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/Film - Darren Aronofsky is the director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. His latest film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and was bought by Fox Searchlight the morning after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Earlier this week, I was granted the chance to sit down with Aronofsky for a half hour interview. Below is the first part of the interview. We will be running the next part tomorrow, and the third part on Friday. Enjoy.
Peter Sciretta: There was a very long period of time between Requiem [for a Dream] and trying to get The Fountain off the ground. And now The Wrestler is being billed almost as a come back film…
Darren Aronofsky: Oh, that’s silly…
Peter Sciretta: So why was there such a long break?
Darren Aronofsky: Well, as you know, I had to make the Fountain twice. The first incarnation with Brad Pitt was much publicized and then it fell apart. I had to basically rewrite it and put it back together with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. So basically if you look at it, it was about 6, 7 years the whole thing from start to finish. So for me it was almost like making two different movies. We were at seven weeks out from shooting the first Fountain 1.0 when it fell apart, so I was fully story-boarded and shot listed, and… [Full Story]
Archive for 2008
The Brothers Bloom (2007) – ScreenDaily Review
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
ScreenDaily - Rian Johnson’s eye-catching 2005 feature debut Brick brought a fresh sensibility to the world-weary private eye thriller. That fresh sensibility takes a sharp turn towards the picaresque and eccentric in The Brothers Bloom, a globe-trotting con game adventure that has a degree of charm but also displays the exasperating indulgence of an ambitious auteur project that may have been more fun to film than it is to watch. More likely to gain a cult following than show mainstream appeal, it should generate modest returns as a specialist release targeting a sophisticated market.
A film that has the feel of a rambling, magical realist novel, The Brothers Bloom unfolds in its own beautifully crafted world. It could be set in the present day or the 1930s. There are elements of cockeyed screwball comedy in the manner of a Preston Sturges classic like The Lady Eve. The more anarchic elements (explosives, gunfire and a shipboard bolero) recall a Swinging Sixties caper like Gambit or the cinema of Richard Lester. There is also something of an affinity with fellow luminaries from the current generation of American independents, especially Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited) or David O Russell in I Heart Huckabees mode. The unclassifiable nature of the material is part of its appeal although it is an appeal that diminishes as the narrative twists and bluffs start to pile up.
Beguiled by the possibilities of storytelling and the blurred lines between reality and make believe, the film concentrates on Bloom (Brody) and his older, protective brother Stephen (Ruffalo). The brothers are consummate con artists but Bloom longs for an unwritten life in which he is not playing yet another character in one of his brother’s convoluted scenarios. He is committed to one last con involving lonely New Jersey heiress Penelope (Weisz) who is thrilled by the sense of adventure they bring into her life and unperturbed by the fact it may all be a scam. As Bloom develops real feelings for Penelope, the challenge for Bloom and mute sidekick Bang Bang (Kikuchi) is to develop a con in which everyone gets what they want… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: SUMMER HOURS – Twitch
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Twitch - The sermon of the inanimate is such that objects of art speak through the memories emotionally invested in them. And yet the shift of objects from daily usage to museum display via estate bequest is a transition rarely recorded in film. In their museum settings, empty vases thirst for water and flowers; paintings recall affectionate placement on the walls of homes and their daily dalliance with shifting angles of window light; artist notebooks plead not to be torn apart and auctioned off a page at a time. The circle that is the art of collecting holds its breath at being broken and then resigns itself to the cursory glances of museum crowds. In a surprising turnabout from the Hollywood B-movie homage of Boarding Gate, Olivier Assayas offers up in L’Heure d’été (Summer Hours) a film that feels distinctly European, unquestionably French, imbued with refined, cultured nuance. As Michael Hawley mentioned in his recent “tabulation of deprivation”, along with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon, L’Heure d’été was commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Musée d’Orsay, where transitional scenes in the lives of these objects are administratively staged.
