DVDs: Fantastic Blind Red Cliffs for Mad Men

A fresh batch of DVDs. Which will you eagerly consume?

• The Blind Side will have huge DVD sales. I'm *cough* blind to this movie's appeal but millions love what they see and will continue to. If it weren't based on a true story, you KNOW that they would already be adapting this into a television series for some young C Lister to try and survive, risking comparisons to a movie star. Kinda like when Sandra Bullock herself got the Melanie Griffith sloppy seconds for television's Working Girl. Who knew then that Bullock's fame would so eclipse Griffith's?
  
• Brothers has arrived for those of you curious about Tobey Maguire's Golden Globe nomination. Do you think he came in the dread sixth place for an Oscar nomination this year? Whoever was sixth was a distant sixth given events on the road to Oscar night, but someone was sixth!
  
• Fantastic Mr Fox is probably going to be even better on DVD. I'm sensing "highly rewatchable". You know what scene makes me howl with laughter each time I'm reminded of it? "Whackbat"
  
• Red Cliff is basically a porn movie to me given that it stars Chen Chang, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu Wai... so I, uh, probably shouldn't watch it at home. But, that said, I might because in DVD form you can see all 4 hours. I liked the movie in theaters (big action scenes, colorful costumes, and fun war strategy sequences) but it felt suspiciously like a miniseries that had been repackaged for movie length... which, in fact, it had.
  
• Seraphine. Yolande Moreau stars is the painter in this biopic. She won the French Oscar as well as the recent LAFCA Best Actress prize. For those who are impatient it's available on instant play at Netflix.
  
• The Twilight Saga: New Moon ...no comment.
  

Which DVD would you like Nathaniel to type at'chu about right here? A simple review, tossed off thoughts or even a liveblog. Who knows? Vote.

poll by twiigs.com

Mad Men Season Three is also available. I own all three seasons and the packaging is so choice. A scotch neat this time (last season it was a dress shirt in its package). I can't wait to watch it again but first I have to rescreen Season 2 for "Mad Men at the Movies", my series on the film references therein. It'll be a good summer Sunday diversion right here at TFE while we wait for Season 4 to begin. If you've never watched the show you still have a few months to get caught up. It's pretty hard to resist once you've succumbed to its spell. If you haven't yet seen Season Three, you should also rent Bye Bye Birdie (1963) for kicks. It factors in more heavily than just about any film ever has on the show.
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Decade in Review: 2005 Top Ten

2009 is almost over and so many magazines and websites have already offered up their best of the year AND decade that I'm afraid y'all will get sick of the retrospectives before The Film Experience has chimed on. Remember: the tortoise wins! 2005's top ten list (in its original form) follows. New comments in red.

Public Favorites (Box Office): Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, War of the Worlds, King Kong, Wedding Crashers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Madagascar and Mr & Mrs Smith
Oscar Favorites: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck and Munich
My Vote For UnderAppreciated: In Her Shoes, Happy Endings and The White Countess
Top Ten Runners Up (11-15): The Squid and the Whale, Match Point, The New World, Junebug and The Beat That My Heart Skipped. I like all five of these even better today than I did at the time... and more than a few things in my top ten list. I'd definitely reorder.

10 Corpse Bride
If there is one thing I value above all else in animated films, it's vivid character designs and cohesive artistic vision. In this area, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride has few equals. Credit goes to the titular auteur Tim Burton and co-director Mike Johnson's guiding goth-happy hands as well as one of Hollywood's finest production designers, Alex McDowell. (His past visually stunning credits include Minority Report, The Terminal, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and Fight Club. And still no Oscar nomination for his troubles... tsk tsk Hollywood.)

Beyond its superb visual delights, Burton's best film in years also digs up rich voicework from its cast, and offers an enchanting tale both sweet and sour. Nowhere close to perfect but Corpse Bride's got magic to spare.

