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denimbex1986 · 9 months ago

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'"I tried to capture a lot of intimacy, but there's something special going on here," Haigh says of his protagonists.

On a break from shooting the much-anticipated Gladiator II, oPaul Mescalmeets director Andrew Haigh for a discussion around their shocking film , All of Us Strangers .

Already three years on the Dublin stage, the Irish actor got the attention he deserved in April 2020 when he made his television debut, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, in the successful adaptation of Normal People , Sally Rooney's bestselling novel. The BBC's top-grossing series that year was the springboard to launch Mescal's career, who has never looked back since his role as awkward teenager Connell earned him both an Emmy nomination and a Bafta .

In the next four years, his first participation in a feature film, in Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut with The Lost Daughter , but also God's Creatures , Aftersun (for which he received an Oscar nomination for his leading role), Carmen before come Foe and of course the masterpiece All of Us Strangers which has now convinced even the most skeptical in the most tragic way that Mescal is a rare talent with the ability to charm and break hearts with a glance down.

Directed by Andrew Haigh , All of Us Strangers tells the story of Adam (Andrew Scott), who, when he falls in love with Harry (Mescal), begins to explore a tragedy that has cast a great shadow over his life. Everything unfolds at a dizzying pace between fantasy and reality, as Adam "visits" his dead parents and surrenders to all those feelings that awaken the beginning of a new sexual relationship.

The British director, known for the intimacy and emotional weight of his works, delivers - through Mescal - to the public, a masterpiece that haunts and moves viewers like no other film this year.

The new meeting

The two met again, in the pages of AnOther Magazine, where they talked about the radical tenderness of their new film, revealing what it takes to express their inner conflict with the subtle restraint that characterizes them. It's the first time they've had the chance to speak together publicly about the award-winning All of Us Strangers.

After agreeing that the time leading up to the film's release is terrifying, Andrew Haigh confesses that he created the film in the first place to connect with people, while Mescal called the script the best he's read in a while. It even surprised Haigh that from the first moment he was interested in the role of Harry. A role that other (few) actors turned down before it landed on him.

“This character had the same effect on me as other leading roles I have played. It was all there, in the script. This role had it all,” says Mescal. The moment he is at Adam's door, you can understand Harry's pain, longing, need, as it is all hidden in his words and gestures.

A scene so important that the film wouldn't work without it.

“I can say that this scene is one of my favorites in my entire career. I remember when I read it, I thought you could spend a week in this scene – there are endless paths you could take. And I'm so happy with how it turned out – it's the perfect combination of dangerous and sexy and sad , but it's not clear which part is dominant," she adds.

“I tried not to think too much while I was making the film because it's really dangerous to think about how people will take it and what people will end up asking. I think I would end up scared. But one of the things I've tried to figure out is, 'Why do I want to make movies?'" Haigh confessed, noting that as painful as it is, "for anyone who works in film, there's a part of us that he's probably doing it because you just want people to love you."

The stress of filming

As for the scene in which Mescal was most anxious, it was none other than the one in Harry's apartment towards the end of the film.

"I was nervous about the performance – I'd seen how beautiful the work with Andrew was and I was like, 'We're going into the last two minutes of the movie and if I f@m#% it, it's my fault.' But it's one of those few moments where Harry becomes the focus of the film for a second," he confided.

“You sure hid that anxiety well. And you tore. It's heartbreaking. I also love the scene between you and Andrew in bed halfway through the movie. I can't tell you how beautiful you both are in this scene. I feel like I tried to capture a lot of intimacy, but there's something special happening here, the way we see you open up to each other. It's so subtle and tender, the way you hide and reveal yourself,” Haigh replied.

"But that's what I also like about the script. We've seen versions of these scenes in movies where a character suppresses or hides what they're feeling through a smile. But what's different about this scene is that there's someone on the other side of the bed who loves him and tells him that it's not okay to do this. And what upsets me so much in this scene is Harry saying, "I'm ostracized by my family etc... but it's fine." And the line that destroys me is when Adam says, “But why? It's okay' It's such a simple line," Mescal added.

“It's about knowing that someone cares enough about you to push a little deeper. It's this exhalation of yours in response to this question, a laugh, a gesture, and then you stretch. It's one of my favorite moments in the movie. We're so close to your face, close enough to see Harry's mind working, asking himself if he can go any deeper into this relationship. It's those moments that I'm obsessed with trying to capture,” explains Haigh.

“It's not something I think you can prepare for as an actor. You can't go home and do your homework and say, "When he says this, I'm going to stretch and make a little noise." You just can't," says Mescal.

“I feel like sometimes, though, it's a blind panic. Because I think acting has the ability to be the most embarrassing thing any of us do. And it can be done in an instant. I've seen actors I really admire do bad, embarrassing things. When you're in a scene where that's intense – say, if you're naked or there's emotional weight in a scene – strangely enough, if you're working with good actors, you can just throw a bubble around and scare it off. Andrew Scott is just outrageously good,” he says of his co-star.

“When you feel close to an actor like him, as you do with Andrew, you have a real intimacy and a trust that I've only had a few times – obviously with Daisy [Edgar-Jones] in Normal People, with Andrew and with Saoirse in Foe . It's not about talent. Saoirse and Andrew are actually quite similar. They're so emotional, where all you have to do when you're in scenes with them is sit there and listen to what they're saying. Normally they will find a way to unlock you. It sounds reductive, but you don't have to do anything when you're working with brilliant actors like them,” adds the 28-year-old Irishman of the pair's award-winning film duo.'

#The Lost Daughter #God's Creatures #Carmen #Normal People #All of Us Strangers #Paul Mescal #Andrew Haigh #Andrew Scott #Gladiator 2 #Foe #Sally Rooney

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atlaese · 3 years ago

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Is a lot? lots of descriptions and is basically many years? is an easy ready I think, war and peace is more difficult for me? too many characters and names. But I think is worth it? like it feautures two of my favourite romances ever, and I read it at 19 so is very dear to me, in a way. Right so the les mis tomes we have each one is 800 pages, I checked, dude I have no idea.

Yes man parenthood isn't easy and nobody becomes a mom from one day to the next in a way. Yes it was Maggie Gyllenhaals first time handling a full film and she did a great job, I'm excited if she decides to stay on as a director, I loved it. Me either! even though I saw pictures of him around here, they filmed it last year! after summer I think.

The sags noms are out and I'm gonna base my oscar viewings on those movies, whichever is available on the internet of course ;)

so a bit of marvel knews, moonknight is supposedly coming in march 30, then shehulk in may and msmarvel in july or august :D and you watched eternals? right the voice at the very end is supposedly Blade's and maybe Blade will appear in moonknight.

ooh okay, gotcha!! girl, you keep astounding me with all this knowledge lol i'll just keep coming to you f i have any questions about books/films/shows/etc. some books really just stay in your mind eh? idk those books are like *chefs kiss* ooh 800 pages is still a lot!! like 700 you know you're in for a ride but 800 is a whole other world!

she did an amazing job!! honestly i loved everything about the movie! the direction, the cinematography, the OST, the acting, the casting, locations etc. very well done! he really was a surprise guest then lol!!

ooh, i'm interested to hear your judgement :)

omg so many new movies goddamn lmao. i honestly can't keep up with all this stuff!! ah moonknight was played by oscar isaac right? mans got a busy schedule wow. yessss!!! i loved eternals!!!!! chloe zhao did an amazing job like damn i loved every moment in it i'm gonna watch it again when i've got time bc oof. feel like i missed some stuff just by being amazed by everything, haha! ooh right!! i was wondering if they were just gonna keep Kit as a random human lol. glad he's coming back! heard blade is played by mahershala ali??? super excited to see him tbh!! loved that we just heard his voice too, adds a little bit of suspense to the whole thing :)

#arianswers #andy 🌿

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back-and-totheleft · 4 years ago

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INSIDE a flimsy temporary office on a dusty movie lot here, a young man sits in front of a computer, showing off a three-dimensional rendering of the collapse of the World Trade Center. It was assembled by merging the blueprints for the twin towers — the before-picture, you might say — with a vast collection of measurements, including some taken with infrared laser scans from an airplane 5,000 feet above Lower Manhattan, just days after 9/11.

With a few clicks, Ron Frankel, who has the title pre-visualization supervisor for Oliver Stone's new 9/11 film, begins to illustrate the circuitous path that five Port Authority police officers took into the trade center's subterranean concourse, until the towers above them fell, killing all but two.

As Mr. Frankel speaks, behind his back a burly man has wandered through the door. He is Will Jimeno, one of the two officers who survived. He has been a constant presence on the movie set, scooting from here to there in a golf cart, bantering with the actor playing him and with Mr. Stone, answering questions and offering suggestions — a consultant and court jester. But he has never seen this demonstration before, he says, pulling up a chair.

Mr. Frankel, continuing with his impromptu show-and-tell, says the floor beneath Mr. Jimeno, Sgt. John McLoughlin and their three fellow officers dropped some 60 feet, creating a 90-foot ravine in the underground inferno. The difference between instant death and a chance at life, for each of the men, was a matter of inches.

Mr. Jimeno sits quietly, absorbing what he's just seen and heard. His eyes moisten. "I didn't know this," he says. "I didn't know this. I didn't know there was a drop-off here. This is an explanation I never knew about." He pauses. "We try not to ponder on it, because we're alive. But it answers some questions. That, really, played a big part in us being here." The countless measurements taken and calculations made by scientists and government agencies helped ground zero rescue workers pinpoint dangerous areas in the weeks after the attacks. The data also provided a fuller historical record of how the buildings collapsed and lessons for future architects and engineers.

Only a movie budgeted as mass entertainment, though, could harness all that costly information to reconstruct the point of view of two severely injured and bewildered men, who didn't even know the twin towers had been flattened until rescuers lifted them to the surface many hours later.

Their story, and those of their families, their rescuers and the three men killed alongside them, is the subject of Mr. Stone's "World Trade Center," which Paramount plans to release on Aug. 9.

The quandary that Paramount executives face is a familiar one now, a few months after Universal's "United 93" became the first 9/11 movie to enter wide theatrical release: How do you market a movie like this without offending audiences or violating the film's intentions? Carefully of course, but "there's no playbook," said Gerry Rich, Paramount's worldwide marketing chief. In New York and New Jersey, for example, there will be no billboards or subway signs, which could otherwise hit, quite literally, too close to home. And the studio is running all of its materials by a group of survivors to avoid offending sensibilities.

But Paramount, naturally, wants as wide an audience as possible for this film.

Nicolas Cage, who plays the taciturn Sergeant McLoughlin, says the movie is not meant to entertain. "I see it as storytelling which depicts history," he says. "This is what happened. Look at it. 'Yeah, I remember that.' Generation after generation goes by, they'll have 'United 93,' 'World Trade Center,' to recall that history."

Whether Mr. Stone set out to make a historical drama or a dramatic history isn't entirely clear. Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin, who have both since retired from the Port Authority, say the script and the production took very few liberties except for the sake of time compression.

