Postcards from the edge

Another visit to La La Land with a return to 1990's POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, Mike Nichol's satisfying comedy drama from Carrie Fisher's book, all the more poignant now after her recent passing and that of her mother Debbie Reynolds. Shirley McLaine - never a favourite of ours - does maybe her best work here, outside of THE APARTMENT, as Suzanne Vale's movie star mother, who drinks a lot and can't help upstaging her daughter.

Substance-addicted Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale is on the skids. After a spell at a detox centre her film company insists as a condition of continuing to employ her that she live with her mother Doris Mann, herself once a star and now a champion drinker. Such a set-up is bad news for Suzanne who has struggled for years to get out of her mother's shadow, and who finds her mother still treats her like a child. Despite these problems - and further ones to do with the men in in her life - Suzanne can begin to see the funny side of her situation, and it also starts to occur to her that not only do daughters have mothers, mothers do too.

Meryl Streep has one of her best early roles here as the drug-addled actress Suzanne tries to get her life back on track, and Mike Nichols fills the film with a great cast: not only Dennis Quaid, but Simon Callow, Richard Dreyfuss, Gene Hackman, Annette Bening and even the great Mary Wickes (from 40s and 50s classics like NOW VOYAGER and WHITE CHRISTMAS, she also went on to SISTER ACT). 

But the film boils down to those encounters between Meryl and Shirley, and both shine, Shirley in her hospital scene getting ready to face her public - the gays love her - and belting out a version of Sondheim's "I'm Still Here". Meryl too sings up a storm in that final country music scene. 

It all certainly works now and is a film to savour for many fine moments.
Maybe its time for another look at Carrie's THESE OLD BROADS telemovie with not only Debbie and Shirley but Dames Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins - which we covered before. see Debbie label.

Evening, 2007

A drama exploring the romantic past and emotional present of Ann Grant and her daughters, Constance and Nina. As Ann lays dying, she remembers, and is moved to convey to her daughters, the defining moments in her life 50 years prior, when she was a young woman. Harris is the man Ann loves in the 1950s and never forgets.

Yes, EVENING sounds like one of those nauseatingly soppy afternoon tv movies for the home audience, not suitable for us trendy folk. We avoided it at the time, but seeing it was on telly we had to look it, if only for that cast. One way - the only way? - of jazzing up a story like this is to make it look good and pile in the names, thats what they did here, as directed by Lajos Koltai.

The dying woman is Vanessa Redgrave, and also popping in are Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and the great Eileen Atkins. Add in Vanessa's daughter Natasha Richardson, plus Toni Collette and Claire Danes (as the younger Vanessa). The men, including Patrick Wilson and Hugh Dancy, barely get a look it. It all looks terrific too, Rhode Island in the 1950s .... all those seascapes. 

The grand dames all get their moment with Vanessa, as the memories keep piling up and colliding with the present. It's a deliberately paced, visually gorgeous meditation on real life issues, and you can cry at it and not feel like you're being manipulated too much.

Into the woods with the foxcatcher ...

Is Stephen Sondheim on a roll or what, after all these decades ? INTO THE WOODS has been in the cinemas and is due on dvd; ASSASSINS recently finished its London run, I enjoyed it a lot at the perfect Menier Chocolate Factory venue with a friend from Ireland; and its off to that terrific new GYPSY next week with Imelda Staunton as Mamma Rose, and there are TWO productions of SWEENEY TODD currently on in London, the hot ticket being the Emma Thompson-Bryn Terfel one. There is a new Concert FOLLIES coming up here too, with Christine Baranski among the cast (I will have to dig out that dvd of the 1985 Concert with Lee Remick, Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin etc).  We also saw the dull movie they made of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC in 1977 (as per review - Musicals label). At least when I saw the National Theatre MUSIC over a decade now - the Judi Dench one - the great man was sitting one seat away from us at the preview, scribbling furiously. He is still going strong now, in his mid-80s, attending all these openings. I must play my SIDE BY SIDE BY SIDE (saw that twice in the '70s) double CD again ....

INTO THE WOODS is a modern twist on the beloved Brothers Grimm fairy tales in a musical format that follows the classic tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Rapunzel - all tied together by an original story involving a baker and his wife, their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the witch who has put a curse on them. 

