Film Fanatics: February 2003
by
News and Reviews
- Shaken or stirred? Blonde or brunette? Young or old? Despite the fact that Pierce Brosnan is currently doing a great job portraying the infamous British secret agent James Bond, he himself has said that he doesn't know how much longer he will continue in the role and speculation has long been rife as to who might take over from him. Popular movie magazine Total Film has recently got in on the act, polling its readers to discover precisely who their top choice would be. The somewhat surprising answer is. Jude Law. Law came top with 28%, followed closely by Ewan McGregor with 26% and Christian Bale with 24%. Hmm, maybe it's just me, but they all seem to be a little too young and 'fresh' looking to step convincingly into Brosnan's shoes - come back in a decade or two, boys!
- "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee, Coming back to star in Grease 3..." (Apologies, both to fans of the original song and to people who've never heard it before and may therefore suspect, quite reasonably, that I've temporarily lost my already tenuous grip on my sanity!) Yes, it's true, both John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, who starred as the deeply cool Danny and sweet, virginal Sandy in hit classic Grease, have apparently agreed to appear in Grease 3. It seems that the pair will be seen as parents when they are reunited at a Rydell High School Reunion, some twenty five years after they graduated at the end of the first film. Grease 2, also set at Rydell but starring only one member of the original cast, was released in 1982 and sank virtually without trace, despite featuring an early performance from a certain Miss Michelle Pfeiffer.
- The Golden Globes, usually considered a fairly good predictor for the Oscars, are over for another year and among the big winners were Chicago (Best Musical/Comedy, Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy for Richard Gere and Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy for Renee Zellweger), The Hours (Best Actress for Nicole Kidman and Best Drama), Jack Nicholson (Best Actor for About Schmidt) and Martin Scorsese (Best Director for Gangs of New York). In the Television section of the awards both the tough US police drama The Shield and the UK mini-series The Gathering Storm picked up two awards each. The Shield won Best Drama and Best Actor for Michael Chiklis (Vic Mackey), while Albert Finney was named Best Actor in a Mini-Series/TV Movie for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm, itself identified as the Best Mini-Series/TV Movie.
ABOUT SCHMIDT (15):
Jack Nicholson stars as Warren Schmidt, a life-insurance executive who 'faces up to life's disappointments when he retires, his wife dies, and then his prickly daughter decides to marry an under-achieving, mullet-haired waterbed salesman.'
The Times (T2): "Nicholson plays Schmidt as a blank page, but not one waiting to be written on. This is an infinitely sadder blank page, the kind where everything has already happened and long been rubbed out with a giant eraser. Indeed the very appeal of About Schmidt is that it is about a man who has absolutely nothing about him. ...This is one of those gorgeously unsentimental so-dry-it's-desiccated black comedies that doesn't rely solely on laughs. The bleaker things get, the funnier things are but the real giggles are all in the painstakingly detailed small print (Payne and his writing partner, Jim Taylor, have done a great job of adapting Louis Begley's novel)."
Heat: "Payne's comedy-of-pain isn't for everyone, and it veers away from resolution: Schmidt goes on a journey but he isn't redeemed by his experiences. Overall, the tone of the film risks patronising its stupider characters. About Schmidt always had the right ingredients for an intriguing screen comedy, but the casting of Nicholson was a masterstroke: the indignities of the fallen patriarch are that much funnier with this incorrigible rogue in the role. The actor strikes just the right pitch of bemused exasperation - a subtle performance that is triggering much talk of Best Actor awards [and has already won him a Golden Globe]. The supporting players provide deft grace notes, but this is very much The Jack Nicholson Show - and a wonderfully entertaining one it is."
The Evening Standard: "It is Nicholson whose professional ballast consistently rallies and steadies the film - even at its rockiest, at the hilarious but ineptly placed wedding reception at which he's required to make a speech and itches to tell the world what he thinks of it. His performance throughout is a masterclass in acting. He carries both broad comedy and inner bleakness without making a burden of either. The main reason for seeing About Schmidt? The answer is easy: it's about Jack."
GHOST SHIP (18):
A salvage crew, captained by Gabriel Byrne and including ER's Julianna Margulies, discover the wreck of a long-disappeared luxury ocean liner and climb aboard, only to find out that they are not alone - and the deceased passengers don't take kindly to being disturbed.
The Times (T2): "Ghost Ship is a deeply satisfying blast of pure hokum. A sexy salvage crew on a tug boat think they've struck gold when they discover an abandoned liner drifting in the Bering Sea. But the rusty hulk is riddled with grisly memories - notably the entire quotient of passenger being chopped in half by an anchor wire before the opening credits have stopped rolling. Class."
The Evening Standard: "...Director Steve Beck has put The Shining out to sea. Swimming pools, instead of lifts, fill with blood; spooks in the shape of little girls in party frocks stand and stare accusingly; and beautiful vamps morph into vengeful crones just as they're about to unzip their form-fitting ballgowns. As usual, the production design outacts the actors, and the CGi effects destroy all logic."
