Review: "Venus" Visits Falling in Love (Happy B'day, Peter O'Toole)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 96 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

Venus (2006)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK
Running time: 94 minutes (1 hour, 34 minutes)
MPAA – R for language, some sexual content, and brief nudity
DIRECTOR: Roger Michell
WRITER: Hanif Kureishi
PRODUCER: Kevin Loader
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Haris Zambarloukos (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Nic Gaster
2007 Academy Award nomination

DRAMA with elements of comedy and romance

Starring: Peter O’Toole, Jodie Whittaker, Leslie Phillips, Richard Griffiths, and Venessa Redgrave

In Roger Michell’s film, Venus, a kind of dark romantic comedy, Maurice Russell (Peter O’Toole), a veteran stage and screen actor, finds the end of his life turned topsy-turvy when he meets Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), a relative of his dear, long-time friend, Ian (Leslie Phillips). Suddenly, Maurice’s mind is inundated and beleaguered by thoughts and feelings of lust upon which his body can no longer react. Jessie finds the old man’s charm and exuberance off-putting because she sees him as decrepit, but is soon dealing with complimentary feelings towards him that only confuse her more.

Two things make Venus memorable. First is Peter O’Toole’s Oscar-nominated performance as an old, old man who becomes aware of his heart rediscovering how painfully intense falling in love can be. Lust has also reared its insistent head, and O’Toole makes that evident in every physical nuance of his performance.

The second element that makes this film is Hanif Kureishi’s script. Kureishi received an Oscar nomination two decades ago for My Beautiful Laundrette, and like that film, Venus deals in unvarnished real folks. Even Maurice, the elegant (and once handsome) actor of both stage and screen, is broken and riddled with imperfections. Kureishi doesn’t pretty up Maurice’s desire for Jesse, nor does idealize the relationship between Maurice and “Venus,” as Maurice calls Jesse.

Director Roger Michell (Persuasion, Notting Hill) recognizes what is complex and troubling in these characters, and the complexity of their relationships with one another. He keeps the viewer guessing with this dark comedy, a romantic drama that doesn’t dabble in the warmth and silliness of many film romances. There is a lot of unease here, and desire, love, and lust is raw and not pretty. In Venus, that may actually be a beautiful thing.

7 of 10
B+

NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Peter O’Toole)

2007 BAFTA Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Peter O’Toole) and “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Leslie Phillips)

2007 Golden Globe: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture-Drama” (Peter O’Toole)

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Lucasfilm Announces "Red Tails" for January 12 2012

(Leslie Odom Jr, Michael B. Jordan, Nate Parker, Kevin Phillips, David Oyelowo and Elijah Kelley portray some of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen in a scene from Lucasfilm's epic action film Red Tails, in theaters January 20, 2012 - Photo: Business Wire)

Lucasfilm’s Red Tails Will Take Flight on January 20, 2012

Twentieth Century Fox to Release Epic Action Story Inspired by the Heroic Tuskegee Airmen

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A high-flying action epic inspired by the heroic exploits of the first all African-American aerial combat unit, the Lucasfilm Ltd. production of Red Tails will launch on January 20, 2012, released by Twentieth Century Fox. Produced by Rick McCallum and Charles Floyd Johnson, the gripping WWII actioner is directed by Anthony Hemingway (“Treme,” “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica”).

“I am humbled and honored to direct the story of the Tuskegee Airmen – heroes who have paved the way so others could have the opportunity to pursue their dreams,” said Hemingway. “To be selected by George Lucas and Rick to direct this film was more than my wildest dreams come true. It’s been a blessing to work with them, along with the amazingly talented artists at Industrial Light & Magic. I’ve grown a lot on many levels from this experience. As director, I had the fortune to work with a highly skilled crew from the Czech Republic, U.K. and the U.S., along with a remarkably talented group of actors. The resonant beauty, strength and dedication of our heroes is reflected in the powerful ensemble cast.”

Red Tails stars Oscar® winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire), Oscar nominee Terrence Howard (Crash), Emmy® winner Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”), Nate Parker (The Secret Life of Bees, The Great Debaters), David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Tristan Wilds (“90210”), Grammy® Award winner Cliff Smith aka Method Man (“The Wire”), Kevin Phillips (Pride), Rick Otto (“The Wire”), Lee Tergesen (Monster), Andre Royo (“Heroes”), Grammy-Award winner Ne-Yo (Stomp the Yard), Elijah Kelley (Hairspray), Marcus T. Paulk (Take the Lead), Leslie Odom Jr. (“Grey’s Anatomy”), Michael B. Jordan (“Friday Night Lights,” Chronicle) and Daniela Ruah (“NCIS”).

