Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas
PUSSSYKATT
The way people have been flocking to "Charlie's Angels," you would think the
film were some kind of watershed achievement. In fact, it's a very ordinary,
moderately entertaining movie coming at the end of a drought that has plagued
Hollywood longer than the one that cleared out Kansas during the Depression.
Not that it's over, but with the holiday season upon us, there will be better
films than "Charlie's Angels" to salve our parched eyes in the coming weeks. I
can safely guarantee that one movie alone — Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon" — will rescue your faith in the medium and deliver you, in
metaphorical terms, to the promised land.
Maybe a few others will offer smaller epiphanies.
Tom Hanks loses his way -- and his clothes -- in 'Cast Away'.
There is a good balance to report, with at least a half-dozen each of family,
action, romance, comedy, and dramatic pictures. And where sequels tend to crowd
the docket, there are only two: Disney's "102 Dalmatians" and
Paramount/Nickelodeon's "Rugrats in Paris: The Movie."
Traditionally, the bulk of the year's Oscar nominations come from this pack,
and though some analysts wonder if there are enough good films and performances
in this lean field to fill a ballot, they will somehow manage.
As well as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," among the films to keep an eye on
are "Finding Forrester," "Cast Away," "All the Pretty Horses," "Quills" and
"Thirteen Days."
Romantic fantasy gets a workout with a double header on Dec. 15. In "What Women
Want," Mel Gibson is granted the ability to read women's minds. In "Family
Man," Nicolas Cage finds out how life would have turned out had he married his
high-school sweetheart.
David Mamet, in a calmer mood since he tore into Hollywood with his play
"Speed-the-Plow," savages the film industry with kid gloves in "State and
Main," about a film company that scandalizes a small Vermont town.
Brooklyn-born Elias Merhige hit a festival home run with "Shadow of the
Vampire," a black comedy about the making of the silent horror classic
"Nosferatu" by German director F.W. Murnau.
The Coen Brothers, masters of the soft black comedy, are back with "O Brother,
Where Art Thou?", their take on the "Odyssey" of Homer as seen through the eyes
of three escaped convicts in Depression-era Mississippi.
Just so mainstream comedy fans don't feel left out, Sandra Bullock plays an FBI
agent compelled to go undercover as a beauty-pageant contestant in "Miss
Congeniality."
As for those family flicks, it all begins this Friday with Ron Howard's
live-action version of Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," with Jim
Carrey both unrecognizable and unmistakable as the hairy green monster, and
"Rugrats in Paris."
And down the road are the two Disney films, "102 Dalmatians," and "The
Emperor's New Groove.
The latter, based loosely on "The Prince and the Pauper," is the studio's
latest animated musical. It won't jiggle like "Charlie's Angels," but it does
have a rainforest.
Nov. 17:
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS.
Directed by Ron Howard
Just about any child knows who put the Whos in Whoville, but it took the boy
who put the O in Opie to bring Dr. Seuss' classic tale to the screen. The
result is a $123-million holiday present from director Howard, his long-time
producer partner Brian Grazer, and a hairy green Jim Carrey as the Grinch. With
a Seussian set spread over 11 sound stages and a scary Carrey salary of $20
million, costs snowballed. (The tab included 52,000 Christmas lights, 8,000
Yuletide ornaments and 5 miles of electrical wire.) But the real miracle on
Whostreet is that the movie got made at all.
Audrey Geisel, widow of Theodore Seuss Geisel (pen name, Dr. Seuss), had
resisted all appeals to adapt the 1957 story for the movies. Transforming a
50-page book of red, white and black pen-and-ink illustrations into a
full-length, live-action feature was not what she thought her late husband
would have had in mind. He had been perfectly happy to draw the line with a
half-hour TV cartoon by legendary animator Chuck Jones in 1966.
Howard had watched that as a child too, he says, "and it deals with the [Who]
world in ways we couldn't compete with." Instead, he convinced Audrey Geisel
with his version of the Grinch story, shrink-wrapping it, as it were, in
psychological motivations.
