Short Take: "Beautiful Boy".

Maria Bello and Michael Sheen bring gravitas and urgency to Shawn Ku's tale of suburban decay as the parents of a depressed teenager (Kyle Gallner) who one day opens fire on his college campus, killing several classmates and professors. What's left for his parents other than to explore what went wrong. Considering they're a couple at the edge of separation, it might be a detriment of sorts for Ku to suggest that tragedy might be what these two people needed to realize they still loved each other. The film is pretty much a depression-fest in which we see Bello and Sheen's characters go through the phases of grief individually and together. To say that all their pain becomes excruciating would be to make the film a favor and it's a shame that unlike the superior Rabbit Hole, it rarely bothers in conveying a feeling that these characters existed for more purposes than to serve this tragedy.

Grade: **

A Cut of Prime TV.

Out of all the new TV shows this season, only Prime Suspect sounded appealing to me (sorry 60s retro porn) why? For one and one reason only: Maria Bello. Today I caught up with the first two episodes and as expected Ms. Bello was absolutely fantastic. Hell, more than that, she got me hooked on a procedural drama. Something that never really happens (I hat cop, doctor and lawyer shows, Damages being the one huge exception to the rule)

Now to my surprise (although not really) I'm finding out that nobody has given a damn about this show! Critics received it warmly but it hasn't generated enough buzz to save it from getting lost in the mix of procedural series, cop shows and Thursday night mammoths that prevail.

With that said, I believe this is a big crock of crap and will now proceed to give you ten reasons why you should be watching Prime Suspect instead of CSI: Milwaukee and Law & Order: Etiquette Infractors Unit.


1. Maria Bello.
No, really. Three minutes into the first episode where she complains about quitting smoking, scares the crap out of a cab driver and looks fabulous while running, I found myself dreaming of how lovely she would look at the Emmys next year.

2. The way it explores the dynamics between men and women. This show could become a rich study of gender politics in the 21st century!

3. Brian F O'Byrne. I'm thrilled he's becoming more and more popular this year! From Mildred Pierce to this, he proves he can work magic when starring with strong women.


4. The writing! Every line Bello utters is priceless without being too quirky or showy.

5. The cases have actual mystery in them...

6. ...but you're still more drawn to the characters involved.

7. The chemistry between Bello and her onscreen hubby (Kenny Johnson), you wonder how can they keep their clothes on when they're together.

8. Jane's hat!

9. Jane's trenchcoats!

Talk about efficient but understatedly elegant style.

10. The underrated Aidan Quinn is in it as well!

Now, for real, stop doing what you're doing and go check out Prime Suspect.

Were you a fan of the British version? I've never seen one and I'm curious now!

Style Sunday.

The British were coming at an event held by BAFTA last night in Los Angeles. His royal highness Prince William, who also happens to be President of BAFTA (as if being a future king wasn't cool enough...) attended with his wife, Kate Middleton. Of course, she looked stunning but I keep wondering, where the hell does she find all these wholesome looking Alexander McQueen gowns?

This lavender creation is of course the epitome of classiness but would it kill her to try something a little bit more aggressive and McQueen-ish? Those odd little hats don't count.

Mary Louise-Parker brought her relaxed hippie-ness to the royal table in this cherry Dolce & Gabbana gown. Considering it lacks some oomph for a royal shindig, it's lovely to see her preserve her quirkiness.

Excuse me for saying this but royals should be bowing down to her royal majesty of actressing Nicole Kidman. I love how with the years she's adjusting herself to more sober, but still terrific, looks and how lovely her smile has become with each passing year. This Ellie Saab gown isn't a scene-stealer but Nicole must know that at a royal party, you are not supposed to overshadow the future queen. This well thought dress and demure style make her even more majestic.

Ooh-la-la, god only knows why Blake Lively gets invited to all these amazing red carpets, or perhaps he does, and the reason is merely because she always looks fantastic. This flowy Marchesa gown goes against everything Blake has us used to. Oh no, no boobs or legs! But with the see through loveliness of the fabric and the very Marchesa embroidery she looks like a true goddess. Her simple, unkempt chignon completed a look that reminded me of a Renaissance nymph.

