Game of Thrones

Quick show of hands. How many of you have read the fantasy classic GAME OF THRONES by George R.R. Martin? HBO is making it into a series now which comes as such a relief. Long novels are so much better suited to series format than movies and yet they're rarely adapted that way. You can follow the production diary here. I'm only 650 pages into the first novel -- god this is long -- but it's a page turner: superbly paced, tense, multi-layered, fine prose, and unpredictable plotting (a rare thing in fantasy novels).

Peter Dinklage has quite a role in his hands. He plays Tyrion Lannister, the manipulative, whip smart "imp" of the royal house of Lannister (the Lannisters are the villains mostly... Martin does a fine job of making sure your allegiances shift on occasion.)  Tyrion  is possibly the most complex character in a book that's teeming with vivid personalities. Not all of them are multi-faceted exactly but they all pop out from the page.  Do you think other vertically challenged actors applaud or resent him? There aren't that many roles out there and doesn't he gets them all. I remember registering shock when I saw Jordan Prentice in In Bruges. I was like "Peter Dinklage missed out on a role?"

EW has a new photo gallery of the characters. Looking through it I'm a bit worried about the budget (something about the costumes or armor seems too simple?) and I don't like how they've visualized Daenys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) at all though that whole thread is my least favorite part of the stories many tentacles.

Are you excited for this production?

"I hope she'll be a fool..."

.

"... that's the best thing a girl can be in this world -
a beautiful little fool." - Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

(pic by Baz Luhrmann) JA from MNPP here. Deadline reported a little earlier today that Carey Mulligan will presumably play Daisy Buchanan for Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby, you know, if he gets around to making a Gatsby. (Who knows with Baz?) But for now as the Magic Eight Ball says signs point to yes. And perhaps the best visual I'll be given today is in their article:

"Mulligan was on the reception line for The Fashion Council Awards in New York when she got the call on her cell phone from Luhrmann, just a few minutes ago. She burst into tears on the red carpet in front of Karl Lagerfield and Anna Wintour."

Thanks for that, Deadline. They forgot to mention the part where the tears of an innocent caused those two's fangs to burst forth.

Anyway I think she's a great choice. What about y'all? And will Baz really get around to making this movie for real? And what do we think about Leo DiCaprio as Jay and Tobey Maguire as Nick?
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Streep and Roberts for "August: Osage County"

The news, which isn't actual news yet so much as 'in talks' talking-points (the bulk of online movie articles), is this: Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts will take the plum Oscar bait roles of the pill-popping abusive matriarch Violet and eldest control-freak daughter Barbara in August: Osage County. The new (to feature directing) John Wells will sit in the director's chair instead of Mike Nichols as previously rumored.  It seems quite risky to give a project this complex and fraught with ways in which it could go wrong to a newbie but maybe his debut film (The Company Men) is unexpectedly rich?

 One of the most popular posts in the history of The Film Experience was our discussion of the casting of this genius actress-heavy play. It's THE stage-to-screen project to watch for any actressexual out there since the cast that matters is all female and the roles, to a one, are juicy with extra pulp. (The supporting female roles could put Oscars on shelves, too.)This news, if it does become actual news, is a weird sort of exciting/disappointing.

As many of you have gleaned I am something of an über Streep fan but I think she's wrong for this part. Streep has a glorious earthy warmth as a performer and Violet needs the opposite. Streep's most successful "cold" performances were in A Cry in the Dark (which came during the amazing chameleon years) and The Devil Wears Prada (see previous post) which came during her comedic ascendance. To do justice to Violet, she'd need to be as good as she was in both pictures... simultaneously. And sometimes when Streep goes cold (Doubt, The Manchurian Candidate) she pushes too much. Violet is more complicated than either the Prada or Cry roles and requires both jagged comic steel and dormant volcanic drama ... and both need to be channelled through a druggy fog for the entire film. In short: it's an A+ dream role, better than many whole Best Actress rosters combined.

I like Julia Roberts.

If Julia works as hard for August as she did for Erin Brockovich or Closer than she might absolutely nail the role of exhausted controlling Barbara. But how often does Julia work as hard as she does in those two movies? When you're a massive star with more innate charisma than most performers can muster over the entirety of a career, coasting is an ever present danger. If she coasts at all, you'll lose the electricity of the play. The play just crackles with the stuff. Any loss of that and you could have a disaster on your hands.

