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vanessakirbyfans · 4 years ago

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There’s a singular vision that director Kornél Mundruczó had in constructing “Pieces of a Woman,” and he had the full trust of his actors, particularly Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn. The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival where Kirby won the Volpi Cup for best actress. Just ahead of its Venice bow, Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese joined the film as an executive producer.

The phrase “it’s difficult to watch” is often spoken in various cinephile circles when referring to dour, less-than-pleasant movie experiences. I can recall having those same conversations around films like “Requiem for a Dream” and “Son of Saul.” Similar words have been uttered about Mundruczó’s portrait of loss and grief.

The role of Martha, a woman whose home birth ends in an unfathomable tragedy, demanded a lot of the 32-year-old Kirby. She’s received rave reviews for her performance, planting herself near the forefront of this year’s best actress race.

Burstyn has been a staple of the cinematic industry for more than five decades. She’s managed six Oscar nominations over her career, winning best actress for Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” from 1974. Her passion and vigor for her craft is as clear as any thespian working today. When discussing her character Elizabeth, and her daughter Martha, who is a third-generation Holocaust survivor, drawn from screenwriter Kata Wéber’s own family experience, she becomes visibly emotional.

“Pieces of a Woman” marks the English-language debut for Mundruczó, who gained a passionate following with his breakout film “White God.”

On Thursday evening, in collaboration with the American Film Institute, Netflix will be hosting a screening with industry professionals, critics, journalists and Academy members.

Variety sat down with both Kirby and Burstyn prior to the screening.

You have had an incredible career, and are still working consistently. Do you have a method to choosing roles at this point in your profession?

Ellen Burstyn: Whenever I’m asked a question like that, I have the impression that people feel I get a million offers and I pick my favorite and that’s not quite true. I don’t have to turn down many films. If I like the director, writers and the actors, I’m prone to take it because in fact, there aren’t many roles written for a woman of my age. So when I get one, I’m usually very happy to get it.

In this case, I saw “White God,” Kornel’s film, and I adored that film. And I have seen Vanessa [Kirby] play Princess Margaret [on “The Crown”] and I don’t watch television very much. When I saw Vanessa, I went “who’s that?” I could see right away she was a special, really accomplished, talented actress. Unusually talented. I was very impressed with her. So when I have a filmmaker I like, a script I like, and an actress like Vanessa where I get to play her mother. It’s a win-win-win situation. That doesn’t happen very often. The roles that are written for a woman my age aren’t plentiful.

This role demands a lot of you, not just as an actress, but as a human. Can you talk about your experience filming?

Vanessa Kirby: Well, firstly, Ellen is one of my heroes. I was so excited that she agreed to do it. She’s always had this trailblazing fire in all of her performances. I so looked up to that, like Gena Rowlands, the same kind of dynamism. I’m so happy to have her in my life now and she’s someone I love very deeply.

How demanding it was on paper, and the idea of knowing that I would need to understand, and go into the psychology of that level of grief, while trying to honor all of the women that I spoke to, and that went through similar things, it felt like a responsibility. I’m always looking for something that scares me and that is seemingly insurmountable, and that alone was the birth because I haven’t given birth myself. I knew I owed to women to try to portray as true-to-life as possible. I was very lucky to watch someone do it for real, which helped me incomparably and I wouldn’t have known how to do it without her giving me the gift of allowing me to be there with her.

The 23-minute one-shot sequence of you giving birth is incredible. How many takes did you do and can you talk about that experience?

Kirby: The actual filming of it was just exhilarating. It was the best film experience of my life. We did four takes the first day and two the second day. I think Kornel used the fourth one. It was like doing a play. Shia is also a real theater animal, so is Ellen, and we all understood what it would require. It was exciting setting up, preparing and then launching into it freefall. And then at the end, to slowly missing word? Out of it – taking a long time to come out of it – and then reset everything. We would blast music around the house and dance around the house just to clear what had happened. By the end of it, your psyche does know any different and you feel like you actually went through this.

Your character is deeply flawed but with a lot of love for her daughter. Did you draw on anything from your own life as screenwriter Kata Weber did?

Burstyn: I always draw from personal experiences. It’s just part of what we do. I don’t know how to not do that. She’s a funny type of character [Elizabeth]. The story Kata wrote about how she was born, with the Holocaust aspect of the film, is from Kata’s family. The idea of being held upside down by your feet and the doctor saying that if she picks up her head, she’ll survive. That’s such a…deeply moving concept how one comes into the world. With the will to live, despite the frail condition of the body. It’s so moving to me. It explains so much about her character and her drive forward. That wonderful introduction of the character that Kata wrote. It’s kind of a pathetic version of whatever it is, make it better, go for it, do it. Don’t be satisfied with blandness. I think she’s a very strong character despite her limitations. She’s not in tune with her daughter but sometimes mothers aren’t.

Talk about Kornel’s vision of the film and how it compares to other directors you have worked with in the past.

Kirby: I knew that the film would be special. I always feel like his movies have a lot of soul and I love movies that have lots of soul. I knew that this was a personal story for Kornel and Kata. He had such a clear vision, and it’s so relaxing when someone has it. He had such a burning vision of Martha and needing that story to be told. It’s not about the loss of a baby, it’s more of a character study of someone that this happens to. How someone reacts to trauma and how individual grief is and he allowed me to really shape that. I felt a lot of respect and trust because of that. It was really profound collaboration.

Burstyn: I just feel his sense of sensitivity and is such a dear human being. Kind and a visionary. I felt like he allowed me to give what I had to give. I never felt interfered with. Sometimes directors come up with an idea and they say “maybe she does xyz” and you say “what?” I deeply fond of him.

If nominated, Ellen Burstyn you will set a record as the oldest acting nominee ever at 88 years and 98 days old on nomination day. How does that feel?

Burstyn: That’s a wonderful thing. I actually have a strong desire to be the oldest person ever nominated. That’s an encouraging thing for me to say to the women of the world, keep on trucking, as long as you can. Don’t give up, don’t retire, don’t sit back and say “well I guess it’s over,” it’s not over, until you declare it’s over. I pray that I get to be that example.

Ann Roth, the costume designer for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” also a Netflix feature, who if she’s nominated, she will be oldest nominee, of any category, at 90.

Burstyn: I’m jealous.

How do you feel about the reviews you are receiving and the possibility of being in the awards conversation?

Kirby: The film felt so much bigger than any of us. This is a subject about neonatal death. The women I spoke that had stillbirths and multiple miscarriages and it’s still a subject that’s really hard to talk about. The fact that you’re saying this conversation is happening around this [film], that means so much to me. If that means that a few more people watch it or more conversations start happening, and that was everyone’s intention with it. The best moments of my working life was doing that birth. It’s hard to articulate. I’m unbelievably grateful and touched that it’s for this film. It’s my first lead role too and I knew I that was ready. I waited a long time. I watched other people do it and I absorbed everything and felt really ready.

Burstyn: Honey, you’re a glowing example of what a fine actress is. You studied well and you came up the right way on the stage, which as far as I’m concerned, everybody who ever wants to be an actress should learn what is on the stage. You’re an absolute glory as an actress, and as a person I might add.

I wish you were my mother.

Burstyn: I can’t tell you how many people say that to me. After “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” I became some type of archetypal mother that people never had and wish they did.

“Pieces of a Woman” will stream on Netflix on Jan. 7.

#Vanessa Kirby #Pieces of a Woman #Ellen Burstyn #Interview #Articles

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years ago

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New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: MOVIE REVIEW: Little Women

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LITTLE WOMEN— 5 STARS

Not to borrow out of context from George Harrison’s Beatles lyrics, but, when it comes to Greta Gerwig as the director of Little Women, there is something in the way she moves. Scene after scene in the adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic penned by her own hand, there is an enchanting manner by which the ensemble is allowed to carry on, as it were. For every segment where a performer is hitting a mark of precision to deliver their speech, there are four or five others where Alexandre Desplat’s sumptuous score will rise, mute the conversation, and lead the audience to simply watch. The characters commiserate and move freely within their relationships and surroundings. We too then live and become absorbed in the beauty of those moments.

The endearing brilliance of Little Women is earned in those quaint sways and movements as much as, if not more than, it is by its crests of high drama. With masterful leadership and bold thematic choices applied to well-worn ideals, Greta Gerwig continuously captures an uncanny vibrancy out of a literary setting that otherwise would be frozen in stagnant despair. Every fiber and morsel of this movie swells with this sense of spirit to embed radiance in resiliency.

The titular Chatty Cathys are the four March sisters of the 1860s at different coming-of-age stages. The two youngest, Beth (newcomer Eliza Scanlan of Babyteeth) and Amy (rising star Florence Pugh), look up to their older two sisters, Jo (three-time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan) and Meg (the now nearly-30 Emma Watson) with shifting notes of reverence and jealousy. With a short-sighted “tired of being poor” feeling, all four lament living within their reduced New England means during the American Civil War. The family’s pastor patriarch (Bob Odenkirk) has been away for years with little contact while his dauntless wife Marmee (Laura Dern) cares for the rapidly maturing girls.

The Marchs are not alone with the tough times. With a shared “I know what it is to want,” they are in a place to tighten their skirts and give to help a poor and struggling single mother nearby. At the same time, they are supported from above by their huffy elder aunt (a perfect feisty Meryl Streep, well within her element) and the wealthy Laurence family next door comprised of Mr. Laurence (the kindly Oscar winner Chris Cooper) and his nonconformist son Theodore (Call Me By Your Name’s Timothée Chalamet). With an alluring young man like “Laurie,” as he is called, nearby, affections grow and hearts swoon.

Swinging the chronological narrative pendulum to and fro, the plight of the March family is being remembered in episodic portions by Jo. She has moved away years later to New York City with the uphill aspirations of becoming a published writer for the discerning editor Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts, with the right amount of curmudgeon). Jo is enterprising and determined to be taken seriously.

LESSON #1: GIRLS HAVE TO GO OUT INTO THE WORLD — Independence is highly valued and celebrated with “love my liberty” in Little Women. For our central guide Jo, fond reflection forms the confidence that her own story is compelling sort that will inspire others. Despite what society deems suitable and how they are kept from property and prosperity, women are fit for more than love and marriage. They deserve to play out their ambitions. Along the same lines, Alcott’s novel itself presents a great passage on wealth that is echoed in the film in its own way:

“Money is a needful and precious thing, — and, when well used, a noble thing, — but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.”

LESSON #2: NEIGHBORS HELPING NEIGHBORS — In many wonderful displays, these are noble and generous people who care to hear and tread in the stories and needs of others despite their personal wants. Furthermore, respectfully knowing the arduous realities present keeps them from being truly ungrateful for what they have. That level of empathy will remain in them into their own families. When rewarded, their own pulled-up bootstraps will transform how “pretty things deserve to be enjoyed.”

LESSON #3: TO PINE, OH WHAT IT IS TO PINE — Nevertheless, even with a giving heart, the longing for deeper wants is hard to truly curb. We have multiple characters in this melodrama that pine for love, marriage, position, dreams, or freedom within their unfortunate and trying situations. The definition of “pine” reads “to yearn intensely and persistently especially for something unattainable” followed by “to lose vigor, health, or flesh.” So much of Little Women, is this languishing pursuit towards personal and emotional fulfillment.