“I've wanted to do this film for a great many years,” said George Lucas, executive producer of Red Tails. “So it is especially gratifying to see it all come together. It has been a real pleasure to work with Anthony and the extraordinary cast on a project that we all passionately believe in. The Tuskegee Airmen were such superb pilots that it was essential for us to create visual effects that would live up to their heroism and put audiences in the cockpit with them. They were only in their early 20s when they performed these amazing feats,” Lucas added. “They became the best of the best—the top guns. It is an honor to bring to the screen a story inspired by their heroics.”

SYNOPSIS:
1944. As the war in Europe continues to take its toll on Allied forces, the Pentagon brass has no recourse but to consider unorthodox options – including the untried and untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program. Just as the young Tuskegee men are on the brink of being shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. Against all the odds, with something to prove and everything to lose, these intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country – and the fate of the free world.

About Fox Filmed Entertainment
One of the world’s largest producers and distributors of motion pictures, Fox Filmed Entertainment produces, acquires and distributes motion pictures throughout the world. These motion pictures are produced or acquired by the following units of FFE: Twentieth Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Animation and Fox International Productions. Twentieth Century Fox International is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a segment of Fox Entertainment Group.

About Lucasfilm Ltd.
Lucasfilm Ltd. is one of the world's leading film and entertainment companies. Founded by George Lucas in 1971, it is a privately held, fully integrated entertainment company. In addition to its motion-picture and television production operations, the company's global activities include Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, serving the digital needs of the entertainment industry for visual effects and audio post-production; LucasArts, a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software worldwide; Lucas Licensing, which manages the global merchandising activities for Lucasfilm's entertainment properties; and Lucasfilm Animation, which produces cutting-edge digital entertainment. Additionally, Lucas Online creates Internet-based content for Lucasfilm's entertainment properties and businesses. Lucasfilm Ltd. is headquartered in northern California.

Lucasfilm, the Lucasfilm logo, Red Tails and related properties are trademarks and/or copyrights, in the United States and other countries, of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. TM & © 2011 Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.

Review: "Seven Beauties" is Fine Cinema (Happy B'day, Giancarlo Giannini)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 37 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Seven Beauties (1975)
Pasqualino Settebellezze – original Italian title
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Italy
Running time: 115 minutes (1 hour, 55 minutes)
MPAA – R
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Lina Wertmüller
PRODUCERS: Arrigo Colombo and Lina Wertmüller
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Tonino Delli Colli
EDITOR: Franco Fraticelli
COMPOSER: Enzo Jannacci
Academy Award nominee

COMEDY/DRAMA/WAR

Starring: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler, Elena Fiore, Piero Di Iorio, Enzo Vitale, Roberto Herlitzka, Lucio Amelio, and Ermelinda De Felice

In Pasqualino Settebellezze or (by its English title) Seven Beauties, Pasqualino Frafusco (Giancarlo Giannini) is a small time crook and hood wannabe who lives in Naples with his mother and seven sisters. As the movie begins, Pasqualino and a fellow soldier (Piero Di Iorio) are lost behind enemy lines, somewhere in Germany, during World War II. German soldiers eventually capture the duo, and they are interned in some kind of prisoner camp (which may also double as a concentration camp for Jews).

Because he has by his own estimation always been a ladies man, Pasqualino decides on a plan to woo an evil female German commandant (Shirley Stoler) in an attempt to save his life, a plan that of course goes horribly awry. Pasqualino’s camp trials are interspersed with scenes from his life in Naples and the time he spent in a mental institution for killing a man who he believed had insulted him and his family by turning one of Pasqualino’s sisters into a prostitute.

Seven Beauties earned Lina Wertmüller the first Oscar® nomination for a woman as Best Director. The film is part satirical and part farce, and it’s also a tragicomic drama that focuses on the soul of a common man. Giannini also earned a Best Actor nomination for his performance as a man who sells his body to the Germans and ends up loosing his soul or, at the very least, his spirit to them. Giannini’s performance is one of the great comic masterpieces, but many people may miss this because of the film’s darker tones. Pasqualino is a womanizing clown who thinks he has the world by the balls until the horrors of war and the internment camp show him how brutal people can be to one another. He thought he knew, but his imprisonments really show him how ugly dog eat dog can be.