Streep is such a consummate performer that, whether miscast or not, many people will demand she win a third Oscar because she will be so spectacularly watchable in the end. Even if it's not quite what the movie needs. (We'll see. I can't say how badly I hope to be wrong.)

I watched the 3 hour play from the edge of my seat and loved-loved-loved. I will anxiously await the movie. But both casting decisions feel like the kind anyone could and would make without actually knowing anything about the play, the roles, the tone or what kind of movie it would need to be to be a great one. It reeks of corporate laziness. They are rather inarguably the most famous senior citizen actress and the most famous middle age actress; "STREEP | ROBERTS" will look great on a marquee. But it's sad to cast source material this magnificent with no regard for the actual source material, and all eyes towards some imaginary marquee.

Movies should come first, not their ad campaigns.
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Never Let (This Piece of) Me Go

It's hard not to lose your heart a little to Never Let Me Go at the start. Carey Mulligan, making good on that An Education promise, stares through you with big caring soulful eyes. She even confirms that look with dialogue about being a "carer". Andrew Garfield stares back, through glass, with an uncomplicated smile on his face. He's prone on an operating table and obviously in need of her caring. Never Let Me Go uses a definitive plea as title. Not to be to cruel when faced with so much neediness but can we do some haggling first? May we keep parts of you and discard the rest? Never Let This Piece of Me Go? Consider it a deal.

Cathy H, Tommy D, and Ruth ???

I'd personally like to keep the actors. I've even written up a "Best in Show" column on Andrew Garfield for Tribeca Film. The set decoration has its moments, too. I'll even keep the screenplay so long as I can jettison at least a third of Cathy H's redundant narrated bits and a truly atrocious final speech which ruins the heartbreak of the scene preceding it. You know the type of final speech I'm talking about "Let me spell out the theme for you in case you were two hours late to the movie or took a really long bathroom break." The narration is actually a bit baffling for a film that does, in fact, trust you to fill in some of the blanks. If you're trusting the audience to infer meaning on several occasions, haven't you already decided your audience is a smart one?

More than any film this year, I want to fuss with everything. The first donation needs to be Rachel Portman's score. Give that away immediately. One can half imagine the creative meetings "This is the climax of the film. Make it important." ...only they forgot to mention which scene. The score even treats transitional bits like cars pulling up to buildings as perfect moments to remind you that this is an ominous dystopian tale that is Breaking Your Heart. For all of the inherent power in Never Let Me Go's compelling premise, clever images and nuanced performances -- that seems to be the exhausting directorial mantra for the entire creative team: 'this is the climax, make it important!' But not every scene can be a climax - just as with life, they only happen once. C+

Related Articles
"Best in Show" Andrew Garfield
A Second Look at An Education
Oscar Predictions
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Yes, No, Maybe So: Mildred Pierce (2011)

It's not intentional but today will be something of a TV day here at The Film Experience -- and to think how we were just bitching about all the false arguments in its favor -- and let's start with this trailer for the HBO Miniseries Mildred Pierce. [thanks to Sebastián for alerting me]



Like Angels in America seven years back, the director, cast and production values allow us to easily pretend that it's really just a feature film in disguise. It's just another part of The Great Convergence because what are today's franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight other than three season'ish long television series with bigger budgets?

YES I'll see anything -- and have seen everything -- that Todd Haynes directs. From subversive queer shorts like Dottie Gets Spanked to the inventive Superstar (the legally troubled Karen Carpenter bio with Barbie dolls) through to Oscar contending films like Far From Heaven and I'm Not There. His films never fail to excite the eyeballs, the intellect and hormones. Some people think he has trouble with the heart portion of entertainment, that his films are too heady, but to this complaint I say [insert expletive]. Even if that were true, better that problem than the far more common cinematic ailments of brainlessness, sexlessness and generic aesthetics.

NO I don't understand the casting of 23 year old Evan Rachel Wood as 34 year old Kate Winslet's nasty ungrateful daughter Veda at all. Aren't they too old and too young for their roles respectively, thus compounding the problem? Believable mother daughter chemistry won't be as important as usual since they're at odds, but still. Not sure I follow this. Plus, I've been aching for Evan Rachel Wood to get out of her bad girl rut. She has more range than this (or at least she once did).