After siblings Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), Frédéric (Charles Berling) and Jérémie (Jérémie Rénier) return home to the countryside for their mother’s (Edith Scob) 75th birthday, an unexpected event threatens family unity and forces them to face up to their past. Her passions well spent, Edith Scob—in a performance that glows with the beauty of diminishing embers—anticipates death, sadly aware that she will take with her memories, secrets and stories that no one cares to listen to anymore. She knows that her children’s lives will lead them far away from their childhood home where she has raised them; a home decorated with accumulated treasures of art: the “detritus” of a life well-lived. She has no illusions that her home will need to be sold and has prepared for this likely event by making an inventory of what is valuable and museum-worthy. More than anyone, having lived her life fully, she is aware that nothing can remain the same in order for the new to thrive. Her house of breath is dismantled—not board by board—but by one meaningful memory at a time… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: The Lucky Ones – Cinematical
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Cinematical - Many films have sought to portray the terrible damage inflicted by war against a soldier’s mental and physical health, but The Lucky Ones takes this concept to new depths by depicting a trio of Army personnel who have been messed up only in amusing, sitcom-y ways. It has three strangers with nothing in common but their uniforms driving cross-country to get everyone home, and if that sounds like an ill-conceived cross between Stop-Loss and Planes, Trains & Automobiles, you’re right on the money. Especially on the “ill-conceived” part.
Sgt. T.K. Poole (Michael Peña) is a horny young man who’s been rendered impotent — hilarious! — by shrapnel from an IED. He can’t bear to tell his fiancee, though, because without sex, “we got nothing to talk about.” Pvt. Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) is taking a guitar that belonged to her boyfriend, who was killed in action, to his family in Las Vegas, deluding herself into thinking they’ll take her into their home, too, as she has no family of her own. T.K. and Colee are on 30-day leaves; Sgt. Fred Cheever (Tim Robbins), a career Army man from St. Louis, is heading home for good, having injured his back in combat. Well, OK, a porta-potty fell on him. But still, he’s retiring.
A blackout at JFK Airport suspends all flights indefinitely, so Cheever opts to rent a car and drive to Missouri. T.K. and Colee tag along, figuring they’ll fly out of St. Louis, but the three wind up sticking together after T.K. and Colee witness Cheever’s home life falling apart the very minute he arrives. Don’t worry if that sounds sad — the film’s jaunty, light musical score, played in nearly every scene, serves to keep you feeling upbeat… [Full Story]
The Brothers Bloom – Variety.com
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008
Variety.com - The hints of glib cleverness that hovered around Rian Johnson’s debut, “Brick,” burst into full, glaring view in his cheeky follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom.” As a pair of brothers raised to be topnotch grifters, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo are seldom allowed to play off of each other amid the film’s breathless busyness and adoration for eccentricity — and, even more problematically, for the cinema of Wes Anderson. The more elaborate the twists, the slighter the project becomes, leaving little impression and smaller B.O. prospects for Summit’s targeted December release and January rollout.
Fable-like opener (narrated by magician-actor Ricky Jay) intros the brothers as born con artists, with Bloom (Brody) — whose first name is never revealed — the sensitive one and Stephen (Ruffalo) the mastermind who plots their cons with literary pretentiousness, using Bloom as his narrative “hero.”
This, like several other elements in Johnson’s script, proves vastly more interesting in description than in the playing, regardless of the energy Brody and Ruffalo bring to it.
Burned out after 25 years of training (by Maximilian Schell’s crafty master, Diamond Dog) and conning, Bloom wants out. Stephen wants him for one final con, targeting loony East Coast heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz), with whom Bloom just can’t resist falling in love… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: PONTYPOOL – Twitch
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Twitch - …The opening act of Pontypool is, without a doubt, the work of a master at play. McHattie is absolutely brilliant as Mazzy, a weary man who would have made a brilliant poet in another age, and McDonald makes full use of his star’s skills. McDonald proves over and over again that tension is best produced in the mind, trapping us in the radio station along with his three principal characters – Mazzy, his producer and a young engineer – only trickling to us what information slowly trickles in to them, leaving us to muddle through what’s happening along with them. By the time a quarantine is called and strange warning messages are being broadcast throughout the region in French Mazzy et al are beginning to piece together what is happening and the energy, for both characters and audience, positively crackles.