No words describe how magnificent this is and I won't even try.

So, there you go...

Maria Bello was all kinds of lovely in this metallic Donna Karan gown. Gotta love how her tan doesn't make the already shiny fabric look vulgar.

J. Lo probably didn't get the memo that this was a BAFTA event with Prince William and not the Grammys with will.i.am, so she showed up like she always does, flaunting her best assets.

This Emilio Pucci gown will make most women alive envy Lopez's stunning curves but is this the best she could do when she was going to be near the future Queen of England?

How do you even bow before her in this without ripping the fabric and showing Kate your luscious ass?

The Brits weren't the only place for fab fashion this week though...

Anne Hathaway was the fairy tale princess at this year's White Fairy Tale Love Ball, where she opted for a gorgeous Valentino Couture dress. The little details in this dress are best appreciated when you see it in movement, Annie looked like she was hovering while distilling pixie dust. Gotta love her bold red lipstick and romantic hairstyle. Only she can pull off sexy risque and then melt our hearts with this kind of look.

Armani Privé + Cate Blanchett = fashiongasm.

How the hell did she avoid looking like she was part of the red carpet?

This asymmetrical Chanel gown makes the lovely Diane Kruger look like she won best dressed at the 1986 Academy Awards. Make of this what you wish.

Phew, lots of looks this week huh? Can you pick a fave?

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


The upper half of this poster is a thing of beauty. Simple illustrations to make a powerful point.
The lower half is a mess though. Not only is it a total ripoff of things that have been done better before but the images and credits are so conflicting.
For starters the movie is called Company Men, emphasis in "men", yet we have the awesome Maria Bello right in the middle of that testosterone party looking all lost and confused.
What's weird isn't that the lack of her name among the credits makes this seem like some misogynist Neil Labute experiment but that once you realize she's the only one in that group who doesn't have an Oscar (or a goddamn nomination for starters!) makes it all seem more unfair and just plain bad.


This movie is honestly making me think of this too much.
But just how cute was Matt Damon in the 30 Rock season premiere?

Interested in either of these movies?
Also I just realized this edition of Sheet-y Saturday paired Ben and Matt, I promise it was totally unintentional.

Indie Kick-off.

The Spirit Awards for independent film have announced their nominees today. Thus they kick start the happiest time of the year: awards season.
Among their top nominees are:

BEST FEATURE

“(500) Days Of Summer”
“Amreeka”
“Precious”
“Sin Nombre”
“The Last Station”

BEST DIRECTOR
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”
Lee Daniels, “Precious”
Cary Joji Fukunaga, “Sin Nombre”
James Gray, “Two Lovers”
Michael Hoffman, “The Last Station”

BEST SCREENPLAY
Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman, “The Messenger”
Michael Hoffman, “The Last Station
Lee Toland Krieger, “The Vicious Kind”
Greg Mottola, “Adventureland”
Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, “(500) Days Of Summer”

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
Sophie Barthes, “Cold Souls”
Scott Cooper, “Crazy Heart”
Cherien Dabis, “Amreeka”
Geoffrey Fletcher, “Precious”
Tom Ford, David Scearce, “A Single Man”

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Maria Bello, “Downloading Nancy”
Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”
Gwyneth Paltrow, “Two Lovers”
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire”
Nisreen Faour, “Amreeka”

BEST MALE LEAD
Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “(500) Days Of Summer”
Souléymane Sy Savané, “Goodbye Solo”
Adam Scott, “The Vicious Kind”

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Dina Korzun, “Cold Souls”
Mo’Nique, “Precious”
Samantha Morton, “The Messenger”
Natalie Press, “Fifty Dead Men Walking”
Mia Wasikowska, “That Evening Sun”

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Jemaine Clement, “Gentleman Broncos”
Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger”
Christian McKay, “Me and Orson Welles”
Raymond McKinnon, “That Evening Sun”
Christopher Plummer, “The Last Station”

For a complete list of nominees click here.

I'm particularly thrilled about Gwyneth Paltrow and James Gray getting in for "Two Lovers", I was sure it would be one of those movies everyone forgets existed come awards season.
No Joaquin Phoenix? That's got to be a joke though...