MAYBE SO As much as I love Kate Winslet, performing in the shadow of Joan Crawford's signature role just seems so... foolhardy? It's one thing to star in an adaptation of a novel that's been adapted before. It's quite another to star in an adaptation of a novel that's been adapted before as an immortal and glamorous star's biggest hour.

I'm a yes given Kate + Todd + below the line players like DP Edward Lachman. Though I feel I should note that Todd's regular costume designer Sandy Powell did not work on this -- she told me her schedule conflicted when I interviewed her during the Young Victoria Oscar run.

My current plan: read the book in the next month or two so as not to be thinking of the gorgeous Michael Curtiz noir the whole way through.

Kate in her Emmy winning* role as Mildred Pierce.

You? Have you seen Joan Crawford's Oscar winning take on the Mildred Pierce role? If not, what are you waiting for?

*just guessin'
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Double Oh! (Casting News)

By now you've heard that the great casting search of 2010 (distaff division) has ended. Rooney Mara has landed the role of Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Rooney & Noomi

That's the role that Noomi Rapace played in the Swedish trilogy based on the best selling book franchise about men who really hate women. David Fincher rejected most of the famous names who wanted the coveted role of this short little sociopath. Little known fact: in addition to height and age requirements only actresses with double O in their name were considered for the famed Tattoo part.

Soleil Moon Frye was deemed too old, despite having come to fame playing short little sociopath Punky Brewster.

Speaking of double Os, it'll be nice to see 007 Daniel Craig again, won't it? Especially with Fincher's camera on him. Think of the multiple wonders Fincher's camera pulled from Brad Pitt over the years, give or take Benjamin Button.

In other strange double lettered casting news Marilyn Monroe ("MM") was supposed to be a character in two upcoming features with major actresses like Naomi Watts (Blonde) and Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn) playing her.


Now, supposedly there's a third Marilyn picture in the works. The author of the book "The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog", which is about the last two years of Marilyn's life as seen by the pet terrier that Frank Sinatra gave her, thinks that Angelina Jolie will play her in the film adaptation. But that sounds like an author delusion. What a strange movie that would make. Not that there's anything wrong with strange movies. We like them.

New Rule: In the future all movies must contain at least one scene involving a character named Marilyn Monroe so that every actress gets a chance to play her. Apparently they all want to.

Julia Roberts vs. The World

"Do you know this one girl with hair like this?"
-Scott Pilgrim

"Who MEEEEEEE?!?"
-Julia

Eat Pray Love and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World are almost kinda the same movie. Or at least thematically kin. No really. Though I'd grade them differently: B- and B+ respectively at least immediately after viewing.

Double Feature Review @ Towleroad

I'd love to hear what you thought of both or either. You starring in Read Share Like
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"Respect the Link. Tame the Blog. Tame It!"

Flow TV a structural analysis on Glee, why some episodes don't work and others do.
Examiner Would Tom Cruise's career be different today had he won the Oscar?
Pullquote You can draw a line from Prince through Laurel Canyon and on to The Kids Are All Right.
Just a Cineast looks at Olivia de Havilland's first released movie Alibi Ike, 75 years ago.


Socialite's Life I hadn't heard this rumor about Taylor Lautner taking on Hugh Jackman's role in X-Men First Class and now I want to die a little inside. See also: every post where I lament franchise actors playing in multiple franchises. Don't mix up my film worlds!
Cinematical interviews the great cinematographer Wally Pfister from Inception
Twitch Film Christopher Nolan's little seen first film Following is now available on demand.
Dear Old Hollywood visits the sites visited by one Joan Crawford in Possessed. I always wish that someone would do them with NYC movies. Don't say "do it yourself." You don't wanna know the depths of my inability to know which way is up let alone north south east west.
Film Business Asia Gong Li & Andy Lau to star in remake of Mel Gibson movie What Women Want.
i09 reminds people of flops promoted heavily at past Comic Cons. A bit of reality to preface the annual uber-hype fest.
Chateau Thombeau "Is it Wong?"
Awards Daily The NY Post endorses homophobia in a piece on The Kids Are All Right

another thinkpiece on Inception

Roger Ebert linked to his latest piece from Twitter with a "you are allowed to dislike "Inception". While my initial reaction was to scoff 'Uh, thanks (?) for giving people permission.' I realize that a lot of the same mob who demand agreement from every critic (missing the point of criticism by 100%) worship Ebert as a God so I'm glad he wrote this article. It's a good one with lots of civility. I shan't scoff at the 'permission' given.

