The picture on the Richard III poster shows the actor Kevin Spacey, mangled like a piece of John Chamberlain’s chrome sculptures, his left leg in a brace turned inward, his epaulets woefully off kilter, his dark glasses barely grazing his nose, his crown cocked like a smartass cartoon. At BAM where the Bridge Project’s stunning production of Shakespeare’s play is thus advertised, the image only begins to tell you what’s in his heart. Having just murdered Lady Anne’s father and husband, he woos her, Shakespeare’s language suggesting everything you can possibly do with a cane. Its noise announces Richard’s writhing gestures, producing dread and glee. You don’t know where he will thrust it, including a gratuitous jab at a severed head in a bloody box. Ooooh!
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Freshly returned, triumphant at the Golden Globes, Harvey Weinstein exhibited no jet lag introducing a new film, Coriolanus at the Paris Theater: There are three great Shakespeare films, he exulted, Olivier’s Hamlet, Olivier’s Henry V, and this one. The film’s star and director Ralph Fiennes then introduced cast members Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave to a crowd that included Patti Smith, Judd Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Fisher Stevens, Dan Abrams, Michael Stuhlbarg, Liam Neeson, James Earl Jones, Paul Haggis, Terry George, Thomas Langmann, and hosts Bob Balaban and Susan Sarandon. -
Running up to the Golden Globes weekend, a plateau in the awards season, one category I had my eye on was Best Actress in a Drama. The nominations left two formidable actresses vying for the honor, that is, Viola Davis in The Help and the winner Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady. Even as Streep left the stage she said, Viola, you’re my girl. -
At the elegant National Board of Review’s Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street this week, fine films were respectfully feted, with Hugo winning Best Picture, its director Martin Scorsese honored. Christopher Plummer, Best Supporting Actor for Beginners, and Will Reiser for his 50/50 original screenplay were among those honored. But, those speeches! On this occasion coming up on the Golden Globes weekend, a subtext emerged. Were they thinking about Oscars? -
Last October when the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory premiered at the New York Film Festival, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky celebrated an unanticipated event: the release from prison of the West Memphis 3. For documentary filmmakers, it doesn’t get better than this: having your work bring about change.In 1993, a newspaper item about the murder of three 8-year olds in West Memphis and the three teenaged boys arrested for the crime piqued the interest of HBO’s Sheila Nevins. She called the filmmaking team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, sending them south to document the case. The filmmakers thought they were going to tell a tale about guilty teens and Satanic rituals in the heartland. Finding the evidence overwhelming that the men were innocent, instead they made a movie that pointed toward a miscarriage of justice. Two earlier versions of the documentary, shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directions/ New Films festival and HBO galvanized support for the convicted young men. After 18 years in prison, the men were released this past August.
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The crowds outside Crimson, the club where the New York Film Critics Circle held their awards, were six deep, calm in the cold behind velvet ropes, hoping to get a glimpse. Brad Pitt would receive a Best Actor award for his work in Moneyball and The Tree of Life, and, Angelina was by his side. He had been at hers a few weeks ago, a quiet presence at the In the Land of Blood and Honey premiere. Inside Crimson, critics and colleagues heard his story about first coming to New York at age 25, staying with a friend on Christopher Street, noting there were an awful lot of men, and they were all so nice. As to the New York critics, he was happy to meet this group led this year by John Anderson, surprised they weren’t taller, and even happier that the event would not be televised. -
As the guy who doesn’t get the pretty girl, Albert Brooks does get the laughs. Which, as he indicated at a special tribute focused on his acting on Sunday night at the Walter Reade Theater, has made some directors hesitate to cast him in dramatic roles. In such American classics as Taxi Driver and Broadcast News, romance with Cybill Shepherd and Holly Hunter eludes him, while in Private Benjamin, sex with Goldie Hawn on their wedding night does him in. Filmmakers may be wary of his “funny,” but not Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director of Drive, a Ryan Gosling vehicle (ha!) in which Albert Brooks plays an articulate thug, a performance touted for major awards, such as Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle.Before the Film Society’s tribute and a special screening of Drive, I had the opportunity to ask Albert Brooks about this role.
