You Gotta Give Them Hope.

"If we learn from history that the struggle goes on, eventually we will win and all the President has to do, or the Governor, is just turn the pages of history a little faster"
- Harvey Milk

To the Woodsman.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to achieve it by not dying"
- Woody Allen

With his talent and natural genius you know he has made sure his work will live forever, with his determination and energy (still making a movie per year) you believe it's just quite possible he'll achieve physical immortality as well.
To the Woodsman on his 73rd birthday, may the movie g-ds shine their light on him for decades to come!
Now go out and celebrate by watching one of his films...

I've Loved You So Long ***1/2

Director: Philippe Claudel
Cast: Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein
Serge Hazanavicius, Jean-Claud Arnaud, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot

Have you noticed how characters in French movies wear the same clothes over and over? How their homes aren't afraid of looking dusty and unkempt? How the actors, despite the fact that you know their faces, seem to completely vanish into the characters they're playing?
This lived-in-ness may not be true of all their national cinema, but in Philippe Claudel's exquisite directing debut it seems to be the rule.
An intimate tale of the fragile links between people, the film begins when Juliette Fontaine (Scott Thomas) is released from prison after a fifteen year sentence.
She sits alone having a cigarette at the airport gazing ahead into some sort of limbo with a blank expression on her face; her sister Léa (Zylberstein), as energetic and smiley as her sister is sad, arrives to pick her up and after an awkward hug they leave.
We learn that Juliette was practically forgotten about while she was in jail, the reason of her sentence remaining a complete mystery for Léa (their parents began saying they had only one daughter) and the crime itself a continuing burden for Juliette.
Now she is forced to live with her sister, her husband Luc (Hazanavicius), his mute father Paul (Arnaud) and their two adopted Vietnamese girls (Lily-Rose and Lise Ségur).
She has to look for a job, knowing that most companies won't take her because of her criminal past, meet with her parole officer Captain Fauré (Pierrot) and try to readjust to a society and a life she really has no desire of being part of.
The film mostly works around the devastating, beautiful performance by Scott Thomas who in French seems to tap into the greatest source of her acting range.
Her aristocratic features and British accent have always made her a perfect actress for roles that demand an air of superiority (her character in "The English Patient" for example has her working the Garbo in her to the maximum level).
Here the actress becomes someone else entirely, her face becomes a blank slate. Her sunken cheekbones and detached manner only hint at the kind of life she led in jail, her wrinkles become the actress' weapon and the character's punishment.
You sometimes wonder why Juliette didn't try suicide as an option if she seems to have lost her will to live, Scott Thomas makes her such a complex woman that soon you realize that she has chosen to live her life as a continuation of her prison sentence.
She holds regret, resentment and anger, but at the same time allows herself to believe she may have some hope. Her interaction with Pierrot is a thing of beauty (and one of the elements that make the film delicious despite the heaviness of the emotional weight) and as she slowly learns to love her nieces (Ségur particularly is a delight to watch) she becomes luminous.
She is at her best when she seems to not be acting at all, watching her dress up for a bar says more about Juliette than a whole speech and in one of the film's most beautiful moments she quietly enters Grandpa Paul's study and falls asleep next to him while he reads.
Zylberstein is perfect in her own way, her character gets the difficult task of balancing fear and unconditional love. You wonder why does she feel an obligation towards someone everyone else disdains.
The actress however turns this in her favor and lets it become Léa's ground, her insecurity and lack of trust towards her sister make you wonder if she in a way is guilty of some sort of emotional crime as well.
A born storyteller, with background as novelist and screenwriter, Claudel crafts an intimate universe in what results a compelling portrait of desolation and the kind of pain that changes you forever. The film relies on silences and small moments, perhaps more than it does on dialogue, which is why it's remarkable how you can perceive how well written it is.
Claudel's choices as a director are just as fascinating; he could've easily made his film a mystery by making us wonder what exactly did Juliette do to end in jail, instead he creates a series of vignettes where we see her slowly becoming alive again.
Moving at an easy, but never dull, pace, Claudel takes his time taking us places and before you realize it you might have even forgotten that there is some sort of mystery to begin with; the film doesn't seem to need a normal catharsis, it reaches one without us even noticing.
He concentrates on Juliette, sometimes the camera moves with her and views the world through her eyes as if they were watching things for the very first time, or at least under a different light.
The central themes sometimes become too obvious (a scene where Léa discusses "Crime and Punishment") and the film doesn't work well when it feels as if it's forcing itself upon us.
It's too bad considering that Scott Thomas' work is enough to guarantee that we will ask ourselves Dostoyevskian questions on our own.
By film's end we may come out wondering if it's OK to like a criminal, if the nature of the crime should make a difference to how we view them and mostly if it's possible to regain one's humanity.
What Juliette did should've remained a secret, because in the end it doesn't make much of a difference; the pain in Scott Thomas' face doesn't come close to being justified by the eventual revelation.