And here McDonald makes what – to me, though others at the screening I attended disagree – is the film’s major mis-step, breaking the dynamic of the current group to introduce a new character when the doctor whose clinic was attacked implausibly arrives through an unlocked window at the radio station which, by this time, is besieged and surrounded. Ignoring how the doctor got through the crowd at all for now, his arrival unsettles the dynamic that has been established by this point and does so for seemingly no reason other than to provide copious, generally pointless, exposition explaining things we already know or should be able to work out on our own. I am generally of the opinion that if you resort to telling me something that you could have shown me then you have failed as a film maker and McDonald teeters dangerously along this edge for long stretches and never fully recovers his footing… [Full Story]
Pride and Glory – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Variety.com - With its focus on corruption and family angst among Irish-American New York cops, “Pride and Glory” feels like a film that should have been made at least 25 years ago. Or made as a period piece. Heavy, doom-laden and, unfortunately, entirely predictable, director Gavin O’Connor’s murky drama applies epic aspirations to a story all too familiar from any number of films and TV shows. New Line sat on the film for so long it ran out of time to release it, so the task falls to Warner Bros. to try to milk a few bucks out of it, which won’t be easy.
Gavin O’Connor and his twin brother, producer Gregory, grew up as the sons of a New York City cop and developed this story together, along with Robert Hopes and co-scenarist Joe Carnahan. The sincerity and earnestness of their approach are as obvious as the plot mechanics, which hinge on the long-understood tendency of cops to close ranks and protect their own against outsiders, as well as on loyalty within a clan.
Mortal conflict among brothers is officially the oldest story in the book, so it’s a disappointment that some new spin isn’t put on the inevitable faceoff between smart but dour Det. Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) and his dedicated but bad-boy brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell). The family also includes straight-arrow first son Francis Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich) and its patriarch, boozing Chief of Manhattan Detectives Francis Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight)… [Full Story]
Parc – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Variety.com - Promising much in its initial stages but increasingly falling short on a number of levels, psycho-suspenser “Parc” is an intriguing attempt to transfer John Cheever’s 1969 novel “Bullet Park” from America’s comfy ‘burbs to the more-than-comfy environs of the contempo French Riviera. Good performances by leads Sergi Lopez and Jean-Marc Barr, as opposite types on a life-destroying collision course, can’t save a clunky script that goes off the rails in the third act. Beyond fest play, this pic’s future looks thin.
Writer-director Arnaud des Pallieres has shaken off most of the pretentious tics of his 2003 first feature, “Adieu.” And with the help of superb sound design, using silence and ambient susurrations, he conjures up an atmosphere of suppressed violence that recalls the slightly similar “Funny Games.” More’s the pity, then, that he loses his grip on the characters’ psychology at the moment when it’s most important.
Lopez plays Georges Clou (called George Nail in the subtitles), whose fatalistic meeting with Barr’s Paul Marteau (subtitles: Paul Hammer) reps the main dramatic engine. Cheever’s original characters were hardly less subtly named (Eliot Nailles and Paul Hammer), but for non-French auds, the continual reminder onscreen of their metaphorical monikers keeps driving the point home in an annoying way… [Full Story]
Dean Spanley – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Variety.com - It’s a dog’s past life in “Dean Spanley,” an immaculately cast, nicely handled and wafer-thin slice of Brit period-dress whimsy. Pic reps an odd sophomore feature choice for New Zealander Toa Fraser, whose big-hearted Maori family drama “No. 2″ should have made more waves internationally. This effort will likely travel further due to thesp names, and it does have its peculiar charms. But it’s a talky, narrowly focused piece that feels like an after-dinner anecdote presented with the full ceremony of a formal meal. Pic will flit through theaters before finding more comfortable smallscreen berths.
In the Edwardian era, genteel Londoner Fisk Jr. (Jeremy Northam) resents his dreary obligation each Thursday: visiting his father, Fisk Sr. (Peter O’Toole), who refuses to acknowledge the tragic loss of his wife and other son, or indeed express any emotion beyond bullheadedness.
In an effort to find some diversion from their awkward companionship, the two end up at a swami’s lecture on reincarnation. This proves singularly unilluminating. But it does provide an opportunity for the first of several chance encounters with Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), a peculiar, somewhat mysterious fellow who strongly piques Fisk Jr.’s curiosity… [Full Story]
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Variety.com - How many thrillers could put the outcome in the title and still provide as many white-knuckle moments as “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29“? Although common wisdom says docs can’t draw a crowd, producer-director-editor-d.p. Kevin Rafferty’s film is so much fun it could prove an exception, especially given the word of mouth that will surely follow widespread festival play.
Rafferty’s unadorned sports saga is built around the broadcast of the Nov. 23, 1968, match-up and Don Gillis’ play-by-play, which provide the thrills in a game in which Yale led 29-13 with 42 seconds to play.
