Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), her caregiver, to a South Carolina town which holds the secret to her mother’s past, and while she is there she meets the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo) who show her their Black Madonna and tell her about her mother.
The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd. Kidd took three and a half years to write her novel and explained its origins in an interview:
“I grew up surrounded by black women. I fell they are like hidden royalty dwelling among us, and we need to rupture our old assumptions and develop the willingness to see them as they are....
As a girl I lived in a country house where at least 50,000 bees hived within the walls of one of our shut-off rooms. When I went in there, I could hear hummy-honey leaking through the wall and puddling on the floor. That image stayed with me for years before I decided to write it. And then when I finally did begin, I was told that it might sell as a short story but not as a novel. I sold the short story but... it wouldn’t let me go. Four years later I had to go back and write the novel.”
Bythewood is one of the very few African-American female directors to have a film distributed by Hollywood. She made her name by directing Disappearing Acts (2000) and both writing and directing Love & Basketball (2000), with Spike Lee as producer which won her the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. For The Secret Life of Bees her executive producers were Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
The Secret Life of Bees
USA 2008 (110 minutes)
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Hudson
Awards and Nominations
10 wins and 14 nominations
In South Carolina in the early 1960s Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) is haunted by the memory of her late mother. In order to escape from her lonely life and cruel father Lily flees with Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), her caregiver, to a South Carolina town which holds the secret to her mother’s past, and while she is there she meets the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo) who show her their Black Madonna and tell her about her mother.
The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd. Kidd took three and a half years to write her novel and explained its origins in an interview:
“I grew up surrounded by black women. I fell they are like hidden royalty dwelling among us, and we need to rupture our old assumptions and develop the willingness to see them as they are....
As a girl I lived in a country house where at least 50,000 bees hived within the walls of one of our shut-off rooms. When I went in there, I could hear hummy-honey leaking through the wall and puddling on the floor. That image stayed with me for years before I decided to write it. And then when I finally did begin, I was told that it might sell as a short story but not as a novel. I sold the short story but... it wouldn’t let me go. Four years later I had to go back and write the novel.”
Bythewood is one of the very few African-American female directors to have a film distributed by Hollywood. She made her name by directing Disappearing Acts (2000) and both writing and directing Love & Basketball (2000), with Spike Lee as producer which won her the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. For The Secret Life of Bees her executive producers were Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Cinema Paradiso
I tend to write my notes at different times and in different places, but these have to be the most unusual. I wrote most of this between a series of meetings held over three days in London while negitiating the finer points of an international support contract.
I have to admit that this is one film that until this screening had escaped me, but having seen it I'd be happy to see it again. I subsequently found the soundtrack on Spotify and spent an enjoyable hour listening to it while marking up a contract for a bid I'm working on. Such are the joys of working from home.
Cinema Paradiso
Italy 1988 (123 minutes)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
A further 19 wins and 12 nominations
A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He also remembers his lost teenage love, Elena, whom he left behind when he set off for Rome.
In a poll in 2007 readers of The Guardian chose Cinema Paradiso as the greatest foreign language film ever made by a considerable margin. However when it was originally released in Italy it performed badly at the box office and it was shortened to 123 minutes for its international release. In this version it became an instant success: amongst its many awards it won both the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2002 Tornatore released an extended director's cut with a running time of 173 minute version (known in the U.S. as Cinema Paradiso: The New Version).
The 2002 version reinstates more of the story of the adult Elena, but all three versions omit the major historical national and international events of the period that would have affected the whole of Italy after the Second World War, focussing instead on the different films screened in the village. But it is this infectious celebration of film that makes the repeat viewings worth it . As David Thomson puts it:
“It has many film clips, from Renoir to Antonioni, and a little boy’s face as seen through the booth window is a winning effect – the first dozen times you see it. After that, you’re on your own.”
Tornatore has made ten further films in the 20 years since the release of Cinema Paradiso, but to date none of them has even come close to matching its worldwide success.
I have to admit that this is one film that until this screening had escaped me, but having seen it I'd be happy to see it again. I subsequently found the soundtrack on Spotify and spent an enjoyable hour listening to it while marking up a contract for a bid I'm working on. Such are the joys of working from home.