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee **1/2

Director: Rebecca Miller
Cast: Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin
Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci
Ryan McDonald, Zoe Kazan, Mike Binder, Maria Bello
Robin Weigert, Shirley Knight

How do you engage an audience and make them become interested in a character? First you have them believe said character has qualities we want to discover.
Pippa Lee (Wright Penn) is "a mystery, an enigma..." says one of her friends (Binder) minutes into the film.
So check, we have something to unravel.
Then you go and try to solve said mystery by putting together pieces of a puzzle. Therefore we go back in time as Pippa narrates her life to make us understand where she is now.
And since we don't really know what it is exactly we're trying to discover we let the characters engage us.
We learn how Pippa (played by Lively as a younger version) ran away from home, escaping her lunatic mom (Bello) and passive dad (Tim Guinee). She ends up living with her lesbian aunt (Weigert) and her girlfriend (Moore) only to end up becoming addicted to pills and falling in love with-and marrying-a publishing editor (Arkin) who's thirty years her senior.
And this is where we first meet her, she's just moved in with her husband to a retirement community trying to find something new to do, while learning that she might be going insane.
Written and directed by Miller (who also wrote the book the film is based on) "The Lives of Pippa Lee" is obviously its creator's lovechild and as such Miller has trouble knowing what to tell, what to conceal and she doesn't want to give us a bad impression about the people she so devotedly wrote, re-wrote and directed.
Therefore the characters are actually very interesting, even if sometimes they're stuck with ridiculous dialogues and selfconscious quips, but there is absolutely no real plot to follow.
She just keeps inserting new elements (even if they're old because they're Dickensian flashbacks) to make her heroine more appealing.
One of those elements includes new neighbor Chris (Reeves) who more than not turns out to be an excuse for Miller to pull all her deus ex machina moves.
But even with all her tricks and stylistic juxtapositions Miller can never really justify what she's doing and the "many" lives of Pippa Lee are reduced to her being single and then married.
Working with Wright Penn as top accomplice ("to be perfectly honest I've had enough of being an enigma" she teases) they make an event out of what turns out to be a not quite fascinating life.
The actress is at her best, she's tender and loving with Arkin, she's motherhood personified with the actors who play her kids (Kazan and McDonald) and she does her best Marcia Cross when she has to share scenes with her neurotic friend (Ryder).
Underneath her undeniable sexiness and appeal Wright Penn is above all bewitching. Try to take your eyes away from her and you won't be able to.
If only the movie had something else to say (we often wonder why do we need to know about this woman's life) instead of settling for facile resolutions and awkward quirk, then we would have been in for a real treat.
Because as it is, the movie comes, goes and Pippa is still as much of a mystery to us when the movie ends. "I feel like this is just the beginning" she says in the last scene, but perhaps only Miller is willing to go on this journey with her.

Downloading Nancy **

Director: Johan Renck
Cast: Maria Bello, Jason Patric, Rufus Sewell, Amy Brenneman

As if trying to give his movie a final chance for some redemptive-or even human-qualities, director Johan Renck shows us a title card that reads "inspired by true events", then the ending credits roll.
His intention was probably to elicit a collective gasp that would send moviegoers debating the controversial subject the film deals with. But it works instead as a troubling statement that contradicts the previous ninety six minutes or so, because absolutely nothing in "Downloading Nancy" feels alive.
That would make sense in a movie that has a lot to do with death, but its own sense of detachment makes it impossible for the audience to get interested in what's going on.
Bello plays Nancy, a depressed housewife with fetishist (self mutilation and violent sex) practices who wishes death more than anything else.
Her husband Albert (Sewell), busy with his airport golf business idea, barely notices her existence and her psychotherapist (Brenneman) has reached a dead end trying to help her.
Fortunately for Nancy, you can find anything on the internet and she meets Louis (Patric), a loner who is willing to have painful sex with her before he kills her.
The film uses fractured narration in which we see how Nancy interacts with the other characters, but if the intention was to make us understand her, Nancy always remains impenetrable.
Bello gives a conflictive performance and the movie's coldness might in fact be owed to her, because she makes Nancy someone impossible to empathize with.
Even when given stereotypical dialogues, mostly in her therapy scenes, she delivers them with a conviction that make us wonder how much of Nancy is actually a learned performance.
When Louis reminds her that after he kills her "it will be the end of everything" she gives him a warm, almost hopeful, smile and replies "that's the whole idea".
Patric-proving how underrated he's remained-is nothing short of brilliant, his Louis is a mysterious creation that gives the film its only hints of authenticity.
Even when the story tries to turn him into a serial killer-ish character, the actor stays true to who he made the character to be.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Louis starts developing feelings for Nancy, it's almost a structural given, the surprise is how Patric channels those feelings.
The way he looks at her, the way he listens (while Bello has a good 'ole time chewing the scenery in fight scenes) all amount to making him someone who might've achieved a kind of love nobody, but him understands.
It's a shame for his performance that the rest of the movie isn't able to make him justice.
"Downloading Nancy" is made out of several parts that work independently (Christopher Doyle's sterile cinematography is fascinating if a bit too facile) but as a whole just make us feel like the movie is merely a contraption that never really answers the question: why doesn't Nancy just get it over and done with?