09 Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were Rabbit
(Another animated film that's blissfully not of the currently homogenous CG *only* school of animation)

I have been a fan of W&G for a long time and enjoying them for an entire feature was akin to visiting with supremely droll friends whom one never sees enough of. To sweeten the reunion, they brought along the sublimely silly Lady Tottington. They even uncovered a heretofore unseen sense of humor in Ralph Fiennes (who voices bunny-hunting Victor Quartermaine). W & G's last cinematic outing was in 1995. A plea to Nick Park: Please do not make us wait another whole decade for the next adventure.

Curious that I shoved two animated films into the top ten... especially considering how strong the runners up were. I blame this partially on my own childlike delight at stop motion animation (it gets to me on some primal level) but mostly on release schedules. I know I'm too susceptible to that but it's just the way I am. I am better at loving things I'm familiar with than brand new things I've just met. And I had JUST gotten a glimpse of Match Point and I remember that I had an awful awful time processing The New World and what was going on with Oscar qualifications that year. Like Nick recently mentioned, I wasn't even sure which version of the Malick movie I was watching. And I don't know that it even still exists. I'm nervous about what this says about me but I actually felt physically angry at the idea that a movie I saw in the theater was not the same movie that my friends saw in the theater which was maybe not even the same movie that critics were writing about for their readers who would never be able to see that one. In some ways I'm still angry. It makes no sense to be this bonkers about it but I even feel like there should be laws against that ever happening again.

08 Good Night, and Good Luck.
Seasonal truth: As surely as leaves fall in autumn, "prestige" dramas arrive in movie theaters. They are generally set in the past, always aim to be 'classy', wish to delight year-end awards voters with gorgeous production values, and plan to be good for you, too. Rarely however are do they deliver on all four counts. This recreation of the 1950s media war between journalist Edward R Murrow (played by the mesmerizing David Strathairn) and Communist hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy (playing himself in archival footage) gratefully hits all of its mark. It's a prestige bullseye for writer, director, star, and emerging activist hero George Clooney.

I have had no desire whatsoever to rewatch this. Does that mean I overvalued it or is one enjoyable viewing of anything reason enough to love a movie?

07 Kings & Queen
Ever since seeing Arnaud Depleschin's wondrously mutating film Rois et Reine about a single mother named Nola (the superb Emmanuelle Devos) and the four men (father, son, ex-lover, and fiancé) in her life I've been desperately trying to pin it down. Exactly what is it?

Whatever it is --melodrama, comedy, existential quandry-- it's as gripping as any fine novel. And to extend the comparison further, it seems just as rich and information packed. Like Nola herself, Kings and Queen is a mysterious and possessive creature: Ultimately unknowable but unwilling to let you withdraw from its world.

06 Brødre
I first saw this Danish drama @ TIFF in 2004 where it became one of my two favorites of the festival. A year later Brothers was released in the states to critical acclaim but made not much of a ripple at the arthouse box office, making it one of the many lost foreign pleasures of the year.

Hollywood may soon be utilizing director Susanne Bier. It's easy to see why. This drama about a young family turned upside down by the news that the husband has been killed in Afghanistan is emotionally potent without ever once feeling forced, despite story elements that would be either pedestrian or overplayed in lesser hands. There's nary a false note struck from the entire ensemble including Hollywood actress Connie Nielsen (making her first film in her homeland) who has never looked better or been more sympathetic onscreen.

Oops. Hollywood didn't take my warning about a story that would feel "pedestrian or overplayed in lesser hands". They went and proved my point just two weeks ago.

05 Me and You and Everyone We Know
Quirky. Edgy. Precocious. Artsy. Odd. These are all adjectives that truthfully describe Miranda July's debut film. Unfortunately all of these carry a whiff of negative connotation. Any of them alone can feel like mere attitudinal posing if a film has nothing to say. Thankfully Me and You and Everyone We Know, with its endearing cast of childlike adults and children playing at adult games has plenty to say about life and connections in this digital age. So quirky yes, but blissfully so. Me and You transcends any adjective you'd like to bestow on it.

One of Miranda July's funniest affectations in her performance/digital art is her tendency to use pre-recorded crowd cheering to punctuate her lines or do her own repetitous call/response with a lowered voice creating her own sycophant lover. I didn't need the prompting to express my adulation. In a year filled with promising debut filmmakers hers was the most endearing new voice.

