Pete Postlethwaite Has Died

The English actor Pete Postlethwaite has died, apparently after a long battle with cancer (Sunday, January 2, 2010). The 64-year-old actor earned a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his role in the 1993 film, In the Name of the Father.

Postlethwaite began his career on the stage at the age of 24 after leaving his profession as a teacher. Steven Spielberg once called him, “probably the best actor in the world;” Postlethwaite appeared in two 1997 Spielberg films, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Amistad. Over the years, he has appeared in such films as Alien 3 (1992) and The Usual Suspects (1995). He appeared in three movies released in 2010: Clash of the Titans, Inception, and The Town.

Postlethwaite was born in February 1946 in Lancashire, England. He leaves behind a wife and two children. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2004.

Postlethwaite was a favorite actor of mine, and I'd like to recommend a film of his, Brassed Off (1996).  I am shocked and saddened at the news of his passing. His family and friends are in my prayers.  Gregory Katz of the Associated Press wrote this nice obit about Postlethwaite.

It Gets Ugly in Fine "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 24 (of 2008) by Leroy Douresseaux

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
Running time: 117 minutes (1 hour, 57 minutes)
MPAA – R for a scene of strong graphic sexuality, nudity, violence, drug use, and language
DIRECTOR: Sidney Lumet
WRITER: Kelly Masterson
PRODUCERS: Michael Cerenzie, William S. Gilmore, Brian Linse, and Paul Parmar
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ron Fortunato
EDITOR: Tom Swartwout

CRIME/DRAMA

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris, Aleksa Palladino, Amy Ryan, Michael Shannon, and Brian F. O’Byrne

Andrew “Andy” Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his brother, Henry “Hank” Hanson (Ethan Hawke), plot to rob their parents’ jewelry store, Hanson Jewelers. Hank is also sleeping with Andy’s wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Charles Hanson (Albert Finney) and his wife, Nanette (Rosemary Harris), have no idea what their prodigal sons are plotting. When the job goes horribly wrong, the botched robbery triggers off a series of events that sends the brothers, their associates, and their family towards a shattering climax.

Famed director Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) was 82-years-old when he directed the riveting crime drama, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. [The title comes from the old Irish saying, “May you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”] Yet the five-time Oscar nominee for “Best Director” (and winner of an Honorary Oscar) seems as fresh today as he did half a century ago. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a mesmerizing, raw open wound that examines the murderous extents to which desperate people will go, the complicated dynamics of parent/child relationships, and sibling rivalries.

Much of Lumet’s reputation as a director is built around his ability to get intense, riveting, and memorable performances out of actors. Everyone in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is at the top of his game, even the smaller parts. The usually-fine Albert Finney surprises with a compelling performance that delivers a gut punch. The underrated Ethan Hawke subtly and slyly delivers Hank Hanson in a way that is as funny as it is heart-wrenching. It’s Hawke’s way of revealing how pathetic Hank is.

Philip Seymour Hoffman made 2007 a banner year for him by giving three superb performances in a diversity of roles (in such films as Charlie Wilson’s War and The Savages). Here, his Andy Hanson is a tightly-wound thief and addict capable of sincere emotion and unexpected emotional outbursts. Hoffman simply presents that in unique ways that enhance the drama rather than detract from it with a showy performance.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is similar to Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning 1996 film about a plot to kill family for money. Devil may lack Fargo’s dry wit, black humor, and wacky imagination, but Devil goes deeper into the dark heart of an angry family. Lumet and company really let the ugly be ugly.

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Will Smith Developing TV Drama for Fox

Thanks to IMDb.com, I discovered a new website, Shadow and Act, which its participants describe as "A collective of writers, filmmakers, film critics and film enthusiasts, interested in discussing primarily film and filmmakers of the African Diaspora."

They made note of the following tidbit:  Will Smith and a Chinese director named Eva Jin are developing an hour-long, television crime drama for Fox.  It will be set in China and focused on a crime-fighting American female college student studying abroad in China.

I'll let you know when I learn more.

