Best Original Screenplay, Barbara Benedek/Lawrence Kasdan - Nominated
Some time before eighth grade -- we were still living in the duplex, so I know it wasn't later -- The Big Chill came on AMC. Who can forget "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" playing while a sleeve was pulled over the stitches of a slashed wrist? My father identified it as a personal favorite, but was hesitant to have me watch it. I was too young, not for the sex and drugs, but for the experience of loss, regret, reunion. As my cousin Kathy would say, I had no patina. And after about ten minutes...I realized he was right.
The film takes place over one weekend. Alex (wrists and ankle played by Kevin Costner) has committed suicide, and his seven college friends reunite to mourn him, joined by his much-younger girlfriend. They look back on the past, pick it apart; they look on their present, some favorably, most with disappointment. These were college radicals, kids who protested and demonstrated and believed they were going to change things for the greater good. Only Harold, who owns the house they're staying in, seems content with his life, but his music selection is exclusively hits from the late 60s-early 70s. They're all stuck on the past, in one way or another.
I eventually watched it in college, and have revisited it once or twice in the years since. Each time I do, I pick up on something else. My feelings change, my perception shifts, and I think, "Oh, I must not have really understood it last time." Like my realization that the title was not, in fact, referring to Alex's death, but to the steady cool that comes when you're no longer young and idealistic. But I see it -- I have friends that I've known for years, friends who seem to be coasting, friends who are disappointed with where they are, friends who are doing well but want more, friends who think they were their best selves ten years ago. You're never too young for disillusionment.
Now, after all that, here's what I love about The Big Chill: it offers that introspection, but it's not so damn glum about it! Ultimately, it's about bonds and friendship, and when you get a close knit group of people together, whether it's the family God gave you or the one you formed yourself, shit gets fun. They know each other, they became themselves around each other -- they dance and get stoned and push each other's buttons and argue and make up and, yes, fuck. As Harold says, "How much sex, fun, and friendship can one man take?" It's a timeless story.
Which is why it's perfect for a Casting Coup!
Of course, the difficult thing about casting The Big Chill with today's actors is the idea of putting that story in a modern context. Timeless though the experience may be, it is a movie that's tied to the experiences of the 60s and 70s. Frankly, the 90s and 00s were neither idealistic nor radical in the same way. But, you know...it's fun. So we're doing it.
I have a long relationship with My Fair Lady. I first saw it the summer before middle school, as research. There was a theatre day-camp I used to attend, and that year the show was the Lerner-Loewe classic. My grandparents insisted on renting the movie and letting me see the show for myself...and I was appalled. Who in the world could possibly like this film? The leading lady was shrill, the comic relief was odious, and the "hero" of the film was a snotty, mean-spirited jerk. And it was, like, three hours! Oh, what a miserable summer this was going to be.
I was already signed up for the camp, so I thought it best to grin and bear it. After all, I loved performing, and all my friends were at camp, and who knows? Now that I was older, more experienced, and in with the teachers, I could get the role I wanted most: Colonel Pickering, the only honorable member of the entire cast. I threw myself into the dialect lessons, mastering the bearing and speech of an upper-class English gentleman. My father got me to memorize the Pickering monologue I was using as an audition (they had different monologues for each character; you chose whichever role you'd audition for). I even refused to revisit the film so that my audition was Walter Hollmann's Pickering, not Wilfrid Hyde-White's.
My mother and I would pray every morning before camp. Wanting Pickering but determined not to be too demanding, I asked God to give me a good part...as long as it wasn't Higgins. After hearing my prayer a third or fourth day in a row, Mom looked up and said, "You know, maybe you shouldn't limit God's options." Ok, fine. So my final prayer before the last day of auditions was to just do well, and get a great part.
The day came when they announced the cast. They would gather the entire camp, aged 6 - 13, to hear it, making it the very last event on the last day of the first week. There were, like, 600 of us or something. Maybe not that much. Everything seems so much larger in memory. So let's say 1,000 people were gathered, as they went through the cast -- exactly as I'm doing it now, making their way down until only the trio were left. And the role of Colonel Pickering goes to -- Michael K.!
Well, my prayers went unanswered. I was proud for Mikey, a born showman who would later star in a Florida production of A Stoop on Orchard Street some years after its off-Broadway run. Oy, but I wanted that role so. I was proud, too, of Krystal, who was just announced for the role of Eliza. She was a quiet newcomer, a wallflower -- until she went up for music auditions and belted out "I Could Have Danced All Night" with a masterful soprano that would make Kiri Te Kanawa retire in defeat. Lord, even the music director looked up from the keyboard with bug-eyes. Here's to them. My friends. They deserve it.
"And as Henry Higgins -- Walter Hollmann."
See what happens when you adjust your prayers?