"We're still nervous," Mr. Jimeno said last fall, after shooting had shifted from New York and New Jersey to an old airplane hangar near Marina del Rey. "It's still Hollywood. But Oliver — it's to the point where he drives me crazy, trying to get things right."

There are many people of course who have been driven a little crazy for other reasons by some of Mr. Stone's more controversial films, "JFK," "Natural Born Killers" and "Nixon" chief among them. But in several interviews, sounding variously weary, wounded and either self-deprecating or defensive, Mr. Stone spoke as if his days of deliberate provocation were behind him.

"I stopped," he says simply. "I stopped."

His new film, he says, just might go over as well in Kansas as in Boston, or, for that matter, in Paris or Madrid. "This is not a political film," he insists. "The mantra is 'This is not a political film.' Why can't I stay on message for once in a while? Why do I have to take detours all the time?"

He said he just wants to depict the plain facts of what happened on Sept. 11. "It seems to me that the event was mythologized by both political sides, into something that they used for political gain," he says. "And I think one of the benefits of this movie is that it reminds us of what actually happened that day, in a very realistic sense."

"We show people being killed, and we show people who are not killed, and the fine line that divides them," he continues. "How many men saved those two lives? Hundreds. These guys went into that twisted mass, and it very clearly could've fallen down on them, and struggled all night for hours to get them out."

By contrast Paul Haggis is directing the adaptation of Richard Clarke's book on the causes of 9/11, "Against All Enemies," for the producer John Calley and Columbia Pictures.

Asked if that weren't the kind of film he might once have tried to tackle, Mr. Stone first scoffs: "I couldn't do it. I'd be burned alive." Then he adds: "This is not a political film. That's the mantra they handed me."

Mr. Stone says he particularly owes his producers, Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, for taking a chance on him at a time when he had gone cold in Hollywood after a string of commercial and critical disappointments culminating in the epic "Alexander" in 2004. "They believed in me at a time when other people did not, frankly," he says. " 'Alexander' was cold-turkeyed in this town, I think unfairly, but it was, and I took a hit. Nobody's your friend, nobody wants to talk to you."

Mr. Stone came forward asking to direct "World Trade Center" just about a year ago. He decided it would require a different approach from, say, "JFK." "The Kennedy assassination was 40 years ago, and look at the heat there, a tremendous amount of heat," he says. "I was trying to do my best to give an alternative version of what I thought might have happened, but it wasn't understood. It was taken very literally. 'Platoon,' I went back to a Vietnam that I saw quite literally, but it was a twisted time in our history.

"This — this is a fresh wound, and it had to be cauterized in a certain way. This is a very specific story. The details are the details are the details."

The details that led to the movie's making began in April 2004, when Andrea Berloff, a screenwriter, pitched a story about Mr. Jimeno's and Mr. McLoughlin's "transformation in the hole" to Ms. Sher and Mr. Shamberg. Ms. Berloff, who had no produced credits, was candid about two things:

"I didn't want to see the planes hit the buildings. We've seen enough of that footage forever. It's not adding anything new at this point. I also said I don't know how to end the movie, because there are 10 endings to the story. What happened to John and Will in that hospital could be a movie unto itself. Will flatlined twice, and was still there on Halloween. And John was read his last rites twice."

The producer Debra Hill, who had optioned the rights to the two men's stories, was listening in on the line. When Ms. Berloff was done, she recalls, Ms. Hill said, "I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think we should hire you."

Ms. Berloff and Mr. Shamberg headed to New York to meet with the two officers and their families, and to visit both the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the men had once patrolled, and ground zero. In long sessions with the Jimenos in Clifton, N.J., and with the McLoughlins in Goshen, N.Y., Ms. Berloff says, she quickly learned that both families, despite the nearly three years that had elapsed, remained emotionally raw. "Within 20 minutes of starting to talk they were losing it," she says. "We all just sat and cried together for a week."

Before leaving, Ms. Berloff says, she felt she had imposed on, exhausted and bonded with the two families so much that she warned them that in all likelihood she would not be around for the making of the movie. "I had to say, 'The writer usually gets fired, so I can't guarantee I'll be there at the end,' " she recalls. "But I'd recorded the whole thing, and I said they shouldn't have to go through this with a bunch of writers. They'd have the transcripts to work from."

Ms. Berloff returned to Los Angeles, stared at her walls for a month, she says, and then wrote a script in five weeks, turning it in two days before her October wedding.

Ms. Hill died of cancer the following March. Mr. Shamberg and Ms. Sher moved ahead, circulating the script to Kevin Huvane at Creative Artists Agency, and to his partners Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett. Mr. Lourd gave it to Mr. Stone, Mr. Lovett to his client Mr. Cage.

The agency also represents Maria Bello, who plays Mr. McLoughlin's wife, Donna, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays Alison Jimeno. Ms. Gyllenhaal, who'd just seen "Crash," suggested Michael Peña, who made a lasting impression in a few scenes as a locksmith with a young daughter. (Mr. Peña did a double-take, he confesses, upon hearing that Mr. Stone was directing a 9/11 movie: "I'm like, let me read it first — just because you're aware of the kind of movies that he does.")

Given the need to shoot exteriors in New York in September, the cast and crew raced to get ready for shooting. The actors aimed for accuracy in different ways. Mr. Cage says he focused on getting Mr. McLoughlin's New York accent right, and spent time in a sense-deprivation tank in Venice, Calif., to get a hint of the fear and claustrophobia one might experience after hours immobile and in pain in the dark. Mr. Peña all but moved in with Mr. Jimeno.

Ms. Gyllenhaal had her own problems to solve. That April she had stepped on a third rail, saying on a red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival that "America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way" for 9/11. She apologized publicly, then met privately with the Jimenos, offering to withdraw if they objected to her involvement. "We started to get into politics a little bit, and Will said, 'I don't care what your politics are,' " she recalls.

With Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin vouching for the filmmakers, more rescuers asked to be included, meaning not only that dozens of New York uniformed officers would fly to Los Angeles to re-enact the rescue of the two men, but that there were more sources of information to replace Ms. Berloff's best guesses with vivid memories.

Ms. Bello, who had gone to St. Vincent's Hospital on 9/11 with her mother, a nurse, and waited in vain for the expected deluge of injured to arrive, contributed a scene after learning from Donna McLoughlin of a poignant encounter she had had while waiting for her husband to arrive at Bellevue.

Some of the film's most fictitious-seeming moments are authentic. Mr. Jimeno's account of his ordeal included a Castaneda-like vision in which Jesus appeared with a water bottle in hand. But Mr. McLoughlin recalled no hallucinations, or nightmares, or dreams: only thoughts of his family. "He kept saying I'm sorry — 20 years in the job, never gotten hurt, and here we go and I'm not going to be there for you," Ms. Berloff says. "So we tried to dramatize that."

Nearly everything else in the movie is straight out of Mr. Jimeno's and Mr. McLoughlin's now oft-told story: the Promethean hole in the ground, with fireballs and overheated pistol rounds going off at random; the hundreds of rescuers, with a few standouts, like the dissolute paramedic with a lapsed license who redeems himself as he digs to reach Mr. Jimeno.

And the former marine who leaves his job as a suburban accountant, rushes to church, then dons his pressed battle fatigues, stops at a barbershop for a high-and-tight, heads downtown past barricades saying he's needed and winds up tiptoeing through the perilous heap calling out "United States Marines" until Mr. Jimeno hears him and responds. Mr. Stone says he is adding a note at the end of the film, revealing that the marine, David Karnes, re-enlisted and served two tours of duty in Iraq, because test audiences believed he was a Hollywood invention.

Reality can be just as gushingly sentimental as the sappiest movie, Mr. Stone acknowledges, especially when the storytellers are uniformed officers in New York who lived through 9/11. And particularly when it comes to Mr. Jimeno and Mr. McLoughlin, who have struggled with the awkwardness of being singled out as heroes when so many others died similarly doing their duty, and when so many more rescued them.

"You could argue the guys don't do much, they get pinned, so what," Mr. Stone says. "There will be those type of people. I say there is heroism. Here you see this image of these poor men approaching the tower, with no equipment, just their bodies, and they don't know what the hell they're doing, and they're going up into this inferno, they're like babies. You feel saddened, you feel sorry for them. They don't have a chance."

Mr. Cage says he once mentioned to Mr. Stone that their audience had lived through 9/11: "That it's not like 'Platoon,' where most of us don't know what it's like to be in the jungle."

"He said, 'Well what's your point?' " Mr. Cage says. "And my point is that we all walk into buildings every day, and we were there, and we saw it on TV, so this is going to be very cathartic and a little bit hard for people."

Despite its fireballs, shudders and booms, Mr. Stone's film is also unusually delicate, from the shadowy intimacy of the officers' early-morning awakenings to the solemnity of their ride downtown in a commandeered city bus, to the struggle of their wives to cope with hours of uncertainty and then with false reports of their husbands' safety.

"It's not about the World Trade Center, really. It's about any man or woman faced with the end of their lives, and how they survive," Mr. Stone says. "I did it for a reason. I did it because emotionally it hit me. I loved the simplicity and modesty of this movie.

"I hope the movie does well," he adds, "even if they say 'in spite of Oliver Stone.' "

-David M. Halbfinger, "Oliver Stone's 'World Trade Center' Seeks Truth in the Rubble," The New York Times, July 2 2006 [x]

#oliver stone #world trade center #the new york times #2006 #9/11 attacks

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tblpress · 4 years ago

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The day before James Spader won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alan Shore, the morally dubious lawyer on “The Practice,” the actor was at the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, admiring the statues -- especially the female forms. “Look at the beautiful curve of her back, right at the base of her spine,” he said, noticing a dancer at the top of Robert Graham’s “Dance Columns.” “It’s the most perfect curve in nature.” Then Spader felt a breeze and started ambling in the other direction. “I just want to walk into it,” he explained. “Oh, my God, that is nice.”

The sculpture garden, a favorite hideaway of Spader’s, brought out in him a charming mix of formality and earthiness. When Gaston Lachaise’s bronze powerhouse “Standing Woman” caught his eye, the memories rushed out. “My sons, when they were growing up, always enjoyed her rather ample” -- here he used a word not proper for this newspaper but that means “derriere” -- “and her rather ample breasts,” he said. The boys, Sebastian, now 15, and Ellijah, 12, would come here with their scooters. “So you come around,” Spader explained, “and lo and behold, you have that beautiful” -- that word again -- “over there. You can hardly resist scootering by and giving her a poke. She has nice calves too. She’s ample everywhere. She’s spectacular.”

James Spader, network TV star: To anyone familiar with the 44-year-old actor and his work, it sounds almost absurd. With the outre air of highbrow naughtiness and deep but slightly distracted intelligence he’s been known for since his 1989 big-screen breakthrough in “sex, lies, and videotape,” Spader could hardly have cooked up a more improbable career move. And yet starting tonight on “Boston Legal,” the new David E. Kelley show spun off from “The Practice,” TV viewers will get a weekly taste of the actor who has specialized in finding an endearing human side to wealthy school bullies, creepy cocaine dealers and sensuous sadomasochists.