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor **

Director: Rob Cohen
Cast:
Brendan Fraser,
Maria Bello
Jet Li,
John Hannah,
Luke Ford
Isabella Leong,
Michelle Yeoh

Set fourteen years after "The Mummy Returns", this new adventure has the O'Connells, Rick (Fraser) and Evy (Bello) living a quiet life in England, while their son Alex (Ford) uncovers the tomb of the legendary Emperor Han (Li) in China.
Looking to put some excitement back into their lives, Rick and Evy sign up for a special mission and in Shanghai discover that there's a plot to bring back to life the emperor their son found.
Soon enough they are all involved in an exciting chase that has them travelling through the Himalayas, battling a Terracotta army and looking for the mysterious Shangri-La.
If we can make it with CGI, it will happen, seems to be the ongoing motto of the film, which features a constantly renewing mummy, who like most of the film has lost the thrilling sense of surprise and tries to impress by exploiting its resources.
The film is often at its best when it captures the interaction between Rick and Evy, with Fraser relying on his great charm to convince us he does this as a lifestyle and while it's tricky to get adjusted to Rachel Weisz's change, Bello reinvents Evy, as a less bookish, more strong willed woman just coming to terms with the power of her sexuality.
Li is used as a token martial arts expert and Hannah, as he has in previous entries, pretty much steals every scene he's in as well as Yeoh, who has the presence of a grand dame of cinema and happens to know how to high kick.
While the previous entries (particularly the first one, which was a breath of fresh air in the adventure blockbuster) had the situations unfold at the service of an innocent, exciting story, every scene here seems to have been made for the mere purpose of leading to a gargantuan battle between dead armies, which sadly is less impressive than director Cohen thinks and the film sometimes tries too hard to impress its audience.
The original "Mummy" was bold enough to create terror with shadows and the appearance of a shaky hand wrapped in bandage, while this one with all its explosions, chases and effects never musters a gasp.
Whatever happened to this film that made it think of wonder as an archaelogical artifact?

The Jane Austen Book Club **1/2

Director: Robin Swicord
Cast: Maria Bello, Amy Brenneman, Emily Blunt, Kathy Baker, Hugh Dancy

A group of women begin a book club to get one of their friends out of depression.
They realize that what they all have in common is an unmeasurable love for the books of Jane Austen.
Soon they have formed a club in which each month they will discuss one book and there is a lot that can happen in six months (they skip "Lady Susan" which is rather odd).
As one of the characters says "reading Jane Austen is like walking through a minefield".
Before the film, and the books are over, they have gone through divorces, deaths and newfound loves.
While the film is an exemplary "chick flick" its bases go beyond the cliché of female bonds, since Austen proves an intellectual output for this women to prove they too can be the sort fo heroines she wrote of.
But more often than not the film tries too hard to draw parallels between the Austen characters and the women in the plot, so while the Emma in Maria Bello is both sexy and hilarious, the Margaret Dashwood in Amy Brenneman is far from compelling.
Also, for people who don't share the passion for Austen this film might result as bewildering as the very first time when Elizabeth Bennet goes to Pemberley...