Cinema Paradiso
Italy 1988 (123 minutes)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi, Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
A further 19 wins and 12 nominations
A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He also remembers his lost teenage love, Elena, whom he left behind when he set off for Rome.
In a poll in 2007 readers of The Guardian chose Cinema Paradiso as the greatest foreign language film ever made by a considerable margin. However when it was originally released in Italy it performed badly at the box office and it was shortened to 123 minutes for its international release. In this version it became an instant success: amongst its many awards it won both the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2002 Tornatore released an extended director's cut with a running time of 173 minute version (known in the U.S. as Cinema Paradiso: The New Version).
The 2002 version reinstates more of the story of the adult Elena, but all three versions omit the major historical national and international events of the period that would have affected the whole of Italy after the Second World War, focussing instead on the different films screened in the village. But it is this infectious celebration of film that makes the repeat viewings worth it . As David Thomson puts it:
“It has many film clips, from Renoir to Antonioni, and a little boy’s face as seen through the booth window is a winning effect – the first dozen times you see it. After that, you’re on your own.”
Tornatore has made ten further films in the 20 years since the release of Cinema Paradiso, but to date none of them has even come close to matching its worldwide success.
Milk
These are my notes for Milk which we screened in mid November. Work has been pretty hectic, so I need to catch up on things.
Milk
USA 2008 (129 minutes)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin
Awards and Nominations
Won Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn)
Won Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black)
Six further Oscar nominations including Best Film and Best Director
A further 32 wins and 39 nominations
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician to hold a major public office in the US. After moving to California he became a campaigner for gay rights and was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1975. Three years later a disaffected fellow Supervisor assassinated both Milk and George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco
Dustin Lance Black spent three years researching Milk’s life and interviewing Milk’s associates after seeing the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk and used this work to produce his screenplay. The screenplay reached Gus Van Sant, who had made an abortive attempt to make his own film on the life of Harvey Milk fifteen years previously, and Van Sant at once decided to film it. The film makers used Milk’s original camera shop as well as San Francisco City Hall as key locations, and several of Milk’s associates portray themselves. Other characters portrayed in the film are still active in US public life and of these the most prominent is Dianne Feinstein, who made the announcement of the assassination of Milk and Moscone to the media. After succeeding Moscone as mayor she was subsequently elected to the US Senate and in 2009 she presided over the inauguration of Barack Obama.
Gus Van Sant had made several small independent films which had been artistically successful before obtaining commercial success with the black comedy To Die For (1995), which gave Nicole Kidman a breakthrough role as a homicidally ambitious weather girl on a cable TV station, and Good Will Hunting (1997), which launched the careers of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. After the commercial failure of a strangely pointless shot for shot colour remake of Psycho (1998) Van Sant returned to series of smaller scale films which continued to win artistic plaudits, culminating in his winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Elephant (2003), a story inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
Critics gave Milk widespread acclaim and Sean Penn, who bears a surprising physical resemblance to the real Harvey Milk, won many awards including a second Oscar, for his performance. The film appeared on many critics’ lists of the best films of 2008.
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Here are the notes I wrote before seeing the film:
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
UK/USA 2008 (94 minutes)
Director: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewliss and Vera Framiga
Awards and Nominations
Two wins and five nominations including:
* Vera Franiga won the Best Actress Award and Mark Herman was nominated as Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards
* Joint Winner (with Slumdog Millionaire) of the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is living a comfortable life in Berlin during the Second World War but things change for the worse when his family has to move to the country: his father (David Thewliss) is a high ranking Nazi SS officer and his new posting is as commandant of a concentration camp. In his innocence Bruno sees the camp as a “farm”, and after initially wondering why the inhabitants all wear striped pyjamas he makes friends with a young Jewish boy of his own age who lives in the camp.
The film is based on the book of the same name by John Boyne, who described his story as a parable rather than historical fiction. But Boyne’s choice of the Holocaust as background to his novel was bound to provoke strong reactions: one reviewer questioned the overall premise of the story, claiming that there were no nine year old boys in Auschwitz as the Nazis killed all those not old enough to work. But on this specific point Boyne is close to the truth: records from Auschwitz registered that in January 1944 there were 773 male children under the age of 15 living in the camp and some were used as messengers, although it is impossible to forget the enormous numbers of other children who died in the gas chambers every day.
