Shame on “Liz & Dick”
Shameful… There is no other word for it. The idea alone of Lindsay Lohan playing Liz Taylor was painful enough. Now we have pictures to deepen the wound. Not only is there no resemblance between the starlet and the legend, the vulgarity of Lohan is an insult to the beauty and class of the great Elizabeth.
No matter how good the makeup (which is terrible by the way), no matter how good the costumes, this TV film is an insult to the memory of the greatest stars Hollywood ever had. Don’t even get me started on the choice of Grant Bowler to play Richard Burton. How can you hire average actors to play legends? Fortunately, this is Lifetime. So I can only hope that no one will watch this outrageous production.
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| What is he doing, biting her? Is this another Twilight? |
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| How can you compare that beauty… |
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| …with THIS ? |
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| This is just ridiculous.
Now let’s look at some real beauty, shall we? |
Viddy Well.
E.C
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LES MISERABLES – TRAILER REVIEW
When I first was asked if I knew «Laymiz», I said no. It was only after I was explained the plot that I realized they were in fact talking about “Les miz.” short for: Les Misérables, and were refering to the stage musical adapted from this masterpiece of French literature. The stage musical was first produced in 1980 in Paris and directed by Robert Hossein. Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel wrote the lyrics of the songs Claude-Michel Schönberg composed. Their translation to English by Herbert Kretmzer turned the musical into a worldwide success. The next natural step was to illustrate the saying “There’s no business like showbusiness”, and turn it into a movie. If you are French, you might be acquainted with the countless adaptations of the classic, both for television and cinema. This, however, is the first adaptation of the stage musical. Directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) and starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Amanda Seyfried and Sacha Baron Cohen. Here are a few scattered images from the trailer. This first glimpse only allows us to get a general idea of the indeed very 19th-century/ «Oliver Twist»-like photography. After the Susan Boyle phenomenon from Britain’s got talent, the trailer chooses, once again, to put the same song «I dreamed a dream» on the spotlight. Does the movie come too late? Or will Anne Hathaway manage to give a new birth to the song and be believable as a tormented Fantine?
For my part, I have had a bit of an overdose, but I let you judge for yourself:
Viddy Well,
E.D
News of the Week
Here’s the news we found interesting this week.
Drive will get a sequel
Looks like every kind of movie is getting a sequel these days. Just days after James Sallis, author of Drive, released its sequel, Driven, he announced that a plan is being made to adapt that novel as well. In the sequel, the hero, using Paul West as a new identity, is living in Phoenix with his fiancée. But after an attack that leaves his girlfriend dead, violence reemerges. Nothing has been said whether or not both Winding Refn and Gosling would be back. But I doubt it could be otherwise.
Michael Emerson hired by Woody Allen
Nothing is known about Woody’s new project, as usual. But as always, there’s an incredible cast attached to it, the last member to join the club being the incredible Michael Emerson (Ben Linus in Lost). The rest of the cast includes Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Bradley Cooper, Sally Hawkins and Bobby Cannavale.
Michael Mann goes to Venice
The director will be President of the jury of the 69th International Venice Film Festival. These last few years, the festival has become the new “Cannes”, getting major quality pictures in competition. From Lust, Caution to La Graine et le mulet, Venice has managed to grab masterpieces that strangely didn’t make it in the Cannes competition. So this year, here are the films I hope we’ll see in Venice: The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson, Low Life by James Gray and To the Wonder by Terrence Malick.
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| The Master |
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| Low Life |
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| To the Wonder |
David Cronenberg and his stars
David Cronenberg is hoping that his new project Map to the Stars will be his next film. He has apparently already gotten Robert Pattinson and Viggo Mortensen on board. The script tells the story of two former child stars destroyed by Hollywood. The film is described by Cronenberg as very “extreme”, ” difficult” and “satirical”. The director is hoping that this time he’ll get to film in the US as the Los Angeles setting is essential to the story. I hope that Cronenberg will manage to get this film done, because it sounds great!
Death of Kathryn Joosten
The actress whom we have had the pleasure to see in many TV shows, such as Desperate Housewives, which had won her two Emmys, The West Wing or Ally McBeal has died of lung cancer. She was 72.
Sad week for SNL
After the departure of the incredible Kristen Wiig, SNL is losing another of its great talents: Andy Samberg. Just the thought of not seeing anymore of Samberg’s great digital shorts makes me cry…
Viddy Well !
E.C
lire le billetTHE MUSICAL POST – “New York, New York”
Today on Viddy Well our shoes are longing to stray… This week’s musical post is from Scorsese’s underestimated film New York, New York (1977), starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro.
The movie opens in 1945. Johnny (Robert De Niro), a charmingly annoying saxophone player meets Francine (Liza Minnelli) a singer, as the city celebrates the end of World War II. The story of their romance gets tangled with their competitive quest for success leading to an unusual ending for a musical.
The film lasted a very short time in the theaters when it was released – Star Wars was playing at the time.
In 1979, Frank Sinatra gave a new life to the theme song ‘New York, New York’, composed by John Kander, who also wrote the lyrics for Cabaret. The film was put back into the spotlight when it was released again in 1981 with additional scenes.
It remains one of my favourite musicals along with what I think to be one of the best couples on the screen.