Spader headed toward a section of the UCLA campus blanketed by California sycamores that he and his sons, he said, often climb and swing from. “See that?” he asked, pushing a branch down. “This is a perfect perching spot. I’d do it more aggressively, but there’s people around and it makes them nervous.”

Making people nervous is, of course, a Spader trademark.

“When we first went to the network about James, they shrieked in horror,” Kelley said. “James Spader is not a network face. They didn’t think he was the kind of persona American audiences would want to welcome into the living room on a weekly basis. But once we began to focus on him, he was the only choice. What James does so well is there’s a nucleus to this character that is humane and decent. He manages to let that nucleus shine through even when he’s committing egregious, contemptible acts. You don’t know if you like him or not, but you can’t wait to see him next.”

Kelley hired Spader to play the brilliant agitator whose dirty ways forced the firm of Young, Frutt and Berluti on “The Practice” to close its doors last year, after ABC slashed the show’s budget, forcing Kelley to fire half his cast. Spader, whose most recent television appearance had been a guest spot on “Seinfeld” in 1997, was supposed to play Alan Shore only long enough to shake things up.

“The goal in the beginning was to bring new life to the show, and the luxury we had as storytellers was that we didn’t have to protect the character for the sake of a long series run,” Kelley said. “You can only do so many things with a character that are overtly unlikable and still keep him redeeming and a character that people want to tune into and cheer for. Since we didn’t have that burden, we could swing away with him.”

The high-end firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt might prove a better fit for Shore, who will be surrounded by other conniving legal eagles, including William Shatner as his boss, Denny Crane, and colleagues played by a cast including Rhona Mitra, Lake Bell, Monica Potter and Mark Valley. Alan Shore, Kelley promised, will “defy this law firm as he defies the conventions of regular characters on television.”

“When we watch James, there’s a lot of unknown complicated stuff in his mind, but we don’t know what that stuff is,” said Steve Shainberg, who directed Spader in “Secretary” (2002). “There’s something very unusual about him we can’t put our finger on, but that makes it more intriguing and exciting -- God help us.”

Yet for all the unpredictability that comes across on screen, Spader’s “Boston Legal” co-stars described him as meticulous, exact and particular on set.

“He’s always looking for the truth of the moment, and he gets fidgety when it’s not there,” said Shatner, who won a guest actor Emmy for his portrayal of Crane on “The Practice.” “He becomes as recalcitrant as a donkey until he can find the right way to deliver a line. He never says a word that doesn’t seem to come from the organic character. That’s because James himself is a little weird. But we love him for it.”

The Un-Brat Pack career

Two days after Spader nabbed the top acting award for a drama series, beating out television heavy hitters James Gandolfini, Martin Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, he was on the “Boston Legal” set at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Three episodes of the show were being shot simultaneously, and he had found no time yet to contemplate his win. The Emmy, he said, was tucked away in a corner full of boxes as Spader, who recently separated from his wife, Victoria, waited to move into a new house.

“I was surprised at how quickly I lost the feeling of stunned confusion and ignorant bliss and how quickly it turned into work and pragmatism,” Spader said. “The award doesn’t mean anything to me -- and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. I just haven’t had time to go there yet. Even when my older son called to congratulate me, we moved rather swiftly on to the subject of an upcoming concert” -- the Pixies at the Greek Theatre -- “and the best way to score tickets, which is a much more constructive conversation for us.”

Like other actors who started taking shape in the ‘80s, Spader could easily have cultivated a Brat Pack aura. Instead, he went for a more original brand of alienation, playing seemingly WASPY characters with a devious air and an anti-WASPY erotic charge to them. The roles he took in movies such as “White Palace” (1990), “The Music of Chance” (1993), “Stargate” (1994) and “Crash” (1996) didn’t always hit big but always set him apart -- none more so than “Secretary,” in which Spader played E. Edward Grey, a lawyer who draws his self-mutilating young secretary into a joyful S&M; relationship.

“James is very formal and specific and respectful,” said Maggie Gyllenhaal, his costar. “I remember when we shot a five-page scene in which Mr. Grey asks me not to cut myself anymore, James noticed and responded to everything I did: every breath I took, every shift of my gaze, every movement of my hand. His work is very specific.”

And that, according to Camryn Manheim, who starred on “The Practice” for eight years, can be intimidating. “After you saw ‘Secretary,’ wouldn’t you be scared to go on a date with him?” Manheim said, laughing.

“I was scared of him,” she added. “He’s weird and strange and eccentric, and I mean a lot of that in the very best way. He plays all of these sexually charged characters. He looks at you too hard, like he’s got your number. But behind all of that, he’s a very simple man who is very thoughtful and insightful about the world and humanity.”

Confronted with the praise of his colleagues, Spader took a deep breath and looked skeptical. “Maybe this thing they are describing is just obsessive-compulsive. It just seems to be what the job is, to just try and get the right intention of whatever ... you’re saying. Who is to say if whether what you end up tumbling toward is the right place when you’re standing on your feet in the middle of it? I’ve had a lot of fun acting, and that’s been the only reason to continue doing it.”

Spader, who dropped out of the 11th grade to pursue acting in New York, attributes his interest in acting to the love of storytelling he inherited from his family. The son of teachers Todd and Jean Spader, the actor grew up with two sisters on the campus of Phillips Academy, a fancy Massachusetts prep school. “My father was an English teacher and he taught literature and poetry, and my parents would read aloud and my grandparents read aloud,” Spader said. “My grandfather would write stories and we would make up little plays to read and perform during the holidays. There was always a tremendous amount of humor in all the households I spent time in.”

But there were other reasons for wanting to become an actor. “I started doing theater when I started thinking of nothing but girls,” he said. “I can’t imagine that the two don’t relate. I don’t mean to be glib. In sports and in many other areas, girls and boys are separated. But in theater, you’re all mixed in together. How can it get any better than that?”

Being an actor, for Spader, has never been about celebrity. The press tent for interviews with winners at the Emmys came as a surprise and an “indignity,” he said jokingly. When someone at the Governors Ball on Emmy night remarked how rare it is that Spader has succeeded at being famous and simultaneously living a private life, the actor was incredulous.

“I don’t try to be mysterious,” Spader explained later. “I just protect my private life very carefully. I don’t go out a great deal. To see and be seen I could care less about. I don’t go to see movies at big premieres. If I go out, I go to a quiet place for a meal or I might go to listen to live music with a whole lot of people who are more interested in listening to the music than who is sitting next to them at the show.”

His new TV world

Spader may be on his way to television stardom, but he has never followed a television show from beginning to end -- the way he hopes viewers of “Boston Legal” will.

“That’s something I had no concept of,” Spader said. “Working on the show, I was experiencing the same anticipation for what was going to happen from week to week as the people who were watching it. When you do a film, you know what is going to happen to your character from start to finish. I knew very little about Alan Shore at the end of last season, and I still don’t. I like that constant shift because what I like the most about all of this is the telling of the story.”

What he likes the least is the fuss. He refused to hire a stylist for Emmy night, picking out his tuxedo and shoes himself. He did not prepare a speech. When his name was announced, Spader charmed the crowd by complimenting the women in the room: “You’ve all made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight, and you all look absolutely beautiful.”

“I realized I was going to have to put together some sentences quickly and I wasn’t going to be yet another person to make a music joke,” Spader said. “It worked so well when the gentleman from ‘Arrested Development’ made the singing reference, but I knew that that couldn’t be used again, and certainly not by me. I really don’t have any idea what ... I was saying. Certainly, during the course of the four hours that I was there I had spent enough time admiring women’s shoes and dresses and how well they filled them.”

But as offhand as he may be about that trophy, it’s fitting somehow that Spader will be in the rare position of starting his new gig already having won an Emmy for the role. To his surprise as much as anyone’s, the TV gods have smiled on him. “Does anybody have any illusions about the fact that the Emmys come at the beginning of the television season? The timing seems precise to me,” he said. “And I think it’s grand.”

#james spader #interview #2004 #james spader quote #la times #boston legal #the practice #alan shore #james spader press #link #article

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Dark Knight: Why Heath Ledger’s Joker is Still Scary Today

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It’s one of the great villain introductions in cinema history. Standing with a slight hunch at the center of a massive 70mm image, Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker not so much dominates the frame as he commandeers it. He seduces the IMAX camera, which is still capturing vast amounts of Chicago’s cityscape around him, and draws it closer to his sphere of influence, and by extension us. Before this moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the director’s Gotham City functioned with clocklike precision. Even its greatest villains were slaves to the need of rationalizing everything in cold, utilitarian logic.

Not the Joker.

Within our first breath next to Ledger’s clown, one senses a malevolent spirit has been summoned, and he’s chosen to manifest out of thin air at this exact moment, on this exact street corner. He’s come to claim Gotham’s collective soul, but he’ll settle for any individual with delusions of virtue who crosses his path—including you.

This is of course just a fleeting moment in The Dark Knight; a brisk tease before Ledger’s shown his makeup-encrusted face or uttered even a word. In fact, Nolan and the actor dole out the character with impressive restraint: first as a masked Mephistopheles who is primarily a sing-song-y voice until he unmasks at the end of a bravura bank robbery. Later he becomes an actual narrative presence when he shows up again more than 20 minutes into the film, demonstrating for Gotham’s criminal underworld how to perform a magic trick.

As an isolated performance, there’s an argument to be made that none has ever been finer in the realm of superhero movies. Sure, there’ve been showy turns before and since in comic book blockbusters; there have even been great interpretations of the Joker before and after Ledger. Yet what the actor was able to do in 2008 transfixed audiences because he, like the character, had the freedom to bend the film to his will—even as Nolan prevented the movie from simply becoming merely a showcase for the performance.

With the grungy strung out hair of an addict who hasn’t showered in three months, greasy self-applied pancake makeup, and a grisly Glasgow smile that’s as unnerving as it is uneven (suggesting perhaps half of it was self-inflicted to make a matching set of scars), Ledger’s anarchist supervillain was a long way from Jack Nicholson’s hammy version of the same character in 1989. For audiences, and even comic book fans baying for something darker than Nicholson, it was abrasive in its time—and electrifying, like a punk rocker leaping into the mosh pit. Indeed, Ledger reportedly based the character’s appearance in part on the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and there is more than a hint of Tom Waits’ gravel in Ledger’s cadence whenever the clown growls.