The film produced similarly mixed reactions from its audiences, with a tranche of good reviews praising its fidelity to the source novel and its avoidance of a clichéd ending, but with a dissenting critic who while accepting the power of the film described it as a Hollywood version of the Holocaust, literally a Disneyfication.
Mark Herman first came to prominence as writer and director of films like Brassed Off (1996) and Little Voice (1998). John Boyne is a graduate of the school of Creative Writing at UEA and has written eight other novels, although none has matched the success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which to date has sold more than five million copies worldwide.
Even though I knew the story the film was just as powerful as I had expected it to be, and the audience left in almost complete silence.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Frost/Nixon
These are the film notes for tonight's film. For once I have actually seen the film I am writing about rather than having to rely purely on research.
Frost/Nixon
US 2008 (122 minutes)
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella and Martin Sheen
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Langella) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Morgan).
A further 10 wins and 36 nominations
In 1977 former US President Nixon agreed to a series of TV interviews with David Frost which he hoped would rehabilitate his reputation with the American people after the scandal of Watergate. At this point in his career Frost was better known as a chat show host than a serious interviewer, and he realised that in order to sell the interviews to sceptical US television companies he needed Nixon to admit his role in the Watergate scandal rather than merely pad the interviews with endless anecdotes of life in the White House and details of foreign policy successes.
The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Morgan, which was staged in London and New York with both Langella and Sheen in the same roles. The original interviews that Nixon gave to Frost are available on DVD, and inevitably a number of Nixon’s biographers have identified several inaccuracies in the screenplay: Nixon did not make any late night calls to Frost, Nixon had carefully planned his “confession” about Watergate, and the interviews were in no sense the epochal event in the history of politics that the film suggests.
Sheen has worked with Peter Morgan previously when he played Tony Blair on TV in The Deal (2003) and in cinema in The Queen (2006), and is due to play Blair for the third time in The Special Relationship from another script by Peter Morgan that examines Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton. Initially Peter Morgan was scheduled to direct as well, but has now handed over the this role to Richard Loncraine in order to write the screenplays for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller that Clint Eastwood will direct as well as the next Bond film – Bond 23.
Ron Howard has demonstrated an amazing ability to mix critical and commercially successful pictures in a career as a director which has lasted for more than 30 years: he made his name as a director with commercially successful films such as Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985), but subsequently directed critical successes such as Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He followed the critical and commercial success of Frost/Nixon with Angels and Demons (2009), a sequel to his film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), once again with Tom Hanks in the lead.
Frost/Nixon
US 2008 (122 minutes)
Director: Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella and Martin Sheen
Awards and Nominations
Nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Director, Actor in a Leading Role (Langella) and Adapted Screenplay (Peter Morgan).
A further 10 wins and 36 nominations
In 1977 former US President Nixon agreed to a series of TV interviews with David Frost which he hoped would rehabilitate his reputation with the American people after the scandal of Watergate. At this point in his career Frost was better known as a chat show host than a serious interviewer, and he realised that in order to sell the interviews to sceptical US television companies he needed Nixon to admit his role in the Watergate scandal rather than merely pad the interviews with endless anecdotes of life in the White House and details of foreign policy successes.
The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Morgan, which was staged in London and New York with both Langella and Sheen in the same roles. The original interviews that Nixon gave to Frost are available on DVD, and inevitably a number of Nixon’s biographers have identified several inaccuracies in the screenplay: Nixon did not make any late night calls to Frost, Nixon had carefully planned his “confession” about Watergate, and the interviews were in no sense the epochal event in the history of politics that the film suggests.
Sheen has worked with Peter Morgan previously when he played Tony Blair on TV in The Deal (2003) and in cinema in The Queen (2006), and is due to play Blair for the third time in The Special Relationship from another script by Peter Morgan that examines Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton. Initially Peter Morgan was scheduled to direct as well, but has now handed over the this role to Richard Loncraine in order to write the screenplays for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller that Clint Eastwood will direct as well as the next Bond film – Bond 23.