But the heart comes from interviews with the players, who revisit an extraordinary football game, played at a time when the country was a political powderkeg: The two Ivy League squads, both of which entered the contest undefeated, included members of both the paramilitary ROTC and the antiwar SDS, and at least one battle-scarred Vietnam vet.
But politics were forgotten at kickoff time, the players remember. War protestors and Wall Street alums put their differences aside on Saturday afternoons to rah-rah-rah… [Full Story]
The Brothers Bloom (2007) – ScreenDaily Review
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008ScreenDaily - Rian Johnson’s eye-catching 2005 feature debut Brick brought a fresh sensibility to the world-weary private eye thriller. That fresh sensibility takes a sharp turn towards the picaresque and eccentric in The Brothers Bloom, a globe-trotting con game adventure that has a degree of charm but also displays the exasperating indulgence of an ambitious auteur project that may have been more fun to film than it is to watch. More likely to gain a cult following than show mainstream appeal, it should generate modest returns as a specialist release targeting a sophisticated market.
A film that has the feel of a rambling, magical realist novel, The Brothers Bloom unfolds in its own beautifully crafted world. It could be set in the present day or the 1930s. There are elements of cockeyed screwball comedy in the manner of a Preston Sturges classic like The Lady Eve. The more anarchic elements (explosives, gunfire and a shipboard bolero) recall a Swinging Sixties caper like Gambit or the cinema of Richard Lester. There is also something of an affinity with fellow luminaries from the current generation of American independents, especially Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited) or David O Russell in I Heart Huckabees mode. The unclassifiable nature of the material is part of its appeal although it is an appeal that diminishes as the narrative twists and bluffs start to pile up.
Beguiled by the possibilities of storytelling and the blurred lines between reality and make believe, the film concentrates on Bloom (Brody) and his older, protective brother Stephen (Ruffalo). The brothers are consummate con artists but Bloom longs for an unwritten life in which he is not playing yet another character in one of his brother’s convoluted scenarios. He is committed to one last con involving lonely New Jersey heiress Penelope (Weisz) who is thrilled by the sense of adventure they bring into her life and unperturbed by the fact it may all be a scam. As Bloom develops real feelings for Penelope, the challenge for Bloom and mute sidekick Bang Bang (Kikuchi) is to develop a con in which everyone gets what they want… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: SUMMER HOURS – Twitch
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Twitch - The sermon of the inanimate is such that objects of art speak through the memories emotionally invested in them. And yet the shift of objects from daily usage to museum display via estate bequest is a transition rarely recorded in film. In their museum settings, empty vases thirst for water and flowers; paintings recall affectionate placement on the walls of homes and their daily dalliance with shifting angles of window light; artist notebooks plead not to be torn apart and auctioned off a page at a time. The circle that is the art of collecting holds its breath at being broken and then resigns itself to the cursory glances of museum crowds. In a surprising turnabout from the Hollywood B-movie homage of Boarding Gate, Olivier Assayas offers up in L’Heure d’été (Summer Hours) a film that feels distinctly European, unquestionably French, imbued with refined, cultured nuance. As Michael Hawley mentioned in his recent “tabulation of deprivation”, along with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon, L’Heure d’été was commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Musée d’Orsay, where transitional scenes in the lives of these objects are administratively staged.
After siblings Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), Frédéric (Charles Berling) and Jérémie (Jérémie Rénier) return home to the countryside for their mother’s (Edith Scob) 75th birthday, an unexpected event threatens family unity and forces them to face up to their past. Her passions well spent, Edith Scob—in a performance that glows with the beauty of diminishing embers—anticipates death, sadly aware that she will take with her memories, secrets and stories that no one cares to listen to anymore. She knows that her children’s lives will lead them far away from their childhood home where she has raised them; a home decorated with accumulated treasures of art: the “detritus” of a life well-lived. She has no illusions that her home will need to be sold and has prepared for this likely event by making an inventory of what is valuable and museum-worthy. More than anyone, having lived her life fully, she is aware that nothing can remain the same in order for the new to thrive. Her house of breath is dismantled—not board by board—but by one meaningful memory at a time… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: The Lucky Ones – Cinematical
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Cinematical - Many films have sought to portray the terrible damage inflicted by war against a soldier’s mental and physical health, but The Lucky Ones takes this concept to new depths by depicting a trio of Army personnel who have been messed up only in amusing, sitcom-y ways. It has three strangers with nothing in common but their uniforms driving cross-country to get everyone home, and if that sounds like an ill-conceived cross between Stop-Loss and Planes, Trains & Automobiles, you’re right on the money. Especially on the “ill-conceived” part.