But more than aesthetic culture shock, the enduring horror (and not-so-secret appeal) of Ledger’s Joker lies in the effect he has on the film, both in terms of its narrative storytelling and its enduring pop culture standing. Speaking strictly about this Joker as a character, the villain is off screen for far more of The Dark Knight’s running time than he’s on it. Appearing in only 33 minutes of The Dark Knight’s epic 152-minute running time, the average length of a Hollywood spectacle passes without the Joker on screen. Yet he’s omnipresent in the film, a shadow that hangs over each of Nolan’s three relatively equal protagonists: vigilante Batman (Christian Bale), police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Nolan and his brother and co-screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, have admitted the setup is somewhat inspired by another quintessential blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. In both films, three disparate, combative male authority figures band together for a mythic battle against a presence so malignant and evil, it transcends being simply a shark or a madman in makeup—or even a comic book supervillain. Like that beast, Joker has no arc, no psychological growth, he’s a force of primal evil unbounded. And as the heroes’ battle against him creeps on, it seems like the sanity of their entire community is being dragged into the abyss.

This framing allows Ledger’s Joker to functionally be a catch-all stand-in for many of the social anxieties that kept American audiences up at night during the Bush years. Some of them still do today. There are of course obvious implications to the Joker being the terrorist, the non-state actor who cannot be negotiated with, and who doesn’t play by preconceived rules or notions of fairness. There is also shading of the lone wolf, the usually male gunman who inexplicably pulls the trigger. Most of all though, the Joker represents the hole in which much of humanity’s irrational predilections toward violence is collectively stored and ignored by our cultural memory… until it can’t be.

As Michael Caine’s Alfred Pennyworth famously reasons, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” That summation of staring into irrational, needless cruelty is what gives The Dark Knight bite. And what a sharp bite it is in moments like when Ledger’s Joker laughs manically at the Batman, our ostensible hero who’s resorted to pummeling (or torturing) the villain in an interrogation room. The clown gloats, “You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength.”

This is why the Joker is such an effective villain for The Dark Knight’s parable about how best to use moral power in immoral (i.e. irrational) times—and perhaps why the thrill of Ledger’s performance was so strong on first glance that it powered him all the way to a posthumous Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category seven months after the film’s release.

Still, Ledger’s Joker, more than any other movie villain in recent memory, continues to haunt well after that Oscar night. The mental image of the character slipping his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, like a cobra, and licking his scars—a tic Ledger invented to keep his prosthetics in place while upping the creep factor—has stayed with us like a subconscious boogeyman. Thirteen years on from The Dark Knight’s release, Ledger’s depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime has gone down in the annals of cinema alongside Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or, well, that shark in Jaws again. He’s an enigmatic and mysterious persona who is barely seen in his film, yet unmistakably casts a pall of evil over the whole proceeding.

We don’t know why Ledger’s Joker actually became the way he is, or what made him so obsessed with the Batman—to the point where he was inspired to put on “war paint” and declare his love for the Caped Crusader by saying, “You complete me!” The Joker gives multiple versions of his origin story in The Dark Knight, telling one mobster played by Michael Jai White that he’s a victim of an abusive father while later recounting to Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that he scarred his own face to cheer up his similarly disfigured wife. Both tales are of course lies, transparent manipulations intended to prey upon perceived vulnerabilities in his victims. This touch was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke where the comic book Joker provides the reader with a sob story flashback, and then confesses he probably made it up.

“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice,” he says on the page.

Movies

Joker: 6 Actors Who Have Played the Clown Prince of Crime

By David Crow

Movies

The Dark Knight, The Joker, and Game Theory

By Ryan Lambie

The Nolan brothers understand the horror of this, and they keep the Joker a manipulative and inscrutable evil. Beyond obvious sociopathic tendencies, we know nothing about his inner-psychology and barely can ferret out his real motives beyond an odd devotion to maintaining Batman’s attention. He claims to be an agent of chaos who wants to “just do things,” yet his meticulously planned attacks belie this claim. In the end, he sees himself in a battle for “Gotham’s soul.” Like Amity Island’s Great White Leviathan, or the original incomprehensible nature of Thomas Harris’ cannibal serial killer in the earliest books, we never know the truth about why he is, and how he’s able to do what he does.

That mystery makes him live on in our own heads for years after the story ends and the credits roll.

It’s interesting to consider that effect now, after years of pop culture storytelling going in the completely opposite direction, particularly in comic book movies and other fanboy-driven media. Rather than find satisfaction in the inexplicability of evil, or standalone visions, we like to rationalize it and sympathize with it, even while glorifying it. Most of all, however, we insatiably seem to simply want more.

The need for endless content being generated by intellectual property has led to prequels, sequels, and even spinoffs that explore and too often redeem villains. Even the Joker himself is not wholly immune to this.

Since 2008, there have been two big screen versions of the Joker. Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix both had the unenviable task of stepping into Ledger’s shadow, with at least one of them being dwarfed by it. Leto’s attempts at “method acting” stunts on the set of Suicide Squad shows what can go wrong when scenery-chewing is mistaken with Strasberg.

Phoenix obviously fared better in his own Joker movie two years ago, making the actor the second performer to win an Oscar for playing the comic book villain. However, his film’s interpretation is diametrically opposed to Ledger’s enigma. Instead Phoenix’s film attempts to rationalize everything about the character, depicting the Joker as a mentally ill sad sack whose motivations are borrowed from other iconic movie screen villains and anti-heroes like the mother-obsessed Norman Bates (Psycho) and ticking time bomb Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver).

It still makes for a fascinating (if unoriginal) portrait, but one divorced from the terror of the unknown. We understand who Phoenix’s Joker is and why he is. Society, man. Phoenix’s Joker even outright states it before murdering not-Johnny Carson (Robert De Niro). “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve!”

Technically, Phoenix’s Joker appears closer to our reality and our daily horrors. With clown makeup inspired by real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy and preening self-pity parties resembling the manifestos of so many mass murderers, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is modeled as much off nightly news nightmares as comic book panels. Writer-director Todd Phillips is inelegantly blatant about it.

Nevertheless, whatever ugly truth there may be in that approach, it’s not as haunting, or exhilarating, to witness as what Ledger did in his own rock star interpretation of evil. Save for a blink-and-you-miss-it insert shot, we never see Ledger with the makeup off. And while he might indulge in mocking “society,” he is a character who says more by basking in the chaos of a city in terror, literally sticking his head out of a stolen police car like a dog with the wind in his hair and our horror on his face. It’s a more enduring image than a didactic conversation about insecurities with a father figure. Thirteen years later, Ledger’s version of the character continues to confound, horrify, and ultimately thrill. He still has the last laugh.

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theatersunavailable · 5 years ago

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“Donnie Darko” (2001)

R, 114 minutes, directed by Richard Kelly, screenplay by Richard Kelly

Stream on Amazon Prime or rent digitally on major video platforms.

Notable performers: I mean, Maggie Gyllenhaal is barely in this movie but any movie is lucky to have her, even if it’s only for a moment. And the brother/sister banter than she has with Jake is SO perfect that I’m pretty sure they were actually fighting at that dinner table.

Why you should watch it in general: It’s mysterious and spooky (but not all cooky).

Why you should watch it while you’re stuck at home: Considering the airplane tragedy that happens in this film, it’s probably a great idea to watch this movie while you’re not flying anywhere!

Is it part of a franchise: No.

Have I seen it before: Of course, bish.

Considering the airplane tragedy that happens in this film, it’s probably a great idea to watch this movie while you’re not flying anywhere! Yes.

You’ve probably heard of the cult classic “Donnie Darko”. Have you seen it though? Have you appreciated its weird nuances? Have you fully committed to Sparkle Motion?

So if you haven’t seen it: The titular character wakes up on a golf course. The night before, while he wasn’t home, a jet engine fell from the sky and crashed through the roof of his family’s house and landed in room. He should have died. But instead, he was out on a golf course for unknown reasons. He quickly learns that time travel is a real thing and there’s 30 day to save the universe. It’s a super hero movie without being a super hero movie.

On his quest to save the universe, he’s helped along by some teachers and a “crazy old woman”. Jenna Malone is his awkward girlfriend. His mom is President Laura Rosin. Patrick Swayze plays a very unscrupulous character.

This movie has it has all. And you’d be lucky to watch it.

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#donnie darko #2001 #movie recommendation #2001 movie #jake gyllenhaal #maggie gyllenhaal

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writsgrimmyblog · 6 years ago

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So Do you think if Nick were a straight man dating a 22 yr old woman, or a straight woman dating a 22 yr old man, it would have been reported differently? Perceived differently? How about a gay woman dating a 22 yr old woman?

Yes, I do think it would have been reported differently using all three of your examples, and it has been reported differently. I would like to preface this by saying I can’t believe anyone would take any issue with a relationship between two consenting adults with this kind of age difference, irrespective of gender, but I’ll give answering this a go, even though I think your question is actually enormously complex because it engages issues like heteornormativity, the way non-het women are talked about as opposed to non-het men, misogyny, ageism and the constant objectification and sexualisation of women, a.k.a the goddamn patriarchy . Beneath a read more cut to save peoples dashes from yet another wall of text from me.

Age difference between two men

For all the reasons I outlined in this post the way the British tabloids have written about male homosexuality has a particular history which must be understood in the context of discussions about the language used when the press write about two men. It has historically framed homosexuality as something to be feared, portrayed gay men as predatory and a threat to children.

This is a narrative which still persists, implicitly, reading between the lines, barely concealed, however you want to put it. It’s there, it exists, and it comes from a place which is no good.

The reports on Nick’s new relationship has highlighted some of homophobia that remains implicit in the language used by the media when writing about relationships between men, but there are other examples. See, for e.g. the scrutiny about the 20 year age gap between Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black, something they have been required to address on multiple occasions.

Let’s not pretend homophobic fear mongering isn’t still being pedaled by the British media (and don’t even get me started on the mess of articles around transgender issues that have exploded across the press recently). Whether you agree with me or not with regard to my suggestion that the focus of many of the articles in this instance are couched in the language of thinly-veiled homophobia, there are far more explicit examples of it.

If you’re unsure, I direct you again to Tom and Dustin, and Richard Littlejohn’s piece in The Daily Mail, written just this year, titled ‘let’s not pretend two dads is the ‘new normal’’

Age difference between two women

There was a ten year age gap between Cara Delevingne and St Vincent and I don’t remember there being any concern or sensationalism in that regard.

I found one article in the British tabloids which, aside from a cursory mention of both of their ages (not in the headlines or bylines and certainly not the focal point of the articles) addressed the age gap. It did so as it was something St Vincent herself raised in an interview.

There was a 14 year age gap between Cara and Michelle Rodriquez, but the slant to the way that was reported was different, the assumption being that Michelle was ready to settle down and have a family and Cara wasn’t. Check out the articles writing about ‘broody’ Michelle and women behaving improperly, if you have the stomach for them. The issue wasn’t that Cara was young, it was that the expectation was Michelle would be ready to start having kids and Cara wouldn’t be.

Women in relationships with other women also face the issue that they are ‘gal pals’ for a long time before their relationship is actually even acknowledged by the media so it takes the tabloids a while to catch up in the first place. Sticking with Cara as a high profile example, The Daily Mail today posted an article describing her and Ashley Benson as ‘gal pals,’ a phrase that has now become synonymous with the media being generally blinkered to the fact queer women exist, and one which has been repeatedly memed and poked fun at by the interwebs at large.