So in the two weeks leading up to the show itself, I learned my script, my songs (this abridged version cut out "I'm an Ordinary Man" and "Hymn to Him"), and the Embassy Waltz. And, of course, when I watched the film again after the show (I refused to let my Higgins become Rex Harrison)....I fell in love. Maybe I was too tired before? Maybe I just didn't get it, and doing the show allowed me to further understand the story. I'm sure playing Higgins helped. Anyway, it's now one of my all-time favorite films, and Higgins one of my favorite characters. Just last week I snapped at a venomous co-worker, "Claws in, you cat!" And we all remember how much I support Harrison's Oscar win.
Harrison's was just one of eight Oscar wins. Andre Previn's arrangement of Frederick Loewe's music won Best Adapted Score over such notable nominees as Mary Poppins and A Hard Day's Night. Cecil Beaton won for Costume Design - Color (yay!) and Art Direction - Color, leaving Becket, Mary Poppins and What a Way to Go! in the cold...except for their other Oscars. Well, not What a Way to Go!, but a fun movie that one is! And, of course, it won Cinematography (Harry Stradling), Director (George Cukor) and Best Picture of the Year. And Sound (George Groves).
My Fair Lady was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress - Gladys Cooper (lost to Lila Kedrova), Best Supporting Actor - Stanley Holloway (lost to Peter Ustinov), Best Adapted Screenplay (lost to Becket) and Best Editing (lost to Mary Poppins).
A couple years ago, it was announced that Emma Thompson was working on a screenplay for a remake of My Fair Lady. At the time, Keira Knightley was attached, and it seemed Daniel Day-Lewis may play Higgins. In this post-Nine world, DDL is out, Carey Mulligan is now attached instead of Keira, and there's still been no word. I did some speculation about contenders for the roles, but only now can I offer a concrete Casting Coup. And there are many changed. All good, I think.
But surely, if one is to remake My Fair Lady, one could do a lot worse than this:
MRS. PEARCE
Who is She: Higgins' loyal housekeeper. Practical and unfazed by his nuttery.
Originally played by: BAFTA Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Stevie)
Mona Washbourne (Night Must Fall, The Collector)
My Choice: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (My Week with Marilyn), BAFTA Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Wilde)
Zoe Wanamaker (Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, "Poirot: Cards on the Table")
FREDDY EYNSFORD-HILL
Who is He: A handsome member of the upper class who falls in love with Eliza after her gaffe at Ascot.
Originally played by:
Jeremy Brett (War and Peace, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes")
My Choice:
Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, The Woman in Black)
With paler-than-ivory good looks and proven skills at singing (and dancing!), the ex-Potter could neatly fill the role of the aristocratic love interest. Lord knows he has time now.
MRS. HIGGINS
Who is She: Higgins' mother, who thinks her son can get tiresome. She offers Eliza a safe haven after she leaves Higgins.
Originally played by: Academy Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (Now, Voyager, The Song of Bernadette, My Fair Lady)
Gladys Cooper (Rebecca, The Happiest Millionaire)
My Choice: Academy Award Winner for Best Actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) and Best Supporting Actress (California Suite), BAFTA Award Winner for Best Actress (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Private Function, A Room with a View, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne) and Best Supporting Actress (Tea with Mussolini), Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress - Musical/Comedy (California Suite) and Best Supporting Actress (A Room with a View), SAG Award Winner for Best Ensemble (Gosford Park)
Maggie Smith (The Pumpkin Eater, "Downton Abbey")
It was a toss-up between her and Dench for this role, but Smith, I think, is much better at making an insult go down warm. With her, it may tweak you, but it's not quite cruel -- just stating the facts. "You might stick to two subjects: the weather and your health." Smith would actually make it sound like advice, but with so straight a face you know what a bitch-slap you received.
ALFRED DOOLITTLE
Who is He: Eliza's father, supposedly a chimney-sweep. In practice, he's a drunk and a layabout, but he's at least aware of it. Higgins calls him "the most original moralist in England".
Originally played by: Academy Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (My Fair Lady)
Stanley Holloway (The Lavender Hill Mob, Ten Little Indians)
My Choice: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Zulu), Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actor (Hannah and Her Sisters, The Cider House Rules)
Michael Caine (The Dark Knight, Is Anybody There?)
The rare actor to maintain his cockney accent while still getting the plum roles and a great career. Not the worst singer, and Alfred Doolittle is a role that only demands so much. He'd really be great fun.
COLONEL PICKERING
Who is He: A dialectician, author of Spoken Sanskrit. Pays for Eliza's education in a bet with Higgins to pass her off as a lady at the Embassy Ball. A real father figure.
Originally played by: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (My Fair Lady)
Wilfrid Hyde-White (Ten Little Indians, Xanadu)
My Choice:
Ciaran Hinds (The Debt, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
He deserves it.