This movie feels a bit like a lost oddball relic now. Not that it's aged poorly... just that it was always such an idiosyncratic unfashionable feeling thing that it stills feels a bit like an installation rather than a movie that came out. I hope she makes another film soon.

04 Caché
The last time I saw a Michael Haneke picture the title was The Piano Teacher. I was completely terrified, revolted, and stunned. Though nothing in Caché (also known as Hidden) reaches the peak of Isabelle's Huppert's performance accomplishment in the earlier film, I much prefer the newer film, which offers me the same visceral mix of reactions, albeit in different quantities. Perhaps in 2002 I just wasn't ready for the way Michael Haneke mercilessly dissects human weakness.

This mind-bender (and politically-minded story) about a rich French couple and the stalker-like videotapes that begin arriving at their door is masterfully told and rewards attentive viewing. The Austrian auteur uses no musical scoring, no quick editing, and no cheap Hollywood "gotcha!" scare tactics but still manages to thoroughly unnerve the audience. And unlike most tales meant to terrify, Caché also gives the intellect a workout. Michael Haneke may be the most gifted frightener since Alfred Hitchcock.

03 Pride & Prejudice
Confession: Prior to seeing this romantic romp from debuting director Joe Wright I had not read the Jane Austen novel nor seen the BBC miniseries which many consider definitive. I have since begun to fill in those gaps. For those angered at the films many liberties taken (300 plus page novels can't make it to film without cuts --sorry) I say pshaw! What matters is the spirit of the thing. And spirit the new Pride & Prejudice has in spades.

Austen's writing is full of memorable characters, delicious staccato banter and wit and breakneck pace. In this impressively cinematic transformation, the nimble cinematography, beautifully dexterous setpieces, and highly enjoyable performances have all been beautifully choreographed together to ape the high spirits of Austen's eternal charmer. For pure movie-movie fun and swoon-worthy romance, this film is tough to beat.

I am not at all embarrassed by my love for this film, but I do think I overstated the case with the bronze medal. I'd move Caché up a spot for sure.

02 A History of Violence
David Cronenberg, the legendary Canadian director, is a shining beacon to all fringe dwelling filmmakers with a taste for mainstream exposure. You can make an accessible film without losing any of your maverick qualities or subversive spirit. Cronenberg hardly sold out upon taking the reins of this graphic novel adaptation. His signature offputting bits, like his taste for body-horror are still present, just less visible. In one of the film's many masterfully pivoting scenes, Edie Stall (Maria Bello) suddenly vomits upon learning a disturbing truth about her husband. This isn't the in-your-face gynecological terror of Dead Ringers (another Cronenberg masterpiece) but damned if it's not psychologically connected to Mrs. Stall's genitals

...Violence is one of those rare movies that expands and contracts with the audiences expectations. For film fanatics wishing to get lost in the celluloid, it's as deep as you want it to be. For the more casual moviegoer it's a shocking thriller. Either way it's a superbly crafted piece of cinema.

01 Brokeback Mountain
When I read the famous short story upon which this instant classic is based it haunted me for weeks. In very few pages with precise and spare prose, Annie Proulx gave me a portrait of two lives and broke my heart in the process. The film version has that same lean spirit but miraculously never missteps in expanding her original story. This portrait has fresh details and a stunning humanism. Ang Lee paints the secondary characters, wives, mothers, employers, fathers nearly as vividly. In the process the confident auteur has deepened the tragedy of the original story. Brokeback Mountain is no longer just a small but perfect romantic tragedy. It's now an improbably behemoth portrait of tragedy spilling out all over; this is the price of love rejected and forbidden --both for all those who find it and all those who deny its place in society.

Brokeback, which felt like an instant classic at the time, has never disappointed on repeat visits. If anything its familiarity works for it. Like Jack and Ennis, this love deepens. Will it haunt for a whole lifetime?