One relationship between two women that I’ve seen attract press attention over the age gap is Sarah Paulson and Holland Taylor. There is a 32 year age gap between them. Interestingly, the issue with that doesn’t appear to be that Taylor is predatory, but rather more to do with what on earth Paulson might see in an older woman.

So, in the case of Paulson and Taylor age has some media outlets talking, but for different reasons, this time coming from a place of ageist misogyny and the supposed expiration date on female sexuality. Paulson responds to that best when she says: “If anyone wants to spend any time thinking I’m strange for loving the most spectacular person on the planet, then that’s their problem.”

Age difference between men and women (older woman, younger man)

If it was a 34 year old straight woman and a 22 year old straight man, I doubt it would generate much excitement to be honest, although I don’t have a specific example to point to.

Of course with older women/younger men you start edging into cougar territory. See, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, who had a 15 year age gap between them.

The Sun, the tabloid that got everyone so excited about Nick’s new chap, ran a charming article titled: Meow! Top Ten Sexiest Celebrity Cougars back in 2013, which has so many problems I can’t even begin to unpack them all, but consider the phrasing used: X man ‘bags himself a cougar’, ‘yummy mummy’, ‘toy boy’, ‘sinking her claws into’, ‘man hungry’, ‘her ferocious appetite.’

The age disparity might be couched in terms which indicate the older woman is predatory (literally, a cougar) but it is the way women are written about and gendered expectations of women that drive those speculative pieces in this instance.

This kind of angle requires a totally different perspective and a deep dive into how women are treated by the press more broadly, the sexualisation and objectification of women, which I don’t have time to unpack in depth here, but I imagine you get where I would be headed with all of this.

Age difference between men and women (older man, younger woman)

No one would be talking about it at all and even if ages did feature in an article, it certainly wouldn’t be the headline/byline. There are literally so freaking many celebrity relationships with a 10 - 14 age gap where the man is the older partner and much, much higher instances of age disparity, I have taken just a couple of examples that make my point.

In 2015 at 37 Maggie Gyllenhaal was deemed too old to play George Clooney’s love interest. He was then 55. That’s an 18 year age gap. She didn’t get the part because SHE WASN’T YOUNG ENOUGH to make the attraction of her 55 year old co-star believable.

Younger women and older men being in relationships is normalised on screen, in television and very, very common, so much so that the age difference has to be significant for it to be the focus of media attention.

There’s an 11 year age gap between Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. I don’t remember this being deemed particularly newsworthy.

There’s an 11 year age gap between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and I don’t remember this being deemed particularly newsworthy, either. What was far more newsworthy was the infidelity, and, shock horror, Angelina was framed as the predator with her ‘weird’ relationship history, which included a same-sex partnership.

Women get past their prime, men trade them in for a younger model, and it’s celebrated in a slap on the back, well of course he did, kind of way.

Even when the age gap is huge between younger women and older men, who is (most commonly) the predator and who is the victim in that case according to the media? It’s the woman who’s the predator, obviously. Looking for a payout from a rich man’s will. We all know the phrase ‘gold digger’ and all of its connotations.

Again, if you’re still reading, thank you for bearing with me. I promise not to have any more opinions for at least a few weeks.

#Anonymous #ageism #homophobia #british media #can the term gal pals fuck off please?#i got so angry writing this #i am having opinions today

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oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch · 6 years ago

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The Friendly Film Fan Mini Reviews (2018)

Due to time constraints and the nature of finals week being intensely busy, I’m not able to give my full time and attention to every movie I see in theaters in terms of writing up a full-length review (though I did just write up two for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Bumblebee, so go check those out). Occasionally as well, I get busy enough after seeing one that by the time I actually do have time to write a full-length review, the relevance of said review has passed with time. With this in mind, I do a set of mini-reviews each year that are more like short summaries of what I thought of each film, along with the usual score on a scale of 1 to 10. Not every movie I didn’t write a full review for this year will get one, but I’ll try to cover the ones I feel that I need to for this list. Here are The Friendly Film Fan’s mini reviews for the calendar year of 2018:

A Simple Favor:

A Simple Favor provides a decent showcase for Blake Lively’s acting abilities with style for days, but the mystery really isn’t anything special, playing off as a sort of discount version of Gone Girl that forgot why that movie worked so well, but Anna Kendrick is cute, and at least it has some good performances amidst lackluster dialogue. Really expected more from this one. 6.4/10.

Leave No Trace:

Please never let director Debra Granik leave us for this long again, even though the result of it is perhaps the best movie to come out about post-war veteran life in a really long time. Ben Foster puts on a great performance that’s par for the course for him at this point, but the standouts here are Thomasin McKenzie, a genuine talent that should get a lot more work after this, and a script that respects its audience just as well, if not better, than it respects its subject matter. 9.8/10.

A Prayer Before Dawn

A terrifically performed but occasionally difficult to watch, brutally hard-hitting movie with a career best turn from Joe Cole, A Prayer Before Dawn firmly establishes A24 as not just one of, if not the, best independent movie studio working today, but also the most ambitious. It tackles things like drug addiction and gang violence while also being a uniquely inspiring coming-of-age character piece. The film being set in a Taiwanese prison without subtitles (until Cole’s character learns to speak the language that is) truly lends to the sense of the world, and the result is really quite special. 9.4/10.

You Were Never Really Here

Lynne Ramsay’s meditation on humanity’s obsession with violence is a stunning watch, as the film actively chooses to refuse to let the audience partake in such brutal acts as depicted in a tour de force performance (perhaps a career best) from Joaquin Phoenix. The film is always focused on how badly people want to see the violence and then forces you to reflect on why you wanted to in the immediate aftermath of its happening. The editing, direction, and Phoenix’s performance all add up to a seriously impactful watch. 9.4/10.

The Clovehitch Killer

Many people were wondering if I was going to give this movie a full review, given that both my younger sisters are in it, but given how low it flies on the radar being a VOD release simultaneous with its limited theatrical run, a full review may not have gained a lot of traction. That being said, this is a really solid example of how to do a good film on a low budget; it’s noticeable, but it doesn’t detract from the overall narrative as much as it typically would in a movie like this. The first act takes a bit to pick up some steam, but once Charlie Plummer finds a box in a barn, it’s a pretty tense ride the rest of the way. 7.2/10.

The Kindergarten Teacher

Netflix has been picking up some pretty good stuff lately, and while I haven’t yet viewed 22 July or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs yet (still waiting for ROMA as well), this is a pretty good indicator as to how they’ll get into the awards circuit. It’s good, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is really good in it, but the protagonist is just too unlikable for me to want to keep watching. Gyllenhaal plays the part well, but it’s difficult to root for someone to kidnap a child (which is a thing that happens). 7/10.

Ralph Breaks the Internet

No, it’s not as good as the widely beloved first film, and that’s largely because what made the first one so special was its emphasis on classic arcade style video games as a means to tell a story but not the point of the story, a self-growth tale about Ralph learning to not be insecure about his place in the broader world he occupied, and also an arc that’s immediately forgotten as this one starts. The sequel aims to mostly just show off everything Disney owns in animated form since it takes place in the internet, but much like the internet, it seems much more concerned with selling you something rather than actually making a new point, though given Disney animation’s storytelling pedigree, you still have a good bit of fun along the way. 8.2/10.

Boy Erased

If there’s a singular film I’m more disappointed in than any other this year, it would be Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased, an LGBT drama about the dangers of conversion therapy that doesn’t really seem to make any greater point other than “conversion therapy is bad.” Everyone in it does solid performance work, but it’s all just pretty good work where it could be great, there’s a whole rape scene that’s never really addressed by the movie except for briefly after it happens but not in context to the main character, and the whole thing is so drab and colorless right from the get-go that it feels like Edgerton doesn’t want you to feel any sense of joy even before the bad stuff happens. It’s not a bad movie, but it feels incredibly lackluster given the talent involved. 6.9/10.

Bohemian Rhapsody

And if there were any film this year people probably should be more disappointed by, it’s this paint-by-numbers recap of the highlights of classic rock legend Freddie Mercury, with his time in the band Queen serving as the main backdrop. Rami Malek’s physical performance is too devoted and genuinely astounding to not garner him some awards attention, and the use of a Mercury sound-a-like he lip syncs over shouldn’t be held against him in terms of that, but it does make a little bit of a difference since one can tell it’s definitely not Malek’s voice in the singing parts. The re-creation of the Live Aid concert is a true work of art, but getting there is such a plain ride, it’s honestly kind of boring. In fact, there’s whole edits in the film where one of Queen’s hit songs will start being written, and then it cuts away to a concert version of it but doesn’t bother to stay in any one spot for more than a few seconds at a time, and the moment either gains momentum too quickly or loses it entirely. This film needed to be great in order to justify being more than just another fairly average Brian Singer movie, and in my view at least, it didn’t accomplish that. 6.1/10.

Lean on Pete

Another foray into small film territory from A24, this coming-of-age tale starring Charlie Plummer in the role that will almost certainly propel him to stardom if he’s not there already is a terrific, moving portrait of grief, hope, loss, and love so subtly rendered by the script that by the time it rips your heartstrings out at the end, you barely realize the impact of the journey you just went on and the credits are already rolling. And hey, it’s always nice to see Steve Buscemi get work that unexpectedly fits him since he’s becoming such a recognizable chameleon of an actor; we may always recognize his face, but his performances just keep getting deeper. 9.4/10.

And those are all of my mini-reviews for the calendar year of 2018. Any you didn’t see on the list that you’d hoped to? Any verdicts you’re surprisingly elated or disappointed by? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading, and keep an eye out for my next review, coming soon!

#Mini Reviews #2018 #The Friendly Film Fan #Movie Review #Film Review #Movie Reviews #Film Reviews #A Simple Favor #Leave No Trace #A Prayer Before Dawn #You Were Never Really Here #The Clovehitch Killer #The Kindergarten Teacher #Ralph Breaks the Internet #Wreck-It Ralph 2 #Boy Erased #Bohemian Rhapsody #Lean on Pete

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newagesispage · 3 years ago

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APRIL2022

THE RIB PAGE

Peace and love and unity to Zelensky, his administration and his people. Go Ukraine!! Can it take a small but powerful place to pull the rest of us together?? From letting Russian soldiers call their Mothers to providing them water, Ukraine is a real class act. They are setting such a good example for the rest of us who love freedom. It seems that good people all over the world are sick of negativity, tired of bullies. ** Will Putin default on his loan? Will he use chemical weapons? Will China bail him out? Crush Putin!

*****

Well, What is it Biden, do sanctions deter or do they not??? Pick a lane! That critique aside, Europe has made it clear that Biden is holding this alliance to support Ukraine together. ** 6.5 million have been internally displaced.

*****

The Stones are running around Europe on a tour: Sixty!

*****

‘Barry’ will be back with season 3 on April 24. Bill Hader will direct 5 of the 8 episodes. Word is that he will direct all of season 4.

*****

Billie Lourd has married Austin Rydell.

*****

Bob Costa is on CBS now!! Woo Hoo!!