The Observer: "The handsomely designed, scary, predictable Ghost Ship is the third movie from a company created by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis to make upmarket horror flicks. It shows its hand too early on, but begins intriguingly."
Heat: "A gloriously gory opening massacre... ER's Margulies does a mean Sigourney Weaver impression. [but] clunky dialogue, naff effects and a lousy supporting cast capsize this flick long before the predictable ending. The story makes no sense, and the pop-video editing is annoying. Not bad in a so-dumb-it's-fun way, but you'd be better off waiting for the video."
THE PIANIST (15):
Roman Polanski's film tells the true story of talented concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jew, who is just starting to establish himself at the age of twenty-seven when the Nazis invade in 1939, and his struggle for survival in the following years, as his close-knit family lose their jobs, are humiliated, moved into the ghetto and eventually taken away to be shipped off to Treblinka.
The Observer: "The Pianist is a curious story of a passive survivor, a witness to an incomprehensible atrocity, and it's told in a cold, detached way. The German troops, like Lear's wanton boy, kill Jews for their sport, and there is no attempt to explain or excuse anything. The English dialogue doesn't always ring true (the film would have been more effective in Polish), there's some clumsy exposition and a misguided moment when the hero's brother reads from Shylock's "If they prick us do we not bleed?" speech. But the feeling of time and place is convincing and in Adrien Brody's performance Szpilman is persuasively troubled, withdrawn and desperate. The movie has the same production designer (Allan Starski) and costume designer (Anna Sheppard) as Schindler's List. but it differs considerably from Spielberg's film. Not only is there no triumphalist ending, but by playing down such acts of kindness and decency as Szpilman experiences it refuses to join in any easy celebration of the human spirit. In this resides a stoic honesty."
The Times (T2): "This is a far greater film than a single viewing can possibly afford. The sharp sense of outrage fails to hide the even sharper stink of fear.. Music has rarely sounded so desperately frivolous, and so nakedly important. The pacing and cinematography of The Pianist is absolutely outstanding. It is almost irreverent how the director extracts so much beauty from such pain. There is no more eloquent an image than Brody plodding down a street reduced to rubble. The camera lifts like a hawk and we see his tiny, emaciated figure, quite alone, scrabbling around the splintered bones of a city that is as silent as a desecrated grave."
The Evening Standard: "Polanski fails to bring to the film of Szpilman's life the very element he [left] out of his own story [when writing his 1984 autobiography]: empathetic emotion. For most of its length, The Pianist is a dispassionate inventory of ethnic slurs, personal humiliations and criminal acts committed by German forces on the Warsaw Jews. ...Polanski's tableauesque style is redolent of routine film-making 50 years ago. It lacks the fluent blend of horror, pathos, absurdity and even grim black humour that made last year's Czech film, Divided We Fall, on an identical theme of a Jew in hiding, so structurally audacious and emotionally devastating."
Film Quiz
Just how much of a film fanatic are you? Answer these questions, add up your scores and find out!
Easy (one point for each correct answer):
- Kathy Bates, star of About Schmidt, is still best remembered for her portrayal of a psychotic fan who takes the author of her favourite series of books captive and 'hobbles' him to prevent him from escaping in which big screen adaptation of a Stephen King novel?
- ER nurse Carol Hathaway (played by Ghost Ship's Julianna Margulies) had a long relationship with Doctor Doug Ross - can you name the actor who played him?
Less Easy (two points for each correct answer):
- Emilia Fox, presently to be seen in The Pianist, has recently appeared on UK television screens playing Jeannie, the sidekick to the private investigators Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Which two comedians took the roles of the eponymous detectives?
- Catherine Zeta Jones, currently electrifying audiences with her acclaimed performance in Chicago, first shot to fame in the UK playing Marietta in which television series, adapted from H.E. Bates' well-loved book of the same name?
Difficult (three points for each correct answer):
- Peter Jackson, director of the monumentally successful Lord of the Rings trilogy also directed Heavenly Creatures, a film based on a true story about two girls whose obsessive friendship drove them to murder one of their mothers when she threatened to pull them apart. Which British actress found stardom playing one of the two lead roles?
- Jennifer Love Hewitt, appearing opposite martial arts genius Jackie Chan in The Tuxedo, first came to notice playing the soft-hearted Sarah in which US television series about a family of recently orphaned brothers and sisters?
(Answers at bottom of page.)
Film Chart
Since the figures are not always available until after the event, the Box Office chart may occasionally be a couple of weeks behind. Sorry!
UK BOX OFFICE (Week ending 19 January 2003)
- 8 Mile
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Chicago
- Gangs of New York
- The Tuxedo
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Star Trek: Nemesis
- Die Another Day
- The Transporter
- Sweet Home Alabama
Quiz Answers:
- Misery
- George Clooney
- Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer
- The Darling Buds of May
- Kate Winslet
- Party of Five
How did you do?
0-4 points: Who needs film when you can listen to the radio, eh?
5-8 points: You're a fan all right, but you're not a fanatic yet.
9-12 points: Move over Spielberg, there's a new man in town!
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