"It's a case study about the Grinch and his dysfunction," he says, "but
tongue-in-cheek and not to be taken too seriously. Why does he live in a cave,
alone with a dog? What's that all about?"
Howard's elaboration on the tale traces the Grinch's small-heartedness back to
childhood. And it's a feisty young female, Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen), who
penetrates the mystery of his youthful trauma. By unraveling the Who's Who
behind his need to destroy others' happiness, she also comes to grips with the
rampant commercialism that she believes is threatening Whoville's true
Christmas spirit. (Speaking of which, Grinch-green Oreos are just one of the
movie tie-ins.)
The production design of "Grinch" has a distinctly '50s look, a nod to the
original book. Production designer Michael Corenblith crossed it with the era's
fad for Surrealism, which informed Seuss' topsy-turvy, make-believe world.
Computer graphics and other special effects have done the rest.
On top of Mount Crumpit, all covered with Styrofoam snow, the Grinch loses his
heart to little Cindy, and Howard hopes you will, too.
"My favorite as a kid was always 'The Grinch,'" he says.
THE 6TH DAY:
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a dual role as a helicopter pilot and his evil
clone in this futuristic thriller about gene science run amok. With Wendy
Crewson, Robert Duvall, Tony Goldwyn.
WHAT'S COOKING?:
Directed by Gurinder Chadha
Four turkeys get four different bastings on the same multicultural block of Los
Angeles in this Thanksgiving Day drama. But what's really cooking are the
crises around the tables at the Hispanic, Asian, African-American and Jewish
households. The large ensemble cast includes Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert,
Mercedes Ruehl, Kyra Sedgwick, Lainie Kazan, Julianna Margulies and Joan Chen.
BOUNCE:
Directed by Don Roos.
Ben Affleck is an ad exec who gives up his seat on a airplane to a man
desperate to be with his wife and Gwyneth Paltrow is the widow he looks up a
year after the husband dies in the ensuing crash. Naturally, he falls in love
with her. Shades of last year's love-grows-among-the-ashes disaster "Random
Hearts."
RUGRATS IN PARIS: THE MOVIE:
Directed by Stig Bergqvist and Paul Demeyer.
When Tommy's dad is sent to Euroreptorland to fix a broken robot, he takes the
Rugrat gang with him, including Chuckie, whose wish for a new mommy becomes a
group project. Familiar voices include Susan Sarandon and John Lithgow.
LIES:
Directed by Jang Sun Woo.
Known as the South Korean "In the Realm of the Senses," this is an explicit
drama about the relationship between a 38-year-old sculptor and an 18-year-old
school girl who engage in increasingly outre sex, including coprophilia (look
that up in your Funk & Wagnalls).
ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER:
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
Oscar-winning documentary about the Palestinian terrorists' hostage-taking of
Israeli weightlifters and the botched rescue attempt at the 1970 Munich
Olympics.
THE WOLVES OF KROMER:
Directed by Will Gould
A fable using a small village's fear of wolves as an allegory about homophobia.
BILLY LIAR:
Directed by John Schlesinger.
This seminal 1963 British New Wave comedy, about a fantasist trapped in a
Northern English town, accelerated the careers of Schlesinger and Tom Courtenay
and launched Julie Christie's. It is being rereleased in its original
CinemaScope format at Film Forum.
Nov. 22:
QUILLS:
Directed by Philip Kaufman
The film maker who plumbed Henry Miller's sex life in "Henry & June" takes a
biographical run at the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush), whose prison
ruminations on sadomasochism are still being acted out in certain downtown
bars. Adapted by Doug Wright from his play, the movie pitches the Marquis as
the spirit of libidinal free speech against a repressed abbe (Joaquin Phoenix)
and a corrupt and vengeful physician (Michael Caine). Kate Winslet plays the
comely laundress who's the story's moral center.
