Julia Child’s life is partially depicted in the new foodie film Julie & Julia, and while it’s as much fun to see Meryl Streep portray the famous chef as it was to watch Dan Aykroyd and Bill Cosby do her back in the day, we can’t help but wish the real Child had lived long enough to star in the film herself. We also wish the whole movie was based on her autobiography, My Life in France, rather than share-adapted from both that book and Julie Powell’s blog-turned-memoir Julie & Julia.
There’s a reason Child was a hugely popular TV personality and there’s a reason why Powell was an Internet writer. Just as you’d rather only watch Sean Penn as Gene Shalit in a movie and not bother with Michael Pitt’s portrayal of lowly film blogger Christopher Campbell, you could probably do without the Amy Adams as Powell stuff in Julie & Julia.
Outside of playing herself as a foodie heroine in a chick flick, what other kinds of movies could Child have acted in? Given her OSS background, we would have loved to see her fill in for Judi Dench in the Bond films as M. Alas, that will never happen, but if our gastronomical dreams come true, perhaps we might see one of the following TV personalities in his or her own blockbuster film someday: …Read more
Just as Nikki Finke “TOLDJA” almost four months ago, Oscar-nominee Natalie Portman has been tapped for Marvel’s Thor, in which she’ll play love interest to the Norse god-turned-superhero. No stranger to comic book adaptations nor to reworkings of Scandinavian properties, the actress will play “Jane Foster,” a nurse who becomes Thor’s love interest when the “powerful but arrogant warrior” is banished to Earth by his fellow Asgardians. So far, Portman remains the sole household name cast in the movie, which stars Chris Hemsworth as the title hero, Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki and Brian Blessed as Thor’s father, Odin. Fellow Oscar-nominee Kenneth Branagh is directing.
The former child actress follows in the tradition of well-known but questionably talented starlets playing uninteresting love interests in comic book adaptations: Kim Basinger in Batman; Katie Holmes in Batman Begins; Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight; Kirsten Dunst in the Spider-Manmovies; and Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man. To me, Portman seems like a cross between the last two actresses. She’s done the “manic pixie dream girl” thing like Dunst, but she’s a little more high class, a la Paltrow. Marvel claims they’re updating the Foster character for the film, which is good considering few comic enthusiasts even know or care much about her, but it still seems likely Portman may actually have less to do in this movie than she did in The Darjeeling Limited(not including the Hotel Chevalierprologue).
Personally, I think Branagh should have hired Maia Brewtonfor the role, especially now that people are re-watching Parker Lewis Can’t Lose on DVD. Sure, she hasn’t been around in awhile, and it would be stunt casting, but I always prefer stunt casting to bad casting.
Check out some other film blog responses to the casting after the jump:
his review was originally published in February. Two Lovers is out on DVD this week.
Rarely has movie love been handled with both the dreamy indulgence and the cynicism that James Grey pulls off inTwo Lovers. It’s a pity that the film, which premiered nine months ago at Cannes and is now rolling out on VOD and in theaters via Magnolia, has been pegged in time as the allegedly final film of star Joaquin Phoenix. In this meditation on class passing and infinite adolescence, set mainly in Brighton Beach with a few giddy sojourns to Manhattan, Grey creates a mood pocket, as it were, that’s distinctly out of time. Working off a series of contrasts that’s very true to its New York setting, Two Lovers is implicitly concerned with the way romantic relationships give us an opportunity to slide back and forth across class lines; if that motion temporarily offers the potential for an erasal of personal history, our ultimate stations in life can’t be escaped.
James Gray’s Two Lovers, loosely based on a Dostoyevsky short story, offers up the most penetrating examination of male immaturity American cinema has seen since Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love.
Beginning with a suicide attempt by Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), it depicts the thirtysomething Brooklynite’s life with his parents. After a nasty break-up, he’s retreated back to the comfort of their home. They push him towards Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the daughter of a business associate, but he’s more attracted to neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow). However, Michelle is prone to self-destructive behavior like passing out in nightclub bathrooms and carrying on an affair with a married man. Gray explores one of his favorite themes: family life as a seductive trap. Unlike his first three films, Two Lovers is not a genre exercise, but it’s no less dark or moody because none of its characters packs a gun or works for the Mafia.
Spout talked to Gray in New York earlier this week, where he proved to have plenty to say about Dostoyevsky, Brighton Beach and why his films are more popular in France than the U.S.
Rarely has movie love been handled with both the dreamy indulgence and the cynicism that James Grey pulls off inTwo Lovers. It’s a pity that the film, which premiered nine months ago at Cannes and is now rolling out on VOD and in theaters via Magnolia, has been pegged in time as the allegedly final film of star Joaquin Phoenix. In this meditation on class passing and infinite adolescence, set mainly in Brighton Beach with a few giddy sojourns to Manhattan, Grey creates a mood pocket, as it were, that’s distinctly out of time. Working off a series of contrasts that’s very true to its New York setting, Two Lovers is implicitly concerned with the way romantic relationships give us an opportunity to slide back and forth across class lines; if that motion temporarily offers the potential for an erasal of personal history, our ultimate stations in life can’t be escaped.
