Sundance Day 8: Parker Posey, Cyrus and Nowhere Boy

In which all celluloid begins to bleed together, sickness wins out, and Nathaniel loses his mind (from now on, shorter festival trips!). But, just when all hope for sanity is lost as Sundance winds down, Nathaniel dances with Parker Posey at a party! Nathaniel is elated. And no, I don't know why Nathaniel is speaking in the third person either.

Awesome Parker. As friendly as she is talented.
And fun to dance with, too. She was on the competition jury

Cyrus
The Duplass brothers (Mark and Jay), have been steadily rising stars in the indie scene with contributions to films like Humpday, Baghead and The Puffy Chair among many others. Their latest, which they wrote and directed, looks like a breakthrough... at least where mainstream attention is concerned. This is why people cast "name" actors. It wins attention and quite often name actors are names for a reason: talent. There's not a dud performance in the film. John C Reilly plays a sad sack divorcee, Catherine Keener is his ex-wife who worries about him, and Marisa Tomei is the angel he falls for. Because this is a movie, she falls right back. It's all quite funny and just off kilter enough to be surprising. All this despite being the umpteenth billion flick to reinforce that venerable straight male fantasy: yes, any type of guy no matter his appearance, serotonin levels, aspirations, past history or employment status, can and will win incredibly hot chicks. One wonders where homely girls are supposed to go for love?

A few notes on the performances: Catherine Keener is playing warm Catherine Keener [there's two primary modes: smart-bitchy and smart-warm. Both are wonderful... though the most exciting are the performances that veer off into complicating Keenerisms like in Capote and Please Give]; Marisa Tomei continues to be one of the most enduring and endearing actresses of her generation. She's wonderful here as a fun-loving woman who loves too fiercely and impulsively not be blinded by it; Jonah Hill plays her needy manipulative son (he's very funny) and John C Reilly her needy and only slightly manipulative boyfriend. The film is smart enough to see the parallel even if it finds that more amusing than worrisome. B/B+

Finally, I ask you this: Parker Posey was the queen of '90s indies and Catherine Keener the queen of '00s indies. When exactly is Keener going to be dethroned? It seems like she's still pretty comfy on that throne. Or am I forgetting someone...

Nowhere Boy
Director Sam Taylor Wood, who previously made the great short Love You More (see previous post) and her star Aaron Johnson (soon to be seen in Kick-Ass), pictured right, were much talked about at Sundance. Both of their stars are rising (this is her first feature but she's already a famous artist, this is his first high profile role with a probable blockbuster to follow) and they're also engaged and pregnant... not just with possibility. She's 42 and he's 19 which helps with the 'much talked about' bit.

Nowhere Boy, which has already been up for film prizes in Britain, will make it to the States in 2010 hopefully and it's well worth seeing. It's a biopic on John Lennon. The Young John Lennon as it were. Like Capote, it gains a lot of impact by tightly focusing on one specific time period and arc in its subject's life. Taylor Wood definitely has a gift with visuals and the film is always pleasing to look at. Johnson holds his own in the central role as the cocky but emotionally confused Lennon but the true stars of the picture are Kristin Scott Thomas as "Mimi" (interviewed here a year ago) and Anne-Marie Duff (James McAvoy's wife) as "Julia" who play estranged sisters -- Lennon's aunt and mother respectively -- and the most formative women in the musician's life. Pre Yoko that is. Both actresses are wonderful, refusing any standard biopic reduction into "mother figure" and becoming as compelling and three-dimensional as John Lennon himself, without the aid of the audience's pre-identification or projection. The Beatle's teenage anger at his mother figures gets a little wearying before the movie is over (grow up already!) and it ends rather abruptly but, all in all, it's a fine first film. I can't wait to see what Taylor Wood does next.


Cyrus: B/B+ (leaning B+)
Nowhere Boy: B/B+ (leaning B+)
Dancing with Parker Posey: A/A+ (leaning A+)

Which celebrity would you most like to dance with? Do tell in the comments.

Previously
Day 1: Travel Nightmare
Day 2: Late Arrival for Asian Day: Last Train Home, Vegetarian
Day 3: Marathon Day: Waiting for Superman, Splice, Bran Nue Dae, Boy, Please Give
Day 4: I Am Love, Buried
Day 5,6: Holy Rollers, The Runaways, Mother and Child, Catfish
Day 7: Gay Day: The Kids Are All Right and Contracorriente

next: a few more movies and my personal awards for the fest.