ELIZA DOOLITTLE
Who is She: A flower girl who wants lessons from Higgins so that she can be an assistant in a proper florist's. Aha, but the bet between Higgins and Pickering makes her the modern Galatea to their Pygmalion, as she learns to drop her accent (bit rarely her manner) to pass as a Lady.
Originally played by: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Actress (My Fair Lady), Academy Award/Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress [Drama] (Roman Holiday), BAFTA Award Winner for Best British Actress (Roman Holiday, The Nun's Story, Charade)
Audrey Hepburn (Love in the Afternoon, Breakfast at Tiffany's)
My Choice: BAFTA Award/Golden Globe Nominee for Best Supporting Actress (The Devil Wears Prada), Golden Globe Nominee for Best Actress - Drama (The Young Victoria)
Emily Blunt (The Muppets, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
Oh, man, this kind of just came to me. True, I don't know if she can do a Cockney accent, but I've always assumed she could since her American accent is so impeccable. She's good as accents, is what I'm saying. She sings, but is it the same sort of singing required for Eliza? I don't care about that right now. That's probably a bad thing, but there you are.
HENRY HIGGINS
Who is He: An expert of dialects, a confirmed old bachelor and likely to remain so. Rarely does he consider the feelings of others, unless they become inconvenient to him. Little does he know how fond he is becoming of his pupil...
Originally played by: Hollmann Award Winner for Best Actor, Academy Award/Golden Globe Winner for Best Actor - Musical/Comedy, BAFTA Awards Nominee for Best British Actor (My Fair Lady)
Red Harrison (Anna and the King of Siam, The Honey Pot)
My Choice: Hollmann Award Nominee for Best Actor (A Single Man, The King's Speech) and Best Supporting Actor (Easy Virtue), Academy Award/Golden Globe/SAG Award Winner for Best Actor [Drama] (The King's Speech), BAFTA Award Winner for Best Actor (A Single Man, The King's Speech), SAG Award Winner for Best Ensemble (Shakespeare in Love, The King's Speech)
Colin Firth (Fever Pitch, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
Yes, of course, another obvious choice, but run through Higgins' lines in Firth's voice. Heaven, isn't it? And he could be as dismissive as Harrison, but with more warmth. We'd get why Eliza stays.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Best Actor: Colin Firth
Best Actress: Emily Blunt
Best Supporting Actor: Ciaran Hinds, Michael Caine, Daniel Radcliffe
Best Supporting Actress: Maggie Smith, Zoe Wanamaker
This movie does not show up at all in my 25 Most Anticipated of 2010. I made that list before they put out this trailer, this amazing trailer, this beautiful and mesmerizing trailer. Seriously, I have not been this moved and transfixed by a mere trailer since The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That's actually pretty appropriate, seeing this movie also appears to be taking one idea from a short story and using it to tell an against-all-odds love story between a well-dressed blond and a dancer.
Pic stars Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, Terence Stamp, John Slattery, Daniel Dae Kim and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Written and directed by George Nolfi (Ocean's Twelve, The Bourne Ultimatum).
So, I've not been letting the grass grow beneath my feet. I've actually been to the movies!
CRAZY HEART
Well, Jeff Bridges is great. It's a natural, lived-in performance that understands the man, with every gesture as natural as breathing. The music is fantastic, a marvelous soundtrack, and "The Weary Kind" deserves to win over the other nominees. But I'm still coming to terms with that ending, so different from the novel's, yet just as sincere. The novel's seemed to have a bitter ending for the sake of bitterness; the movie has an uplifting one just because, too. Can't we have the bittersweet one that this story seems to call for? It's choppy and does not completely deliver.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is fine, playing a vulnerable young woman who always seems to be attracted to the wrong guy. She does not want to love Bridges, but she falls for him, and takes the risk. Sometimes, though, she looks like she wishes she could do more. It doesn't help that the editing, or maybe the screenplay itself, seems to cut most developments, including what attracts her to Bad Blake.
SPOILERS And I don't buy that final moment, either. It could end with him walking off as Colin Farrell sings "The Weary Kind". For Gyllenhaal to approach him after telling him to leave her alone, revealing that she's married, and everything's OK now...it just doesn't ring true for the narrative. It's like everyone thought it was just too depressing that they couldn't be together, so they at least needed a friendly interview. And then she offers to let him see her son, who he lost in the middle of fucking Houston?!? NO. Bad mom. END SPOILERS
It's an all right movie, with plenty of moments that work because of what Jeff Bridges does. I can't find room for him on my ballot, to be honest.
THE WOLF MAN
After the debacle that was my first attempt to see it, my roommate and I finally caught the movie we'd been following since pre-production. And so, here I am, almost willing to apologize to AMC, because clearly they were trying to spare me. The werewolf sequences are cool. There's plenty of mayhem to go around. But it does nothing to serve the story. It just gathers a bunch of people together in order to off them in the grisliest manner possible. Which I'm not completely against, but it does get tedious after the fourteenth kill. Not only that, they do not work with the non-werewolf scenes.