This is a show I did not know apart from Streisand's versions of some of the songs on her Broadway albums. I did not have too much high hopes for Rob Marshall's film (after his NINE and CHICAGO, the less said the better) from James Lapine's screenplay.
The eclectic cast work hard: another star turn from Streep, and fun to see Christine Baranski, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen as the two princes, Lucy Punch, Tracey Ullmann, Simon Russell Beale, Frances De La Tour, Annette Crosbie, and er, James Corden - at least he can't swamp this production. Johnny Depp seems out of place too as The Wolf .... Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood as an obnoxious little brat. but on the whole, its a muddle as it plays fun with the fairy tales, and looks a little too dark. It seems the stage version breaks down "happily ever after" and teaches us a  lesson about loss and how gray the world really is - which most of the negative reviews did not get as it was a Walt Disney. However, I was fairly pleased.

Less so with FOXCATCHER - or RATCATCHER as I slipped into calling it. This weird drama - a true story it seems - from Bennett Miller (CAPOTE) has an intriguing story and top notch performances from an unrecognisable Steve Carrell and Mark Ruffalo, while Channing Tatum excels as well - as in CAPOTE his lead actors excel and transform themselves. Then there's Sienna Miller and Vanessa Redgrave for a few minutes as Carrell's controlling mother, but one keeps wishing it would end. 

FOXCATCHER tells the dark and fascinating story of the unlikely and ultimately tragic relationship between an eccentric multi-millionaire and two champion wrestlers. When Olympic Gold Medal winning wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is invited by wealthy heir John du Pont (Steve Carell) to move on to the du Pont estate and help form a team to train for the 1988 Seoul Olympics at his new state-of-the-art training facility, Schultz jumps at the opportunity, hoping to focus on his training and finally step out of the shadow of his revered brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo). 
Driven by hidden needs, du Pont sees backing Schultz's bid for Gold and the chance to "coach" a world-class wrestling team as an opportunity to gain the elusive respect of his peers and, more importantly, his disapproving mother (Vanessa Redgrave)  - so the scene is set for the final tragedy. It has some cringe-inducing moments, but the actors give it their all. One cannot say too much about the outcome, but if you don't know, it will keep you guessing, the world of wrestling seems heavy with supressed homoeroticism here .... 

Julia ? On the Beach ? The Arrangement ?

This week I am looking at and revaluating some "prestige" films that were  big in their day,  but do they still stand up now ? JULIA, ON THE BEACH, THE ARRANGEMENT.

JULIA was one of those hits from 1977 which we all went to at the time, and have been rather forgotten about since - THE TURNING POINT was another one - I will return to that later, when I have re-seen it. 

Looking at JULIA now it screams "prestige cinema" but it sees to have been has been debunked - just how much of it is true? Did Lillian Hellman make it all up? - its part of her memoir "Pentimento". It does all seem rather phoney now. Every scene is designed to be impressive, starting with the older Hellmann fishing in her boat at dawn, then that perfect period beach shack she shares with writer Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards, to the manner born) as they fry fish on the beach - Cape Cod presumably. It is 1934 as we see from the calendar on the wall - the time of the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. Hellmann is also a writer (after her success with the play THE CHILDREN'S HOUR), but with writer's block as we see her grappling with that old typewriter. Jane Fonda is actually ideal here, in her 70s prime, like a young Katharine Hepburn. The fastidious Fred Zinnemann carefully fashions it all - I like his other great movies like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE NUN'S STORY, THE SUNDOWNERS and he always gets superior perforances from his actors, and so it is here ....

Then the plot begins - we get flashbacks to her youth with her great friend Julia, with her wealthy grandmother Cathleen Nesbitt, and then their years at Oxford - all golden spires, and Vanessa Redgrave radiant as Julia striding around in her tweeds  while declaiming the brave new future to come ... but then of course the War intervenes .... and Julia devotes her life to fighting fascism, putting her life in danger ...

The central scene has Lillian meeting Julia in a restaurant, but they have to be very careful in case they are being watched. Julia is now on crutches .... and has a mission for Lillian to smuggle money (in her hat!)  As a thriller though its rather suspense-less. Max Schell appears as Julia's friend Johann, and the young Meryl Streep has that minute appearance. There is that train journey - will Lillian get the money throiugh safely?. But then the plot goes haywire, and suddenly Julia is dead. Lillian goes to see the body in a suburban funeral parlour (with Maurice Denham) and tries to find the baby Julia supposedly had.   

It is all still watchable, but I think we have to take it with a large pinch of salt. Redgrave and Robards both won Best Supporting Oscars here and it was nominated for a slew of other including best picture and director. It was Zinnemann's last big success (he did just one more), great score by Georges Delerue, and lensed by Douglas Slocombe. Fonda of course is a far prettier Hellman. 