102 DALMATIANS:
Directed by Kevin Lima
Cruella DeVil (Glenn Close) is being released from prison, and she's one size
larger. It will now take 102 puppies to outfit her in her favorite fur —
about the same number of full-grown St. Bernards it would take to make a coat
for co-star Gerard Depardieu.
THE WEEKEND:
Directed by Brian Skeet
A young couple trying to hold their marriage together get no help from the
screwed-up friends who drop by over a long weekend. With Jared Harris, Deborah
Kara Unger, Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands.
MALENA:
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
The director who reminisced about a boy's fondness for film in "Cinema
Paradiso" reminisces here about a boy's first stirrings of sexual longing.
Monica Bellucci plays the beautiful Sicilian war widow who changes 13-year-old
Renato's life forever.
THE TRENCH:
Directed by William Boyd
Novelist Boyd uses the camera as his pen to chronicle the fears of young men
facing the 1916 battle of the Somme, site of the greatest carnage in British
military history.
Nov. 24:
LA BUCHE:
Directed by Daniele Thompson
Three sisters get together for Christmas in Paris, each with her own crise
personnelle. With Emmanuelle Beart, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sabine Azema.
Dec. 1:
POOR WHITE TRASH:
Directed by Michael Addis
A pair of ambitious buddies try to build for their futures by burglarizing
their trailer-park neighbors, starting a chain reaction that will take them on
a zany tour of the courts and cornfields of Southern Illinois.
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT:
Directed by Richard Lester
The 1964 Beatles romp gets a national rerelease.
DEEP IN THE WOODS:
Directed by Lionel Delplanque
This French knockoff of "The Blair Witch Project" follows a group of actors
summoned to a remote mansion to perform a version of "Little Red Riding Hood"
who run into something worse than a big bad wolf.
A GOOD BABY:
Directed by Katherine Dieckmann
A young hunter bags more than he bargained for when he happens on an abandoned
baby in the North Carolina woods. With Henry Thomas, David Strathairn.
SPRING FORWARD:
Directed by Tom Gilroy
A young ex-con and an older man become working partners in a small-town parks
department and share life lessons over four seasons. With Ned Beatty, Liev
Schreiber.
MOON SHADOW:
Directed by Alberto Simone
Tcheky Karyo plays a scientist from Milan who buys a dilapidated house in
Sicily with plans of restoring it for resale, but instead finds his own soul
rehabilitated through his relationship with an elderly worker (Nino Manfredi)
and the patients at a nearby institution.
Dec. 6:
HILLBROW KIDS:
Directed by Jacqueline Gorgen
A documentary about black children drawn from their poverty-stricken homes in
the outlying regions of South Africa to the dangerous street life of
post-apartheid Johannesburg.
Dec. 8:
CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON:
Directed by Ang Lee
The hit of the 2000 film festival circuit is a romantic fantasy/adventure film
that harks back to the swashbucklers of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, with
handsome action heroes, beautiful heroines, fabulous scenery, impossible
stunts, and dazzling costumes. Only this one comes by way of Taiwan, in
Mandarin Chinese, with the swashbuckling done as martial arts.
Ang Lee, born in Taiwan and film-educated in the U.S., has fused the
sensibilities of his two cultures in making what many critics are calling one
of the finest action films of all time. It stars Chow Yun Fat as Li Mu Bai, a
legendary warrior surrendering a 400-year-old sword to pursue a life of
meditation and perhaps a delayed romance with his life-long friend Yu Shu Lien
(Michelle Yeoh). At the same time, Jen (Zhang Ziyi), the daughter of a Chinese
aristocrat, is being trained by Li's old nemesis to abuse the warrior's art.