Director and Stars Deliver the Goods in "The Savages"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 25 (of 2008) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Savages (2007)
Running time: 113 minutes (1 hour, 53 minutes)
MPAA – R for some sexuality and language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Tamara Jenkins
PRODUCERS: Anne Carey, Ted Hope, and Erica Westheimer
CINEMATOGRAPHER: W. Mott Hupfel, III
EDITOR: Brian A. Kates
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA/COMEDY

Starring: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe, David Zayas, and Cara Seymour

Writer/director Tamara Jenkins delivered some of the best screenwriting of 2007 with her drama, The Savages. Her stars, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, in turn, delivered some of the best acting on screen all year.

Wendy Savage (Linney) and her brother Jon Savage (Hoffman) carry the emotional scars of an abusive childhood. Living in New York City’s East Village, Wendy is a long aspiring playwright who spends her days temping and spends her nights having an affair with her neighbor, Larry (Peter Friedman). Living in upstate Buffalo, New York, Jon is a professor of drama, struggling to finish his book on Bertolt Brecht. They suddenly get an unexpected call from Arizona informing them that their estranged and abusive father, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) is suffering from dementia.

Reunited, the siblings face the challenge of caring for their ailing elderly father in spite of their emotional disconnect from him and each other. They move him into a Buffalo nursing home, and Wendy takes up residence with Jon. Living under the same roof again, Wendy and Jon rediscover each other’s eccentricities, personal failings, and the other things that drove them crazy. However, they may finally have to face adulthood and learn what good there really is in being part of a family.

If a director is to keep a family drama like The Savages from becoming a sappy soap opera, she must draw nuance from both her script and her performers, which Tamara Jenkins does in The Savages, earning herself an Oscar nomination for “Best Original Screenplay.” This smartly written and beautifully played film is for people who love films that allow great actors to do the thing they do so well.

Laura Linney, who also earned an Oscar nod for this picture, wows with her deep and sensitive portrayal of woman adrift in her middle age and trying to get her bearings. Linney really sells the notion that Wendy Savage will, through this tragedy, find the things in her past that she can both cherish and also bring into the future to make her life better. Philip Seymour Hoffman, having a career year in 2007, shows off his diversity by also playing a sensitive creative type. Hoffman also enriches Jon by gradually revealing a strong, steady side to a character that seems unable to take the next big step in anything he does.

Tamara Jenkins reveals an uncanny touch in the way she examines how nature and nurture go into making us who we are, and she makes an attractive narrative of this. It is a film that, while compassionate, is unsentimental.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
2008 Academy Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Laura Linney) and “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” (Tamara Jenkins)

2008 Golden Globes: 1 nomination for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Philip Seymour Hoffman)

Happy New Year's 2011 and Negromancer Heaven

Welcome to Negromancer, the rebirth of my former movie review website as a movie review and movie news blog. I’m Leroy Douresseaux, and I also blog at http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/ and write for the Comic Book Bin (which has smart phones apps).

Happy New Year, and it is a happy new year thanks to you, the readers.  This blog is doing much better than I thought it would at this point.  Many thanks to all the people who have ordered from Amazon through the links and thanks for the donations, which have helped in those... lost employment days.  Onward, Negromancer souljas!

All images appearing on this blog are © copyright and/or trademark their respective owners.

Fantastic "Exit Through the Gift Shop" a Strange Art Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 107 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
Running time: 87 minutes (1 hour, 27 minutes)
MPAA – R for some language
DIRECTOR: Banksy
PRODUCERS: Holly Cushing, Jaimie D'Cruz, and James Gay-Rees
EDITORS: Tom Fulford and Chris King

DOCUMENTARY

Starring: Thierry Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Monsieur André, Space Invader, Zevs, and Rhys Ifans (narrator)

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary that largely focuses on Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant to Los Angeles. Although he was a successful small businessman, Guetta also had an obsession with carrying his camera everywhere and constantly filming his surroundings – from inside his home and business (a vintage clothing store) to outside in public. On holiday in France, Guetta discovers that one of his cousins is Invader, an internationally known street artist.

Fascinated by his cousin’s art, Guetta turns his camera on the street artists and eventually meets such street art luminaries as Shepard Fairey (who created the Barack Obama “HOPE” poster), Borf, Ron English, and Buffmonster, among others. Eventually, Guetta attempts to make a documentary film from all the footage he has shot of street artists. After meeting the secretive and legendary Banksy, a British graffiti artist, stencil artist, and painter, Guetta’s project takes a surprising twist. Banksy takes over the filmmaking duties, and Guetta reinvents himself as the street artist “Mr. Brainwash” (or MBW).