Ron Howard has demonstrated an amazing ability to mix critical and commercially successful pictures in a career as a director which has lasted for more than 30 years: he made his name as a director with commercially successful films such as Splash (1984) and Cocoon (1985), but subsequently directed critical successes such as Apollo 13 (1995) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). He followed the critical and commercial success of Frost/Nixon with Angels and Demons (2009), a sequel to his film of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), once again with Tom Hanks in the lead.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in
These are the film notes from last night's screening. The film was just as good as everything I had read suggested it would be, and I await the American remake already in production with trepidation.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Sweden 2008
Duration 114 minutes
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson and Per Ragnar
Awards and Nominations
56 wins
11 nominations
Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) is a 12 years old Swedish boy who dreams of revenge against the local bullies. He meets and falls in love with Eli (Lina Leandersson), a peculiar girl who can’t stand the sun and in order to come into a room needs to be invited. She gives Oskar the strength to hit back at the bullies, but when he realises that she has to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a difficult question: how much can love forgive.
The first vampire film appeared in 1909 and in the hundred years since then there have been many others. The greatest of the silent versions was F W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula story but with the vampire portrayed as the hideous creature from European folklore rather than Bram Stoker’s Byronic creation – and with the coming of sound Bela Lugosi played Dracula in a series of Hollywood films in the 1930s. Hammer Horror resurrected Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee playing the aristocratic vampire in a total of eight films. Since then there have been many stories which have continued the tradition of portraying the vampire as an alluring sex symbol starring actors as diverse as David Bowie, Catherin Deneuve and Tom Cruise. In the most recent manifestation of this tradition Robert Pattinson is playing a vampire who consumes only animal blood in a series of films based on the best-selling Twilight novels by Stephanie Meyer.
However Let the Right One In sits firmly within another sub-genre of vampire films that links directly back to Max Shreck’s vampire in Nosferatu, a creature whose sole desire is to feed on the blood of others. Other films within this tradition include Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (1979) and the more recent 30 Days of Night (2007) in which a group of vampires attack an Alaskan town as it enters a thirty day period without sunshine.
The film is based on the novel of the same name by the Swedish novelist John Ayvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. Lindqvist is a devoted Morrissey fan and the title of his novel refers both to the song Let the Right One Slip In as well as the tradition in vampire lore that prevents a vampire from entering a house unless invited. The film received widespread international critical acclaim on its release and also won numerous awards. As a result of its success at various film festivals the rights to an English language remake were sold before its theatrical release, and it is currently in production with Matt Reeves as director. Alfredson has concerns about the remake saying that “remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong”, while Lindqvist is excited that Reeves will produce his own adaptation of the original novel rather than merely remaking the original film so that the end result could be quite different.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Vicky Christina Barcelona
We are screening Vicky Christina Barcelona on Thursday 8th October. Here are the film notes:
Vicky Christina Barcelona
US/Spain 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz
Awards and Nominations
Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Penelope Cruz)
Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
A further 18 wins and 27 nominations
While visiting Barcelona Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a famous artist, and begin a relationship with him, not knowing that his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), with whom he had a tempestuous relationship, is about to come back into his life.
Allen sets the film up as a worldly-wise study of what remains after passion has dissipated, the type of film that Eric Rohmer has produced so well; but as Phillip French has noted its premise of American girls being bowled over by European culture the film also echoes the core plot of Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). The cast is truly international with British actor Rebecca Hall affecting a perfect American accent and two Spanish actors who are equally at home in Hollywood as well as in Spanish cinema. However it is the Spanish actors who won praise for their performances, with Javier Bardem receiving several nominations as Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Cruz winning several awards, including an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress.
After nearly two decades of producing a string of classic films like Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) in and around in New York Woody Allen moved to Europe, where his films had always been more successful, and began a new phase in his career. In London he produced Match Point (2005) which was well received and whose cast included Scarlett Johansson and followed this with Scoop (2006), which received mixed reviews and which as yet to be released in the UK, and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). From the UK he moved to Spain and Vicky Christina Barcelona marked a return to the form that produced Match Point, although it is unlikely that he will ever return to the form that produced a series of classics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Woody Allen’s next film is Whatever Works (2009), set in France and he is currently working on what IMDB calls his Untitled Woody Allen London Project, which is scheduled for release in 2010.
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