ON THE BEACH

I really cannot find much to say about ON THE BEACH, that big one from 1959 by Stanley Kramer from the Nevil Shute novel. Shute's novels usually featured big ideas: aviation in NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY, war in A TOWN LIKE ALICE and only the end of the world in ON THE BEACH. Kramer like Kazan, was big in the 50s and early 60s, with those self-important movies on big themes, like THE DEFIANT ONES, INHERIT THE WIND, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBURG (with their great star turns) and this one set in Australia. Even Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner cannot make it sing as the ponderous affair also drags down Fred Astaire and Tony Perkins as the young naval husband. It is actually set in 1964 as atomic war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; 

one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual covers growing despair, as they wait for the radiation to reach them. The only interesting sequence is the submarine returning to San Francisco to investigate a tapping noise (which turns out to be a trapped blind cord), but where is everybody as there is no sign of dead bodies?. Did everyone just vaporise? The end coda couldn't be more in your face: that slogan "There is still time, brother"! That must have wowed them in 1959 as The Cold War escalated, it was one of the main films of that great year - but it simply does not stand the test of time and is a colossal bore now. One simply wants to fast-forward through most of it. 

THE ARRANGEMENT. Elia Kazan of course had his great decade in the 1950s, but like a lot of other once important directors may have felt left behind by the late sixties. THE ARRANGEMENT is from his own novel and it is all just too much as Kazan throws everything at us. Kirk Douglas is the business executive sick of the rat race his life as become as he deliberately crashes his car in that grim traffic scene. Deborah Kerr, getting rather matronly by then, is his worried steely wife doing all she can to help him rehabilitate himself, as he keeps flashing back to his exciting mistress Gwen - Faye Dunaway at the height of her glossy '60s glamour - who keeps taunting him about what he could have been. 

She does have that memorable line: "The screwing I'm getting is not worth the screwing I am getting". But it is all too much and too overwrought as Kirk fixates on his old Greek father Richard Boone and his nude frolics at the beach with Gwen ...

Eddie is a very rich man who has everything he wants; money, family, success, but a car crash causes him to reevaluate the life he leads. Searching for the happiness he lost, he remembers his one-time lover, Gwen, even as his wife conspires to take his fortune...

Like AMERICAN BEAUTY, Kazan's story looks anew at The American Dream and finds it wanting; looking at it now it is not as bad as some reviews said at the time, there's lots of interesting ideas here, but Kazan throws it all at us without being able to streamline it.  Right: Dunaway and Kazan.

Romcoms (2)

LETTERS TO JULIET - Leftover from last Christmas, this 2010 romcom finally gets taken out of its case. I am not one for chick-flicks per se, though I liked THE PROPOSAL (which I saw initially on a flight) and IT'S COMPLICATED wasn't too unbearable. This one though had the attraction of Vanessa Redgrave reunited on-screen with [her husband] Franco Nero and all that Italian countryside. As such, it delivers. The plot is probably a bit too saccharine, as we follow Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, MAMMA MIA) from the "New Yorker" to Verona where she discovers Juliet's balcony and the letters left which are replied to, and guess what - she finds a letter from 1957 when a brick falls out of the wall, so of course she replies to it. Gael Garcia Bernal is rather wasted as her workaholic boyfriend - then Christopher Egan turns up with his grand-mother Claire (Redgrave) in tow and they decide to track down the lover fate had separated her from 50 years ago. There are though 74 Lorenzo Bartolini's in the area .... it is a pleasant moment though when Nero rides up on his white horse - and it continues exactly as one would expect and wish. Directed by Gary Winick. Nice to see a good late role for Redgrave [like Julie Christie with AWAY FROM HER,] looking well and natural in her early 70s. (The 1969 Redgrave-Nero arthouse eurotrash A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY is reviewed at Redgrave label).

IT’S COMPLICATED – I was not enamoured with Nancy Meyers’ SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE and I just did not want to see THE HOLIDAY, so presumably here is more of the same in IT’S COMPLICATED, which has Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin who have been divorced meeting again at their son’s college graduation and rekindling their relationship as he determines to win her back. He though has remarried with young children but it is not working out, and she also starts to get involved with architect Steve Martin, so yes, it’s complicated. If one likes seeing rich people (she is the wealthy owner of a bakery chain) fool around, and smoke pot, then I suppose this is the kind of thing you would like. Meryl seems to be enjoying herself and laughs a lot, at least Martin is low-key here, and Baldwin is the best thing as he has turned into a droll comedian with no vanity at all. I suppose it is a superior romcom with one laugh out loud scene with the webcams (above).