How does 2005 hold up for you? Which were your favorites at the time and which have snuck up on you as enduring loves?
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Brothers and Brødre

Has anyone ever remade a film that you absolutely love? It can be odd to remove yourself from the familiar original while watching the shiny and new. Presumably not many people will have this problem with Brothers though I’ll admit up front that I did. This new war-at-home drama is adapted from a little seen Danish film of the same name. Natalie Portman plays Grace Cahill, a young mother and wife whose husband Sam (Tobey Maguire) has been assumed dead in Afghanistan. We know that he actually survived but Grace doesn’t and in the fog of grief discovers budding feelings for her brother-in-law Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), an ex-con, who begins to bloom when he takes over as man of the house. When Sam returns from war, with post traumatic stress problems, serious complications, tears and family drama arrive with him.

...more in my weekly column at Towleroad
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Natalie Portman and "The Three Block Rule"

Do you hate it when people ask you what you think about a movie while the credits are rolling? Probably not. Everyone asks me this and it makes me crazy. I need time!

Haven't my friends heard of the 'Three Block Rule'? I've always tried to lived by it even though I didn't know the name. Last week at the Brothers' press conference -- same day I met Jake (only earlier) -- Tobey Maguire recounted his first meeting with Natalie Portman.

I remember the day that I met her she taught me a valuable lesson there which is the “three block rule”. We were at a screening of a movie and I don’t think I liked the movie that much and I was going to talk about it...

And she just said 'Wait a second. You don't know the three block rule?'

'What's the three block rule?'

'You don't talk about the movie until you're three blocks away because you never know who is listening'

Even at 14 that girl was damn smart. If you want to read my piece about Tobey, Jake and Natalie promoting Brothers click over to Tribeca Film.
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Mare Hugs Jake

Watch me bury the lead.

I'll be writing about Brothers, the new war-at-home drama, for Tribeca Film soon but for now I just wanted to say that I didn't even know until I was watching it how much I'd missed Mare Winningham. She's an actress whose vibe is a little closer to television (familial, earthy, someone you might see every day) but whose talent is silver screen (rare, outsized, possibly superhuman). I was thrilled when she was unexpectedly nominated for an Oscar for Georgia in the 90s. If you've never seen that performance you must. She's projecting so many layers of character in that film, you start to realize that most performances are threadbare. Put some layers on, actors! You'll catch a cold.

Even though Mare has next to nothing to do in Brothers other than project step-maternal concern, I wanted to hug her as hard as she's hugging Jake Gyllenhaal in the photo.



And usually when someone is hugging Jake Gyllenhaal I am thinking about being them rather than hugging them back. I'm just sayin'.

So yeah, I met Jake Gyllenhaal.

Also rare, outsized, superhuman...

He looks exactly the same offscreen as on (which isn't always the case for better and for worse). I don't advise, if you are a mere mortal like myself, to stand next to celebrities and be photographed. You will just feel so... pathetically human. I don't normally do it (this is only the second time but the first was with Julianne Moore years ago and in both cases, I couldn't not. I'm only human). He was friendly and after I paid him the mandatory compliments that probably sounded like weird if familiar gibberish to him (I'm guessing) we chatted very briefly about Brothers and the Danish film its based on -- yes, he's seen it --before we took this photo. Then I let him loose on the next person who was desperate to talk to him. They were also human.

It's so weird when celebrities are in a room. The crowd can be totally dispersed and navigable and then *boom* bottleneck traffic jams. Everyone wants to be in the place nearest to the celebrity/celebrities.
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Two Brothers

Here's the poster for the December drama Brothers.

Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman are married.
Jake Gyllenhaal comes between them. Sort of.

I can already hear Glenn at Stale Popcorn gnashing his teeth over that empty white space up top. He hates that! But I personally love the poster. It strikes me as appropriately minimalist and I love the delicate severity of that thin cleaving white line. The movie spins a rather simple story of a woman whose heart is split between two brothers, her husband (who goes missing in The Middle East) and her brother-in-law (who comforts her at home).

I love the poster but I'm worried.