The unique martial arts sequences, choreographed by Yuen Woo-Ping (who provided
the same service for "The Matrix") are like ballet pieces, each one setting a
different tone and advancing the story in a different way. The combatants defy
gravity as they dash up the sides of walls, bound over rooftops, take flight
and, at one point, balance like birds on slender branches at the tips of a
bamboo forest. Foreign-language films have been nominated for best picture in
the past; some critics are betting this will be the first to win.
VERTICAL LIMIT:
Directed by Martin Campbell
Years ago, a young mountain climber (Chris O'Donnell) had to make a decision
— cut a rope and let his father fall to his death, or not cut it, and fall
with him and take his sister (Robin Tunney) at the same time. He cut it. And
now he's on K2 trying to save his sister a second time. That's the set-up for a
film that industry insiders are predicting will be the big turnstile spinner of
the holidays. With Bill Paxton, Scott Glenn.
PROOF OF LIFE:
Directed by Taylor Hackford
When freelance negotiator Russell Crowe is hired by the wife of a kidnapped
American engineer to negotiate his release from South American guerillas, the
negotiator's growing fondess for the wife creates a serious conflict of
interest. It wasn't so different in real life, as Crowe and his co-star Meg
Ryan made headlines with their own rumble in the jungle. We'll see whether the
movie is as hot as their Burton/Taylor-style affair was purported to be.
BOYS LIFE 3:
Various directors.
Another package of award-winning horts on gay life, these dealing with themes
of coming-out and homophobia.
THE ART OF AMALIA:
Directed by Bruno de Almeida
Legendary Portuguese fado singer Amalia Rodrigues is remembered through
archival recordings and restored footage, including the late diva's appearance
on an Eddie Fisher TV show unseen since its 1953 broadcast.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS:
Directed by Courtney Solomon
The popular role-playing game and animated 1980 CBS series reaches the screen
with all the usual evil wizards and whatnots. With Thora Birch, Jeremy Irons,
Marlon Wayons.
Dec. 15:
FAMILY MAN:
Directed by Brett Ratner
Nicolas Cage gets to live out a common male fantasy in this romantic comedy: He
plays a well-heeled, socially active, Wall Street single guy who wakes up one
morning with the answer to a nagging question — how his life would have
turned out if he'd married his high school sweetie. Fourteen years later, there
she is, laying next to him, now a suburban dad with theirkids are on the other
side of the wall. Will the fantasy stick and will he want it to? Hey, she's
played by Tea Leoni. How bad could it be?
WHAT WOMEN WANT:
Directed by Nancy Meyers
When a womanizing ad executive (Mel Gibson) electrocutes himself and somehow
comes to with the power to read women's minds, he's torn between wanting to
abuse the power and getting in touch with his feminine side. It proves to be
good news/bad news when he falls in love with the boss (Helen Hunt) he hoped to
sabotage, while Marisa Tomei plays a coffee shop clerk whose thoughts drive him
nuts.
DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?:
Directed by Danny Leiner
On a morning after, two potheads can't remember why their refrigerator is full
of pudding or why they're caught in the middle of an intergalactic war —
don't you hate it when that happens?
CHOCOLAT:
Directed by Lasse Hallstrom
Theater concessionaires are going to love this confection about a French woman
(Juliette Binoche) who opens a chocolate shop across from a church and drives a
priest to distraction by causing villagers to blow Lent on a chocolate spree.
With Johnny Depp, Judi Dench.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE:
Directed by Mark Dindal and Roger Allers
Disney's latest animated musical takes us into the South American rain forest
where a banished young emperor hooks up with a peasant and learns something of
the world as he tries to regain his throne. Music by Sting.
Dec. 19:
FINDING FORRESTER:
Directed by Gus Van Sant.
Is the director of "Good Will Hunting" repeating himself with this story about
a thoughtful professor who becomes the mentor of a young man who might
otherwise fail to meet his potential? We'll see. It stars Sean Connery as a
reclusive prep school teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who befriends
an African-American scholar-athlete (Rob Brown) and nurtures his writing skills
while getting as much in return.
