I've Just Arrived From the Gym...

...and just like Bridget will turn humdrum life upside down before end of year.

In the meantime go read my review for Bridget Jones's Diary over at PopMatters.

As always come back here and discuss!

My Own Love Song *½

Director: Olivier Dahan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker
Madeline Zima, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte

If there's something you can't accuse Olivier Dahan of is subtlety. More than a storyteller he's a pointer, someone who constructs entire universes just to point out a specifically dramatic trait or event in his characters' lives.
Remember how everything in La Vie en Rose for example, was a constant attempt at over dramatizing the already melodramatic life of chanteuse Edith Piaf?
The incoherent editing, the fantastical plot twists, the heightening of emotions through exaggerated visual aids, all with the purpose of exploiting sentiment.
It's not a coincidence that when we first meet Billie (Zima) in this film, she's desperately looking for her wedding band. Minutes later we learn that Billie's husband, like her ring, has disappeared without a trace.
This is the kind of thing Dahan does to point what will become obvious, it's as if he doesn't trust his audience and is constantly trying to tell everything twice.
When My Own Love Song begins we meet former country singer Jane (Zellweger) she's sitting alone in a bar waiting for people she can be mean to apparently.
A stranger approaches her in the way men approach lonely women in bars and Jane proceeds to kick and chew his balls in every way she can. Seconds later, we and the stranger learn that she's in a wheelchair.
Ah, seems to go Dahan's mind, Jane is a bitch because life has been a bitch to her!
After this display of self pity and contempt for humanity Jane wheels herself to her humble house. So far we know she's handicapped, bitter and likes to go to bars. Consequently we will learn she lost her husband in a car accident, had to give up her son to social services and most shocking of all, she has stopped singing! Jane is a Susan Hayward character without the camp.
Jane's best friend is Joey (Whitaker) who can just be described as a magical negro. Period.
He has a stutter, he delivers life changing advice in every line of dialogue and he also talks to angels.
We really can't see why he would even like being around Jane if it wasn't because we know he has a role to fulfill in transforming her hum-drum life. This chance comes in the shape of a trip to Baton Rouge where Joey expects to meet a famous author (who writes about angels) and he also intends to trick Jane into attending her son's first communion (how he finds out this is even occurring is as preposterous as anything you'll see in this film).
They take off towards their own figurative Emerald City where each plans to have their wishes granted. Along the way they meet quirky characters, like the aforementioned Billie and a strange singer (Nolte) who confuses urban legends with myth and has a penchant for magic brownies.
My Own Love Song perhaps would be a better movie if Dahan had concentrated on developing the characters as opposed to finding ways in which to symbolize their every thought in some exciting visual manner. When Jane writes a song about birds we are stuck with a cutesy sequence where the characters walk accompanied by animated birds straight out of a Wes Anderson after school special.
The movie however is mostly a very French take on what an American movie must be like. Get a couple Oscar winners, a soundtrack made out of Bob Dylan songs, squeeze the hell out of quirk and filter all this through the all-American genre by excellence that is the road movie.
It's a pity that the film represents a return to form for Zellweger who has been so intermittent on the big screen this decade. Her Jane might not be extraordinary but the actress does her best with the little she's given, both the actress and the character deserve a much better film.

Two Ladies.

It's been a sad day for the fashion world with the death of the great Alexander McQueen.
But what better way to celebrate his legacy than by taking a look at the people who remind us that fashion is an art?
With the opening of the Berlinale and the upcoming Fashion Week, movie stars will fill red carpets in both continents.
In Berlin the incomparable Tilda Swinton wears a Haider Ackermann creation (straight out of the runway!) to the opening night.