It's so weird that Christopher Nolan films always put me in this position.

• Truth: I have never disliked a Nolan film. I think they're all good... "thumbs up" in Ebert parlance. Yay for consistency!
• Weird Secondary Truth & Conundrum: The reviews of Nolan films always make me crazy. After each release and the attendant flurry of raves, I always end up disliking his films more than I did while watching them. In each and every case, the hysterical praise makes me feel uncharitable towards [insert film title] that I liked a lot. More than perhaps any other acclaimed filmmaker, I feel that people don't actually discuss the merits of his movies so much as shoot big blurb loads on them, bukkake style. Yuck!
  

Finally...

via Twitch we can see the teaser for the Tran Anh-Hung's adaptation of the modern classic Norwegian Wood starring Rinko Kikuchi. The official site is also up.



We need to read the novel soon, having heard only awestruck love vows to it. But the film looks pretty from these teasing glimpses.
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Save Me Elmer Gantry, Save Me!

Fifty years ago today, Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) started preaching to moviegoers. He started howling "Repent! Repent!" and multiple beautiful women started moaning "Save me! Save me!" to paraphrase a line from the satiric 1960 Best Picture nominee.


Elmer Gantry, a Richard Brooks adaptation of the novel by Sinclair Lewis, introduces us to a drunk womanizing salesman and churchgoing Christian who finds his calling when he decides to combine the two, hawking old timey religion with Sister Sharon (Jean Simmons), a revivalist. She's been making quite a name for herself converting the common folk wherever she pitches her tent. It goes without saying that once Elmer spots her, he also pitches his.

Once Sharon and Elmer have joined forces, there's no stopping them. They develop a perfect good cop/bad cop salvation routine: Elmer provides the sweaty fire and shouty brimstone and Sharon swoops in later to offer the soothing sotto voce God is Love denouement. (How anyone hears her quiet words in a huge tent with all the shouting and live musical accompaniment is a mystery the film never explains.) Sharon resists Elmer's sexual swagger at first but eventually succumbs like all the other women.

Of course, if you want your sweaty god-fearing rants to be charming and your aggressive "Repents!" to actually convert women into horny disciples, you'd better look quite a lot like Burt Lancaster, one of the manliest of film stars.


In fact, I suspect how one feels about Elmer Gantry the movie would be closely tied to how one feels about Lancaster as an actor/star. It neatly boils down to which of these two arguments you agree with.

1. A Doubter. Bill, Sharon's manager, doesn't trust Elmer. "Everything about you is offensive," he says to the new revivalist star. "You're a crude vulgar show off. And your vocabulary belongs in an outhouse."
2. True Believer. Sharon herself, finds him disarming and charming. "You're so outrageous! I think I like you. You're amusing and you smell like a real man."
   

So which side of the argument do you fall on with this sweaty, loud, extremely physical actor? I'd like to know but, for myself, I'm agnostic. I can't choose a side. I fall in and out of love with Lancaster but I like him best when he's dialing it back a little to assess how well Elmer is performing his (usually successful) seductions OR when he can't control his impulses at all and just lets Elmer carry on like a mad men. It's the inbetween stuff that's hard for me to take. It's in those moments when he's merely laughing too loud, smiling too big, or talking too much that he's a crude vulgar show off to me ... unless he's so outrageous that he's amusing. It's then that I think I like him.

Being a loud show off or playing one successfully is a great way to win an Oscar, which Lancaster did for this preacher man star turn. Another great way to win an Oscar is to show up in a movie that's well under way and breathe new bracing life into it (See Frances McDormand in Fargo and Renée Zellweger in Cold Mountain for polar opposite examples of the same trick.) I had never seen Elmer Gantry before and I was shocked that Shirley Jones, who won for playing Lulu the hooker, doesn't even show up until almost exactly the halfway mark. It's a two and a half hour movie! Lulu's revenge plot (Elmer has skeletons, y'see) derails Gantry's burgeoning success until Lulu reveals that heart of gold. She's a hooker so you know she has one. It's the movies!