LESSON #4: THE STRENGTH OF FAMILIAL LOVE — To borrow this time from the Greeks and a dollop of The Bible instead of the Fab Four, the level of “storge” love in this saga is exquisite. When family is in need, the annoyances and competitiveness of these sisters go away and bonds are renewed. As they say in the dialogue, “life is too short to be angry at sisters.” Once again, thanks to Gerwig’s tonal choices, you see it, plain as day, in the way the cast in character interacts. The emotional wreckage that results is incredibly genuine.

The performances of this exceptional cast make this journey of pining sacrifices and kindred challenges palpable. Saoirse Ronan accomplishes the quick wit and stubborn strength of the lead role without making it a Katharine Hepburn imitation. Timothée Chalamet uses his smiling charm at full wattage where his piercing gaze and strong words can convey soulfulness under the rude, edgy, and volatile arrogance of his romantic catalyst. Laura Dern flips the privileged acid of her Marriage Story lawyer role to play uncompromising earnestness here with complete and utter grace. Lastly and hugely, Florence Pugh is the spinal cord to Ronan’s backbone. She makes the nerves and savage passion of her tug-of-war middle daughter position stunning.

More and more, there is a pep here higher in this eighth adaptation of Alcott’s novel compared to its predecessors. Springing its winter steps, this Little Women strolls rather than plods. French Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Personal Shopper, A Bigger Splash) captures the textured array of period ambiance created by production designer and veteran Coen brothers collaborator Jess Gonchor. Le Saux’s framing choices are absolutely perfect and the slow-motion occasionally employed to freeze time in happy, blissful moments adds even more impact to its ravishing cinematic layers.

LESSON #5: A WOMAN’S TOUCH IN ALL THINGS — This task to recreate Little Women for the 21st century landed in the right hands, namely HER hands. Greta Gerwig’s elevated her work from Lady Bird in sweeping, grander fashion without losing any of her keen and insightful voice for humanistic commentary. To have this epic tale of powerful gender-driven truths that still resonate in the present day move with such whimsy and gumption is extraordinary and important.

And there’s the best word of all: important. The timelessness of Little Women matters. Gerwig matches the dreams of Alcott’s quote stating “Writing doesn’t confirm importance, it reflects it.” Her stewardship and screenplay deserves every compliment that can be paid. She brings forth the full vigor possible of this story and now owns the poignant love it expresses as much as Alcott.

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mrmichaelchadler · 7 years ago

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Sicario: Day of the Soldado

At its best, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” reminds one of the work of Michael Mann, stories of macho men so released of restrictions on their behavior that they blur the line between good and evil. At its worst, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” reminds one of the straight-to-DVD sequels that flooded the market in the ‘90s and ‘00s, follow-ups to action hits that felt like mere shadows of what came before. It’s more often at its worst.

The follow-up to the 2015 triple Oscar nominee has lost a few key players, including Oscar nominees Johann Johannsson and Roger Deakins, along with star Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve. To say their absence can be felt is an understatement. On the one hand, it’s somewhat unfair to compare the current crew to that talented quartet, but director Stefano Sollima so often mimics the first film that it’s impossible not to do so. For example, the extended shots of helicopters along the US-Mexico border return, along with an imposing score, and a few road-set shootouts. And so we’re constantly reminded of elements that were simply done better in the last film and of the importance of craftsmen like Johannsson, Deakins, and Villeneuve.

In place of that craft, we get a brutal, often ugly journey to the turmoil of the US-Mexico border. Almost as if the film was created by a screenwriting machine designed to mine current national fears and controversies as completely as possible, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” opens with scenes of suicide bombers—one as a group of Mexicans are trying to cross the border, and, in one of the most graphically upsetting scenes in a major film in a long time, more in a grocery store in Kansas City. There we’re treated to the shot of a mother and child desperately trying to get to an exit before they’re blown to bits. It’s almost as if Sollima is laying down a gauntlet: “This will be a violent, harsh experience—leave now if you can’t handle it.” It will cross the line into gross exploitation for some people. You’ve been warned.

The bombings send Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) all the way to Somalia to figure out how and why a terrorist would come through Mexico. His investigation draws the interest of Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) and black ops muckety muck Cynthia Foards (a horrendously wasted Catherine Keener), who tasks Graver with, well, creating chaos across the Mexican border. The US Government wants to pit the cartels against each to disrupt the ecosystem and keep them focused on their rivals instead of anything else—that and the US Government thrives on international drama, of course. So the plan is to kidnap the daughter of one of the cartel kingpins, a man named Carlos Reyes, who just so happens to be the man that Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) has sworn vengeance against. Matt brings in Alejandro and gives him carte blanche to do what it takes.

Once “Day of the Soldado” picks up steam, there are some undeniably well-done sequences, including a harrowing ambush on a Mexican road, and the performers are all strong. Brolin can do this kind of strong-chinned military leader thing in his sleep, but he adds an intriguing (if underdeveloped) undercurrent of rebellion to his character, sketching in a man who will follow orders … to a point. But, once again, the movie is Del Toro’s. He remains one of our best actors, finding ways to deepen minor beats in a movie that doesn’t really allow for pauses for subtlety.

And that’s part of the problem. There’s a difference between a movie that uses extreme violence for a purpose—either thematic or artistic—and one that just feels like it’s using extreme violence because it can't think of anything else to do. The carnage in “Day of the Soldado” becomes numbing to such a degree that it’s hard to care about what happens next. In fact, the final scenes feature a character with dead eyes, shocked into silence and left emotionless by what has unfolded. I felt the same way, wondering what the message or artistic drive of the two hours of bloodshed that came before was intended to convey. The theme of international chaos that once defined places on the other side of the world coming to the US border is there but relatively unexplored. Everything here feels shallow, particularly when you get the sense that it’s all merely set-up for a third film. “Sicario” stood on its own, but this seems like a work that has almost no power without the film that came before it, and may actually only work once we see the film comes next (writer Taylor Sheridan has said that he envisioned a trilogy).

Some will be turned off by the exploitative violence and some by the shallow storytelling, but what struck me most about “Day of the Soldado” was the predictability of it all. We meet a young man who is drawn into a life of crime as a coyote for a powerful crime syndicate, and he’s a complete non-character, the kind of person that you know only exists in a movie like this to eventually cross paths with the characters played by the names above the titles. Everything around Alejandro and Matt feels expendable, and it makes one realize how mindless violence is a poor substitute for nuance, character, or commentary. Not every movie needs to feel like it has something to say, but it’s always annoying when a movie thinks it does but nothing comes out.

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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Glenn Close: You lose power if you get angry

From vengeful mistress to Agatha Christie matriarch: the actor talks about Harvey Weinstein, mental illness and growing up in a cult

Glenn Close and I sit at the corner of a large boardroom table in an intimidatingly minimalist office on the 14th floor of a Los Angeles talent agency. Its the kind of environment in which Patty Hewes, the ruthless lawyer Close played in Damages for five seasons, would feel at home and Im almost waiting for her to stand up, slam both hands on the table and shout, Ill rip your face off or any of the other terrifying put-downs that defined her double Emmy award-winning performance.

But Close is in high spirits and radiates such warmth I barely notice the chill from the tower blocks air-con. After we fiddle with the settings on our swivel chairs, which are so high they make anyone under six foot kick their legs like a child on a swing, the 70-year-old, six-time Oscar nominee and star of stage, television and film starts telling me about her dreams. I have had a lot recently, full of this wonderful love for a younger man. The dreams just keep coming and I wake up thinking, that was wonderful! It wasnt necessarily us doing the sexual act, just the feeling of love.

With her white hair cut to a sharp crop, and wearing a relaxed navy blazer, chinos and black scarf on account of the arctic corporate temperature, she looks stylish and fit. I have never felt better in my life, and I am, like, 70, she says. Im really a late bloomer.

She says she feels a disconnect between how she sees herself and how people may view me when I walk down the street, like: Theres an old lady. You know, there is now this cult of the model. Everyone on the red carpet is made into a model. That is very hard to not play into I have a bit of podge I am trying to get rid of, but its hard. I just think, Oh fuck, Ive been doing this my whole life! But the irony is, you just get better and better with age. You dont feel less alive or less sexy.

In Agatha Christies Crooked House. Photograph: Nick Wall

We are here to talk about Crooked House, the Agatha Christie adaptation debuting on Channel 5, before its theatrical release, in which Close plays Lady Edith, a matriarch of a very dysfunctional family. Close says, Christies grandson came to the set and he validated the fact that it was her favourite book, and the one that had never been adapted. He said when she handed it to the publisher, she was told she had to change the ending, because it was too upsetting and controversial. She refused. Its still pretty controversial.

This production, co-written by Julian Fellowes, might not be as spendy as Kenneth Branaghs $55m Murder On The Orient Express, but the ensemble cast is equally starry: joining Close are Gillian Anderson, Max Irons, Terence Stamp and Christina Hendricks. Close presides over her co-stars with gravitas and grace, in an understated performance that finds the humour in an otherwise bleak setup. But youd expect nothing less from the actor whose 40 years in the business started with star turns in Broadway productions (she won a Best Actress Tony in 1983 for Tom Stoppards The Real Thing). Her first film role, at the age of 35, was with Robin Williams in The World According To Garp, for which she received an Oscar nomination as she did for her supporting roles in The Big Chill and The Natural. Her performances in Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons and Albert Nobbs, about the life of a transgender butler in late 19th century Ireland, which she also co-wrote, racked up further Oscar nominations but still no win. This is seen by many as a travesty: Close brings a precision to her film work, honed through her years on stage. She has that rare taut quality Jack Nicholson also has it where you believe that beneath the steely control she is capable of snapping at any moment.

It was this that led Andrew Lloyd Webber to cast her in 1993 as the tragic silent movie star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard on Broadway. Close reprised the role 23 years later, getting her old costumes out of storage (she has kept all her costumes and recently donated the collection to a university in Indiana) for its revival in Londons West End.

As Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction: Clearly she had mental health issues. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

But it was her Oscar-nominated turn as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction in 1987 that proved career-defining. Thirty years on, Close still counts Forrest as the character of whom she feels most fond; she has admitted to fighting tooth and nail against the films eventual denouement, which turned the character into a bunny-boiling psychopath and Close into the casting directors go-to woman on the verge for years afterwards. Now we have the vocabulary to talk about these things, clearly she had mental health issues, she says.

Close sits regally still as she speaks, emphasising her points by leaning forward and locking eyes. Shes comfortable with silences and often takes a theatrical beat or two before answering questions. Shes all poise and control, but does she ever lose her temper?

I express my feelings quietly. I am not afraid of confrontation, but I am not particularly good at it. If I get attacked, I am not good at attacking back. There is fight, flight and freeze and I tend to freeze. That is not a strength of mine. I love the fact that my daughter Annie [Starke, an actor] is more of a fighter than I am. She doesnt let people get away with shit. While she agrees that women have a harder time being angry, publicly, than men, she says, I have played a lot of characters, and actually anger makes you lose power. Patty Hewes [in Damages] she hardly ever lost her temper, but when she did, it was very specific. I have always felt you lose power if you get that angry.

The collective outpouring of anger among women in Hollywood right now is something of which Close is acutely aware. She says that sexism in the industry has shifted more slowly than it should have done throughout her career: It took Harvey Weinstein and someone calling him out [for real change to happen]. I know Harvey, and he has never done that to me, but people would say he was a pig. I never knew that it was that bad and I dont personally know anybody who has endured that. I would like to think that I would have done something about it.