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Marilyn Maye’s return to the Metropolitan Room was like a camp reunion for the saloon set. Saloons, she informed the crowd already familiar with her patter, are otherwise called “upholstered sewers.” This chanteuse, elegant in her mid-80’s in a blond bouffant, sang tunes suggested by her “regulars,” many of whom she addressed from the stage by first name: “Who requested this?” she asked amiably on the night I caught her act. “You? Okay, now you’re hearing it.” -
Languishing on a beach chair in my winter outpost by a turquoise sea, I have only books on my mind, for me the most portable item from before the age of kindle or even a recent dinosaur, the ipod nano. So here are a few that have pleased and provoked: -
With a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and a ban called by a Serbian leader, it is hard to tell which is better publicity for Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Set in Sarajevo in the early ‘90’s, the drama illustrates neighbors murdering neighbors, barbaric behavior of all sorts, rape, and an official policy of ethnic cleansing. This bloodbath makes the Serbians look bad, the Muslims look like victims. The Croatians are mostly missing in the movie’s action. But last week, at the premiere and press conference, surrounded by regional actors on all sides of that conflict, Jolie made her equal-opportunity indictment clear: war damages the human psyche. -
In the category of Best Animated Feature, the Foreign Press Association has just nominated both Rango and The Adventures of Tintin for Golden Globes. This awards nod comes as no surprise—expect Oscar nominations as well– each is state of the animation art, but so different. In Rango, director Gore Verbinski used the quirky story telling techniques that made his Pirates of the Caribbean franchise so special—well, at least the first two. The plots are frankly forgettable, but the characters remain fresh, a product of brilliant casting. In Rango, Johnny Depp’s voice animates the central character, a chameleon, of all creatures, and it’s like he’s retained a residual high from his Rum Diary persona in this sheriff who must solve the mystery (a la Polanski’s Chinatown) of the disappearing water supply for the desert town of Dirt -
Just as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, three women President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman, were announced, this film season features two films, The Iron Lady and The Lady. Both films focus on women rulers, one, Margaret Thatcher, a hawk, the other Aung San Suu Kyi, a dove who is in fact a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Both films reflect the steely nerve it takes to lead, revealing there is no one stereotype for women heads of state. In the parlance of the 1970’s wave of feminism, they may be called “lady,” but these ain’t no white glove and pearls sporting eye candy, even if they are wearing these accessories as Thatcher does. -
When The Help came out earlier this year, it quickly became the movie to see. Excellent performances, a great script based on Kathryn Stockett’s best selling novel, and a glimpse into the South and the great domestic divide between privileged white homemakers and the black women who raised them. At a luncheon last week at Desmond’s, Montego Glover, Nikki James, Anna Deveare Smith, and Billie Jean King celebrated the film’s happy arrival on DVD with two of the stars, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, who got up to answer questions about the film. Set designers Rena DeAngelo and Mark Ricker were also on hand to explain how much of the film’s antique look came from flea markets. -
Alan Rickman warned me about this: In his new play at the Golden Theater on Broadway, Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, directed by Sam Gold, Rickman plays a well-established teacher of a private writers’ workshop. He cajoles and humiliates his students, sleeps with them, getting his point across. -
Last night at Avery Fisher Hall, introducing his latest masterfully shot and beautifully acted Rockwellesque epic movie, War Horse, director Steven Spielberg noted with pride that the play version was “on the boards” across the Lincoln Center complex. Then, he brought his performers to the stage one by one, with the exception of “Joey,” the film’s star. That’s because there are so many “Joeys,” he explained, seven would be jealous. -
When Elaine Kaufman died last December 3, she left a city of broken hearts. For months, "Elaine’s" lingered on, a nostalgic haven for “regulars,” but many still had to admit, Elaine’s was simply not the same without Elaine. When the doors closed, finally, that simply left a stratum of the entertainment world, eh, homeless. That night, Showbiz411's Roger Friedman filmed a final night with anecdotes galore about the legendary upper East Side joint, providing, along with archival interview footage of Elaine herself, enough material to keep a memorial for her, masterfully planned by Friedman and Fred Rappaport, lively for more than its 3 ½ hour extravaganza of clips and entertainment. -
It is hard to feel sorry for Charlize Theron. The Academy Award winning actress, for the role of Aileen Wuomos in Monster when she famously puffed up and made up to emphasize the serial killer’s tough look, is in fact very pretty, like the most popular girl in your high school. The gorgeous blond of your fantasy who has everything, is exactly the role she plays as Mavis Gary, a writer of young adult fiction loosely based on her memories of teen glory in Mercury, Minnesota in Jason Reitman’s Young Adult, script by Diablo Cody. And yet, her behavior trying to snatch back her happily married boyfriend is so unspeakable, you find her a pitiable, abject, lonely, delusional masochist and alcoholic who self-mutilates pulling out her hair. Ech! -
You could say that the Gotham Awards has edge, and heart, marking the official start of the awards season. Cavernous Cipriani’s on Wall Street was the scene of great film industry camaraderie on Monday night. An “Oscars” night for indie films, with categories like “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” the evening shines a light on many films that will make the trip to Los Angeles for the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, as say, The King’s Speech, did last year.This year, George Clooney may not be an indie leading man; that fact was not missed in this crowd. Much loved, he was the butt of at least one joke. In The Descendants, Alexander Payne’s latest film, he leads a stunning cast. The film is high on critics’ Best Picture lists. In the Gotham’s category of Best Ensemble Performance, Mike Mills’ excellent Beginners beat them out. Did you see it? Exactly. Christopher Plummer, picking up the prize, noted co-star Ewan MacGregor was off working in Africa. “I hate him,” he laughed.