Sgt. T.K. Poole (Michael Peña) is a horny young man who’s been rendered impotent — hilarious! — by shrapnel from an IED. He can’t bear to tell his fiancee, though, because without sex, “we got nothing to talk about.” Pvt. Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) is taking a guitar that belonged to her boyfriend, who was killed in action, to his family in Las Vegas, deluding herself into thinking they’ll take her into their home, too, as she has no family of her own. T.K. and Colee are on 30-day leaves; Sgt. Fred Cheever (Tim Robbins), a career Army man from St. Louis, is heading home for good, having injured his back in combat. Well, OK, a porta-potty fell on him. But still, he’s retiring.
A blackout at JFK Airport suspends all flights indefinitely, so Cheever opts to rent a car and drive to Missouri. T.K. and Colee tag along, figuring they’ll fly out of St. Louis, but the three wind up sticking together after T.K. and Colee witness Cheever’s home life falling apart the very minute he arrives. Don’t worry if that sounds sad — the film’s jaunty, light musical score, played in nearly every scene, serves to keep you feeling upbeat… [Full Story]
The Brothers Bloom – Variety.com
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Variety.com - The hints of glib cleverness that hovered around Rian Johnson’s debut, “Brick,” burst into full, glaring view in his cheeky follow-up, “The Brothers Bloom.” As a pair of brothers raised to be topnotch grifters, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo are seldom allowed to play off of each other amid the film’s breathless busyness and adoration for eccentricity — and, even more problematically, for the cinema of Wes Anderson. The more elaborate the twists, the slighter the project becomes, leaving little impression and smaller B.O. prospects for Summit’s targeted December release and January rollout.
Fable-like opener (narrated by magician-actor Ricky Jay) intros the brothers as born con artists, with Bloom (Brody) — whose first name is never revealed — the sensitive one and Stephen (Ruffalo) the mastermind who plots their cons with literary pretentiousness, using Bloom as his narrative “hero.”
This, like several other elements in Johnson’s script, proves vastly more interesting in description than in the playing, regardless of the energy Brody and Ruffalo bring to it.
Burned out after 25 years of training (by Maximilian Schell’s crafty master, Diamond Dog) and conning, Bloom wants out. Stephen wants him for one final con, targeting loony East Coast heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz), with whom Bloom just can’t resist falling in love… [Full Story]
TIFF Review: PONTYPOOL – Twitch
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Twitch - …The opening act of Pontypool is, without a doubt, the work of a master at play. McHattie is absolutely brilliant as Mazzy, a weary man who would have made a brilliant poet in another age, and McDonald makes full use of his star’s skills. McDonald proves over and over again that tension is best produced in the mind, trapping us in the radio station along with his three principal characters – Mazzy, his producer and a young engineer – only trickling to us what information slowly trickles in to them, leaving us to muddle through what’s happening along with them. By the time a quarantine is called and strange warning messages are being broadcast throughout the region in French Mazzy et al are beginning to piece together what is happening and the energy, for both characters and audience, positively crackles.
And here McDonald makes what – to me, though others at the screening I attended disagree – is the film’s major mis-step, breaking the dynamic of the current group to introduce a new character when the doctor whose clinic was attacked implausibly arrives through an unlocked window at the radio station which, by this time, is besieged and surrounded. Ignoring how the doctor got through the crowd at all for now, his arrival unsettles the dynamic that has been established by this point and does so for seemingly no reason other than to provide copious, generally pointless, exposition explaining things we already know or should be able to work out on our own. I am generally of the opinion that if you resort to telling me something that you could have shown me then you have failed as a film maker and McDonald teeters dangerously along this edge for long stretches and never fully recovers his footing… [Full Story]
Pride and Glory – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Variety.com - With its focus on corruption and family angst among Irish-American New York cops, “Pride and Glory” feels like a film that should have been made at least 25 years ago. Or made as a period piece. Heavy, doom-laden and, unfortunately, entirely predictable, director Gavin O’Connor’s murky drama applies epic aspirations to a story all too familiar from any number of films and TV shows. New Line sat on the film for so long it ran out of time to release it, so the task falls to Warner Bros. to try to milk a few bucks out of it, which won’t be easy.