To be fair, the non-werewolf scenes don't work at all. It's hard to believe this was Benicio del Toro's pet project, for he seems to have shown up with a gun to his head. He looks miserable, poor soul, and it's hard to detect whether he's trying for realism or camp since his line readings don't go together. And he just looks ill, like he's about to throw up. We are told he is a great Shakespearean actor in the movie, but there's no point to that detail, other than to allow Anthony Hopkins to make a few theatre jokes. The character of Lawrence Talbot is dull and lifeless, and Del Toro, with his American accent frequently losing the war with his Hispanic one, is probably the worst part of the movie. At least Hopkins and Hugo Weaving are having fun with the story, though it must be said that Hopkins appears to have too much of it. It's Hopkins hamming it up, not Sir John. Emily Blunt tries to instill some life into her stock caricature, but to no avail. Only Weaving gives a performance that perfectly balances the disparate tones of the film.
And man, do those tones work against each other. Joe Johnston even admitted that he just wanted to make a fun creature feature, while the studio wanted a more serious take on the story. And, hey, that's how the script is written. Johnston's enthusiasm for one aspect of the story causes the other, larger one to suffer. Only the asylum sequence works 100%, for like Weaving, it's the one section that knows just how serious to be and how much fun to have. But hey, at least the VFX are fine and the makeup and sound design are incredible. At least I can say that.
I seem to be very fortunate this week, in that I am finding one spectacular film after another. Coco Before Chanel is not flashy. It is not a "highlights reel" like other biopics. The title says it all, following Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in the years prior to her making a name for herself in the fashion world. She sings, she sews, she dismisses the idea of love, she gains two lovers, c'est la vie.
Audrey Tautou's lead performance is deeply magnetic; you understand her strength, and you cannot help but be drawn to her. Benoit Poelvoorde plays her wealthy lover Etienne, a boorish man with old-fashioned ideas who both loves Coco and does not understand her. Alessandro Nivola is a sexy "Boy" Capel, Coco's British lover. Emmanuelle Devos is delightful and frustrating as an actress who still clings to the corsets and flowery chapeaux of the era, yet finds herself intrigued by Coco's more comfortable designs. The costumes are, as expected, exquisite. Alexandre Desplat's score is the perfect capper to an unbelievably great year for the composer.
Stripped of the biopic conventions, Coco Before Chanel becomes a period romance about a poor orphan girl and the rich men who love her. And that's not to suggest that co-writer/director Anne Fontaine and co-writer Camille Fontaine (are they related?) over-romanticized or insignificantized Coco's story. If, like me, you are a fan of Howards End or A Room with a View, than Coco Before Chanel should sit quite nicely with you.
THE YOUNG VICTORIA
The Young Victoria is by no means perfect. It's fifteen minutes short of being two hours, and you can feel it. The conflict involving the effect her friendship with Lord Melbourne is never explored deeply enough for the audience to get a real sense of it. The politics of the era are explained constantly and vaguely, so that you kind of understand the issues without really knowing what's going on. It ends too quickly, and there's a scene near the end in which Victoria flies into a justifiable rage at Albert, then goes off into a strange ego trip that undercuts the good point she was making. So Albert never has to apologize, but Victoria does. It's very strange.
That said, the film boasts fine performances from all its actors. Emily Blunt is a surprisingly warm Victoria, headstrong yet without confidence in her abilities. Rupert Friend continues to prove himself the greatest find of the season -- his Albert is adorable, smitten with the Queen, seeing her as his equal, comfortable with his role of house-husband. The chemistry between them had me completely. The gazebo scene, the proposal scene, the final scene: wonderful. When the film focuses on the two of them, we get one of the best movies of the year. Though Paul Bettany and Miranda Richardson are always wonderful to watch, and I was thrilled to see Mark Strong and Rachael Stirling yet again. Also, the costumes are beautiful, and Jean-Marc Vallee has a strange yet effective eye behind the camera.
I had some reservations about the film, sure. It's great, it just needs some room to breathe. The end is too rushed; a little over two hours would have been a suitable running time. It might have even given us more Victoria and Albert, and that is always a delight.
BROKEN EMBRACES
Penelope Cruz is beautiful and typically incredible. The cinematography, costumes and production design are beautiful. But good Lord this movie is long. It drags on and on and on. The movie cuts between 1994 and 2008, as a blind writer/director recalls his affair with Penelope Cruz. Well fuck 2008. The movie is way more interesting in 1994, and the 2008 scenes add little to the story...besides de-mystifying some of the more intriguing elements of the piece. There's a huge chunk of magnificence, but the last half-hour just kills it for me. Ultimately: a disappointment.