The song “I Thought I Lost You,” from the soundtrack to Disney’s animated Bolt, is intended as an innocent duet between a young girl and her pet dog, and lyrically there’s not one hint that it’s anything more, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking there’s something terribly creepy about the above music video. Maybe it’s that villainous goatee that John Travolta is sporting. Or maybe it’s just weird to think of the purpose of the song and then imagine Travolta being the beloved pet of Miley Cyrus. The only thing worse, perhaps, would be if Billy Ray Cyrus were the voice of the film’s title character.
And that reminds me of the also relatively creepy duet from Duets, in which a father and daughter (played by Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow) perform Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” at karaoke. Now, that song is certainly more sexual than the Bolt track. But either way, it’s just a song, right? What kid hasn’t innocently sung a love song duet with his mom or her dad? Or performed a karaoke rendition of “Afternoon Delight” with his or her aunt or uncle?
For a great episode of Arrested Developmentthat deals with the subject of creepy dueting, check out another clip after the jump. And for a potentially more appropriate, cartoon rendition of “I Thought I Lost You,” go see Bolt when it opens on November 21.
With Halloween less than a month away, it’s time to start thinking about what to go as. That is, if you haven’t already. A good costume-loving cinephile typically knows well in advance what he or she will dress up as for Halloween (and Comic-Con, too). But if you’re one to wait until the last minute, and also one who likes to be a lot more contemporary than, say, dressing up as a Ghostbuster or Edward Scissorhands, I’ve got some suggestions for you for costumes based on recent films.
I believe this Hollywood Reporter story on the struggles faced by several American Cannes premieres to find a stateside distributor is the first notice that 2929 Entertainment has decided to give James Gray’s Two Lovers to Magnolia to distribute.
The film famously drew mixed reactions in Cannes; I gave it a thumbs up with some reservations, whilst the very idea of waiting in line for it drove Lisa Schwarzbaum to expletives. Lovers has a lower profile than What Just Happened?, another film which 2929 recently decided to let their sister company distribute when buyers didn’t materialize. Both bleak and stylized, the romantic melodrama might even be a tougher sell to audiences than a satire about old men who work in the film industry. We’ll see––Magnolia’s planning a limited release in early 2009.
I don’t entirely buy James Grey’s Two Lovers, and typing this having just walked out of the far superior Un Conte De Noel, I feel strange even praising it. I freely admit that even as certain elements are effectively thrilling in their depiction of tortured passion, it’s all put to the service of a narrative that is occasionally offensive in its total lack of surprise. But, but, but: after dozing on and off for the film’s first twenty or thirty minutes, I awoke to see Joaquin Phoenix breakdancing his way into the arms of Gwyneth Paltrow, and for whatever reason, from that point on I was sort of into it. About an hour later I became totally sucked in, when that moment of dance floor silliness met its dissonant counterpoint with a second, far more desperate scene of Phoenix dancing his way into Paltrow’s arms. It’ll be too little too late for some, but in its final third, Two Lovers becomes an extremely strong parable about the madness of romantic love, and maybe even its impossibility.
That scene…it looks like a classic romantic high, until you realize that there’s almost no color on the screen beyond the white-gold wisps of Paltrow’s windblown hair dusting the frame. It hits you that the characters think that what they’re doing is going to save them both when in fact (and maybe this is where the generic story arc becomes a bonus), we know it’s only going to make everything worse. It’s bleak. It’s beautiful.
The ultimate male power one-man-show, Iron Man is less successful as political allegory than as sexual fantasia. Its most exhilarating moments are essentially pornographic: gadget porn, war porn, rehab porn (you don’t have to see the thing to know that the spiritual rehabilitation for the protagonist is supported subtextually by the actual rehabilitation of the actor who plays him), and porn porn. Each incarnation of Tony Stark’s super suit is sexier than the last, with the final model’s lovingly CGIed streamlined curves simultaneously suggesting hardness and touchability. Better still are the countless close-ups of Robert Downey Jr inside this metal womb, his face fixed in concentrated ecstasy as his hands ejaculate fire. Oh, whoops–spoiler alert.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Just as Nikki Finke “TOLDJA” almost four months ago, Oscar-nominee Natalie Portman has been tapped for Marvel’s Thor, in which she’ll play love interest to the Norse god-turned-superhero. No stranger to comic book adaptations nor to reworkings of Scandinavian properties, the actress will play “Jane Foster,” a nurse who becomes Thor’s love interest when the “powerful but arrogant warrior” is banished to Earth by his fellow Asgardians. So far, Portman remains the sole household name cast in the movie, which stars Chris Hemsworth as the title hero, Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki and Brian Blessed as Thor’s father, Odin. Fellow Oscar-nominee Kenneth Branagh is directing.
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