Dec. 20:
THIRTEEN DAYS:
Directed by Roger Donaldson
To serve as a reminder that even the greatest leaders sometimes have to feel
their way along, "Thirteen Days" highlights the political brinksmanship that
guided the 1961 Cuban missile crisis to its soft landing.
"The lesson for the present is: you need leaders who have this moral courage,
who in times of crisis don't take the easy way out," says director Donaldson.
"What gets said publicly is not necessarily what's going on behind the scenes."
Producer-star Kevin Costner, who worked with Donaldson on the Pentagon thriller
"No Way Out," plays White House insider Kenneth O'Donnell, confidant to the
President Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and Robert Kennedy (Stephen Culp). Much of
"Thirteen Days" shows the trio trying to second-guess the Soviets through 13
days of tense negotiating, most of it between the Kennedys and their military
advisers — the Russians were only half the battle.
Donaldson says "Thirteen Days" is a "special movie," the kind that answers the
question: Why don't they make serious movies anymore? He was a teenager in
Australia in 1962 when JFK stared down the Russians over the missile sites they
were building in Cuba. He brought the journal he kept during the crisis to his
first meeting with Costner and producer Armyan Bernstein to show them how much
the subject meant to him.
"The picture was made for me," he said. "This was an event on which the history
of the world hinged on at the time. Plus there's the fascination the world has
for the Kennedys."
But "Thirteen Days" doesn't pander to all aspects of that fascination. "This is
not a story about their personal and private lives," says Donaldson. "It's
about something bigger than Marilyn Monroe being snuck in the back door. It
rises above that sort of thing and concentrates on some of the great things
John Kennedy did."
Dec. 22:
CAST AWAY
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Zemeckis emphatically denies that his new movie, which stars Tom Hanks as a man
who finds himself washed ashore on a deserted island, invites comparison to a
certain wildly successful TV series.
"It's only people in the media who bring up 'Survivor,'" says Zemeckis. "You
can't label 'Cast Away.' The test audiences who see the movie scratch their
heads when asked about 'Survivor.' 'Cast Away' will transcend any comparison
issues, and will take on a life of its own when it comes out."
Certainly, the making of "Cast Away" occupies its own niche in movie history.
The film was shot in two parts, with a one-year hiatus in between, which
allowed Hanks to lose more than 40 pounds so he could show the end result of
his character's physical deprivation.
Despite this unusual production schedule, Zemeckis says the shoot went off
without major problems.
"The key was to do another movie in between," he says. "So the crew did [the
Harrison Ford/Michelle Pfeiffer picture] 'What Lies Beneath,' then came back
onto 'Cast Away.' We had to prep the movie once, not as if it were two separate
shoots. It wasn't that bad, because we shot the movie in continuity. That's
what made it a relatively sane thing to do."
Zemeckis says that the toughest part of the whole experience was figuring out
how to make the story dramatic given that Hanks is onscreen by himself for much
of the time.
"It's about a guy who's in isolation, and that presents a lot of challenges,"
he says. "You start by having a great actor, then you try to hone the scenes
and figure out how to shoot them so they create their own drama.
"This movie is not like 'Robinson Crusoe' with Man Friday showing up," he adds.
"And it's not 'Swiss Family Robinson.' It's unique unto itself."
Also unique was Zemeckis' ability to look at his finished footage from part one
of the shoot as an opportunity "to learn from all our mistakes and errors. Part
two went like clockwork because we knew what the pitfalls were."
Ultimately, Zemeckis sounds surprised — even gratified — that the split
shoot went as well as it did.
"It could have been a lot worse," he says. "It was rough, but anytime you're on
the water or under the water, things become logistically complex. It was
difficult, but there were no unforeseen surprises. However, if you were prone
to seasickness, this was not a movie you wanted to be on."