Seven Beauties might be one of the best films about internment camps, except for the fact that it’s not really about that. Still, the film makes a salient point about the evil, greediness, and selfishness at the core of the human soul. If the film has a fault (and it’s a minor one), it’s that Wertmüller’s script glosses over the impact of Pasqualino’s mother and sisters on him and his character. Otherwise, this is an example of the great cinema Italy has given the world.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1977 Academy Awards: 4 nominations: “Best Actor in a Leading Role” (Giancarlo Giannini), “Best Director” (Lina Wertmüller), “Best Foreign Language Film” (Italy), and “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” (Lina Wertmüller)

1977 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Foreign Film” (Italy)

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An August Occasion for Negromancer

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 (http://www.comicbookbin.com/).

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

This month, let us remember

Negromancer News Bits and Bites July 31 2011 - Weekend Edition

News for me and news for y'all:

A Dark Knight Rises News Alert!  Total Film has found several set pictures of Tom Hardy in one of his Bane costumes.

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They're rioting in the streets. Lawd! Two theatre chains, Regal and AMC, have cancelled showings of the documentary, Electric Daisy Carnival Experience, after violence erupted at the Hollywood premiere earlier this week.  The documentary is about the Electric Daisy Carnival, an annual electronic music festival or rave.

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The New York Times has a short article on Steven Spielberg's busy year, which will end with two films he has directed, Tintin and War Horse.

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At the recently concluded 2011 Comic-Con International in San Diego, Francis Ford Coppola talked about his 3D film, Twixt.  Reuters has the story and an interview.

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Over at the excellent Box Office Mojo, Brandon Gray puts a beatdown on the lies being told by supporters of the Sarah Palin clownumentary... I mean documentary and propaganda puff piece, The Undefeated.

Review: "Blade II" is Still Too Legit to Quit (Happy B'day, Wesley Snipes)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 26 (of 2002) by Leroy Douresseaux

Blade II (2002)
Running time: 117 minutes (1 hour, 57 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug use and sexual content
DIRECTOR: Guillermo del Toro
WRITER: David S. Goyer (Blade based upon the character created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan)
PRODUCERS: Peter Frankfurt, Patrick J. Palmer, and Wesley Snipes
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Gabriel Beristain (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Peter Amundson
COMPOSER: Marco Beltrami

ACTION/FANTASY/HORROR/MARTIAL ARTS

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus, Thomas Kretschmann, Luke Goss, Matthew Schulze, Danny John-Jules, and Donnie Yen

The human/vampire warrior Blade (Wesley Snipes) returns to do his thing, which is hunt and destroy vampires. While in Prague, Czech Republic to rescue his old partner Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), Blade receives a summons from Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann), the overlord of vampires. A new breed of creatures, The Reapers, is loose, and they feed on both humans and vampires. Damaskinos has formed a vampire tactical unit dubbed the Bloodpack to hunt the Reapers, but he also wants Blade’s assistance and offers a truce. The Reapers, however, led by the powerful Nomak (Luke Goss), prove to be a formidable foe.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Mimic), Blade II is that rare sequel that not only surpasses the original in quality, but also manages to be very different than the original. This is primarily through the efforts of del Toro; his sense of visual style has a huge impact upon this movie, and the look is seemingly based on art rather than music videos. (Stephen Norrington, the director of Blade, was also a director of music videos). He plays with light (natural and artificial) and darkness to set mood and tone, but also to suggest character motivation and plot elements. del Toro works like a painter, and he makes Blade 2 a wild ride, but reveals a thoughtful composition behind the camera.

In fact, the art department played a huge role in the look of the film. Wayne D. Barlow, the head creature designer, is famous in science fiction and fantasy circles for his drawings of aliens. Mike Mignola, the concept artist, worked on Atlantis: The Lost Continent for Disney. Timothy Bradstreet, a comic book artist and illustrator like Mignola and like Blade 2 storyboard artist Leo Duranona, designed the vampires in this film. Bradstreet’s work, according to him, probably influenced the look of the Blade character in the first film.

The dark and decayed look of inner city Prague is absolutely beautiful and mesmerizing even in the dankest and dirtiest sections. Kudos to the art directors and set decorators; they manage to make Blade 2 one of the most gorgeous looking movies ever that used low rent sets.