While jury member Renée Zellweger, in what I'm assuming is Carolina Herrera, wears practically the same color as Swinton but adds an open back and a gorgeous classic bow.
On another note it'll be interesting to see what wins the top prize in Berlin this year, considering how last year's winner is now competing for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

My One and Only **

Director: Richard Loncraine
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Kevin Bacon
Mark Rendall, Nick Stahl, Chris Noth, Eric McCormack
J.C. MacKenzie, Robin Weigert, Steven Weber, Troy Garity

The life of actor George Hamilton gets Hollywood-ized in this biopic starring Lerman as a young George and Zellweger as his mother Anne Deveraux.
The film begins when Anne leaves her husband (a sympathetic Bacon) and takes George and half brother Robbie (Rendall whose gay character is forced to deliver cringe worthy one liners) across the country while she looks for a new husband to take care of them.
Deveraux who thinks she's "too good to work" often ends in awkward situations and her beaus include playboys, insane paint moguls and crazy military types.
But Zellweger grounds the movie with a performance that could've gone borderline, but stays on a sane, actually moving limit.
Several characters are forced to remind George that his mother loves him above everything else and truth is Zellweger embodies this beautifully.
Whether she's being mistaken for a prostitute or fighting her conservative sister (Weigert), the actress remains true to her character and never dares to judge Anne's reasons to do what she does.
And if she doesn't, how can we?

New in Town *

Director: Jonas Elmer
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Harry Connick Jr.
J.K. Simmons, Siobhan Fallon, Frances Conroy

Renée Zellweger plays Lucy, a-curiously untanned- Miami executive, who gets sent by her company to run a plant in Minnesota.
Being from Miami, she's obviously not prepared to embrace a small town and the film gives path so that her cold cold heart will melt with the help of the Jesus loving, tapioca eating, folks from the joyous Minnesota.
Anyone watching this film will be offended by at least two things: first the utter lack of originality displayed in the screenplay.
It's obvious that Lucy will become good and learn to love the townsfolk including the hunky union leader (who else but Connick Jr.?) and the nosy secretary (Fallon).
And because of this not a single actor in the film puts some effort into their characters. Simmons, who even looks uninterested, rehashes his usual lovable smartass role from "Juno" and "Spider-Man", Connick Jr. is so bland that you wonder who refused his role so that he ended up taking over and Zellweger who is usually charming and cute is so icy and detached that nothing in the film ever really makes you like her.
In fact absolutely no character in the movie is likeable!
Then comes the fact that the entire movie is so disrespectful of Minnesota that nobody will feel comfortable with the clichés and eventual Capra-esque realizations we're supposed to have with it.
"Fargo" wasn't exactly reverential of Minnesota, but the Coens knew what they were doing, director Elmer here however tries to emulate them and especially with Fallon's character- whose last name is Gunderson-the film proves that there is a fine line between the sublime and the purely ridiculous.

Double Take.

By an odd chance last night I ended up watching two films which dealt with the exact same themes. I was in Meryl Streep mood (make that me trying to watch all of Meryl's Academy Award nominated performances) so I got "One True Thing". I had a basic idea of what it was about: mom (Meryl) gets sick, hotshot daughter (Renée Zellweger) comes from the city to take care of her and make amends, all leading to a melodramatic assisted death thing.
After that was over I watched "The Barbarian Invasions", Denys Arcand's follow up to "The Decline of the American Empire", which had a plot I didn't know about. To my surprise it deals with an ill father (Rémy Girard) whose hotshot son (Stéphane Rousseau) comes from the city to take care of him and make amends, all leading to assisted death.
What made these events happen for me in the same night? I do not know. But the night ended up being a film lesson of sorts about do's and don'ts when it comes to family dramas.
Streep's film, yet it's hers, handles things in a slightly contrived way. It's all about the revelations and hidden feelings, instead of flowing naturally.
Zellweger has some trouble throughout the film not acting and you can see her figuring out what should her character do in the next scene. William Hurt plays her dad and while he's brilliant as usual, his character suffers the same problem most of the movie deals with and is the fact that they feel pretty aimless.
The film can't hide its tricky sentimentalism when it comes up with a rather unnecessary subplot involving a police investigation dealing with the whole suicide thing.
Of course Meryl rises up and makes the entire film seem less like a Lifetime flick of the week and more like an existential meditation of compromise and love.
She suffers with such dignity that every single attempt to turn her scenes into a cornucopia of corniness becomes testament to someone who can do it all, and does!
Arcand's film on the other side doesn't take itself too seriously. Before long there are subplots with heroine junkies, corrupt hospital unions and "Empire"'s array of literate, vicious characters who cheer up the dying man with their sexcapades, erudite conversations and wicked sense of humor.
You can't really feel death looming over this movie in the way you feel it in "One True Thing". Does this mean that one is in a denial of sorts while the other deals with things more straightforward? Or is perhaps death, in a Bergmanian way, something that should be received with as much fear as humor?
All this made me wonder what would it have been like if Meryl was part of "The Barbarian Invasions"' ensemble.
For one Marie-Josée Croze would've said goodbye to that Best Actress award at Cannes (I don't see what they saw in her, especially not in the year of Nicole Kidman in "Dogville" at the festival...) Streep does dry humor-and all humor-like no other thespian and she would've known exactly how much tears to put into the sentimental moments.
She would've been perfect, but alas she can't be in every movie.
Have you seen these two movies? If so had you seen the similarities? And do you prefer one over the other?