MISS CONGENIALITY:
Directed by Donald Petrie
Being long in the leg is good, but isn't Sandra Bullock a little long in the
tooth to pass for a beauty pageant contestant? Anyway, the 36-year-old actress
gives it a try in this comedy/thriller about an FBI agent who goes undercover
as a Miss United States contestant to thwart a terrorist…
MISS SADIE THOMPSON:
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt (1953)
What a bargain: Rita Hayworth as Sadie Thompson, in 3-D! Don't forget your
Kleenex — to wipe the steam off your glasses.
BUT FOREVER ON MY MIND:
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
Italian comedy about a 16-year-old boy searching for a political issue that
will get the attention of his activist parents.
WES CRAVEN PRESENTS: DRACULA 2000:
Directed by Patrick Lussier
This latest take on Bram Stoker's famous tale has Abraham Van Helsing trying to
reclaim his daughter from the bloodsucking count in New Orleans.
BEFORE NIGHT FALLS:
Directed by Julian Schnabel
Spanish actor Javier Bardem has been acclaimed on the festival circuit for his
performance as the exiled Cuban novelist/poet Reinaldo Arenas, an AIDS sufferer
who was persecuted by the Castro government for his homosexuality and
countercultural writing. Look for cameos by Johnny Depp and Sean Penn.
THE GIFT:
Directed by Sam Raimi
In 1950s Georgia, police call upon psychic Cate Blanchett to help them find a
woman (Katie Holmes) whom they believe has been murdered. Keanu Reeves, a
serial killer in his last film ("The Watcher"), plays a likely suspect; Gregg
Kinnear is the suspected victim's fiancé, and 1999 Oscar-winner Hilary Swank
is Reeves' wife.
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH:
Directed by Terence Davies
An adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about social prejudice and moral
injustice among upper-class New Yorkers at the turn-of-the-century. Gillian
Anderson plays the tragic heroine Lily Bart and Eric Stoltz the lawyer she
loves. With Dan Aykroyd, Laura Linney.
NOWHERE TO HIDE:
Directed by Myung-se Lee
A Korean art-house action film about a detective chasing a ruthless killer and
drug lord who is a master of escape.
O, BROTHER, WHERE ARE THO?:
Directed by Joel Coen.
The Coen brothers take their inspiration from Homer and their title from
Preston Sturges' "Sullivan's Travels," but it's all in good fun, as their
unlikely heroes — a trio of Depression era chain-gang escapees — wander
through Mississippi avoiding capture and looking for treasure. With George
Clooney, John Goodman, John Turturro, Holly Hunter.
STATE AND MAIN:
Directed by David Mamet
David Mamet satirizes the hand that feeds him with this story about a film
company that moves into a small Vermont town with a movie star (Adam Baldwin)
who can't keep his hands off teenage girls, a director (William Macy) who's
seen it all before, an actress (Sarah Jessica Parker) who knows how to squeeze
a few more bucks out of a budget, and a writer (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who,
like so many before him, will quickly move to the shallow end of his integrity.
Dec. 25:
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES:
Directed by Billy Bob Thornton
When Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally ("Silence of the Lambs") first read
Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" several years ago, he knew he wanted
to adapt it for the screen. The 1992 novel, which won the National Book Award,
is an elegiac tale of a young cowboy who rides into Mexico in the late 1940s
and falls in love with the daughter of a rich landowner.
The horses aren't all that's pretty in Matt Damon's latest film. Says Tally, "I
love it because it's so many different kinds of a story — an adventure story,
a love story, a coming-of-age story, and a Western, but a different kind of
Western, because it's set in 1949. It's a very rich canvas."
Mike Nichols originally owned the film rights, and Tally was able to convince
him that he was the man to write the screenplay. When Billy Bob Thornton came
on as director, he retained Tally and, says the writer, "shot everything I
wrote."
As with all the screenplays he has written (which also include "Before and
After" and "White Palace"), the process Tally used to get to a final draft was
long and arduous.