Rachel Getting Married ***1/2

Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt
Mather Zickel, Bill Irwin, Tunde Adebimpe, Anissa George
Anna Deavere Smith, Debra Winger

Who would've guessed that Jonathan Demme's best film in almost twenty years would have him turn into a wedding planner?
After a decade that has had him directing documentaries and pointless remakes, he's back in form with an Altmanesque tale of a family coming together for a wedding.
Anne Hathaway plays Kym, a former model who's been in and out of rehab for ten years; she takes leave for a weekend to go to her family's house in Connecticut where her sister Rachel (DeWitt) will be getting married.
There we meet her dad Paul (Irwin), her estranged mother Abby (Winger), Paul's new wife Carol (Deavere Smith), Rachel's fiancé Sidney (Adebimpe), best man Kieran (Zickel), Rachel's best friend Emma (George) and all the sorts of people, with varying descriptions brought together by the event.
Before the weekend is over there will be fights and reconciliations, dark family secrets will come to the surface, news will have them outbursting with happiness, faces will get slapped, music will be played (if there was ever an informal musical film this one's it) and eventually the guests will leave having done exactly what they came to do.
From its opening shot the film establishes the fact that it will be everything except what you thought it would be. The plot is the kind made to make us think that it will be a quirky indie film about dysfunctionality and hippie people, but Demme aptly turns it into a quasidocumentary about love and all the shapes it can take.
Working with a beautiful screenplay by Jenny Lumet (daughter of Sidney and granddaughter of the legendary Lena Horne) you often wonder how much came from the words and how much from Demme's mise-en-scene which comes alive in a way very few films ever do.
Big part of it is owed of course to cinematographer Declan Quinn whose handheld camera approach might've been off putting if it wasn't so damn engaging.
The camera peeks into rooms to see who's there, moves around the house following the characters and eventually it's home video feel might make us wonder who is it exactly representing?
Is it our guide? Is it perhaps Kym's aid in trying to take everything in or is it perhaps some sort of scrapbook with the intention of capturing both the good and the ugly from the wedding?
Whatever it turns out to be for each audience member the truth is that Quinn's work is so fantastic that it makes us thrive on a sort of inviting voyeurism.
The ensemble is tremendously natural, so much in fact to the point where we feel as if the movie was constructed from outtakes.
Hathaway is a revelation, Demme makes the most out of her established likeability and turns her Kym into something we think we like, only to pull the rug from under our feet and making us battle between us "loving to hate" or "hating to love" her.
Hathaway, like everyone else in this film, grabs onto something other films exploit shamelessly, in her case drug addiction and extracts the cliché out of it.
Kym is holding on to a source of pain you can't even imagine, but the actress never martyrizes her character. Hathaway is especially moving when the camera catches her going to some faraway place. Her need to fit in is obvious in her line readings, but watching her just listening to other characters or smoking a cigarette make her turn into someone real.
Her chemistry with the extraordinary DeWitt gives the movie its soul. DeWitt's Rachel who often tries to act like the grownup is in a limbo between going to the childlike joy her wedding brings to her or remaining a steady rock for her whole family to lean on.
When you watch her try to conatin herself from accusing her sister of something DeWitt shines with a rare kind of beauty.
If they give the film a lively spirit, the magnificent Bill Irwin gives it its heart, his Paul is the kind of ever loving father that cries because he can't contain his happiness from having his family with him. Irwin's nuances should've felt like a parody at times, but he's the kind of movie character you wish you knew in real life.
Winger, who is in far too little scenes, makes her Abby someone strangely appealing. You want to know more about her, why did she divorce Paul, why did she become so distant from her daughters, she's a fascinating force of nature that proves to us that love for a mother might be the only kind that is undying.
The rest of the ensemble from Adebimpe's adorable Sidney, to George's neurotic Emma and Zickel's unbelievably sexy Kieran make for one hell of a welcoming party.
"Rachel Getting Married" feels like a family relationship. Its cast and crew become vital parts of a vibrant organism. It goes up and down with its characters, fills them with unmeasurable joy only to replace it seconds later with anger and deceit.
It's like the kind of wedding where you wake up the day after with bruises and a hangover, but will never regret having attended.

