Tag: Kate Winslet

Stark Future.

The new trailer for Stephen Zaillan’s star-studded take on All the King’s Men premieres online. I remain conflicted — James Gandolfini looks just about dead-on as Tiny Duffy (and should be fun to watch as the anti-Tony Soprano), and, tho’s she not really in this clip, I love Patricia Clarkson as Sadie. But Jude Law and Sean Penn still feel wrong, wrong, wrong to me (particularly when Penn/Stark’s on the stump.) And I still kinda hate the blatantly Oscar-bait-ish ad campaign on display here, what with the distracting orchestral sweep and all the actorly kudos. But, we’ll see…I’ll definitely be in the theater day one.

Oil & Smoke.

In the movie bin, Jake Gyllenhaal welcomes the suck in the full trailer for Sam Mendes’ Jarhead (teaser noted here) , and John Turturro directs an all-star cast to song and dance in this first clip from Romance & Cigarettes.

Burden of the Bayou

Hidden over at the official FX Nip/Tuck site (click on the Sony lounge button at the bottom of the screen) are a number of new trailers for upcoming big-ticket films, including Freedomland (with Samuel Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, and The Wire‘s Clarke Peters) and Memoirs of a Geisha (with Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe.) Both, particularly the latter, look impressive.

Less impressive, unfortunately, is the trailer for one of my most eagerly awaited films of the year, All the King’s Men. To be fair, I have very high hopes for this flick. All the King’s Men is far and away my favorite “Great American Novel” for many reasons. (To name just one, anyone thinking of going anywhere near a history graduate degree should peruse Jack Burden’s trying experience at State University first.) Whatsmore, it’s being brought to the screen (again) through the efforts of my old boss, who’s got, you might say, a good handle on the source material.

But this trailer misses the punch of the book and, frankly, plays like not much more than warmed-over Oscar bait. Ok, no biggie, it’s just a trailer. But more worrying, Jude Law and Sean Penn, both excellent actors, seem miscast. As the passage cited above attests, Burden is by no means a fresh-faced kid when he enters Willie’s circle — he’s been around the block a few times, fallen in and out of love and lust, gotten kicked around when he’s down, and taken refuge more than once in the smothering arms of the Great Sleep. There’s a sadness and a resignation about him that’s just not gonna shake…Think Gabriel Byrne in Miller’s Crossing. But, here, Jude Law looks entirely too wide-eyed, beaming, and innocent — in a word, too pretty — to do justice to the part. As for Penn…well, he just seems off to me, particularly considering how perfect Sadie (Patricia Clarkson) and Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini) look. But, well, perhaps I’ll get used to him. (The Stantons — Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo — are neither here nor there, but I’m getting a bad feeling about Anthony Hopkins, who’s been known to phone it in, as Judge Irwin.)

Boo Hiss.

Y’know, after RotK‘s commanding sweep last year, I’d almost forgotten about Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, The English Patient, and all the myriad ways Oscar tends to be generally lame. But today’s nominations brought it all roaring back.

No Eternal Sunshine for best picture? That’s the most egregious snub since Three Kings, Being John Malkovich and Fight Club were all overlooked in favor of the much-overhyped American Beauty (to say nothing of ghastly drek like The Cider House Rules and The Green Mile.) Neither Jim Carrey nor Paul Giamatti for Best Actor? Giamatti’s snub is particularly cruel, given that both Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated. Clive Owen and Natalie Portman? I think highly of them both, but as I said of the Globes, Closer was a lousy, over-the-top flick that confused explicit talk for serious purpose, and has no business being up for anything. (The same might be said of Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland — Depp rarely gives a bad performance, but, from what I gather, Neverland is a rote, by-the-numbers biopic. I haven’t seen it, though.)

To be honest, these choices generate zero excitement on this end (even if there’s a very outside chance I win a Soctopus that evening.) But, for tradition’s sake…

Best Picture: It’ll come down to The Aviator or Sideways, and my bet is this is the year the Academy honors Scorsese (partly for making Old Hollywood look so glamorous.)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Aviator. See above. It’s Scorsese’s year…and that’ll be the lead for the evening.

Best Actor: Leonardo di Caprio, The Aviator. I could see Don Cheadle winning here, but, when in doubt, pick the actor playing the crazy and/or mentally deficient guy. (Jack Nicholson/As Good as it Gets, Geoffrey Rush/Shine, Tom Hanks/Forrest Gump, Anthony Hopkins/Silence of the Lambs, Dustin Hoffman/Rain Man, etc. etc.) I need to see the blueprints…

Best Actress: Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine. Besides being an Oscar darling, she’s helped by the fact that the movie got screwed in all the other categories. (Kinda like how the Moulin Rouge enthusiasts put Jim Broadbent over-the-top for Iris.)

Best Supporting Actor: Alan Alda, The Aviator. (This could just as easily have Alec Baldwin in the same film.) You could make a strong case for Jamie Foxx in Collateral, but I’m guessing his vote splits between here and Ray. Plus, Alda best fits the elder statesman role that generally wins these (Michael Caine/The Cider House Rules, James Coburn/Affliction, Martin Landau/Ed Wood, Gene Hackman/Unforgiven, Jack Palance/City Slickers.)

Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator. This category can surprise, and Virginia Madsen and Natalie Portman are her closest competitors. But I figure the gist will be that Madsen should be happy to be nominated and Portman was a good performance in a bad film. (That being said, Portman’s role as a stripper is exactly the type of thing that often wins in this category — see: Kim Basinger/L.A. Confidential, Mira Sorvino/Mighty Aphrodite.)

Best Original Screenplay: Eternal Sunshine. The fan-favorite movie that the Academy feels bad for not quite “getting” generally goes here (Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, Lost in Translation), and Eternal Sunshine will be no exception.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Sideways. I could see Before Sunset winning here, possibly. Still, I’ll say Sideways as recompense for the Giamatti snub.

Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles. No contest.

2004 in Film.

Happy New Year, everyone. Inauspiciously for 2005, it looks like I’m starting the year a day late on the end-of-2004 movie roundup…but better late than never. As you probably already guessed, this year’s film list will be the first in four years without a Peter Jackson Tolkien adaptation in the #1 spot (although I’m still keeping it warm for The Hobbit in 2008.) Nevertheless, my top choice this year was an easy one, and those of y’all who come ’round here often can probably figure it out.

Top 20 Films of 2004:
[2000/2001/2002/2003]

1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The one true classic of 2004, Eternal Sunshine has only grown in my estimation since its initial release in March. (David Edelstein’s take on it as one of Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell‘s remarriage comedies is well worth reading.) A heartfelt examination of love, loss, and memory, Eternal Sunshine was also a strikingly adult take on romance and relationships, the kind you usually don’t get from Hollywood. With great performances from a caged Jim Carrey and an electric Kate Winslet, the film managed to be both an earnest, passionate love story and a wistful paean to those person-shaped holes we all carry in our hearts and memories. Along with Annie Hall and High Fidelity, it goes down as one of my all-time favorite films about the mysteries of love. (Why even bother? We need the eggs.)

2) Garden State. Writer-director Zach Braff’s “anti-Graduate” debut was a small but touching ode to home that, along with reviving Natalie Portman as an actress and offering the best soundtrack of the year, delivered exactly what it promised. A bit hokey at times, sure, but Garden State wore its heart on its sleeve and, for the most part, got away with it. It was a witty and eloquent voyage to the Jersey burbs and a testament to the proposition that as Paul Weller put it, it’s never too late to make a brand new start.

3) The Incredibles. Pixar has been delivering well-constructed eye-popping wonders since Toy Story, and The Incredibles is the best of the lot. I figured it might be awhile before a movie topped Spiderman 2 as a sheer comic book spectacle, but, as it turned out, The Incredibles did it only a few months later. One of the best comic book films ever made, The Incredibles was two hours of unmitigated fanboy fun. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably also the best Fantastic Four film we’re ever going to see.

4) Sideways. Like a fine 1961 Cheval Blanc, Alexander Payne’s elegiac toast to California wine country and the regrets and indignities of middle-age has a tendency to linger in the senses. Paul Giamatti must tire of playing depressive, barely sociable losers, but he’s great at it here…Sideways isn’t as funny as Election, but it is a memorable trip.

5) Spiderman 2. A definite improvement on the first adventure of your friendly neighborhood wallcraller, Spiderman 2 was a perfectly made summer film that stayed true to the spirit of Peter Parker. Along with X2, this is the gold standard for comic book-to-film adaptations right now…let’s hope Batman Begins is up to snuff.

6) Shaun of the Dead. Although it lost its footing shambling to its conclusion, Shaun of the Dead was great fun for the first two-thirds of its run, and it’s now probably my favorite zombie movie (everyone should have one.) A much-needed dry British humor fix to tide us over until Hitchhiker’s Guide.

7) The Aviator. A bit on the long side, Scorsese’s life of Howard Hughes is most fun when it stays away from the airfields and lounges about Old Hollywood. Two very clean thumbs up.

8) The Assassination of Richard Nixon. A dark, unflinching 90-minute descent into violent futility. I originally had this before The Aviator, then figured the degree of difficulty on Scorsese’s flick was much, much higher. Nevertheless, this funereal biopic for non-billionaire crazies, while grim and not much fun, was well-made and well-performed, and I expect it’ll stay with me for awhile.

9) The Bourne Supremacy. Perhaps a bit too much like its predecessor, Bourne II was still a better Bond than anything we’ve seen in the past 20 years. Paul Greengrass’ shakicam work here bodes well for Rorshach in The Watchmen.

10) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban. It’d be hard to make a better film of Harry Potter’s adventures at Hogwarts than Alfonso Cuaron did here — Azkhaban managed to capture the dry wit and subversive spirit of the books that’s so missing in the Chris Columbus movies. That being said, Azkaban also made it clear that much of the fun of Rowling’s tomes is uncapturable on film. What was great fun to read on the page ended up seeming like Back to the Future II on the screen. With that in mind, Year 6 begins on 7/16.