The eclecticism of the cast also adds to the aura of this movie. Snipes is clearly more confident and more comfortable in his role. He dropped his monotone delivery from the first film for more effective banter this time around, and he portrays Blade throughout this film more as the bold warrior who finished off the original film than the one we first saw.

Kristofferson’s role is a little weightier this go round. Whistler has an air of mystery and intrigue about him, and every time he is on screen, there is something about him that makes you wonder about his motivations. His verbal jousts with his replacement Scud (Norman Reedus) brings a little humor to the film.

Although Kretschmann and Goss are good in their respective roles as Damaskinos and Nomak, the Bloodpack are the true supporting vampire stars. Leonor Varela as Nyssa, Damaskinos’s daughter, brings beauty and a hint of sexuality to these mostly male proceedings. Fight choreographer Donnie Yen also has a small role as Bloodpack member Snowman. Ron Perlman also does a nice turn as Reinhardt, Blade’s opposite in the Bloodpack.

Visually exciting, intriguing, and beautiful, Blade 2 is unique horror movie simply because of the way it looks. It is an exciting action movie filled with leather suits and high tech chop-socky. The CGI fights scenes are a little off in some instances, but for the most part are very good and only add to Blade 2’s exceptional look; it gives the movie the feel of being something other than just another violent action movie. The fight scene between Nyssa and Asad (Danny John-Jules of the British sci-fi television series “Red Dwarf”) against Blade, alone, is worth the price of admission because it tops anything in the first film. It stands with some of the good fight scenes found in Hong Kong movies (thanks to Donnie Yen).

Guillermo del Toro has created a special cinematic visual experience in Blade 2, which adds to the appeal of seeing his other work. Simply put, in popular parlance, Blade 2 rocks, and it is worth repeated viewings.

8 of 10
A

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Half of "The Lincoln Lawyer" Remains Unseen

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 65 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux


The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)
Running time: 118 minutes (1 hour, 58 minutes)
MPAA – R for some violence, sexual content and language
DIRECTOR: Brad Furman
WRITER: John Romano (based upon the novel by Michael Connelly)
PRODUCERS: Sidney Kimmel, Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Scott Steindorff, and Richard S. Wright
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lukas Ettlin (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Jeff McEvoy
COMPOSER: Cliff Martinez

DRAMA/CRIME/MYSTERY/THRILLER

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, Josh Lucas, John Leguizamo, Michael Peña, Bob Gunton, Frances Fisher, Bryan Cranston, Trace Adkins, Laurence Mason, Margarita Levieva, Pell James, Shea Whigham, Michael Paré, and Reggie Baker

The Lincoln Lawyer is a 2011 courtroom drama and legal thriller starring Matthew McConaughey as the lead character, Mickey Haller. The film is based upon the 2005 novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, the first book in the Mickey Haller series from American crime writer, Michael Connelly.

Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a criminal defense attorney who operates around Los Angeles County in a Lincoln Town Car, currently driven by his chauffer, Earl (Laurence Mason). Haller has spent his career defending the usual suspects (drug dealers, murderers), but he has just landed the case of his career. Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe), a Beverly Hills playboy, has been charged in the brutal beating of a sex worker, Regina Campo (Margarita Levieva). Mickey’s sleazy reputation and Roulet’s tastes for prostitutes, however, only complicate an already difficult case.

I have not read the book upon which The Lincoln Lawyer is based, so I don’t know how close the movie is to novel. Watching this film, I got the idea that screenwriter John Romano and director Brad Furman certainly tried to squeeze as much of the novel as they could into the movie. As good as this film is, a lot of the story seems to be happening offstage or off-camera, in this case. I lost track of how many times, supporting and minor characters ran up to McConaughey’s Mickey Haller and talked about something big they did or found out for him. I kept thinking, “Did I miss something?” It is as if half of the movie takes place out of sight, and only the half with Haller actually happens in front of the audience. That makes many of the film’s twist and turns and sudden revelations seem contrived and arbitrary.

However, I do think that Matthew McConaughey gives a very good, layered, and textured performance, one that makes Haller, who is way too sleazy, an engaging character that you might want to follow around L.A. This is probably the best performance of McConaughey’s career and certainly his best turn as a dramatic actor in a long time. He makes The Lincoln Lawyer worth seeing. He makes a problematic legal thriller something of a thrill to watch.

6 of 10
B

Thursday, July 28, 2011