We discuss whether its possible to separate the work from the personalities involved in it. News has just broken that House Of Cards will be back for another series without Kevin Spacey, after it was originally canned because of harassment claims brought against its leading man. Close wraps her scarf around her chest and fixes me with her electric eyes. Artists, to make a huge generality, walk on a very thin line. Sometimes, like my beloved friend Robin Williams, who was one step away from madness, whatever makes them a great artist also makes them very complicated human beings. Again, that doesnt mean they can prey on and abuse people.

With Harvey Weinstein in 2013. Photograph: Mike Coppola/Getty Images

At the root of the problem of sexism in Hollywood right now is, Close says, biology. I think the way men have treated women, from the beginning of time, is because they have different brains to women. So I am not surprised by it at all. I say to a guy, Tell me the truth, if you see a woman walk into a room, what is the first thought that goes through your head? His answer, always, is, Would I fuck her? It doesnt mean they act on it. If you can evolve into a society where men know that they should not always act on it then there has been a positive revolution. But you cant just say that theyre not going to have the thought that is ridiculous. It also has to be the women, who are not powerful, to be OK to say no and leave the room. I think its unrealistic to say were going to change but we have to evolve.

I ask Close who she thinks is a great man today. She is silent, thinking, for what feels like a full 60 seconds in which I am so tempted to throw out some options: Barack Obama, the Pope, the friendly security guard on reception who let us in

Nelson Mandela, is her final answer, but Im not sure shes convinced. I guess for me, she says, greatness is taking your humanity and still doing the good thing. Its sad to say that there are very few men, who are leaders, who have some sort of moral code that they dont deviate from because of popular opinion.

She thinks we are undergoing a crisis of masculinity: In the public mind, yes. I was outraged when I heard that there was a war against men I was like, are you joking? What do you think has been happening against women for centuries?

Close knows all too well about the misuse of power, because her own upbringing was, as she puts it, complicated. When she was seven, her parents joined a cult. Moral Re-Armament or MRA was a modern, nondenominational movement founded by an American evangelical fundamentalist which extolled the four absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. Her father, a physician working in the Congo, sent Close with her brother and two sisters from the family home in Greenwich, Connecticut, to live at the MRA HQ in Caux, Switzerland (Closes mother, Bettine, was a socialite).

She is vague on the details but clear on the impact this experience had on her as a teenager: I was repressed, clueless and guilt-ridden. The timeline is patchy, but Close travelled with MRA in the 60s as a member of their musical groups, and spent time back in Connecticut at an elite boarding school. I had a wonderful time at Rosemary Hall, a girls school, she says. I was in a renegade singing group called the Fingernails: A Group With Polish. But she remained, as she calls it clueless. A lot of my friends knew boys youd have these horrendous dances with boys schools and they would get the guys they wanted and I would just stay with the person I was with.

As Patty Hewes in Damages. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

She was briefly married before going to university. It is a complicated story for me. I was married before college, and kind of in an arranged marriage when you look back on it, and my marriage broke up when I went to college, as it should have. I was 22. But my liberal arts school had a wonderful theatre that was my training, my acting school.

Was that where she finally learned about sex, popular culture, the ways of the world? Not really, she says. I still am learning.

Close has two sisters, Tina the eldest, and Jessie her younger sister; and two brothers, Alexander, and Tambu Misoki, who was adopted by Closes parents while living in Africa. At the age of 50, Jessie spent time in a psychiatric hospital and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a weight that had been hanging over the family, undiscussed, for years. Talking about mental illness just wasnt done, Close says. You dont have a vocabulary for it and youre also very aware of appearances. You dont want to appear a crazy family.

In 2010 Close founded Bring Change to Mind, a charity that aims to end the stigma around mental illness by talking openly about it and its effect on families. It was my nephew who was first diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. This is basically schizophrenia with an ingredient of bipolar. And when that happened, it was like, What? My sister Jessie, his mother, didnt know what was wrong. He went to the hospital for two years and that saved his life. Then Jessie was, finally, correctly diagnosed herself.

With sister Jessie in 2009. Photograph: Getty Images

Close felt a duty to her family to give them a high-profile person who is not afraid to talk about it publicly. It affects the whole family. We always knew my grandmother and mother had depression my sister does, I do to a certain extent. But I didnt know my great-uncle had schizophrenia. I knew my half-uncle died by suicide. There was a lot of alcoholism addiction, self-medication. Nobody ever talked about it. I knew my grandmother was depressed, but at first I thought she lived in a hotel, not a hospital, because she always said how good the food was.

Close says she and her siblings are of one mind politically, but admits she does have members of her family who voted for Trump. I tried to understand that. Theyre not crazy people who have been brainwashed by Fox News, but I try to understand the anger, because I think that has been building up ever since Watergate. It was watching that scandal unfold that made her realise Americans have always been naive, we just take for granted what we have, and we always thought of our leaders as good people. With Watergate, people became cynical about government.

Today, she says, Washington is a bunch of self-serving She searches for an expletive and after a second settles on men. She says, Its hard to believe that people are so out for themselves. It goes against what you would like to believe about your country. I feel eloquence is incredibly important for a leader, and we had that with Barack Obama, who made his initial impact because he gave that incredibly eloquent speech, but he lost his eloquence in his presidency. We always need someone to say, I hear you, someone who can put their words into unity and hope and we dont have that. I think the last person may have been Robert Kennedy.

And now you have Trump tweeting nonsense.

Its devastating. Social networks are now like our nervous system, and if you keep pumping that kind of crap into the nervous system, it is going to have an effect on a population.

With Kevin Kline in The Big Chill. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Close doesnt talk politics with her friends because she doesnt really have many friends. I have always forced myself into situations I am not comfortable in. I am an introvert, and I was painfully shy as a child. I think I still have a big dollop of that in my persona. I read a book called Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Cant Stop Talking and it was a real comfort to me I realised I was that person I had always been. And it was at that point I told myself to stop pushing myself into situations that I dont enjoy. I dread cocktail parties.

She tells me shes pretty reclusive and can count her closest friends on two fingers. I ask if shes still good friends with Meryl Streep.

I have never been close friends with Meryl. We have huge respect for each other, but I have only done one thing with her, The House Of The Spirits.

I apologise for assuming they were pals, being of a similar age and stature in Hollywood, and admit this negates my next question: Who would win in an arm wrestle, you or Meryl?

Close laughs. Oh, I would, because I am very strong.

***

The tightest bond Close has is with her only daughter Annie, 29. Annies father is the film producer John Starke whom Close dated for four years from 1987, but never married. Annie was never a door-slamming, difficult teenager. Close tells me: When my Annie was three, she looked at me, and said, I want you. I knew what she meant. I, at the time, was a single working parent, sometimes even when I was home, working or producing something, I was there and not there.

With daughter Annie Starke in 2010. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

She doesnt think its any easier for working mothers today and acknowledges, I had it easy because I could afford to have help think of the women who cant afford it and have to put their child in some shaky childcare centre. No, I think it is incredibly hard for women. Any person, in any profession, feels that tug [of guilt]. We discuss the intimacy of the single-parent, only-child bond. Once, I went to vacuum Annies car seat as we were moving house, and a lot of life had happened there, so I was crying. She said, Mummy, are you OK? I said, Yeah, Im OK. And she said, Here I am.

She was married to businessman James Marlas from 1984 to 1987 and then, following other relationships, including that with Starke, she married again, in 2006, to venture capitalist David Evans Shaw, divorcing him nine years later.

Would she marry again?

I dont know.

Does she think marriage is important?

I think it is a positive evolutionary component that we are better with a partner. I think to have a partner that you can go through life with, creating a history with, that you can find a comfort with, have children with there is nothing better. This is an opinion I have come to very late in life, at an ironic moment, where I dont have any of that. I dont know if I will again. But I do think its a basic human need to be connected.

Despite this, shes happy on her own right now. This is a good time in life. I do think, what would it be like to have a partner again? But it would have to be very different from what I had before. Then I have that great dream and wake up happy.

Crooked House is on Channel 5 at 9pm on 17 December.

Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazines letters page in print, please email [email protected], including your name and address (not for publication).

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/16/glenn-close-harvey-weinstein-mental-illness-cult-fatal-attraction

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kacydeneen · 5 years ago

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Felicity Huffman Released Early From Prison

Actress Felicity Huffman has been released from prison, according to a prison official.

She had reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, on Oct. 15 to serve a 14-day sentence for her part in the nationwide college admissions cheating scheme. She served the sentence in California to be near family.

Huffman Gets 14 Days in Prison in College Admissions Scandal

The early release is in accordance with prison policy for inmates scheduled to be released on weekends.

Huffman was sentenced last month to 14 days in prison, a $30,000 fine, 250 hours of community service and a supervised year of release. The 56-year-old Oscar nominee had pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy and fraud for paying $15,000 to boost her older daughter's SAT test scores.

Read Felicity Huffman's Full Statement on Prison Sentence

The prison where Huffman served her sentence is a low-security, all-women's facility in Alameda County southeast of Oakland, with a minimum-security satellite camp attached.

Huffman gave an emotional statement in a Boston courtroom before her sentencing on Sept. 13.

Lori Loughlin's Daughters Break Instagram Silence

"I was frightened, I was stupid and I was so wrong. I am deeply ashamed of what I have done," the actress said.

She reiterated that sentiment in a public statement shortly after the sentencing, saying she accepted it "without reservation" and apologizing to students who worked hard to get into college, as well as their parents.

"My hope now is that my family, my friends and my community will forgive me for my actions," she said in the statement.

Huffman's sentence was greater than what her lawyers asked for — no time behind bars — but less than the prosecutors' request for a month in prison.

Lesser penalties, including probation, would have meant little to someone with "a large home in the Hollywood Hills with an infinity pool," prosecutors said in a Sept. 6 filing.

Huffman's lawyers had said she should get a year of probation, 250 hours of community service and a $20,000 fine. They said that she was only a "customer" in the scheme and that, in other cases of academic fraud, only the ringleaders have gone to prison.

In deliberating the sentence, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said, "The outrage is that in a system that is already so distorted by money and privilege ... you took the step of obtaining one more advantage to put your child ahead."

Huffman's husband, actor William H. Macy, had submitted a letter of support to the judge describing how Huffman has been a wonderful mother who has also occasionally struggled finding the right balance between her instincts and experts' recommendations.

In her own letter to the judge, Huffman wrote that, "In my desperation to be a good mother I talked myself into believing that all I was doing was giving my daughter a fair shot. I see the irony in that statement now because what I have done is the opposite of fair."

The amount Huffman paid is relatively low compared with other bribes alleged in the scheme. Some parents are accused of paying up to $500,000 to get their children into elite schools by having them labeled as recruited athletes for sports they didn't even play.

In the Sept. 4 letter asking for leniency, Huffman said she turned to the scheme because her daughter's low math scores jeopardized her dream of going to college and pursuing a career in acting. She now carries "a deep and abiding shame," she said.

Prosecutors countered that Huffman knew the scheme was wrong but chose to participate anyway. They said she wasn't driven by need or desperation, "but by a sense of entitlement, or at least moral cluelessness."

Among those still fighting the charges are actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, who are accused of paying to get their two daughters admitted to the University of Southern California as fake athletes.

Authorities say it's the biggest college admissions case ever prosecuted by the Justice Department, with a total of 51 people charged.