*****

Bernie Sanders is trying to block Jeff Bezos and NASA from making a deal that would give $10 billion to Blue Origin.

*****

Amazon spent 4.3 mil on Anti -union consultants last year.

*****

U.S. Corporations are having their best year since 1950.

*****

Days alert: Paul Telfer who plays Xander just celebrated his 7th year on the show. ** I hate seeing Chloe and Brady getting closer. **Why is Tony staying with the Kiriakis’s? Anna was right, there is an institution nearby. It is funny to think about the lines being blurred between the mansions, there are never usually too many Dimera’s at Victor’s. ** Isn’t it fun to watch Abigail and Chad and their little capers? They do have a real team dynamic. **

*****

The Oscars were here and back in the Dolby theatre! The Governor’s award honored Samuel L. Jackson, Elaine May, Liv Ullman and Danny Glover. Too much time spent on nonsense and not enough time to honor them. CAA had its pre -Oscar party where Taylor Swift was seen dancing all night and Donald Glover and Tiffany Haddish were there. Many (ME) were upset that some awards were given out an hour before. Hello! We are watching to see people win. Everyone connected to a winning project is important. C’mon! The 94th Oscars was hosted by Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer. It is a crying shame that ‘Passing’ was not nominated for anything. The hosts were top notch and the direction was great. We could still use less banter. Winners included Jessica Chastain, CODA, Arianna DeBose, Troy Kotsur and Dune. Best dressed were Nicole Kidman, Arianna DeBose, Timothy Chalamet, Zendaya, Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes, Lily James, Sofia Carson, Soniyya Sidney, Kodie Smith Mcphee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sophia Hunter, Venus Williams and Kirsten Dunst. The top half of Jessica Chastain was great and the bottom, the worst. Maggie Gyllenhaal always surprises and OMG! Jamie Lee Curtis held a puppy as she talked about Betty White. John Travolta and his son, Ben later adopted that dog. It was without a doubt, the strangest Oscars ever.

*****

Of course, the big Oscar moment that the world was talking about was the slap. No need to explain, ya’ll know what I mean. What the Fuck is wrong with Will Smith? Is he a professional or not? How long does one have to be in this business to be a pro, to know how to treat his peers with respect? I am so sick of these narcissistic angry men like Trump, Kanye and Smith. They are at the top of the food chain and they behave like that? Who cares if there was some history there. I mean, I thought she railed against the Oscars a few years ago. Why did they want to be there anyway? And, the acceptance speech for best actor that got a standing O was an apology and a meltdown. How dare he compare himself to Richard Williams whom he portrayed. The Williams response: “We don’t condone anyone hitting anyone else unless it’s in self -defense.” Why didn’t Smith get dragged off the stage? Optics? He was a sour puss earlier in the night when Regina Hall tried to pull him into a bit. Everybody else played along. So.. Not a team player. And I would have been so offended as his wife. Does he think that she cannot take care of herself? She is an outspoken woman who shouts far and wide everything about them so I think she can hold her own. The man seems to have some sort of chip on his shoulder. The only real excuse would be mental illness, which does seem likely. Here is yet one more thing to divide us. TEAM ROCK!! But it seems that Smith got what he probably wanted, everybody is talking about him. And, just as I have done here, he is getting all the attention and not Chris Rock who showed real (stunned) class. I mean, this moment of madness changed Rocks life forever. Professionally and personally, he will be asked about this always. Some feel the whole thing was a publicity stunt. It seems to me that this is where reality shows have gotten us. Here are some others thoughts.: Jokes are jokes, assault is assault. They are in different moral categories completely. It’s why we have a first amendment that protects free speech but not one that protects hitting people over hurt feelings. Anybody confused about this has the IQ of a gnat. - Kyle Kullinski** I’m tripping that you can assault someone on live television on stage at the Oscars and just take your seat and watch the rest of the show. -Ida Bae Wells** Wanda Sykes said that Rock apologized to her because she and the other hosts were doing such a good job. So far, hi has been the only apology. She was disappointed in the industry itself and that the Academy’s decision to let him stay in the audience, “gross.” She wished he had been escorted out of the building. ** Still triggered and traumatized. I love my friend (Rock) and believe he handled it like a pro. Stayed up there and gave an Oscar to his friend (Questlove) and the whole thing was so disturbing. So much pain in (Smith) anyway, I’m still in shock and stunned and sad. I’m proud of myself and my co-hosts. But yeah, waiting for this sickening feeling to go away from what we all witnessed. - Amy Schumer** “And that’s how we do it.”- Jaden Smith** When Will Smith stormed onto the Oscar stage to strike Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife’s short hair, he did a lot more damage than just to Rock’s face. With a single petulant blow, he advocated violence, diminished women, insulted the entertainment industry and perpetuated stereotypes about the black community. - Kareem Abdul Jabar ** OK.. I have said way too much about this and can we stop seeing the slap everyday??

*****

The Grammy’s are here and Trevor Noah hosts who seems awfully cozy with Will Smith.

*****

A couple of days after the above incident, Peacock sent propaganda about streaming season 1 of Bel Air. Yea, Right!

*****

Joseph Patel, producer for Summer of Soul, was not happy with neither Smith or Rock. The night before the televised Oscars, Rock joked that he would introduce that documentary as produced by Questlove and 3 white guys. After the slap he said “4 white guys” but same sentiment. Patel is pissed. Asians have not won tons of Oscars and he was proud to represent. Again, jokes are jokes but imagine having your moment and getting no credit.

*****

Jim Carrey says he will probably retire.

*****

Bruce Willis has announced that he has Aphasia which can bring about problems with comprehension and communication. He is stepping away from acting.

*****

Cheap Trick played 4 nights in Vegas. An Australian tour started in March. There will be a spring North American tour with Rod Stewart and ZZ Top.

*****

Marlee Matlin will direct ‘Accused’ on Fox.

*****

Hooray for soccer player, Trinity Rodman! She is the youngest player ever drafted in NWSL history!

*****

Deep Water on Hulu looks great.

*****

A Federal judge has struck down a racist voting law in Florida. ** There are protests in Florida aginst the ‘Don’t say gay’ bill.

*****

The Red Hot Chili Peppers got a star on the walk of fame!

*****

Bradley University were speech champions this year!

*****

After 22 years, Anthony Anderson and Alvina Stewart are getting a divorce.

*****

The NFL has changed the overtime rule that has been in place for decades and now each team will get possession. The only teams to vote against the change were the Dolphins, the Vikings and the Bengals.

*****

Pete Davidson is turning down the chance to go to space.

*****

Abbott Elementary is pretty cute!

*****

Love the Tyler Henry show, Life after Death, mostly the history of his own family. It is like Long Lost Family meets Long Island Medium with Life on the D-list . The biggest problem I see with the show is some of the people he is reading. Why do people surprise others with a reading? They are talking about sad serious subjects. Tyler must feel like a party favor.

*****

North Korea is back to firing missiles.

*****

Tiger Woods has been seen practicing at Augusta and word is that he has his stuff back.

*****

July 10 will bring Who do you think you are back to NBC. WOO HOO! Could NC be starting to get its groove back? The show moved from its original place at NBC to TLC until 2018. The new season will bring us Allison Janney, Zachary Levi, Nick Offerman, Billy Porter, Zachary Quinto and Bradley Whitford.

*****

We are learning from the committee that Trump and his people were a part of Jan. 6. Um.. I realize real evidence takes time but didn’t we know that already? Did we not all see the rally that preceded the event? ** By the way, shouldn’t Judge Clarence Thomas be removed from the Supreme Court? His wife’s fingerprints are all over the insurrection. I can’t believe it took months to get this story to the mainstream. ** And more recently: Is this true? Scary Clown 45 made an emergency landing and asked supporters to fund the private plane, Trump force one. Talk about someone who cannot move on. ** Sounds like Pence is out as possible VP.

*****

Two Lawyers, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz resigned from the NY probe into Trump. D.A. Alvin Bragg has stated that he won’t seek charges against Trump. In his resignation letter, Pomerantz stated, “The team has been investigating Mr. Trump and harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes- he did. I fear that your decision means that Mr. Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes.” Susan Hoffinger will now take over.

*****

Mike Lindell says he is filing suit against all machines. ** Trump has sued Hillary Clinton and 26 other people for conspiring to link his political campaign to Russia. But.. Didn’t he do that? How much of this ridiculous theatre do we have to endure? What must it feel like to wake up every day just thinking of ways to clog up the court systems and people’s lives?

*****

Cleveland Brown, Deshaun Watson has 22 cases pending against him concerning various sexual harassment claims.

*****

Alexandria Daddario will star as Rowan on the Mayfair Witches series for AMC.

*****

Why does the start of most of the celebrity gossip anymore start with Kanye?

*****

Is this really a drink: A Conan O’Brien: whiskey and ginger ale?

*****

Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham put Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson thru the ringer. Thank goodness for people like Corey Booker and especially Mazie Hirono. Hawaii’s Hirono laid out facts about other judges who have ruled similarly to Jackson on child porn. The way republicans use children while on their soapbox is unbelievable. Much was made of Guantanamo and the clients she defended. The woman was a public defender so she did not pick those clients and some seem to forget that people are allowed to have lawyers.

*****

North Carolina’s Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson paid for his girlfriend’s abortion but is now trying to outlaw it.

*****

Hayley Mills Oscar that was missing has been replaced.

*****

The Razzies were announced. Diana: The Musical won 5, Space Jam: A New Legacy won 3 and Jared Leto got one too. Bruce Willis has his own category so he won.

*****

OK.. Great to not take oil from Russia but Saudi Arabia and Venezuela aren’t any better.

*****

Dolly Parton has removed her name from consideration for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

*****

Michael Cera and partner Nadine had a son 6 months ago.

*****

Lynching is a federal hate crime.

*****

The Andy Warhol diaries are great on Netflix. Jerry Hall was on there a bit. I remember reading the book and am I wrong or did he say some not so nice things about her?

*****

The BAFTA awards hit us on March 13. Big winners were Power of the Dog, Belfast, Summer of Soul, Licorice Pizza, CODA, Will Smith, Dune, Ariana DeBose and Troy Kotsur. My best dressed were Lady Gaga, Florence Pugh, Emilia Jones and Adriana DeBose.** The same day gave us the Critic’s Choice awards. Venua and Serena Williams were dressed very similar in Versace very sharp. Peyton List, Alan Kim, Andrew Garfield and Emilia Jones all looked great. Kristen Wiig whose structured style I can’t seem to get into showed a lot of skin and wore it well. Issa Rae brought out some print which looked great against all the solids. But, Kristen Dunst and Jean Smart, What the Hell??? Winners included Belfast, Will Smith, Troy Kotsur and Adriana DeBose. The speech for Power of the Dog was awkward.

*****

Can’t wait for Babylon with Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Tobey Maguire, Olivia Wilde, Margot Robbie, Eric Roberts, Katherine Waterston, Jeff Garlin, Lukas Haas, Flea, Frederick Koehler and Chloe Fineman. What a cast!!