The trailer is as In Contention suggests, way too shrill. I saw it a week ago and chose to ignore it since I'm eager to see this. It suggests a film that's twice as histrionic as even the climax of the Danish film that this is based on (a film which I've raved about in the past and which you should rent not only because it's good but for compare/contrast purposes). Said trailer also gives far too much of the story away. It's one of those trailers that tells you the whole story from beginning to end. It doesn't even stop at the 2/3rds or the 3/4ths mark.

Tobey Maguire has serious PTSD issues

Nevertheless, we'll hope for the best. Brothers opens almost exactly 5 years to the day since Closer ushered in Natalie Portman's graduation to adult roles. Good sign? Plus, director Jim Sheridan has a way with actors and he's a bit of a gold magnet. He's only made six films prior to Brothers, two of which were best picture nominees (My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father). His films have garnered eight acting nominations with two wins. Quite an enviable track record, yes?

Any hunches on how Brothers will fare?
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"We Can't Wait" 2009 Preview

Tomorrow the blog will begin to be invaded by brief peeks at 20 films we're excited to see in 2009 (at least at this writing -- trailers could change our pre-viewing feelings). Who is "we" you ask? This year I did the anticipatory mindmeld with Whitney of Dear Jesus, Fox of Tractor Facts, Joe of Low Resolution and JA of My New Plaid Pants to come up with the top 20. I am horrified to inform you that these so called "friends" did not help me place Stephen Frears Chéri on the list. The plentiful posts I've already done on the matter will have to be enough until its Berlinale premiere later this month. The other highest ranking "orphans" from my own personal list function as an accidental Natalie Portman Double Feature.

Brothers is from actor-friendly director Jim Sheridan (In America, In the Name of the Father) and its based on the Danish film by Susanne Bier which I've recommended for rental many times. In the original film Connie Nielsen (in a terrifically engaging and warm star turn) is an army wife whose husband (Ulrich Thomsen) has been shipped off to Afghanistan. His troubled brother (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) helps her out around the house and they form a makeshift bond in his absence. If the plot sounds similar it's because Bier herself didn't stray far from its distraught wife and uncomfortable romantic triangle that also characterized the plot of her English language debut Things We Lost in the Fire.


In the American remake Natalie Portman plays the tearful wife. The title characters are Tobey Maguire as the soldier hubby and Jake Gyllenhaal as the ne'er-do-well brother. I'm interested to see what mojo Portman can work on both of them. Think of how bewitched bothered and bewildered Clive Owen, Jude Law (twice!), Timothy Hutton and Jason Schwartzman have become in her presence onscreen. Even wooden Hayden Christensen was thrown by her. He was haunted by the kiss she should never have given him [gag] !

17 Photos of Isabel comes from writer/director Don Roos and I think he proved with The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings that he definitely has his own voice as a filmmaker. It's a voice worth hearing from time to time. He's also the filmmaker we can thank for Lisa Kudrow's best performance (The Opposite of Sex) and even, arguably, Maggie Gyllenhaal's (Happy Endings) which is saying a lot. The film is about a woman who is having trouble with her stepson but I don't know who plays whom. Neither Kudrow (returning for a third round with Roos) nor Portman are playing a character named "Isabel". The working title was Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.

Did you like Roos' previous films? Do you share my intermittent Portmania?

The Official "We Can't Wait ~ Top 20 of 2009" kicks off tomorrow @ Noon. You can see other "orphans" at Low Resolution, Tractor Facts and My New Plaid Plants

In case you missed any entries they went like so...
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We Can't Wait:
#1 Inglourious Basterds, #2 Where the Wild Things Are, #3 Fantastic Mr. Fox,
#4 Avatar, #5 Bright Star, #6 Shutter Island, #7 Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
#8 Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, #9 Nailed, #10 Taking Woodstock,
#11 Watchmen, #12 The Hurt Locker, #13 The Road, #14 The Tree of Life
#15 Away We Go, #16 500 Days of Summer, #17 Drag Me To Hell,
#18 Whatever Works, #19 Broken Embraces, #20 Nine (the musical)
intro (orphans -didn't make group list)
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