Kate Kraze.

"Oh G-d, who's the other one?"
- The gorgeous Kate Winslet congratulating, and forgetting, her fellow nominees upon winning her second Golden Globe of the night.

I never thought I'd feel so happy to see Meryl Streep, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Penélope Cruz and Anne Hathaway lose an award until they all lost to the lovely Kate Winslet.
When she first won Best Supporting Actress for her work in "The Reader" I realized she'd go and win 'em both (I'd predicted her for Drama Lead despite Hathaway-gate) and when Cameron Diaz gave her that look my heart stopped as Kate came to collect her Best Actress award for her brilliant performance in "Revolutionary Road".
And really she was the highlight of the show, one that had some of the worthiest winners I've seen in ages. Mickey Rourke and Colin Farrell got Best Actor in Drama and Comedy respectively and were in fact the best in their categories (toss up between Sean Penn and Rourke for me) and the lovely and extremely Amy Winehouse-like Sally Hawkins got Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy (who'd guess they're both so shy and quiet when in their professional lives they seem just so fiery?).
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" got Best Picture Musical or Comedy and that made my day despite Penélope losing, but back to Kate for a minute...
She single-handedly put some spice into this season again. Best Actress has been extremely tough to guess this year and with this double whammy what the hell will happen at the Oscars?
Ballots are due tomorrow so tonight won't have any effect anymore, but will the Academy also get her a double nod? And if so can she actually go ahead and win them both?
I shiver with excitement and if she eventually gets both awards the thing is that she would be perfectly capturing what seems to be the spirit of this awards season which is rooting ecstatically for your favorites.
Not only with Kate, but with Heath Ledger obviously and on the TV side this was captured perfectly with "30 Rock" and "John Adams" rightfully sweeping, but if a crossover appeal was ever more obvious it was "Slumdog Millionaire".
Whenever the nominees for the film were announced there was thunderous applause and cheering and each time it got an award the room just exploded.
When the film eventually won Best Picture-Drama and the camera captured Christina Applegate going "it's soooooo good" it was obvious that everyone there wanted this film to win.
There is no way this movie can lose that Oscar now. The energy of people who like it is contagious, even if I didn't love the movie I was happy it was winning things.
And don't even get me started about Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. They are just so cute and rootable (?).
They did this silly Bollywood dance class on the red carpet and instead of making me laugh at them I went "aww" and that is exactly what the movie is doing to everyone else.
Can it be so wrong that we have the need to share joy? And why is joy only as obvious in crowd pleasers?
The answers to those questions are too deep for tonight...for now I'll leave you with my favorite fashion of the night (ranked in no particular order).


Finally. What the hell is this?
I'm one of the only people who still likes her, but this is just impossible to defend.