Amanda and friends @ the Beach

Amanda Seyfried (22, so pretty ~ I've entered a pretty trance ~ p r e t t y p r e t t y) ... and some other girls* walk along the beach for Vanity Fair


* Oh, don't take offense "other girls". It's just that I only have eyes for Amanda. And Anne and Kirsten and Lauren and Amy and Evan and Scarlett and... Amanda's photographic BFFs (they probably just met) would be Emma Roberts (17, Julia's niece and Nancy Drew), Blake Lively (20, of Gossip Girls) and scary Kristen Stewart (18, of Panic Room, Into the Wild, Jumper). What? She scares me. She just exudes need onscreen... whether it's the need to jump Emile Hirsch's bones or just the vague need for an undefinable something. I feel as if she might reach out of the screen and just >cling<>some gaping need' desperation kinda freaked me out in Jumper (previous post) and I think she was onscreen for about 16 seconds all told. s-c-a-r-y.

I get sick of hearing about Gossip Girls but I like Blake a little more upon hearing that her three favorite movies are Wizard of Oz, Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet. The girls are posing for Vanity Fair's annual Teen Hollywood issue. Which I had kind of forgotten about and which is vaguely distracting from my Vanity Fair retrospectives of plain ole' "Vanity Fair's Teen Hollywood". (Another one of those coming your way very soon)

You can see all eight of the photo spreads here... or, you know, buy the magazines. There are things called stores and they sell photos that you can touch on this stuff called "paper" it's really... well, it's something! I included this photo of Jonah Hill (Superbad, left) with Rachael Taylor (Transformers) and Amber Heard (Friday Night Lights) because it made me giggle in how well it illustrates that Hollywood top fetish 'schlub gets the hot chicks!'. Jonah can be hilarious but try to imagine this photo with Nikki Blonsky. It just wouldn't happen.

Now you can see rare celebrity portraits of larger women surrounded by hot men (I remember one of Rosie O'Donnell back in the day) and I'm sure there've been a few others but it's always portrayed as a kitschy gag and the men are of the nameless shirtless model variety. They'd never drape two of Nikki Blonsky's male peers over her. They just wouldn't. [insert Joan Cusack Addams Family Values voice here] "But what about Debbie's Nikki's needs?"

I've doctored a photo for you just to demonstrate the improbability.

30 Under 30...

Or... Why Corporate Entertainment Coverage Sometimes Bugs the S**t Out of Me

So, I'm flipping through EW.com's "30 under 30" special and I'm like oh yeah... bring it on. Love the Tatum. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jamie Bell. Yes and yes. Of courses, doubled. Some love for the under appreciated Elijah Wood, smart move. Why do people forget what a solid actor he is? And then I get to Hayden Christensen and I realize. Oh, yeahhh. This is just yet another sloppily thrown together PR driven list that has no purpose other than to generate content for a website. [not that we all aren't guilty of that on occassion he says sheepishly]

It's just an excuse to show pictures of 30 famous guys. And then I get to Seth Rogen, Justin Long, Jonah Hill, Zac Ephron (?) and all of these newbies --none of whom I have anything against but none of whom have shown any range yet so there's not much you can have for them either. One or two hits and you're the best? What about the people who haven't had any hits but are good actors? Like Victor Razuk. What about people who have been in hits and are good actors? Like Anthony Mackie. What about Eddie Redmayne who has a few pictures coming out and might get famous. What about down on his luck but obviously talented Haley Joel Osment ... just as a reminder of his existence. Supposedly he's making a movie with Max von Sydow this fall. He's not dead. If you're going with looks over talent (as they seem to be in several cases) why not Jesse Bradford? What about Jay Hernand-- oh, he just turned 30, never mind. What is the point of this list? Down with substance-free lists! Give me opinions or critiques ... something. Let's decide what lists are about rather than just listing.

But who cares about 20 year-olds when Hugh Jackman, who is almost 40, is looking like this...

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Rowwwr, or... um, whatever growling noise wolverines make. Wolverine is only 427 days away. Hold your breath.

UPDATE: And here are the actresses --a similarly haphazard list of famous beauties without talent, young women with lots of talent, and people who just happen to be really famous. Zzzzz.

Just joining us ? ...and totally nostalgic for last Sunday. Check out the big Oscars review
or, if you're "now" driven go to the most recent posts
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