Photo Credit: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images, File This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Felicity Huffman Released Early From Prison published first on Miami News

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thegloober · 6 years ago

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Life and Nothing More

The title of Spanish writer/director Antonio Méndez Esparza’s “Life and Nothing More” asserts to viewers that what they will witness over the next two hours won’t be comprised of tidy contrivances. In his sophomore feature effort, the filmmaker used his script merely as a blueprint, enabling each scene to be formed organically in the moment. Esparza’s aim is to capture nothing more than the relentless flow of “life itself,” a term famously selected by Roger Ebert for the name of his 2011 memoir and its subsequent 2014 cinematic incarnation.

Through Esparza’s clear-eyed artistry, scenes merely move from one to the next in a linear fashion, often stopping mid-conversation, while guided by the experiences of nonprofessional actors whose performances are as assured and richly nuanced as those of any industry-branded Oscar contender. Like director Bo Burnham—who credited his 15-year-old leading lady, Elsie Fisher, as the co-author of their masterful junior high-set portrait of modern anxieties, “Eighth Grade”—Esparza seeks to understand the hearts and minds of people who are different from himself. His movie is a living testament to Ebert’s belief that cinema, at its best, can serve as an empathy-generating machine.

After earning Film Independent’s John Cassavetes Award during the Spirit Awards ceremony held this past March, “Life and Nothing More” is finally receiving a theatrical run in the U.S. just as the current Oscar season is heating up. Though Best Actress buzz is already favoring the expected list of familiar stars, there are at least two nonprofessional contenders who deserve to be in the mix: Yalitza Aparicio, star of Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming “Roma,” and Regina Williams, the stunning Spirit Award nominee in Esparza’s film. Many of the characters, particularly the four leads, share the same first name as the actors playing them, and Williams’ portrayal of “Gina,” a waitress struggling to provide for her children in Leon Country, Florida, is a tour de force on every level.

At first, she strikes the viewer as a volatile mess, yelling at her 14-year-old son, Andrew (Andrew Bleechington), about his failure to clean the kitchen before warning him not to wake his three-year-old sister (Ry’Nesia Chambers) sleeping in the next room. Her outburst is all the more maddening when juxtaposed with the scenes that come just before it, showing Andrew diligently taking care of his sister, bathing the girl before reading her a bedtime story where a mother voices pride in her child’s achievements. It’s only after we follow Gina during her arduous routine that we begin to fathom the mounting frustration coupled with exhaustion that fuels her rage. With her husband imprisoned on charges of aggravated assault, the woman’s high school diploma has left her with limited options regarding how to keep her family afloat. So closed off has her personal life become that she immediately deflects the advances of a kindly stranger, Robert (Robert Williams, no relation to Regina), as soon as he shows interest in her.

This leads to a wonderful scene outside her current place of employment, the Red Onion Grill, where Gina tentatively entertains the advances of Robert, sizing him up while walking around a post, at one point quipping, “Do you like pole dancing?” Glimmers of the woman’s playfulness and sensuality that had been crushed for so long under the weight of her daily burdens start to materialize here, and I found myself savoring every smile that flickered across Williams’ weary face. Editor Santiago Oviedo brilliantly links small yet crucial moments in order to provide a fully dimensional portrait of Gina’s soul, enabling us to see its many shades—tenderness, anger, humor, fierce strength—and how they drift into one another. In a shattering cut, Oviedo jumps from a tragic sequence to a mundane one, as Gina shovels ice at work, stabbing the cubes with such tear-streaked agony, one senses that she’s piercing her own heart. When Gina finally lashes out at her young daughter, we understand her meltdown entirely, considering it happens soon after she maintained a cool head during an infuriating conversation with one of Andrew’s alleged “victims.”

In one way or another, every scene builds to the film’s climatic encounter, where the boy comes perilously close to suffering the same fate as Laquan McDonald. Cinematographer Barbu Balasoiu (“Sieranevada”) surveys the action in an excruciating wide shot, magnifying the distance between a white family, playing in the park of their affluent neighborhood, and Andrew seated on a park bench with his back to them. It is the white father, fearing the safety of his pregnant wife and young child, who chooses to walk from the left corner of the frame to the right, badgering the unresponsive boy with condescending questions designed to make him leave. If Andrew had filmed the man with an iPhone, the video may have become yet another logged display of racism that went viral. Instead, he takes a more intimidating approach toward fighting back, and when Gina questions the white mother about what may have provoked her son’s behavior, the woman deliberately lies by failing to mention that her husband was trying to kick Andrew out of the park. All she can say in response is, “I’m uncomfortable.”

I’ve watched Esparza’s film twice now, and its greatness reveals itself even more upon second viewing, upending the biases we may have developed about certain characters. Even the white couple’s actions, while misguided and bullheaded, have tangible motivation not painted as purely villainous. The county where “Life and Nothing More” is set has the highest crime rate per capita in all of Florida, a statistic that engenders paranoia of all inhabitants deemed unfamiliar, even those who mean no harm. When I first saw the movie, I tended to view events from Andrew’s perspective because that was how they were framed by the camera. In a shot where he confronts Robert about a squabble he had with Gina the previous evening, the unwelcome boyfriend’s body is almost completely out of view, save for his head visible just above the surface of the kitchen counter. The staging here reflects Andrew’s own unwillingness to really see Robert for the attentive man he is, rather than the scoundrel with ulterior motives he presumes him to be. Of course, Andrew has no reason to trust any father figures in his life, and that disillusionment causes him to pick a fight that will get Robert tossed out of the house, just as the white dad starts an argument in order to remove the black stranger from the park.

All of the film’s major conflicts arise from a stubborn reluctance of its characters to communicate with one another. Gina’s generalization, “F—k all men,” that she brandishes as a shield against Robert’s sweetness, epitomizes the sort of prejudicial thinking empowered by Trump, whose impending election victory hovers ominously in the background. Without ever spelling it out, Esparza shows us how our treatment of one another as members of the same human family is a direct rebuke to the divisions enforced by tyrants to keep us frightened and isolated. In its poetic simplicity, the film’s deeply moving final shot suggests that our estrangement can be mended the moment we choose to lock eyes and listen to each other, allowing our voices to rise above the deafening cries of our presumptions. Andrew’s teacher may believe he knows the family of his student, having schooled himself in their criminal records, yet the boy is entirely correct when informing him, “You don’t.”

Source: https://bloghyped.com/life-and-nothing-more/

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lorrainecparker · 7 years ago

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ART OF THE CUT with Oscar nominee Tatiana Riegel, ACE

Tatiana Riegel just won the ACE Eddie for Best Edited Feature Comedy and has been nominated for this year’s Best Editing Oscar for her work on I, Tonya. Riegel’s previous nominations and awards include a 2009 Daytime Emmy nomination for Imaginary Bitches, and a 2008 ACE Eddie win for The Half Life of Timofey Berezin.

I, Tonya, was directed by Craig Gillespie, with whom she’s worked on several films including The Finest Hours, Million Dollar Arm and Lars and the Real Girl. Other work includes There Will Be Blood, Fright Night and The Men Who Stare At Goats. TV work includes Game Of Thrones and House, M.D. As an assistant editor, she worked on JFK, and Pulp Fiction, among others.

As you may be able to guess, this is an interview I’ve been pursuing for a while and Tatiana did not disappoint. She is just as skilled at articulating the nuances of her craft as she is at editing.

(This interview was transcribed with SpeedScriber. Thanks to Martin Baker at Digital Heaven)

Director Craig Gillespie on-set with Margot Robbie, as Tonya Harding.

HULLFISH: You’ve worked with director Craig Gillespie before.

RIEGEL: A lot. This is our fifth feature. We also did a pilot together.

HULLFISH: Tell me a little bit about what that does for you, to work with the same director again: the comfort level or the shorthand. What are the editorial benefits?

RIEGEL: It’s a wonderful and unique luxury to have that. It’s remarkable actually. Craig and I started working together 10 years ago on Lars and the Real Girl. We now have a knowledge of each other, of our sensibilities and of our humor that makes it simple… we just understand each other so much.

Craig told me he was going to send me the script for I, Tonya, and at first, I thought, “Really? Tonya Harding?” I had the same reaction that I suspect a lot of people have to the film at first. Then I read it and right off the bat I was like, “Oh I totally get it”. I understand why they chose Craig, he just was perfect for it. It was an amazing script and I knew that Craig was going to just bring even more to it and that I would love working on it. Particularly with a film like this, where there is a very delicate dance of tone, having a good knowledge of the director and what they’re going to want and need is invaluable.

HULLFISH: The tone is one of those things that I really respected with the movie. Most of it is comical but then it does dip into these moments, especially with Allison Janney, playing the character of Tonya’s mom, where you do get glimpses of humanity you get glimpses of this tough exterior slipping a little bit. The tone is always shifting.

RIEGEL: That’s exactly the thing that attracted me initially to the script once I read it; what I found so unique. First of all, the way they told the story with these different/unreliable viewpoints. The film is filled with characters that you don’t think you’re going to like. I was very guilty of having an opinion about what I thought were the facts. Not that the film is trying to tell you ultimately how to feel about it, you can still have your own opinion about who did what and when, but it expands your knowledge of who these people are and why they may have done what they did. Even with Tonya Harding’s mother who’s just a horrible horrible mother in the film. She still does have a couple of positive qualities too.

For example, she worked a tough job as a waitress to pay for the lessons and she took her at dawn every morning to the rink. I always wonder what her own childhood was like. She did the best she knew how and there is something that you can connect to on an emotional level even when they’re frankly a pretty vile person. You can still connect and appreciate in some way. Obviously, Tonya Harding is a tough woman, but now you can see why she is the way she is and what led her to become this kind of person… and survive it.

HULLFISH: You had fantastic performances to work with, but then you also have to curate those performances and be a steward of those performances. Are there specific places where you can remember doing that or thinking, “Hey I’ve got this great performance, but it can be enhanced with editing?”

RIEGEL: I think that’s the case with every movie. You’re always trying to make the most of every performance but it’s even more fun with actors who are so capable: they gave me a huge range of material so I could pick and choose and build and sculpt the arc of each character with their performance throughout. In this film, there was nobody that was a weak link. It was an embarrassment of riches. Every single performance was just flawless and gave unlimited options all with honesty.

All of the departments did that. From the camera department to the hair and makeup to the costumes to later in post our sound and our composer. Everybody delivered, which made my job ridiculously wonderful because by the time it got into my room I got to spend time really making the story, and not having to fix or work around too many problems. It was really quite luxurious.

HULLFISH: One of the places that I remember I really liked, was a moment where you could have cut away sooner but you held a moment longer: it was after a point where the mom — who could care less for the affections of her daughter — tells Tonya to give her a kiss before she leaves. And you hold on the mom after the kiss for a moment.

RIEGEL: I love that scene. I really love that scene! I believe it was a scene that was put into the script rather late in the process. I think that Craig actually requested and Steven (scriptwriter, Steven Rogers) to write: a beautiful and important scene needed in that spot. It’s interesting because Craig shot it two different ways in terms of angles. He shot it in a more conventional way, which is a little bit more “front on,” where you see faces more and then he shot it the way that you saw in the film. It’s often from the back or profiles of both actors. I cut it both ways and sent it to the director early on. I told him my great preference was for the more mysterious, darker and manipulative on LaVona’s part. It’s one of my favorite scenes actually, and that moment – kiss your mother – is such a great moment of holding power over her daughter – the look on Allison’s face is just brilliant. This is the third film I’ve actually done with Allison Janney and I’ve told her several times I would be happy to be her personal editor.

HULLFISH: After watching this performance I think that I would say the same thing to her if I was in that position. Absolutely.