There has been some speculation that Exit Through the Gift Shop is one big prank – the documentary film about street art that is essentially graffiti on the body politic of documentary filmmaking. This film could also be seen as a satire of the art scene and of media hype, especially hype around artistic or cultural events. However, as brief as this film is, Exit Through the Gift Shop does capture the mesmerizing power of art and also the ability of artists, especially rebels and innovators, to capture the public’s imagination.

Exit Through the Gift Shop heaps scorn on practically everyone who appears in the film and anyone who is involved in this narrative. In a subtle way, it disapproves of the way underground and outsider art has become commercialized, just another thing for rich people to co-opt with their cash. Is street art just more pop art? Still, the film cannot hide the fact that people are genuinely fascinated by art: arguing about art, deciding what constitutes art, and depicting how artists can astonish with the surprising mediums they use to present their art.

Whatever the truth is about the validity of the film’s content and subject matter, Exit Through the Gift Shop does something many films have a difficult time doing, captivating the audience from beginning to end. Its only fault may be that it doesn’t give us more of its delightful subjects and characters.

9 of 10
A+

Friday, December 31, 2010

Review: Ben Kingsley a Beast in "Sexy Beast" (Happy B'day, Ben Kingsley)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 22 (of 2002) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sexy Beast (2000)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK
U.S. Opening date: June 15, 2001
Running time: 89 minute (1 hour, 29 minutes)
MPAA – R for pervasive language, strong violence, and some sexuality
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Glazer
WRITERS: Louis Mellis and David Scinto; from a story by Andrew Michael Jolley
PRODUCER: Jeremy Thomas
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Ivan Bird with Dan Landin
EDITORS: John Scott and Sam Sneade
Academy Award nominee

CRIME/DRAMA with elements of comedy

Starring: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman, James Fox, Cavan Kendall, and Julianne White

Gal (Ray Winstone) is a retired safecracker living in Spain with his wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman). Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), an old London acquaintance, comes calling to recruit Gal into a gang of hoods to pull off a major heist for a big time gangster, Teddy Bass (Ian McShane). Gal wants to say “no,” but Don isn’t likely to take “no” for an answer. When Don and his quirky personality arrive at Gal’s Spanish villa, all bloody hell ensues.

Helmed by first time director Jonathan Glazer, Sexy Beast is a brutal British crime comedy/drama similar in vein to Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. Unlike the ensemble Snatch, Beast’s focus is primarily on Gal, his dilemma and Don Logan’s startling personality. Until the actual heist begins, the tension focuses on the possibility of Logan turning violent and weird on Gal when Gal refuses to join the crew Logan is recruiting for Bass.

Ray Winstone is very convincing as Gal, grown lazy, soft, and complacent in his retirement; so comfortable is he that Gal nearly goes to pieces when informed that Don is reentering his world. You can taste Gal’s turmoil and fear; he really doesn’t want any part of his old life. The film’s focus is really the tightrope upon which he walks from beginning to end, and he sells the audience his troubles, his fear, and his anxiety.

Tension and dilemmas aside, the best reason to watch this film is Ben Kingsley. Don Logan is one of those roles in which a talented actor can chew up the screen, but Kingsley doesn’t just chew scenery; he owns this movie. Don is actually royalty, the king of man-to-man talks, the invading conqueror of any situation. He talks so fast in some kind of cockney that you can barely understand what he says, but you get the gist of what he saying - trouble. Don means to get his way. Kingsley is a subtle show off in this part; he’s natural and smooth. His performance is unobtrusive, and his Don is indeed kind of sexy.

Sexy Beast is a slightly dressed meat and potatoes movie – nothing special at all except if anything British appeals to you because a British hood flick is better than an American gangster movie, of course. Sexy Beast can’t touch Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. It’s a quiet, but frantic look at a man’s dilemma with some gangster hoo-hah thrown in. The unequivocal delight here is Ben Kingsley. This one of those great performances you read about in film texts that you should really see.

6 of 10
B

NOTES:
2002 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Ben Kingsley)

2001 BAFTA Awards: 1 nomination “Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film” (Jeremy Thomas and Jonathan Glazer)

2002 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture” (Ben Kingsley)

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