*****

Julia starring James Cromwell and David Hyde Pierce looks good.

*****

The Parenting will star Brian Cox, Edie Falco and Lisa Kudrow.

*****

Denis Leary is on Law and Order: Organized Crime for a bit.

*****

The Unbearable weight of massive talent is getting great reviews for Nicolas Cage.

*****

We are probably going to start hearing endless stories about the old men of Hollywood. These sexual harassment stories have probably been going thru the biz for some time. It is only now as these powerful men get older and pass on that the truth may come out. Women have been lately telling stories about Jerry Lewis. He had a terrible rep with women, which to me is not surprising. Yes, I absolutely love some of his work but always felt his condescension even thru the screen.

*****

R.I.P. Charles Entenmann, Conrad Janis, Renee Prussant, Maureen Howard, Sally Kellerman, Mitchell Ryan, Brent Renaud, Tom Parker, Jeff Darling, Taylor Hawkins, Keith Martin, Jeff Carson, Madeleine Albright and Mery Edington.

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insanityclause · 3 years ago

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Had a little movie binge with my family over the holidays: Tick tick Boom, Don’t Look Up, The Power of the Dog, Belfast, Coda. Sad to say TPOTD is at the bottom of my list (right next to Don’t Look Up for very different reasons). It was very beautifully shot but I guess I’ve lost my appetite for slow painful family disfunction drama. Did you see it? Tell me what I missed?

I did see it at TIFF, and I have to admit, it isn't at the top of my list, either.

Actually, I should say -- it's beautifully made and directed, but it left me kind of cold, and I have no desire to watch it again. I was extremely impressed by Kodi Smit-McPhee, though.

Don't Look Up and Coda are next on my must-see list. I did watch The Lost Daughter, which is outstanding! Still slow painful family dysfunction, but I really loved the way the story was told. Maggie Gyllenhaal did an outstanding job. And of course, Olivia Colman is amazing, as always -- but don't miss out on Dakota Johnson and Jessie Buckley, and also Ed Harris and Paul Mescal.

Another one that I quite enjoyed was Jockey, with Clifton Collins Jr. and Molly Parker. The very definition of an indie film.

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lifejustgotawkward · 6 years ago

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365 Day Movie Challenge (2018) - #147: Very Good Girls (2013) - dir. Naomi Foner (52 Films by Women 2018: #34)

I’ll give any movie set in what I know as “the real Brooklyn” (Ditmas Park, Brighton Beach) a shot, but Very Good Girls is hardly the best coming-of-age movie one could hope for. The story is set during the summer between high school graduation and college, and the protagonists - much like in another 2013 film, the delightful Aubrey Plaza comedy The To Do List (also made by a female director, Maggie Carey) - set themselves the goal of losing their virginity in time to begin the next chapter of their lives.

That these main characters are portrayed by Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen makes the film exceptionally easy to watch; such capable actresses can make anything, even a plot as absurdly melodramatic as the one in Very Good Girls, seem sensible. The passage from adolescence from adulthood can be fraught with difficulties for any girl, but the challenges faced by Lilly (Fanning) and Gerri (Olsen) all boil down to one concern: guy trouble. They both fall for the same stereotypical “bad boy,” David (Boyd Holbrook), who works odd jobs as an ice cream vendor and waiter but who - of course - aspires to be a pretentious photographer living the bougie life à Paris. What they see in this dude, I don’t know.

Naomi Foner, an industry veteran who produced the classic children’s TV program “The Electric Company” and wrote the screenplays for the films Running on Empty, Losing Isaiah and Bee Season (as well as being Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s mother), made her directing debut with Very Good Girls, proving that it’s never too late to try something new. Unfortunately for viewers, the film leaves far too much to be desired. Rather than depict an all-out war between the two girls for David’s affections, the narrative follows Lilly’s decision to keep Gerri in the dark when David lets Lilly know that she’s the one he prefers. (Ugh, the fact that he had to be the person to make the choice... it just doesn’t sit well with me.) As encouraging as it is to see a story in which a young woman actively pursue and enjoy her first sexual encounter and subsequent romantic relationship, Lilly’s deception of her best friend is discomfiting.

Foner assembled an especially impressive roster of actors for the film’s supporting characters, though. Richard Dreyfuss and Demi Moore play Danny and Kate, Gerri’s free-spirited mom and dad, while Clark Gregg and Ellen Barkin are Edward and Norma, Lilly’s parents and a couple whose marriage is on the verge of disintegration due to Edward’s philandering. The cast also includes Kiernan Shipka and Clare Foley as Lilly’s two younger sisters, Eleanor and Phoebe, while Peter Sarsgaard (Naomi Foner’s son-in-law) has the icky role of Fitzsimmons, Lilly’s boss and a guy who doesn’t understand personal/professional boundaries, to say the least. Very Good Girls doesn’t shy away from the messiness of first love, sexual exploration, cheating, breakups and leading a double life so as not to hurt loved ones (who inevitably find out and get hurt anyway), but it is also a film hampered by its multiple plot developments and not nearly enough character development for pretty much anyone other than the two young women at its center.

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glitterysummerkitty · 7 years ago

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Dr Bombshell & Mr Hollywood

Please go to the Masterlist for links to the preceding chapter. Thank you.

Chapter 14

(Part 1)

Finding herself in the same stressful situation twice in a span of less than twenty – four hours wasn’t something that was good for Candice’s heart, as it refused to slow down in its confines. Naomi’s dinner proposal, at her place had taken Candice by complete surprise and her brain had frantically plunged into finding a reason to avoid it, but the great Claire had taken it upon herself to accept the invitation for the both of them.

So, on that glorious Saturday night, Candice found herself on board Claire’s car once again, headed to dine with Naomi, in a different part of the city than she was used to. She wanted to just curl up in her couch with Mr Ruskin and continue reading the book or cook a warm dinner and listen to Debussy, but life just didn’t work that way.

“Do you think Jake Gyllenhaal would be there?”, nothing seemed to deter Claire’s excitement, as she carefully navigated through the Saturday evening traffic. Candice sneakily observed her perky agent and was totally narked by the excitement dripping from her expression. How could she be so excited about the situation while she was dreading the whole thing? With some degree of conviction and concern for herself, that maybe her lawyer wasn’t wrong or even Melanie for that matter, about her needing therapy. Of course she knew that there was nothing wrong with anxiousness. Everyone faced anxiety to some degree when faced with new situations, but she was beginning to realise that what she was facing was not healthy.

“Hello... Earth to Candice!”, Claire’s excited voice cut through her self- diagnosis and Candice shot her companion an annoyed look.

“I asked you if you thought Jake Gyllenhaal would be there.”, Claire grinned, her brown eyes still fixed on the road before her.

“Should it matter? Aren’t you married?”, Candice cavilled.

“So what?”, Claire snorted. “There’s no harm in some flirting. Besides George isn’t here.”

“Well, then. For your sake I hope he’s there.”, Candice said, her mind briefly going back to that night at Gustavo’s.

The rest of the ride Claire kept chattering about Jake and his movies and his scandalous relationship with the now famed actress Tessie. Candice tuned out the entire conversation and instead paid attention to the streets. Ever since she moved to New York, she had explored fair part of the city but still there were areas that she had never been to and Hudson Square was one such neighbourhood. Being within Manhattan, her work and home lay in Upper East Side and she never had an excuse to drive so far south until now. She tried to keep her attention pegged to many new street names and the several establishments that lined the streets in order to escape her torturous thoughts of what lay ahead.

Finally, after a good thirty minute drive, Claire came to stop before a lavish apartment complex. Candice stepped out gracefully out the car, her cocktail dress slightly rustling as she did. No sooner had she stepped into the lobby, Candice felt gratitude towards Mabel’s sister Josie, who had graciously lend her 2k worth Miu- Miu dress. The place screamed wealth with its exquisite marble that glimmered under the soft lights, from the magnificent Crystal chandelier illuminating the grand lobby. There were also lush and comfortable looking chairs and couches spread out, for visitors such as herself she supposed.

What more? The apartment building had a door attendant and a concierge service. Although she lived in a reasonably expensive apartment building in Upper East Side, her building had neither. Candice and Claire were greeted by the pleasant woman at the receptionist, who was dressed in an immaculate three piece suite. Upon seeing them, she offered a genial smile before greeting them. Apparently, she had been expecting them and as soon as Claire confirmed their identities, the woman called their hosts to inform of their arrival. Candice felt her heart throw itself rapidly against her rib cage. The mere luxury of the place made her queasy and gave her a strong sense that she didn’t belong here.

Candice didn’t know how long they had waited when finally a figure she recognised from the many pictures emerged from the elevators. Maggie Gyllenhaal looked suave in a Black and Nude embellished jumpsuit. Her short hair was parted at the side and styled elegantly. Candice stood behind Claire and watched her walk in their direction. She had not seen them yet, but then Claire raised her hand and waved at her, drawing her attention towards them.

Maggie’s eyes first fell on the overtly excited petite woman who was shifting her weight from one feet to other as she waved at her. She smiled at her politely and strode towards her while her eyes looked beyond her in search of the other woman. When her gaze caught the tall blonde her smile and steps both faltered as she felt her breath catch in her throat.

“Hi... I am Claire. Candice’s agent.”, the petite woman said, extending her hand when Maggie reached them. Maggie greeted back politely but she couldn’t take her eyes off Candice.

“You must be Candice. Nice to meet you.”, Maggie took Candice’s hand in hers and gave it a firm shake.

“Nice to meet you too.”, Candice blushed under her scrutiny. Maggie found herself melt a little at the smooth voice. She could most definitely listen to that voice all day.

With the formal greetings over, she led them towards the elevator but not before thanking the concierge at the desk.

“It feels really good to finally have a face to the name I have been listening to the past few weeks. Mom hasn’t been able to stop talking about you. She really adores your work and most certainly you too.”, Maggie complimented as they stepped into the elevator. Maggie watched the blonde’s fair cheeks turn crimson as she looked down smiling and mumbled a thanks. Normally, when girls did that it would make her roll her eyes but for some reason she found this little reaction endearing in Candice. Probably because she could sense that it wasn’t fake but a natural reaction for Candice.

“Did she tell you that she made me read the book? No offence but the book was slow in the beginning but she kept nagging me to finish it and I must say Candice, the ending was so unexpected. I liked it at the end.”, the crimson on her cheeks turned darker and Maggie smiled broadly.

“I am a fan of yours Maggie but I must say I adore your brother more.”, Claire’s comment made Maggie laugh.

“You don’t say. Well I am sure you will change your opinion after tonight.”, Maggie winked. Her gaze travelled back towards Candice, who stood meekly behind Claire, and thought about what Jake had previously suspected. Her mother sure did play this well. She bet that not even Jake with all his insecurities would be able to resist such a beauty. Now she couldn’t wait to see his reaction.