Gavin O’Connor and his twin brother, producer Gregory, grew up as the sons of a New York City cop and developed this story together, along with Robert Hopes and co-scenarist Joe Carnahan. The sincerity and earnestness of their approach are as obvious as the plot mechanics, which hinge on the long-understood tendency of cops to close ranks and protect their own against outsiders, as well as on loyalty within a clan.
Mortal conflict among brothers is officially the oldest story in the book, so it’s a disappointment that some new spin isn’t put on the inevitable faceoff between smart but dour Det. Ray Tierney (Edward Norton) and his dedicated but bad-boy brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell). The family also includes straight-arrow first son Francis Tierney Jr. (Noah Emmerich) and its patriarch, boozing Chief of Manhattan Detectives Francis Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight)… [Full Story]
Parc – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Variety.com - Promising much in its initial stages but increasingly falling short on a number of levels, psycho-suspenser “Parc” is an intriguing attempt to transfer John Cheever’s 1969 novel “Bullet Park” from America’s comfy ‘burbs to the more-than-comfy environs of the contempo French Riviera. Good performances by leads Sergi Lopez and Jean-Marc Barr, as opposite types on a life-destroying collision course, can’t save a clunky script that goes off the rails in the third act. Beyond fest play, this pic’s future looks thin.
Writer-director Arnaud des Pallieres has shaken off most of the pretentious tics of his 2003 first feature, “Adieu.” And with the help of superb sound design, using silence and ambient susurrations, he conjures up an atmosphere of suppressed violence that recalls the slightly similar “Funny Games.” More’s the pity, then, that he loses his grip on the characters’ psychology at the moment when it’s most important.
Lopez plays Georges Clou (called George Nail in the subtitles), whose fatalistic meeting with Barr’s Paul Marteau (subtitles: Paul Hammer) reps the main dramatic engine. Cheever’s original characters were hardly less subtly named (Eliot Nailles and Paul Hammer), but for non-French auds, the continual reminder onscreen of their metaphorical monikers keeps driving the point home in an annoying way… [Full Story]
Dean Spanley – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Variety.com - It’s a dog’s past life in “Dean Spanley,” an immaculately cast, nicely handled and wafer-thin slice of Brit period-dress whimsy. Pic reps an odd sophomore feature choice for New Zealander Toa Fraser, whose big-hearted Maori family drama “No. 2″ should have made more waves internationally. This effort will likely travel further due to thesp names, and it does have its peculiar charms. But it’s a talky, narrowly focused piece that feels like an after-dinner anecdote presented with the full ceremony of a formal meal. Pic will flit through theaters before finding more comfortable smallscreen berths.
In the Edwardian era, genteel Londoner Fisk Jr. (Jeremy Northam) resents his dreary obligation each Thursday: visiting his father, Fisk Sr. (Peter O’Toole), who refuses to acknowledge the tragic loss of his wife and other son, or indeed express any emotion beyond bullheadedness.
In an effort to find some diversion from their awkward companionship, the two end up at a swami’s lecture on reincarnation. This proves singularly unilluminating. But it does provide an opportunity for the first of several chance encounters with Dean Spanley (Sam Neill), a peculiar, somewhat mysterious fellow who strongly piques Fisk Jr.’s curiosity… [Full Story]
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 – Variety.com
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Variety.com - How many thrillers could put the outcome in the title and still provide as many white-knuckle moments as “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29“? Although common wisdom says docs can’t draw a crowd, producer-director-editor-d.p. Kevin Rafferty’s film is so much fun it could prove an exception, especially given the word of mouth that will surely follow widespread festival play.
Rafferty’s unadorned sports saga is built around the broadcast of the Nov. 23, 1968, match-up and Don Gillis’ play-by-play, which provide the thrills in a game in which Yale led 29-13 with 42 seconds to play.
But the heart comes from interviews with the players, who revisit an extraordinary football game, played at a time when the country was a political powderkeg: The two Ivy League squads, both of which entered the contest undefeated, included members of both the paramilitary ROTC and the antiwar SDS, and at least one battle-scarred Vietnam vet.
But politics were forgotten at kickoff time, the players remember. War protestors and Wall Street alums put their differences aside on Saturday afternoons to rah-rah-rah… [Full Story]