With the “kiss your mother” scene, the angles were kind of oblique and also, I assume, you’re trying to play with the timing of how long it takes Tonya to concede to the kiss and who to be on in this power struggle.

RIEGEL: As the scene progresses they’re having this very awkward crazy conversation about domestic abuse and who hits who. Tonya is telling her mother that LaVona used to hit her father. It’s a crazy scene. It’s a discussion about a brutal topic and then the brutality is shown throughout the film. Tonya gets up to leave the scene because she just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore, that’s her protection, to go to practice and then her mom just comes up one more time and says, “Kiss your mother,” total power play and which is just the last thing in the world Tonya wants to do. So she goes over and gives the least affectionate kiss humanly possible and then escapes.

HULLFISH: Why would LaVona even want this kiss, except to exert dominance?

RIEGEL: That’s what abuse is all about. It’s a power and a control issue and control is something that Tonya Harding had to face so much in her life with her mother or her husband or the skating community trying to control her and make her into a person that she’s not. She was one of the most spectacular athletes and they didn’t just appreciate that at face value. They wanted to constantly push a square peg into a round hole and make her something she wasn’t.

HULLFISH: There’s another very tense scene in the kitchen with a knife. How did you approach that scene?

RIEGEL: This is a very simple dinner when it starts off – spoiler alert, by the way – two people quietly at dinner, not talking to each other and it escalates quickly into an argument with her mom crazily grabbing anything off the table she can get her hand on and heaving it at Tonya who defends herself only by ducking then one of the things LaVona grabs is a knife and throws it at her Tonya. It’s wonderful to watch in the theater because every time we get this huge gasp from the audience. Not only the audience, but the characters themselves are stunned. Lavona is stunned that she’s done that. Tonya’s stunned. You then wait and wait and wait. The tension is stretched and pulled and ratcheted up cutting back and forth between them as the audience wonders what they’re going to do. They, as characters, are wondering what the other is going to do. And it continues to be pulled and pulled tighter and tighter until Tonya takes the knife and slaps it down on the table and then just walks away and we are left with LaVona just standing there. All you hear is her breathing and it is as tense as you can possibly get: holding it for as long as possible until just before it breaks and then smashing LaVona in with that interview of: “Oh please, show me a family that doesn’t have ups and downs” which is her character, again, blowing off anything that she did wrong in this crazy absurd way but mostly is this marvelous release of tension for the audience with a ridiculous comic moment.

HULLFISH: Editing is so much like music where you build a tension and then provide release and that scene is definitely a high example of that. You mentioned in the end of that scene that all you hear is her breathing. I can’t remember: is there a music cue throughout that scene or do you do it dry?

RIEGEL: No, no. It’s dry. There’s a music cue at the end of the other scene we were talking about – that “kiss your mother” scene that I love – it’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that is just this beautiful piece that’s the absolute antithesis of what’s happening on screen and then again with her ZZ Top skate.

HULLFISH: Talk to me about the use of music, because there’s a lot of pop music cuts. There’s a great music cut that you obviously started at a specific point so that it paused at a dramatic moment at the door.

RIEGEL: Yeah it’s Fleetwood Mac. It’s a whole montage section where it starts there and she walks to the door and there’s a little break in the music and then it picks up again as she opens the door. That’s Fleetwood Mac and that exact moment worked perfectly. There is also a wonderful rhythm thing a little bit later that just builds and builds during the interview section in that montage when she’s talking to the audience. Music in this film was so much fun to do. We had 40 some-odd needle drops and then score on top of that. None of the music was in the script. That was something that Craig really wanted to do to bring energy, time period, emotion, all of these different things to the film which I thought was absolutely brilliant. Early on he got some 400 songs from the music supervisor and he just started listening to them and then he sent them to me and I started listening to them and during the shooting process, he had some ideas of things that might work. For example Devil Woman, Craig knew early that he wanted to use that song when LaVona is at the skating rink with young Tonya and then others songs were experimentation, trying everything – moving them around and then crossing our fingers and trying to figure out if we could get clearance and pay for them, which is always a hurdle. We proceed as if everybody was going to say ‘yes’ and we had all the money in the world. And then let other people like our music supervisor, Sue Jacobs, figure that out. She worked miracles, thank goodness.

HULLFISH: Yeah, there’s nothing worse than finding that perfect cut of music and then not being able to clear it or being able to pay for it.

RIEGEL: The Fleetwood Mac example is one I was absolutely terrified about because they happen to be a very difficult band to clear. Not only are they expensive but there are a lot of band members, so you have to get a lot of people to say yes. We couldn’t find anything else to work there and I didn’t know what we were going to do if they don’t say yes. I’ve worked on other projects where you couldn’t get something that was perfect for the film – that was just flawless – but you just couldn’t get it. It’s heartbreaking to know that something could have been better and you can’t use it for some reason. So, with this particular cue, I was just over the moon when we actually got it, because I didn’t know what our other options were going to be. It worked so well in the very beginning of it and it built throughout the whole montage so wonderfully. I was thrilled. This film was very different than anything that I have done before, musically. The first thing is that there were so many songs.

I work in a way where I try to avoid putting music in for a long time. A lot of people don’t do that. A lot of people want to see something as finished as possible early on. I, frankly, would argue against that as much as possible because I think many times it hurts the movie if you put movie music on too soon. I think music is so powerful and so important that if put in too soon, can cover a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be covered yet. If you can cut a scene without music and really force yourself to be efficient and honest and get a scene to work dry – get an action sequence or suspense sequence or an emotional sequence whatever it is – if you can get that sequence to really work dry, you know when you put music on you’re just going to be better. If a scene works without music, you know that that scene’s really working. The other problem that happens is that you start to have transitions from scene to scene with music and you can somehow become attached to those transitions because they work so well musically whereas if there weren’t music there, you might be freer and more apt to move a scene around and find the right place. And I often think movies have too much music.

This movie has a lot of music in it but that’s just the nature of this movie. I think there are a lot of films that have too much score because music gets added in so soon and we get so used to it that if you pull it out it feels odd and then it just lives there even though perhaps it’s not needed. It’s like if you use highlighter on your book everywhere, it doesn’t stand out anymore. I always like to hold off as long as possible before putting in music. Having said that, it’s NOT the way we approached this film. So much is cut to the music we had to start putting it in early in the process. Still, I did not put music in through my whole first assembly. It wasn’t until the director came in about two weeks into it: that’s when we started trying anything and everything and seeing how it worked.

HULLFISH: One of the challenges in this movie would have been the skating scenes: to cut seamlessly between Margot and what I have to assume is a skating double. They’re seamless and very complex.

https://youtu.be/YTpeiTQoWIA

RIEGEL: Each skating sequence is very different from the others, and intentionally so. Craig wanted them all to have their own personality so he and the DP and the others really choreographed and designed each one to be quite different but obviously based on her real performances.

They did it so well. For example, the very first one with ZZ Top is when Tonya is quite young and she’s very aggressive and bold and brash and energetic and cocky. So it’s sharp and cut in a way that is much faster and a little rougher and more dynamic versus at the very end at Lillehammer where it’s all one shot: it’s not all one shot but it plays as all one shot. It actually goes back and forth between Margot and the double and then back to Margot. It is intentionally done with the simplicity of one shot to be in her head, to build tension and pressure for what’s happening with her. Then on top of that, there’s the whole technical aspect of visual effects, because, as good of a skater as Margot is, she’s not an Olympian: to do those sorts of jumps and twirls and have that speed. So we had to find those moments to cross back and forth as seamlessly as possible. Sometimes it’s straight cuts and sometimes it’s invisible cuts, where you exchange from one to another in a seamless way.

HULLFISH: What kind of coverage did you get? I would think that that stuff is so complex that it’s very choreographed like a stunt fight.

RIEGEL: It was to a certain extent. There were definitely parts that were broken down and choreographed, so that was actually laid out for me. There’s a video playback guy, Rich, that Craig has worked with a lot that actually will assemble these big scenes very quickly for Craig on the set to confirm he has all the elements. Then Craig tells me, “Don’t look at that. Do what you do.” I do look at it sometime because Rich is terrific and it is super helpful to me to see what they have in mind. Once I have the spine – geographically where they’re supposed to be and can understand that – then I just go for the emotion and energy of the scene. You can cut back and forth and use little bits and pieces from other moments — cheats from other moments – and place them at different parts, structurally, to raise the energy, and that just is so much fun. It’s a puzzle.

HULLFISH: I remember one spectacular shot that starts a skating sequence – as we all look at dailies, there are those shots that stand out, like “Well, I know this must be the first shot.”

RIEGEL: I know the shot you’re talking about. It’s wonderful. It’s so much fun when you’re watching dailies. I was here in L.A. and they were shooting in Atlanta. The stuff comes in and you’re looking at it for the first time. The editor is the first audience of the movie. You get to watch it as an audience member which is I think the unique position the editor vs. the rest of the crew. Or at least the closest to that for a while. So that shot comes in and I remember it was just beautiful. It’s exciting. You think, “Yes! I know exactly how this is going to start.” It’s just so much fun. It was funny we had screenings with friends and family, and we were showing these ice skating sequences before any visual effects were done. We were clearly cutting back and forth between Margot and the double who had a little orange ball on her head for VFX tracking purposes. We would show it to these audiences and very few ever commented or said, “Why does she have an orange ball on her head?” because you’re so drawn into the energy of the scene. You’re watching her body and what’s happening so there were people who actually weren’t aware that we were cutting back and forth between different people as much as we do. Then the visual effects people did a remarkable job, especially considering it is a little movie. It’s a small independent movie and it was very ambitious in the kinds of visual effects that we did. Certainly for our schedule and budget.

HULLFISH: Talk to me about cutting back and forth between the different aspect ratios. That was very interesting.

RIEGEL: That was an idea that Craig and the DP had early on with the interviews. They wanted it to be a different size. When it was scripted: there’s on-camera interview, there’s voiceover, and there’s breaking the fourth wall. All of that was scripted as an on-camera interview. When I first read the script I said to Craig, “There’s a lot of talking heads.” He said, “No, no, no, we’re going to use some as voiceover” and so it was really fun to try to figure out what that was going to be. How much do we need to see on camera? How much can we just hear? And then where we use the breaking of the fourth wall. I had everything in the interview format. Then as I began to weave them into the body of the film we had to be connected and whose point of view it was. That’s where I would decide where it felt natural to cut away from the interview and then just play it as voiceover, and/or breaking the fourth wall.

The “fourth wall” shots were shot both ways. All of that material was shot with the actors turning and talking to us, and also NOT turning and talking to us. We could use the voiceover or we could just cut from that and go back to the interview. So we tried all kinds of different things. At one point we even tried having no interviews at all in the film. It didn’t work. (laughs) We tried it, just in due diligence. It was fun to do that, but we tried it both ways. We tried a screening without breaking the fourth wall and then another one having those incorporated. I love them. I think they’re really fascinating and different and unique and work very well. Craig saw a documentary about Tonya Harding when she was 15 years old and there is a moment in the documentary where Tonya is talking to the camera in this very very matter of fact, shockingly detached way about the fact that her mother hit her – and she’s 15. Craig was very moved by this and realized that this is something that happens with victims of abuse. The survival mechanism is detaching emotionally. He was trying to come up with some way of having that sense of detachment. He wanted the violence in the film to not be sugarcoated because that is what determines why Tonya Harding is the way she is: her life, her upbringing – as it does with all of us. But he wanted some way of signifying that and the way he came up with was this breaking of the fourth wall which is actually the older Tonya talking to us in this very detached, unemotional way over the scene of her head has been smashed into a mirror – and I think it really gives an excellent subconscious interpretation of that kind of emotion, detachment, and survival.