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Deauville, 1930’s. The fine Private Lives revival directed by Richard Eyre at the Music Box Theater opens on a posh hotel terrace. The view must be amazing, you imagine as two couples on honeymoon in adjoining suites gaze over the audience to a yacht in the harbor. On the right, Elyot answers one jealous question after another about his first wife Amanda. His pretty blond new wife may sense Amanda’s shadowy presence. On the left, another newly wed man echoes the insecurities to his wife wrapped audaciously in a towel. Of course, the audience gets the conceit from the start; these in fact are one another’s exes, in the flesh! Yet the beauty of Private Lives is Noel Coward’s language, the hilarious barbs and banter, foreplay to out and out brawl. You cannot resist the unexpected laugh when Elyot, says, “Don’t quibble, Sybil.” -
In Martin Scorsese’s homage to cinema history, Hugo, there’s a delicious moment, one of many in this stunning 3D epic, when two children, Hugo and Isabelle attend a black & white silent Harold Lloyd movie and the actor dangles from the hands of a giant clock. Of course this image prefigures a scene when Hugo (Asa Butterfield, the accomplished star of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) who works the clocks at Paris’ Gare Montparnasse ends up in a similar posture hanging on a snowy ledge, hiding from the station’s inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). But the delight of this old movie for the children, the happiness in their faces, is truly what Scorsese is going for and achieves so masterfully in Hugo, arriving in time for the holidays and an assured “Best Picture” contender this season. “Hugo is a family movie,” introduced Scorsese at Monday night’s Ziegfeld premiere, and it took a beat to realize precisely what kind of family he had in mind. -
Sheila Nevins knows how to pick them. At HBO2 where documentaries are her domain, so to speak, she reigns supreme. But “don’t call me lucky,” she cautioned members of New York Women in Film and Television at a special breakfast, lest anyone might envy her this dream job. To get to this place is a lot of work. Part of that work is selecting films for HBO2 to produce as she did with the Paradise Lost trilogy, sending a film team to West Memphis to see what they can find out about a sensational murder story. And sometimes it is just seeing a film she wished she had made as in the case of The Sound of Mumbai to air on HBO on November 23. -
“All of David’s movies are about the body,” said producer Jeremy Thomas, when Cronenberg’s new film A Dangerous Method screened at this year’s New York Film Festival, “This time the body part is the brain.” Given that the brain can be the sexiest organ, you can think of A Dangerous Method, based on a stage play by the screenwriter Christopher Hampton as a love triangle with a twist: the players are the historic Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), and their patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who became a writer and psychoanalyst in her own right. “They were incredible free thinkers,” Thomas went on. “David could have made this material salacious but he handled it with delicacy.” -
It was an unexpected Ezra Miller film festival: two movies premiering back to back this week, co-starring this gifted 19 year-old in roles that might give new parents pause. He's got this character nailed, the disaffected, edgy son with degrees of menace. Naturally the films in question, Sam Levinson's Another Happy Day and Lynne Ramsey's We Need to Talk About Kevin are all about the formidable moms, played by Ellen Barkin and Tilda Swinton. -
Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin has perhaps one of the most rarefied visions of anyone working in film: operatic, on a tilt, jawdropping. This weekend, his talent for bringing together elements, yes, Icelandic music from the Middle Ages to a unique historic moment in Canadian history, comes to the Walter Reade Theater for a program commissioned for this year's PERFORMA 11, the new visual art performance biennial. I had the opportunity to speak to Maddin about his TALES OF THE GIMLI HOSPITAL: REFRAMED, a dreamlike re-imagining of his first film from 1988, with a new score by Icelandic musicians including Aono Jikken Ensemble and former members of mum. -
Who doesn't love a wedding? What little girl doesn't adore the Barbie decked in tiered white tulle? Or fetishize her. Who ever thought such beloved and at times tacky traditions would be so political? And also terrifying? Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays at the Minetta Lane Theater, features eight playlets by the playwrights Mo Gaffney, Jordan Harrison, Moises Kaufman, Neil LaBute, Wendy MacLeod, Jose Rivera, Paul Rudnick, and Doug Wright. If you cry at weddings, straight or gay, you can consider these cathartic canapés.
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