Australia ****

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman
David Wenham, Bryan Brown, David Gulpilil,
Jack Thompson, Ben Mendelsohn, Essie Davis, Brandon Walters

Remember the days when films were advertised as “movie shows” and studio productions boasted “having it all”?
Days when movie stars were photographed in beautiful, glossy light that made them look otherworldly? Days when there were “movie stars” to begin with. Well, those days are back, at least during the running time of Baz Luhrmann’s spectacular “Australia”.
After a seven year hiatus, the visionary auteur, who seems to have a thing for neglected movie genres and styles, takes on yet another cause: the reinvention of the historical epic.
Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, a British aristocrat who travels to Australia looking for her husband in 1939.
After reaching the wild continent she meets one of her husband’s workers, a mysterious, tough man who everyone calls the Drover (Jackman). Once they reach “Far Away Downs”, her husband’s farm, which lies deep in the outback, she discovers he’s been murdered (no gasps here considering one should only use common sense to know that Jackman and Kidman will obviously become romantically involved in a film where they have top billing).
She also finds her estate is being tampered with by the greedy Neil Fletcher (Wenham) who is in league with the competitor cattle baron, King Carney (Brown).
Sarah first wonders what would’ve made her husband fight so much for something that to her seems an unnecessary risk, until she meets Nullah (Walters) a “creamie” (half aboriginal, half white) child who becomes suddenly orphaned and is being searched for by the authorities to be placed under government “care”.
Lady Ashley takes a liking for Nullah and this newfound knowledge of the vast injustices in the land inspires her to finish her husband’s work and, along with the reluctant Drover, deliver almost two thousand cows cross country to Darwin and stop Carney’s enterprise.
Lurhmann’s ambitious plot, combines the WWII background and the country’s racist history with the intention of encompassing everything the nation is about.
Paying homage to classics of the genre, the first part of the film feels like “The Sundowners” meets “Giant” going by way of “The African Queen” as the characters face danger and adventure in the form of cattle stampedes, wild sandstorms, fires and even a bit of aboriginal magic by the way of Nullah’s grandfather, tribe elder King George (Gulpilil).
There isn’t a single frame in “Australia” that doesn’t demand to be seen, Mandy Walker’s luscious cinematography (reminiscent of “Out of Africa”) is both in love and in awe of the country it captures.
Her camera sometimes feels as if it’s about to burst open trying to take everything in at once. In smaller moments, aided by CGI, the look is straight out of a Technicolor newsreel with vintage postcard strokes.
The whole cast is great, even if they know for a fact that they are not the main event. Kidman at first has a hard time fitting into the slight camp the film kicks off with, but soon enough (and after looking more beautiful than ever while covered in sweat and dirt) the usually cold actress radiates a sense of maternal warmth she’d never conveyed before.
She may be no Vivien Leigh, but unlike the other members of the ensemble, her performance is the one that doesn’t rely on any reference to become what it is.
Jackman, looking impossibly handsome, evokes Indiana Jones, Clint Eastwood and Cary Grant! He effortlessly moves between these personas and balancing the crass and the class, while flexing his muscles and romancing Kidman, is not something easy to pull off.
Wenham is as vicious as the bad guys in “Shane”, the incomparable Jacek Koman steals every moment he’s onscreen and Mendelsohn as the stern Captain Dutton provides the film with an unexpected sense of calm.
The find here is of course Walters, who it seems escapes every child actor cliché to deliver a beautiful performance of someone trapped between two worlds.
His narration helps hint that the film is perhaps a symbolic coming-of-age tale of the country where it takes place, which through the years has been marginalized (just consider how it was founded…) and become object of jokes (Baz has a ball playing with Aussie clichés to convey a sense of farce).
Working on this film Baz had the intention of creating his country’s very own “Gone With the Wind” and like the 1939 American epic (cinematic year which highly influenced this film) it acknowledges the racist roots both countries were built upon, but does so without losing hope for the future.
Fascinated by aboriginal mysticism, there are various customs revealed throughout the film, one of them being that once a person dies you can not say their name again; theory that is able to keep the memory while looking forward, in the same way Baz looks at his country.
Not as extravagantly stylized as his “Red Curtain Trilogy” (although some elements can be rightly called trademarks), this project gives the director the chance to broaden his storytelling horizons.
Because “Australia” is first and foremost about the art of storytelling. One of the aboriginal traditions portrayed in the film is that of passing along knowledge through stories.
Borrowing elements, and to a degree the structure, of Victor Fleming’s “The Wizard of Oz”, Luhrmann’s desire is that his country will also be part of history.
During one of the film’s greatest moments, Nullah asks Lady Ashley to sing, after bursting into a self-conscious version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, the boy giggles as he affirms that she is a funny singer, but the song is just too good.
The same goes for the director; if “Australia” feels overwhelming it’s because it is, but instead of being referred to as an undertaking, which implies burdens, Baz makes it feel like a love song that simply can not be contained.
Grabbing plot twists, characters and situations as varied as the country itself, “Australia” is a sort of imperfectly perfect masterpiece. It wants to be everything at once, but is at its best when it just lets go.
Nowadays when the musical score rises and the characters are put in unfathomable situations the audience will simply role their eyes and giggle, here we are swept off our feet.
It’s not every day that you feel your heart will come out of your chest when a movie reaches its climax. With “Australia” Baz Luhrmann has proved that he is the real wizard of Oz.