HULLFISH: How much structurally did you and Craig alter the film from the script?

RIEGEL: I’d have to go back and look at the script. We moved a number of things around as you always do in this process. Obviously, there are certain scenes that got deleted — some wonderful scenes that got deleted — that were heartbreaking to yank out of the movie, but hopefully… DVD extras. There are a few things that got moved around but structurally it’s such a good unique, sound script that it was probably less than most films.

HULLFISH: That idea that a scene is so good that it’s heartbreaking to cut out of a movie is something that most non-editors simply can’t fathom. How can you have a great scene that needs to be cut?

RIEGEL: That’s always one of the more difficult moments. When you have a scene that you have to lose for the greater good of the movie. Oftentimes, when you’re screening a film, you find and feel the lulls as the audience is watching it and you have to address that. Sometimes it’s not exactly in that moment. Sometimes it’s three scenes earlier. It’s a hard puzzle to figure out. As with good writing, you want every word to be there for a reason. You want every scene to be there for a reason. It’s either motivating the emotion of the story or the character or it’s motivating the actual story logic as it progresses so that you are giving the audience everything that they need to have. The challenge of that is you always want the audience to be sort of leaning forward and interested and trying to follow along and never get too far behind the movie. You don’t ever want to be confusing or distracting or take them off the path and then have to emotionally or physically get them back into the story. You also don’t want them to get ahead of the story and be bored. So that’s where those things come from. You watch and you guide that by losing sometimes great lines great jokes whether they be entire scenes or just part of scenes to continue to motivate and stay on that path.

HULLFISH: So, the scene, by itself, is fantastic, but its contributions to the overall story are not strong enough that it justifies its existence.

There’s a great scene — played in a single shot — of Tonya putting on the makeup before one of her performances. It was disturbing to watch.

RIEGEL: Margo is just amazing in that scene. That’s a scene that is quite interesting. It was covered a lot more than obviously ended up in the film. It’s just all done in one shot now as you see it in the movie, but Craig shot quite a lot of coverage: everything from the coach walking in and observing her going through this and leaving her alone.

That’s the play of trying to figure out what should be in a movie and what shouldn’t be in a movie and how can you hold it? Because in the original dailies she went through and put all of her makeup on: lipstick and everything. It’s an incredibly powerful scene. You’d have to sit there for 10 minutes and watch it all. But it is as powerful in its entirety almost as it is in that section. But just holding on that straight-on shot of her in this extraordinarily not vain way where she’s trying to put on her makeup, where she’s just on the edge. It just builds the tension with her hands shaking and trying to put her makeup on and the tears welling up and it’s almost clown-like the amount of makeup that – first of all they have to wear when they’re out there in this huge stadium to see any of it – so close-up, it’s disturbing. You can hear her brain practically going through all of this emotion as she’s doing it. I just found it to be one of the most powerful, brave scenes in the movie. The simplicity of it is sometimes far more powerful.

It can be very very uncomfortable to do that and awkward and you’re sitting there with this woman with lipstick on her teeth and you feel embarrassed and awkward and compassionate for her. And holding that moment and staying still I think is extraordinary. She’s just doing everything she can to hold it together to get out there and perform again. This is her last Olympics and all of the pressure of what’s going on… I just can’t imagine.

HULLFISH: The other great tense scene is just after that with Tonya trying to get her skates tied. As an audience member I was on edge watching that. How did you build that tension?

RIEGEL: That was actually very fun to build because there was a lot of coverage for that as well. But a lot of that is sound. You hear the rumbling of the people stomping their feet in the stadium.

And we’re cutting back and forth with the announcers and the clock is ticking down and all of these different things are just building. You see Margot’s hand shaking, so nervous she can’t even tie her skates. And she’s got a problem with the lace: it’s too short, and other people are trying to help. It’s a really super-wonderfully tense scene. Looking back on that, that was actually one of the more difficult scenes to put together. There was a lot of coverage and there are so many moving parts with what’s happening in the stadium. That took a little bit of time and effort to get that correct.

HULLFISH: The way you describe it is almost as if it just happened that way. But of course it had to be EDITED that way. The clock on the wall is counting down, but you’re the one that decides when to cut to the clock on the wall…

RIEGEL: When to hear the announcer saying, “if she doesn’t get out here she’s going to get disqualified.”

HULLFISH: Walk me through your approach to a basic scene. You come in in the morning and you’re faced with a blank timeline and a bin full of selects.

RIEGEL” I can imagine what a writer goes through with a blank sheet of paper. It’s sort of the same thing. Sometimes I have no idea where to start. The first thing I do is watch all of the dailies for the scene. I don’t pay attention to what the director has called their select takes until after I’ve watched it. I just want to have my initial gut reaction to the performance and what’s happening in the scene. Frankly, I also try not to read the script too many times. I don’t want to be too familiar with it. I want to simply understand from the material that’s given to me: from geography to emotion to time — all of these different elements.

I remember once cutting a scene and there was some really crucial bit of information that I was certain was in dialogue. It was missing and I was like, “Where is this? Did I just hear it in one take? Why isn’t it in every take?” I finally went back to look at the script and it was actually a screen direction in the script but never got put into the movie. I just read it like everybody else did. Everybody involved with the film read it and it just became a part of the movie in our heads, but not on film.

HULLFISH: That’s happened to me before. You can’t have screen direction that you can’t see.

RIEGEL: I heard a director once say that, as an exercise, always try to have a read through of the script with no screen direction at all to ensure that kind of thing doesn’t happen, because sometimes there’s a lot of screen direction written into scripts that just go into your subconscious mind, then you think it’s there and lo and behold it’s not.

HULLFISH: Getting back to dailies and your approach: do you have someone put together a KEM roll of selects, or are you literally clicking on each set-up and take from the bin?

RIEGEL: No KEM rolls, just individual takes. When I used to work with film of course but not now. I’ve had such wonderful assistants my whole career, but on this they went above and beyond. Dan Boccoli with whom I’ve worked probably seven or eight movies now was my assistant in Los Angeles during dailies. He couldn’t come with me to New York for post. I had another assistant there, Steve Jacks, who was spectacular as well. Dan knows how I like things prepared, which is relatively simply. He goes through and does all of the technical stuff,

making sure everything’s in sync, and that everything got transferred properly. He just sets the bins up in masters, mediums, over shoulders, just in basic order. (as she says this, she draws out a row in the air for each type of shot, indicating that each shot type is in a row in the bin).

HULLFISH: This is in Frame view? (thumbnails or poster frames)

RIEGEL: Exactly. I just go through one by one. I watch all of the dailies. I have ideas. I take notes.

Sometimes extensive notes, sometimes quite cryptic notes – just for memory purposes – so that I can go back and find a moment. Sometimes I use the locator button to just kind of quickly mark a moment or a look or a particular line reading that I like, so I can find it again quickly and when I’m done watching dailies I just begin: sometimes at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, sometimes the end – depending on the scene – and work my way either forward or outside or backwards, to construct the scene with all the moments that I find real and believable… that moved me. A little bit regardless of shot size. Although I think size plays into that intuitively.

And then I watch a scene a couple of times, tighten it up, make some changes, realize that there’s an energy shift when I’ve changed takes that doesn’t play as well as I thought it would play. Then I have to go back and keep a single take or sometimes I’m allowed to switch takes very easily. All of those little bits and pieces that go into it – just sort of constructing the scene once and then I try to put it away and look at it the next day with fresh eyes. Sometimes I’m horrified. “What was I thinking?!”

HULLFISH: You’re not alone. I’ve heard that about 100 times.

RIEGEL: And other times I come in the next morning and I hit play, thinking I’ve got the most atrocious scene ever and I’m like, “Hey, wait a minute! That’s actually not bad.” Make some adjustments and then I send it to the director right away.

I try to send directors stuff, Craig or any director that I’m working with, as quickly as possible so that they can see what they have. No sound effects, no music – just my initial gut reaction in an assembly of a scene. I want them to see it and make sure that they have what they want

in terms of coverage, performance and tone. Then, if they want, they can make their adjustments or we can begin a dialogue about what I should do. Sometimes a scene might be put together nothing like what they originally imagined in their mind. I hope I can get them to watch these scenes a few times before they start reacting to them. I believe this is much easier to do if they’re individual scenes. Then as things start to build, I get to show that scene attached to the scene after it, and they see that first scene again. And by the third or fourth time they’ve watched it, they’re finally watching it as its new entity: As the movie – not the movie that they had in their head – and that doesn’t mean we’re not going to change it like crazy, it just means that they’re not stuck in what they had in their head early on. So by the time they finished shooting they’ve actually seen the entire movie: maybe completely out of order and in little bits and pieces but they’ve seen it. Nothing’s a mystery. And so when we sit down to watch it beginning to end the first time, it’s not as shocking.

HULLFISH: I remember a spot in the movie — only really a single place — where it has built up into some really pretty tight close-ups. Do you know where I’m talking about?

RIEGEL: Craig and I always have this sort of on-going thing: I always try to avoid closeups as much as possible for as long as possible. I think that they are brilliant when used sparingly and when used too much they just take away the impact.

I think it was much easier before, when people cut on film and actually used to screen the movies all the time on a big screen, to really understand how these things are going to translate when they are 30 or 40 feet high. When you’re doing a feature, that’s your goal: to make everything play big. And so when you get so used to watching it on these small monitors now, I think you can very easily go to the close-up too quickly because you’re judging it in this small space. And so you feel like you need that impact of a close up. But when it’s actually 30 feet high, a medium shot may do it very well. So I try to avoid that. I never really try to pay too much attention to the size. I’m always going for the emotion of the performance and then that sort of dictates everything. And then if I need extra impact I’ll find a take that’s closer.

HULLFISH: So you don’t use selects reels.

RIEGEL: Almost never. I did use ScriptSync on this one for the very first time. I have never done it before. I’ve never really felt the need to do it before because I watch everything so thoroughly and I take these notes and I use markers. I could always sort of find stuff before pretty quickly.

The way they shot the “interview” material on this, I just can’t imagine not using ScriptSync. I think we’d still probably be cutting the movie because they shot so much interview material: hours.

Everything else in the movie was shot on film, but the interviews were shot digitally, so the camera was just rolling and there were these long, long takes where they would jump around from scene to scene. Nothing was slated. They were doing retakes within takes. So it was just very hard to find stuff.

HULLFISH: Now when you’re talking about interviews, for those people who have not seen this movie, you’re not talking about interviews with the actual people. You’re talking about scripted scenes with the actors that SEEM like interviews.

RIEGEL: Right. So, all of that 4:3 aspect footage. The movie has all of these interview sequences with the various characters and that material was shot digitally.

HULLFISH: And was a lot of that ad-libbed? You’re talking about how much footage there was.

RIEGEL: Some was ad libbed, although we always got the scripted versions first. Sometimes they would give all kinds of options. It’s woven throughout the entire movie, and there’s some that we never used, but they shot a lot. I think for Tonya alone there were 6 or 7 hours and hours of footage. It would be difficult to find the material without ScriptSync.

HULLFISH: It sounds like, to build the sequences, you weren’t really using it.

RIEGEL: Just to find the options. I would just go through and find all of the line readings of these lines and I can listen to them and pick them and start to build those interviews sequences in between all of the other footage.