Notice the bird’s eye view final movement of the camera, when it drifts away from the stage… quite recurrent in Scorsese’s films. It always makes me think of Taxi Driver and how the camera exits the scene of Travis Bickle’s killing. And even though it is not as dramatic here… it is still a beautifully visual way of saying ‘goodbye’.
Viddy Well,
E.D.
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PROMETHEUS – Did Scott lose the sacred fire?
Prometheus promised to be great and left me with a bitter taste of unfinished business. Not just because the ending could not be more explicit about a sequel, but because the content itself never truly came to honor the grandness of the title.
Reminder: Prometheus was the titan from Greek mythology who stole the sacred fire of divine knowledge to the Gods to give it to the mortals. He was then punished in return and condemned to be chained to a rock as an eagle ate his liver – the only organ in the human body that keeps growing back – for eternity.
Because we have watched the trailer and because we know the tagline to be ‘The search for our beginning could lead to our end’, it was naturally that we put two and two together to figure out this would be about humans wanting to know more than they are supposed to, and being punished for it. We even recall that legendary Alien scene where a lovely-looking E.T. violently exits John Hurt’s convulsing body while everybody around screams in sheer horror, and how it might all be linked with Prometheus’ punishment. And indeed, without revealing too much, there is a similar scene in Prometheus.
Because we have watched the trailer and because we know the tagline to be ‘The search for our beginning could lead to our end’, it was naturally that we put two and two together to figure out this would be about humans wanting to know more than they are supposed to, and being punished for it. We even recall that legendary Alien scene where a lovely-looking E.T. violently exits John Hurt’s convulsing body while everybody around screams in sheer horror, and how it might all be linked with Prometheus’ punishment. And indeed, without revealing too much, there is a similar scene in Prometheus.
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| Prometheus, by Paul Rubens |
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| John Hurt in Alien (1979) |
The movie, who could have been titled «Alien Begins», proves that gut feeling to be right. We were hoping for another level of depth to appear in this outline at some point; psychologically and narratively, but this sadly never comes.
Visually stunning, narratively uninspiring
The movie is very impressive visually, in terms of setting and special effects, Aliens are what we hoped them to be and more: perfectly disgusting. We did not expect any less from the creator of Alien. Less horror would have proven disappointing. Our heart races as the characters are being chased, we cringe in our seats when some of them die (spoiler? Not really), the surrounding sound and the 3D operate their magic on us: we experience it all with fearful delight – how could we not? We’re not cylons.
And yet. We cannot but be aware of what they are selling us: the movie borrows entire scenes, images and references to many sci-fi classics, to sometimes an indecent extent: 2001: A Space Odyssey being the most obvious one. Aesthetically first: when Michael Fassbender as the perfect robot walks around the ship in a similar fashion as the characters do in 2001. His name is David, his personality combines both that of Hal the endearing computer created by mankind and the character who embodies the human race ‘Dave’. The whole fourth dimension part from Kubrick’s classic clearly inspired the setting of the ship. Using Kubrick’s divine fire does not work here.
Followed by a character borrowed from Zemeckis’ Contact, adapted from Carl Sagan’s novel: a rich entrepreneur decides to finance a space expedition for personal health reasons. We also think of A.I. and their human looking robots.
And perphaps this was the original idea: to combine many sci-fi references that worked successfully to create one great sci-fi epic. But despite a few interesting inventions, there is nothing really transcendentally new in the end, and that is where we are let down. A myth is supposed to be renewed, to leave wondering and to raise new questions. The only question we have at the end of the film is «When will Prometheus 2 be released?». Because we know for a fact it is coming.
We also regret the lack of depth of some characters; three of them are just there to fill the ship or to die first, because they are quite unfit to be a part of such an expedition. We even wonder how they got hired in the first place. When the time of their disappearance comes, we firmly believe they have been asking for it since the beginning of the film with a succession of simplistic dialogue.
Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender hold the fire
Noomi Rapace is excellent as a new Ripley (same haircut as Sigourney Weaver, same tendency to walk around the ship in underwear). She is the only human worth saving.The most interesting invention is perhaps that of Michael Fassbender’s character. An actor who continues to prove the length of his talent with this impressive performance as an un-feeling Nazi-looking robot.
The opening of the film leaves us wanting for more, which leads us to this crucial point:
The problem of filiation
Unknown engineers created humans and humans created robots. An interesting start. When David the robot asks ‘why did you create us?’ to humans who couldn’t care less about their son, the answer they give is «Because we could». A little easy, but at that point we are already halfway through the movie and we just want answers, so we accept it. When humans realize their creators are not what they hoped them to be, we expect this revelation to be mirrored in their relationship with robots. Sons killing their creators to inherit their father’s power, the thirst for existencialist knowledge: all this is left entirely undevelopped. Even the whole religious dimension that is a backbone to the quest: who created us? Shaw’s character (Noomi Rapace) and her Christian beliefs, the Holy Father and the son, the holy cross, the notion of sin and redemption, pagans versus monotheistic believers, it is all present but dealt with superficially.
Granted that the screenwriter is no longer Dan O’Bannon, writer of Alien. Damon Lindelof creator of Lost (but also of Cowboys & Aliens…) wrote the script, which is rather puzzling. Scott and Lindelof seemed like a great match. In the end, this was good, but not enough.
Viddy Well,
E.D.
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