11) Ocean’s 12. Two swollen hours of Soderberghian glamour and inside baseball. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but I found it an agreeable improvement on Ocean’s 11. (Don Cheadle’s accent is still terrible, tho’.)

12) Touching the Void. Snap! Aigh! Crunch! Aigh! It’d be hard to forget anything as memorable as Shattered Femur Theater. Well worth seeing, if you can stand the pain.

13) Fahrenheit 9/11. Hmmm…perhaps this should be higher. I definitely left the theater in an angry froth (not that it takes much)…unfortunately, apparently so did all the freepers.

14) My Architect. An excellent documentary on Louis Kahn, brilliant architect and terrible family man. Alas, it’s also a less-excellent documentary on Kahn’s son, and his Oprah-like quest for self-acceptance.

15) Kinsey. Take that, red staters.

16) Hero. A memorable meditation on love, power, and kick-ass kung-fu, until its train-wreck derailing in the last half-hour.

17) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. As I said yesterday, Aquatic was a jaunty Wes Anderson joyride that nevertheless gets a little lost in its terminal cuteness. When you care more about the leaving-behind of Cody the three-legged dog than you do the death of a major character, there’s a problem.

18) I Heart Huckabees. Huckabees had its heart in the right place, and made for a decently appealing night at the movies…but it also had a terminal-cute problem.

19) Collateral. If the movie had maintained the promise of its first hour throughout, Michael Mann’s Collateral would have been a top ten contender. Alas, it all falls apart once Tom Cruise goes bugnut psycho in da club.

20) Kill Bill, Vol. 2. There was probably one really good movie somewhere in the two Kill Bills. The second half was closer to it than the first.

Not Seen: Bad Education, Before Sunset, Finding Neverland, Friday Night Lights, Harold and Kumar, Hotel Rwanda, Maria Full of Grace, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Spanglish

Worst Movies of the Year: Van Helsing, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Village, Code 46, Closer, Alexander, 21 Grams (2003)

Biggest Disappointment: The Ladykillers

Ho-Hum: Team America: World Police, The Alamo, House of Flying Daggers, Troy, King Arthur, Anchorman, Blade: Trinity, Shrek 2

Worth a Rental: Mean Girls, The Manchurian Candidate,
Hellboy, The Machinist, City of God (2003)

Best Actor: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine; Paul Giamatti, Sideways; Sean Penn, The Assassination of Richard Nixon.
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine.

Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator; Virginia Madsen, Sideways.

2005: On paper, it’s looking like a better year for film, fanboy and otherwise, than 2004. The slate includes Star Wars Episode III, Batman Begins, The Chronicles of Narnia, All the King’s Men, PJ’s King Kong, Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm, Polanski’s Oliver Twist, Malick’s The New World, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Constantine, Sin City, Fantastic Four, and my own most-anticipated project, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So here’s to the new year!

Wine & Memory.

The 2004 Golden Globe nominations are out, with Sideways leading the pack as predicted. Given the usual Lacuna-like lapses for early year standouts, I was very happy to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, still my #1 film of 2004, pull down three nods (Best Comedy/Musical, Carrey, & Winslet), although it’ll rightfully face stiff competition from both Sideways and The Incredibles. Otherwise, this list seems like good news on The Aviator, but the lack of Life Aquatic nominations bodes trouble for the next film in my queue.

Courtiers to the King.

It seems Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, and Mark Ruffalo may be joining Sean Penn (Willie Stark) and Jude Law (Jack Burden) in the forthcoming remake of All the King’s Men. Streep is apparently set to play Sadie, Willie’s long-suffering right-hand woman, which must make Winslet and Ruffalo Anne and Adam Stanton respectively.

Forget-Me-Not.


While The Ladykillers ultimately fell well short of expectations, I thought Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind lived up to the hype and then some. One part Annie Hall, one part Sliding Doors, three parts Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine is an exceptionally strange take on the romantic comedy, and probably the best flick by the screenwriter in question since Being John Malkovich. (It probably helped that I tend to be a fan of almost all the folks at work here, particularly Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah “Bad Frodo” Wood, and David Cross.) While the movie occasionally lapses into gratuitous symbolism (The “lost and gone forever” name “Clementine,” for instance) and hokey pop psychology (All of the Carrey-as-baby scenes were done more quickly and effectively in the Cameron Diaz-Catherine Keener chase scene through Malkovich’s brain), Sunshine is a fun, thought-provoking look at relationships and memory, and one that definitely holds together better than Gondy and Kaufman’s last collaboration, Human Nature.

I don’t want to say too much about Eternal Sunshine, as I think it’s probably a movie best enjoyed fresh. But just to give a sense of where my own brain was at during the film, there’s a scene near the end where Joel and Clementine are talking in a Barnes & Noble, and as they chat the books around them slowly lose their color and titles, until they’re all just blank. I think this scene unnerved me more than any other in the film…I wanted to shout, “Not until Thursday! Just remember them until Thursday!” Until then, I’d like to keep my mind as spotted as possible, thank you very much.