HULLFISH: Because you can just click on a line in the script and it’s right there. You don’t have to go search for it.

RIEGEL: Yeah. It’s brilliant.

HULLFISH: Do you think you’ll use it again, now that you’ve tried it?

RIEGEL: If I have situations like this, yeah. It’s time consuming and certainly if I have the crew to support them spending the time doing that when there’s so much other work for them to do, I would love to do it but unless I really need to, I like to keep them free enough to do the rest of their work.

HULLFISH: The last film that I used ScriptSync on we decided just to do six or seven big scenes. So the smaller scenes we didn’t ScriptSync because I figured I could find it.

RIEGEL: Exactly.

HULLFISH: But something like a big dinner scene with six people or something like that, it makes sense to use ScriptSync.

RIEGEL: Exactly. So that’s why I said I just use it for the interview stuff. If it were necessary, I could completely use it for any random scene. I think each individual movie will dictate how it’s used in the future.

HULLFISH: Other people have talked to me about ScriptSync and how they don’t like to cut with it initially because they feel like it pulls them out of that whole daily process.

RIEGEL: I can imagine.

HULLFISH: The other great place for ScriptSync is when trying to choose takes or line readings with the director. ScriptSync is the easiest place to go.

RIEGEL: You’re absolutely right. It is very nice in that situation but in all honesty I’ve been able to find those different line readings pretty quickly. I’m so familiar with the material and I know where they fall in the take and it’s usually pretty quick when we have to go back and investigate each and every reading. One of the luxuries with this film is that I’ve worked with Craig so much, I know what performances he’s going to really want for most of it.

HULLFISH: I’ve kept you for an hour but I’m so much enjoying this conversation that I don’t want to let you go.

RIEGEL: Me too.

HULLFISH: I’ve been trying for over year to talk to you. I think originally it was because you were cutting Game of Thrones, but you were always booked. Now, after this Oscar nomination your dance card will really be full.

RIEGEL: That still sounds really peculiar to hear you say that. Lovely, but peculiar. Honestly this film was was really truly an independent film. We had no studio attached. We had no distribution or anything. When we finished, just prior to going to the Toronto Film Festival in September, my hope was: “I hope it gets a good distributor and that we get a good review or two” because it takes some bravery and tallent to get this one out there. Everything has been just marvelous gravy since then.

HULLFISH: I did just think of an important thing because you mentioned something that threw me: You said you had two different assistants in two different locations. What the heck is that about? You edited in LA and then you edited in New York, but they shot in Atlanta?

RIEGEL: Both Craig and I live in L.A. When they were shooting in Atlanta I stayed here with my assistant in L.A. and put together the whole first assembly. Then we went to New York. We went to New York to do all of the post – The director’s cut, the sound mix, the finishing, the DI, visual effects – they were all done in New York because of the tax incentives. This was a small movie and we needed every dime we could scrape together from anywhere. It just was cheaper to do it there, so we spent six months there.

HULLFISH: In New York. The city itself?

RIEGEL: I know. Yes. Putting us up in New York for six months somehow was cheaper than letting us stay home. I don’t really understand budgets, but that’s what they said.

HULLFISH: Thanks for a great, great interview. Congratulations on all your success. Have a wonderful day.

RIEGEL: Thank you. Bye bye.

To read more interviews in the Art of the Cut series, check out THIS LINK and follow me on Twitter @stevehullfish

The first 50 interviews in the series provided the material for the book, “Art of the Cut: Conversations with Film and TV Editors.” This is a unique book that breaks down interviews with many of the world’s best editors and organizes it into a virtual roundtable discussion centering on the topics editors care about. It is a powerful tool for experienced and aspiring editors alike. Cinemontage and CinemaEditor magazine both gave it rave reviews. No other book provides the breadth of opinion and experience. Combined, the editors featured in the book have edited for over 1,000 years on many of the most iconic, critically acclaimed and biggest box office hits in the history of cinema.

The post ART OF THE CUT with Oscar nominee Tatiana Riegel, ACE appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

First Found At: ART OF THE CUT with Oscar nominee Tatiana Riegel, ACE

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megadarkbouquettidalwavethings · 7 years ago

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‘Three Billboards’ biggest winner at female-flavored SAG awards

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Dark comedy “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won three prizes at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards on Sunday in a ceremony marked by women and their stories amid the sexual misconduct scandal that has swept Hollywood.

The Fox Searchlight film about a furious woman seeking justice for the murder of her daughter was named best ensemble, the top SAG honor.

Frances McDormand won best actress and Sam Rockwell took home the best supporting actor statuette for their roles in the film.

Britain’s Gary Oldman won best actor for playing wartime leader Winston Churchill in Focus Features’ “Darkest Hour.”

Allison Janney won for her supporting actress role as a demanding mother in independent ice-skating movie “I, Tonya.”

The SAG awards are indicators of likely Oscar success in March because actors form the largest group of voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday.

The SAG ceremony took place after two days of marches by hundreds of thousands of women throughout the United States.

Host Kristen Bell said women were having a “watershed moment.”

“Let’s make sure we lead the charge with empathy and diligence because fear and anger never win the race,” said Bell, star of television’s “The Good Place.”

Accusations of sexual misconduct have forced dozens of powerful men in Hollywood to step down, be fired or dropped from creative projects.

24th Screen Actors Guild Awards – Show – Los Angeles, California, U.S., 21/01/2018 – Frances McDormand (C) speaks accompanied by the rest of they cast after they presented the award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Women, many of them leading actresses, have responded by breaking their silence through the #MeToo social media movement and the Time’s Up campaign for legal support of victims.

On the red carpet, women swapped the black gowns that marked support for victims of sexual harassment at the Golden Globes two weeks ago for brighter blues, green and metallic hues.

Women were the dominant theme inside the Shrine Auditorium.

Nicole Kidman, 50, won for playing a battered wife in HBO’s female-centric TV series “Big Little Lies.”

“How wonderful that our careers today can go beyond 40 years old. Twenty years ago we were pretty washed up by this stage in our lives. This is not the case now,” Kidman said.

Aziz Ansari, nominated for his Netflix comedy series “Master of None,” was a no-show on Sunday after making headlines last week when a woman described feeling violated following an awkward date last year. Ansari said he believed their sexual activity was consensual.

Ansari lost the television comedy actor statuette to William H. Macy for “Shameless.”

James Franco, a best actor nominee for “The Disaster Artist,” did show up but skipped the red carpet and did not win. Franco had kept a low profile since describing allegations of sexual impropriety against him by five women two weeks ago as “not accurate.”

In television, NBC’s sentimental family drama “This is Us” was named the best drama ensemble cast in a surprise win over presumed front runners “The Crown” and dystopian series “A Handmaid’s Tale.”

The cast of HBO political satire “Veep” won best ensemble for a television comedy. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and missed the SAG show, was named best comedy actress.

”She’s genuinely been in good spirits when we’ve seen her, which I think will carry her along … She is incredibly strong and is uniquely able to combat something like this,” Timothy Simons, who plays Jonah Ryan on “Veep,” told reporters on Sunday.

Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Additional reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Paul Simao and Paul Tait

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years ago

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Matt Fagerholm's Top Ten Films of 2018

For dutiful film critics preparing to mark their ballots, the final months of the year are nothing less than a cinematic avalanche. Studios do everything in their power to entice us into viewing their most prized work prior to our voting deadlines and “best of” lists. There’s no way any single person can watch and fully digest every single movie that comes out in a given year, but boy do the most devoted cinephiles give it their all, consuming multiple pictures after work hours or early in the morning.

You can’t merely enjoy movies to pull off such a feat, you must be obsessed with them and believe deeply in their importance. It’s not just a job or a hobby, it is one of the great purposes of my life to champion an art form that possesses the power of strengthening our connection with one another. In such divided and toxic times, the humanizing beam of a film projector is more vital and revitalizing than ever. And in many recent cases cited below, it reminded me of why I fell in love with visual storytelling in the first place.

10. “Mary Poppins Returns”

In an era where Disney appears hellbent on churning out pointless yet highly profitable shot-for-shot remakes of their animated classics, the very notion of producing a sequel to the studio’s all-time greatest picture sounds like a surefire recipe for disaster. Yet what “Chicago” director Rob Marshall has achieved here will stand as a definitive example of how to honor a masterpiece. There is no attempt made to equal or improve upon Robert Stevenson’s 1964 marvel—after all, how does one top perfection? Yet with a running time clocking in just nine minutes shy of its predecessor, this buoyantly old school musical captures the innocence, whimsy and wonderment of “Mary Poppins” while offering its own spirited take on the material.

Emily Blunt is well-aware that she does not possess the indelible screen persona, let alone the pipes, of Julie Andrews, yet her balance of warmth and sardonic wit is impeccable for the title role, as is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vibrance and Cockney-by-way-of-Neptune accent in the Bert-like role of lamplighter Jack. A team of veteran animators were brought out of retirement to create the film’s glorious hand-drawn sequence, while the “Hairspray” duo of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman penned nine original songs echoing the Sherman Brothers’ signature vaudevillian style. Worth the price of admission alone is the ever-ageless Dick Van Dyke, playing the son of the banker he brilliantly brought to life incognito in the first film. Marshall clearly drew upon his childhood memories of seeing “Mary Poppins” on the big screen, and this labor of love is sure to delight fans and newcomers alike. It certainly brought out the child in me.

9. “Life and Nothing More”

Winner of Film Independent’s John Cassavetes Award during last year’s Spirit Awards ceremony, Antonio Méndez Esparza’s arresting film aims to capture nothing more than the relentless flow of “life itself.” The director used his script merely as a blueprint, enabling each scene to be formed organically in the moment, while guided by the experiences of his nonprofessional actors (who share the first names of their characters). Spirit Award nominee Regina Williams delivers one of the year’s best performances as a waitress struggling to provide for her troubled son (Andrew Bleechington), and baby daughter in Leon Country, Florida. I’ve watched Esparza’s film twice now, and its greatness reveals itself even more upon second viewing, upending the biases we may have developed about certain characters.

The first time around, I tended to view events from Andrew’s perspective because that was how they were framed by the camera. His refusal to trust his mother’s boyfriend (Robert Williams) is understandable, since his own dad’s incarceration has given him little reason to trust father figures, though his methods of ousting him from the house are no different from that of the white family who attempt to kick the boy out of their affluent park, even as he poses no threat to them. All of the film’s major conflicts arise from a stubborn reluctance of its characters to communicate with one another. The poignant final shot suggests that our estrangement can be mended the moment we choose to lock eyes and listen to each other, allowing our voices to rise above the deafening cries of our presumptions.

8. “The Tale”

When Lady Gaga appeared on Stephen Colbert’s late night show this past October, she delivered a stirring defense of Christine Blasey Ford, the psychologist who charged Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault prior to his confirmation as a Supreme Court justice. “If someone is assaulted or experiences trauma, there is scientific proof that the brain changes,” noted Gaga. “It takes the trauma and puts it in a box, files it away and shuts it so that we can survive the pain.” It may take years for that box to be reopened, as evidenced by multiple survivors of the abuse administered by Olympics doctor Larry Nassar. Taped testimonials delivered by these women and girls during his trial, and subsequently uploaded on YouTube, were humbling in their bravery. The same can be said of this blistering narrative memoir from documentarian Jennifer Fox, who revisits an episode from her youth that she had kept buried for decades.