Candice smiled but focused on the door opening into a decorated foyer. She stepped after Claire who followed Maggie and as they turned around the corner of the tiny foyer she realised that the elevator had brought them directly into the apartment. Her eyes roved around the enormous pent house with an open floor plan giving it a much larger appearance. It looked like a sitting room cum kitchen cum dining area with minimalistic yet modern furnishings.

“Here, let me take your coat off your hand.”, Maggie took the caramel coloured coat that Candice took off from her hand and laid it on the lone arm chair. With nothing to hold on to Candice felt vulnerable in the large apartment. That the people were strangers to her didn’t help her blooming unease.

“Candice! Good evening. My, my! You look so... Gorgeous.”, Naomi’s familiar voice boomed as she pulled Candice in for a tight hug. This time Candice had expected it and so returned it a little less awkwardly than the previous day. In a shimmering poncho top and a pair of loosely fitted cotton pants Naomi cut a leisurely look. Being Hollywood royalty and all Candice had this image in her head where she imagined them to be dressed crisply in expensive clothes. Instead, both Naomi and Maggie were dressed casually yet elegantly and that helped Candice feel a bit comfortable. They weren’t pretentious people, she decided.

When she finally pulled away she came to face another man, whom she didn’t recognise and a visibly shocked Jake. However, when their gaze met, Jake carefully schooled his features and his intense blue eyes rapidly filled with..... Anger?

“Candice I would like you to meet my son, Jake...”, Candice wiped her sweaty palm against her dress before extending her hand to greet. Jake lifted his hand slowly to meet hers and when his large rough hand wrapped around her smooth one she felt a slight shiver run through her body causing the hair on her body rise. She brought her molars down hard on her lower lip in an attempt to try and compose herself. Jake had an intense gaze and under it she felt exposed. Also she couldn’t overlook the fact about how good he looked. Closer she could see how well built he was and how well his white dress shirt moulded around his ripped arms.

“And this is his business partner Paul Wheelan. Paul and Jake had recently started a production company together.”, Naomi continued as she pointed out to the lean man standing beside Jake with a stunned expression on his face.

Candice reluctantly shook hands with Paul, feeling very uncomfortable as his eyes raked her body before settling on her chest. She heard someone clear their throat and looked up to find Jake glaring at Paul who promptly let go of her hand after noticing Jake.

When Claire was introduced, she had a fan- girl moment with Jake. She gushed about her love for his latest movie, that Candice had no clue about, and how much more handsome he looked up close in person. Candice watched him take these compliments gracefully. After that they were ushered towards the sitting area. Candice took a seat on the cream leather couch next to Claire while Jake took his place in the grey striped arm chair right opposite to Candice. Maggie and Naomi sat on either side of Jake while Paul took the chaise lounge chair.

No sooner had they settled in, Naomi made the announcement that she had decided to adapt ‘Love Knows no Bounds’, something Candice already knew deep down in her heart. Naomi broke open the Champagne and gave a toast. All the while Jake kept studying Candice as discreetly as he could.

Candice squirmed through the small talk that Claire engaged in with the others. She was really glad for her agent who took charge of the conversation. Had she been alone here, it would have been one hell of a lousy exchange. Now that she was seated she wondered why Jake was angry with her. Slowly she peeked at him from under her lashes and found him staring at her. He appeared stoic but behind that astute gaze she sensed some amount of animosity which left her confused.

After some more talk about weather and other mundane topics they shifted to the dining table where Naomi and Maggie bustled to lay the elaborate meal Naomi had prepared. Candice wasn’t hungry per say but she was glad to have something to occupy her from worrying about Jake’s constant calculative gaze and Paul’s obvious leering. She ran a hand over the corner of the table, admiring the beauty. She didn’t need to be told that this table must have cost a fortune. It was a rare wood. She looked up and found Jake talking to Claire but he was still staring at her, seemingly following her every action.

“The food we will be serving tonight, I prepared each one of them. I hope you two like it.”, Naomi said, setting a plate of crispy potato skins filled with something that Candice was yet to figure out. She felt slightly guilty too at Naomi’s comment. Ever since the day had begun, she had just wanted this night to come and go, so she could get over the dinner, but she could see how much effort Naomi had put in towards this evening as a whole. Candice felt how wrong her attitude towards the evening was and chastised herself. Then and there she made a decision to enjoy the dinner no matter how she was feeling at that moment.

#jake gyllenhaal #jake gyllenhaal imagine #imagine #fiction #fanfiction #romance #thriller #mystery #suspense #not a real story #long reads

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chickawah23 · 3 years ago

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Alrighty finally got to read it.

Here is the full discussion:

A month before Gyllenhaal and I meet, Taylor Swift released Red (Taylor’s Version). On it was an extended version of “All Too Well,” which, since it first came out in 2012, has widely been considered to be about her three-month-or-so relationship with the actor. It’s among her most beloved songs. Because the newly recorded version contains lyrics not on the original, and because it was accompanied by a music video directed by Swift, her fan base, massive and loyal, reignited a sort of kremlinology of the romance. Instantly, Gyllenhaal became the Internet’s punching bag. Though the ire was mostly of the celebrity-schadenfreude sort, it’s hard to overstate its volume and pitch. If anyone came to his defense, their message was lost in the overwhelming anti-Jake sentiment that flooded the comments of not just his Instagram account but also Maggie’s and even Jamie Lee Curtis’s. Entertainment media feasted for weeks. Gyllenhaal had never been in the press as much as he was in the weeks after the song’s release. Not even close. Swift did not comment on her fans’ reactions; while she’s always been open about using her past relationships as lyrical fodder, she’s never named names. Until now, Gyllenhaal hasn’t commented, either; that he turned off his Instagram comments was the only sign this firestorm had affected him at all. “It has nothing to do with me. It’s about her relationship with her fans,” he says when I bring it up. “It is her expression. Artists tap into personal experiences for inspiration, and I don’t begrudge anyone that.” Still, I offer, hasn’t the past month been hard on him? He says it has not. What about turning off his Instagram comments? Doesn’t that suggest the situation has affected his life, even if only as an inconvenience? Here he starts speaking in broader terms. “At some point, I think it’s important when supporters get unruly that we feel a responsibility to have them be civil and not allow for cyberbullying in one’s name,” he says. He falls silent, then pensive. “That begs for a deeper philosophical question. Not about any individual, per se, but a conversation that allows us to examine how we can—or should, even—take responsibility for what we put into the world, our contributions into the world. How do we provoke a conversation? We see that in politics. There’s anger and divisiveness, and it’s literally life-threatening in the extreme.” I ask if his life has been threatened recently; he says no, that’s not what he’s suggesting. “My question is: Is this our future? Is anger and divisiveness our future? Or can we be empowered and empower others while simultaneously putting empathy and civility into the dominant conversation? That’s the discussion we should be having.” I then ask if he thinks such empowerment is achievable. “I think it is possible, yes. Of course. But I think many things are possible.” He shrugs, his hands raised in the air as if to convey, What more is there to say? Has he listened to the album? “No.” - link

I think he handled it well. But I do think the framing of the interview leaned into the character people accuse him of being based on the songs fans attribute to him. It’s worth noting this discussion happened immediately after a discussion of his current 3 year relationship with a 25 year old model. And they called him a “youthful” 41 year old. Lol.

Needs to be translated.

https://www.esquire.com/it/news/attualita/a39088785/senza-tempo-esquire-italia-numero-19-e-in-edicola/

Yeah I checked out that link and it doesn’t show the contents of the interview. I guess I need to see the hard copy.

Other anon I don’t know I’m missing the context surrounding that portion of the interview just a translated partial quote in a tweet. 🤷‍♀️

#anons #the pr of it all #atw 10

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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The Lost Daughter Review: Olivia Colman Shines in Taut Netflix Drama

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The Lost Daughter is the feature directorial and screenwriting debut of actor Maggie Gyllenhaal. And what a first effort it is. Based in a slim novel by Italian author Elena Ferrante, the film is structured as a psychological drama with overtones of a thriller, but it doesn’t bend to the expectations of those genres, functioning instead as a meditation on memory, motherhood and grief, all filtered through a superb, complex performance–as if we would expect less–from the great Olivia Colman.

Colman plays Leda Caruso, a middle-aged professor of comparative literature who heads to a small seaside resort village in Greece to take some vacation time and work on a book. While there, she becomes intrigued (obsessed, really) with a young mother named Nina (Dakota Johnson), who’s vacationing there with her toddler daughter, her vaguely threatening husband and the rest of her extended, somewhat menacing family.

Watching Nina and her daughter together begins to unlock memories for Leda of her own younger years as a mother and domestic partner. As those recollections eventually focus on a significant, impulsive experience that changed the course of her life and her family’s lives, she also commits a bizarre, strangely inappropriate act in the present that blurs both timelines in her mind and leads her to a point where she could face both mental and physical consequences for her actions.

What makes The Lost Daughter work so well is its three central roles and Gyllenhaal’s complete control of the movie’s tone. While there are a few moments here and there where the film is perhaps too understated for its own good, and the viewer may struggle to make essential connections, the director carries the deliberately ambiguous storyline forward with confidence, largely trusting in her cast and in the viewer’s involvement.

She’s aided immeasurably by first Colman, who delivers a nuanced, multi-layered portrait of a woman who has found a sense of contentment with herself yet is still haunted by the actions of her past–actions for which she is not necessarily regretful. Yet there is just enough conflict between her experiences in the present and her memories to tear slowly at her psyche and emotional well-being. This conflict is only heightened by her interactions with Nina. As the latter, Johnson gives what may be her best performance to date, swerving between her unadulterated love for her daughter and a sense that she has been forced into her circumstances (and her boorish new family) against her will.

And then there is Jessie Buckley (I’m Thinking of Ending Things) as the younger Leda, back when she was struggling both as a mother and a student trying to launch her career and follow her life’s passion. Buckley is simply sensational, and her interactions with her little daughters are equally painful, heartfelt and bitterly realistic. There is a tendency to (rightfully) venerate mothers and motherhood, elevating both to some unattainable combination of sainthood and holy work, but in these sections of the film Gyllenhaal and Buckley present the unvarnished truth of how unimaginably difficult the job can be and how it can feel like a trap as much as a blessing.

It is those complicated views of motherhood that are at the heart of The Lost Daughter, although Gyllenhaal’s script and direction never quite reveal all the motivations at play. Instead we are left to figure them out on our own, which may alienate some viewers but provides a refreshing lack of judgment upon the actions of both the younger and older versions of Leda.

Gyllenhaal and cinematographer Hélène Louvart provide a great visual dynamic for the film, contrasting the wide-open, sun-soaked expanses of the resort with the closed-in, suffocating interiors of the young Leda’s small apartment. This perhaps mirrors the inside of Leda’s mind as well: the dark recesses of her memories set against the freedom and light in front of her. Whether she can ever resolve the two is the mystery that The Lost Daughter refuses to provide an easy answer for, making this an unsettling, poignant and terrific filmmaking debut.

The Lost Daughter opened earlier this month in limited theatrical release and begins streaming Friday, Dec. 31 on Netflix.

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