Lulu's schizo back and forth between loving and hating Elmer and her strange waffling between Christianity and sacrilege (in one scene she'll make a dirty joke about God, in the next she'll talk about the Bible with a beatific look on her face) is perfectly in keeping with the movie's indecision about whether to join true believers or mock them.

The movie actually starts with a too-careful disclaimer, suggesting that it's not going to have much satirical bite. Hollywood loves to play to as many demographics as it can which means that satire is not their strong suit. I'm not sure what the political/religious climate was like in 1960 when the film premiered but it was a hit. The film can't seem to make up its mind (at all) as to whether or not these preachers are hypocritical con artists or benevolent spiritual leaders. The only gospel Elmer Gantry seems truly comfortable selling is the gospel of showmanship.

And that, dear reader, it sells well. Lancaster's sermons still play like gangbusters in 2010. They even feel timeless. It was impossible not to see today's politician/preachers in his antics. Sarah Palin's winking 'lamestream media' anti-intellectualism was instantly recognizable in one pointed private moment between Elmer and a reporter (an excellent Arthur Kennedy) which plays out in a public forum.

"I admit I'm not smart like some of them -- some of them smartalecky professors, wiseguy writers and agitators. I don't know the first thing about philosophy, psychology, ideology or any other ology. But I know this. With Christ you're saved. And without him you're lost.

And how do I know there's a merciful god? Because I've seen the devil plenty o times.

Lancaster's sizzle in the sermon scenes has the unfortunate effect of making Sister Sharon seem like a dud in the charisma department. It's hard to suspend disbelief that she is the bankable person on their joint ticket. Could that be why the arguably miscast Jean Simmons was denied an Oscar nomination despite the Academy's love for the film?

The movie's finale is weirdly botched, opting for something like holy sentiment mixed with you-get-what-you-deserve moralizing while also trying to take one last dig at the salvation through donation con game. There are so many competing agendas and you cannot serve both God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24). B-

<-- Lancaster and Taylor with their Oscars in April 1961.

Since it's a muddled effort, is it sacrilegious to suggest that Elmer Gantry really deserves a remake? It's totally topical. Perhaps the novel needs a new set of filmmaker eyes on it. No matter, I suppose. We'll have to make do with a Paul Thomas Anderson double feature starring huckster preachers Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Untitled).

Have you seen Elmer Gantry?
I'd love to hear other perspectives on it.
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The Beginning of the End of Harry Potter

Apparently yesterday marked quite a milestone. According to /Film, the Harry Potter series concluded filming just yesterday.

(How cute. They're at the cinema!)

I've never been part of Hogwarts mega-legion of boosters but it's still an historic moment that I thought we should mark here. I only wish that the series -- which has already earned more money than anyone could ever count or need -- hadn't popularized the greedy "split the last film into two" grab that every studio will now employ for all popular franchises. We haven't seen the results yet but one assumes the filler-to-substance ratio will be off the charts and you know it won't end with The Twilight Saga and Potter. I couldn't get through even the first Twilight book (my god the whining) so I can't speak for Breaking Dawn but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows definitely doesn't need 300 minutes to tell its story, especially since the middle section of the book is filler itself. I wouldn't worry if these films were 90 minutes but you now they'll stick with the traditional Potter length which, six films going, average out to 150 minutes or 2½ hours exactly. I did the math. When the series is over Harry Potter will have lasted about 1,200 minutes... or roughly the length of two seasons on a pay cable drama. And isn't that what all these multi-film stories essentially are, ginormous television series that you have to pay for?



All that said, I hope the last two films miraculously turn out great for the fans and I also hope that there's enough of Maggie & Helena and such to get me through before the movies pull an Avada Kedavra on me with their bloat. And on that note I should quit typing. If I'm claiming that nobody needs that extra 150 minutes of Potter or another 378 minutes of Twilight in their lives than I probably shouldn't whine so much that I'm mistaken for Bella Swan.
Maggie Smith Helena Bonham Carter

Spy vs.Spy

Jose here.

Assuming you've seen the excellent The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (my review here)...

Who's your favorite, book-to-screen, spy so far this century?


Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander (as played by Noomi Rapace).

OR


Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne (as played by Matt Damon).

Discuss!

For all you European readers who've already seen the entire Millennium trilogy how does it fare when compared with the amazing Bourne series? How do these two fare when compared to the books?