While interviewing rape victims for her latest project, Jennifer (Laura Dern) is triggered into remembering the intimate relationship she developed with the running coach (Jason Ritter) and instructor (Elizabeth Debicki) at a horse-riding camp when she was only a little girl (played with heartbreaking innocence by Isabelle Nélisse, sister of “Monsieur Lazhar” star Sophie Nélisse). Rather than accompany Dern’s scenes with routine flashbacks, Fox finds ingenious ways of having the heroine enter her own past, interrogating the occupants of her memories as if they were the subjects of her latest documentary. Dern’s late “Rambling Rose” co-star John Heard gave one of his final performances as the older version of Ritter, who is publicly shamed in a sequence that registers as a rallying cry of the #MeToo movement.

7. “Custody”

There was no horror film in 2018 that tested my nerves quite like this Hitchcockian nightmare from Xavier Legrand, an incredibly gifted first-time feature director from France. Billed as a domestic drama, I was prepared for something more akin to Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation,” as a divorced couple, Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and Miriam (Léa Drucker), battle in court over the custody of their young son, Julien (Thomas Gioria, in one of the most astonishing debut performances I’ve ever seen). At first, my sympathies leaned toward the father, whose foiled bids to connect with Julien are relatable—until his face hardens and he begins to show his true colors. Ménochet slyly straddles the line between frustrated sad sack and frightening monster, causing us to feel as perpetually on edge as Julien, never certain of his next move.

In every tremulous motion and agonized glance, Gioria conveys the volatile atmosphere of white-knuckled fear his father maintained at home. Merely being in Antoine’s presence is enough to give Julien PTSD, and when he attempts to make a run for it, he quickly realizes there is only so far he can go. In a superb instance of juxtaposition, Legrand cuts from Julien’s older sister (Mathilde Auneveux) belting out “Proud Mary” at a birthday party to the violence that threatens to erupt between Antoine and Miriam in the parking lot. Then we arrive at a climatic sequence on par with the finale of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” as Legrand’s Oscar-worthy sound designers create a harrowing sense of impending doom with the subtlest of repetitions. Only at the final fade out will you allow yourself to take a breath.

6. “Leave No Trace”

A list of the year’s greatest achievements in acting wouldn’t be complete without Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie’s extraordinary lead performance in Debra Granik’s quietly shattering drama. Having already won over New Zealand audiences with her endearing web series, “Lucy Lewis Can’t Lose,” here McKenzie goes toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with the sublime Ben Foster, and proves to be every bit his equal. Foster’s character of Will has the same first name as the role that the actor played in Oren Moverman’s equally great war-themed film, “The Messenger,” about an injured soldier assigned to inform families that their enlisted loved one has passed. The man Foster embodied in that film was named after one of the soldiers he met during his research, so it’s only appropriate that the Will he portrays in Granik’s film is also a veteran haunted by ghosts from the past.

The picture is deeply effective in part because none of Will’s demons are ever spelled out in an expositional monologue. So much can be gleaned simply through his behavior, such as how he winces at the sound of propeller. Choosing to raise his daughter, Tom (McKenzie), in the wilderness of Portland, Will has carved out a manageable life for himself. The strength of the bond between him and Tom endures until the modern world comes crashing upon them, forcing the pair to reevaluate what direction they want to take in life, and whether it will be the same one. McKenzie never overplays a single note of her character’s journey, remaining strong for her dad even while fighting back tears. It’s the restraint of her work that left me with a lump in my throat.

5. “Muppet Guys Talking”

For lifelong Muppet fans, Frank Oz’s euphoric documentary has been the gift that keeps on giving. It premiered exclusively online this past March, enabling the legendary Muppeteer-turned-director to connect directly with viewers, while providing those who sign up for a membership with enough deleted scenes to fill a separate feature. Taken altogether, this footage paints an invaluable portrait of Jim Henson’s genius, in terms of both his visionary creations and his knack for being “a harvester of people.” Oz (Miss Piggy, Grover, Fozzie Bear) joins four of his fellow “Muppet guys”—Dave Goelz (The Great Gonzo), Fran Brill (Prairie Dawn), Bill Barretta (Pepé the King Prawn) and the late Jerry Nelson (Count von Count)—for a lively chat about the process of puppeteering and the painstaking effort that must be expended in order to achieve the most fleeting yet crucial nuance. It’s fascinating to watch the performers break down the origins of their iconic characters, and how they were inspired by aspects of their own lives.

Yet what makes the film truly great is the way in which Oz and his wife, executive producer Victoria Labalme, resurrect the humanistic spirit of Henson, enabling his worldview to reach beyond the barriers of show business and prove utterly universal in its relevance. Acknowledging that the Muppets’ signature style is less than polished, Oz keeps the picture loose and alive, refusing to conceal the cameramen scrambling to capture their subjects’ unscripted banter. The performers and audiences that Henson brought together through his artistry are his everlasting symphony, and this onscreen quintet is enduring proof of that. And if you like 1981’s “The Great Muppet Caper” now, just wait till you get a load of the behind-the-scenes stories. It’s one of the most mind-boggling feats in cinema.

4. “First Reformed”

With this richly disquieting film—his finest since 1985’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters”—Paul Schrader proves himself to be a master of “slow cinema,” and like the tortoise, he has outpaced every impatient hare in his path. Moviegoers unfamiliar with this term may assume that it promises little more than a dull slog, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, this genre’s contemplative nature proves to be far more transfixing than films so breathless to entertain that they forget to earn our investment. The austere filmmakers that Schrader pays homage to throughout the picture—notably Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer—are interested in withholding certain elements, refusing to utilize techniques that viewers have come to expect, such as a quick editing pace or varied coverage like over-the-shoulder shots.

Alexander Dynan lenses the film in the same compressed aspect radio as Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Ida”—1.37:1—limiting the camera movement almost entirely to scenes that jump from the temporal plane to the cosmic realm, escaping the bonds of reality. Whereas Schrader’s “Taxi Driver” followed a disillusioned veteran whose plans to wreak havoc on a world he believes to be diseased are foiled by the plight of a 12-year-old prostitute, “First Reformed” is about a disillusioned military chaplain-turned-pastor whose plans to wreak havoc on a world he believes to be diseased are disrupted by the plight of a pregnant woman named Mary. Ethan Hawke delivers the performance of his career as Toller, a clergyman with self-righteous convictions fueled primarily by his personal demons. Like Dietrich Brüggemann’s “Stations of the Cross” (a 2014 German masterwork that Schrader and I both revere), this movie is a rebuke to the fallacy that self-destruction is tantamount to spiritual transcendence.

3. “Roma”

No director makes my jaw drop quite like Alfonso Cuarón. His latest movie left me so stunned that I remained pinned to my seat throughout the entirety of the credits, which end with the Buddhist chant, “Shantih Shantih Shantih.” This invocation of peace—in body, speech and mind—was memorably repeated in Cuarón’s “Children of Men,” a 2006 thriller that horrifyingly foreshadowed the current refugee crisis. That film contained two extended sequences of continuous movement—one set in a car under siege, the other on war-torn streets—that are among the most spellbinding triumphs of cinematography, choreography and effects in the history of cinema. Cuarón’s new film culminates with a bravura set piece on par with those others, yet that’s only one aspect of its greatness.

Like “Children of Men” and “First Reformed,” this deeply personal tour de force assesses the challenge of bringing new life into a chaotic world. It is also a black-and-white valentine to the Mexico of Cuarón’s childhood and the maid who nurtured him, embodied by Cleo (newcomer Yalitza Aparicio). As she finds her own life paralleling that of the middle-class woman she works for, Cleo begins to feel increasingly conflicted about her own future, as well as that of her unborn baby. Having learned a wealth of techniques from his regular DP, three-time Oscar-winner Emmanuel Lubezki, Cuarón takes charge of the camerawork this time around, and his eye for composition (albeit less restless) is every bit as audacious. A pair of visual motifs involving water and airplanes resurface in endlessly provocative ways, while two prolonged scenes—viewed from static angles—blur the action in the background, marrying two moments of inevitable heartache. I have rarely heard an audience react so audibly to the art of mise-en-scène as when I saw this film with a sold-out crowd during the opening night of its theatrical run in Chicago. If you see only one movie on the big screen this holiday season, make it this one.

2. “Minding the Gap”

In the monumental 52-year legacy of Chicago’s production company Kartemquin Films, none of its documentaries have impacted me on as personal a level as this astonishing debut feature from Bing Liu. While filming his longtime friends Keire and Zack as they took part in their cherished hobby of performing bruising stunts on their skateboards, Liu began to see a potential film materialize as he held the camera on their faces. “This place eats away at you,” says Keire of their hometown, Rockford, Illinois. He relishes the fleeting sense of control he sustains while skating, until he wipes out. Sure, the hobby may hurt him on occasion, but so did his dad, and he still loves the old man, though it’s telling that Keire finds catharsis in stomping on his boards until they splinter.

The fact that all three men are victims of domestic abuse is alarming but also quite commonplace in a town where nearly half the population is paid below the minimum wage, and where the residue of violence clings to the interior of houses that were meant to comfort and protect. “I saw myself in your story,” Liu explains to Keire, who likens the experience of making the movie to “free therapy.” As the filmmaker struggles to come to terms with the wounds inflicted by his own upbringing, he starts to see echoes of his abuser in the increasingly unsettling behavior of Zack. When Liu films his mother and simultaneously confronts her about the abandonment he felt as a kid, he keeps a separate camera fixed on his face, drawing attention to his own inability to break free from the pain of his past. Assisted by co-editor Joshua Altman, Liu weaves these stories together, forming a seamless tapestry of anguish and catharsis that culminates in an extended montage so deftly executed, it left me in awe.

1. “Eighth Grade”

As a bullied student in eighth grade, what I desired more than anything was to become a director of films that would make kids like me feel less alone. Now, with his first foray into filmmaking, Bo Burnham has made the movie I’ve spent nearly two decades hoping would one day exist. The film’s heroine, Kayla, is a lonesome soul bereft of an extracurricular outlet. Though her graduation from junior high is only one week away, every second in that soul-crushing environment feels like an eternity. So she turns to the world that didn’t exist when I was her age, the one that beckons to her from the cool glow of her laptop and phone. Burnham, who first garnered a global audience via his comedic YouTube videos, honors his protagonist by refusing to play her feelings for laughs. As portrayed by 15-year-old Elsie Fisher, Kayla emerges as one of the most compelling and vividly realized movie characters I’ve ever encountered. My heart broke every time the camera lingered on her face—untouched by an artificial Hollywood sheen—as she struggled to contain her embarrassment behind an expression of optimism.

The screenplay by Burnham doesn’t have an ounce of condescension, and the laughter that it generates—which is plentiful—arises out of recognition rather than ridicule. These are the years where attentive parenting is utterly essential, and Kayla is fortunate enough to have a father, Mark (Josh Hamilton), who may exasperate her with his persistent prying, but has a limitless reservoir of empathy and understanding. When Mark’s words finally register for Kayla during a lovely sequence set around a campfire, they affirm her sense of belonging in the world. As he tells his daughter, “You make me brave,” I couldn’t help agreeing with him. There is nothing braver than a middle schooler who dares to be human. What makes “Eighth Grade” the best film of 2018 is the way it makes Kayla’s anxiety resonate on a level that transcends all age, race, gender, nationality and culture. With petulant bullies elected to our highest offices, and technology breeding an addiction to constant approval, it goes without saying that our world has currently succumbed to an eighth grade mentality. You no longer have to be 13 in order to feel trapped in junior high.

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