Before the Day is Over...

It's time to say thanks for:
- The productive time in Miami movie wise.
- Cobb's Cine Bistro: I don't know if it was that great Margarita, the kind staff, those oh so comfy seats, or perhaps the fresh taste of every single pop corn (I'm not kidding, every single piece was perfection and I'm not even a pop corn person) that made this perhaps the best theater going experience of my life.
Then again perhaps it was "Australia"...
- Debra Winger and Rosemarie DeWitt in "Rachel Getting Married".
- Baz Luhrmann in Charlie Rose.
- Baz Luhrmann loving "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" just as much as I do.
- Baz Luhrmann himself!
- Cheap DVDs.
- WALL-E.
- The little girls in "I've Loved You So Long".

...and here's hoping the plane going home doesn't show "What Happens in Vegas" again.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

In Completely Film Unrelated News.

She rocked my world tonight.

Uh oh...

The Screen Actors Guild strike is looking like a go.
How will this affect the worsening economy?
With 2009 movies already looking like a fiasco with the WGA strike last year, will this affect 2010 as well?
Will the Oscars be jeopardized again?
Click here for the complete story.

I Like You the Way You Are...

...so what do I care how you got that way?

Doubt Under.

The U.S. site for "Australia" is up and running (Click on the picture to visit it).
It asks you to click on "zones" that don't make much sense, but boy do they have pretty images to see!
Made me worry that the film is going to result in some sort of beautiful disaster.