"You have to eliminate supporting characters and subplot, and focus on the main
character," says Tally. "The details of the structure and dialogue are
secondary to your feelings about this main character and what makes a good
story."
McCarthy wrote his book in the kind of highly stylized language that didn't
lend itself to adaptation.
"There's this soaring, poetic prose, but except where you can find a cinematic
image that captures that richness, that language is not of much use to you,"
says Tally. "Movies don't do too well getting inside character's heads in terms
of the stream of consciousness that a book can do."
Luckily, however, McCarthy's novel is also filled with strong action sequences.
And, says Tally, if you're a screenwriter, your eye is drawn to anything that
involves action on the screen. Still, there was plenty that had to be cut to
avoid what Tally describes as the "fanny-time problem that every movie faces."
Several sequences featuring the Damon character's dying father were pared down
to one. A Mexican prison warden who plays a key role in the book was
eliminated. Tally says he wished he had had "more space to work with the love
story, which only forms a part of the movie. But that's kind of inherent in the
plot."
He says he's pleased with the final result, however.
"'All the Pretty Horses' is the greatest book I've adapted as a work of
literature," he says. "And I think it's my favorite of all my screenplays."
AN EVERLASTING PIECE:
Directed by Barry Levinson
If there's humor to be found in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, former
stand-up comedian and reliably funny film maker Levinson is as good a bet as
any to find it. Here, Belfast barbers Colm and George — a Catholic and a
Protestant — form a partnership to corner the market in toupees. All that the
advance publicity will tell us is that in order to get ahead of a larger, rival
toupee company, Colm and George have to come up with a unique hairpiece and a
way to get Irish baldies of both religious persuasions to don it. With Barry
McEvoy, Brian O'Byrne, Billy Connolly, Anna Friel.
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE:
Directed by Elias Merhige
Legend has it that ctor Max Schreck was almost as weird as the vampire he
played in director F. W. Murnau's German masterpiece "Nosferatu" (1922). This
film treats the legend as fact, with Willem Dafoe playing Schreck as an actor
born to the role. With John Malkovich as Murnau, Catherine McCormack and Eddie
Izzard.
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY:
Directed by Stanley Kubrick (1968)
The style-setting and most intellectual of all science-fiction films gets a
timely re-release.
VATEL:
Directed by Roland Joffe
A costume/culinary drama about a master chef's attempt to prepare a three-day
feast good enough to put his boss back in the good graces of King Louis XIV.
With Gerard Depardieu, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth.
Dec. 27:
TRAFFIC:
Directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are on opposite sides of the law, he
being an Ohio Supreme Court judge appointed as the new U.S. drug czar, she the
wife of a jailed cartel boss trying to take over his business. With Benicio Del
Toro, James Brolin, Don Cheadle.
Dec. 29:
THE CLAIM:
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Peter Mullan plays the definitive bad dad in this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's
"The Mayor of Casterbridge." The setting has been removed from England to the
California Gold Rush era, in which Mullan sellshis wife and daughter only to
encounter them again 20 years later. With Nastassja Kinski, Sarah Polley, Wes
Bentley, Milla Jovovich.
THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO:
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
For this 1956 documentary, the great French director Clouzot ("Wages of Fear")
poked his camera over Picasso's shoulder as the master sketched 20 works on
canvas and later destroyed them, leaving the artwork only on the film.
POLLOCK:
Directed by Ed Harris
Ed Harris directs himself as Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionist painter
and troubled genius, during the last years of his life. With Marcia Gay Harden
as his soulmate, artist Lee Krasner.
CHUNHYANG:
Directed by Im Kwon-Taek
This Korean film is about the love affair between the daughter of a courtesan
and a governor's son. It's narrated in traditional Pansori operatic musical
style.
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Leigh Melton
wrote:
>Not that it's over, but with the holiday season upon us, there will be better
>films than "Charlie's Angels" to salve our parched eyes in the coming weeks. I
>can safely guarantee that one movie alone — Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger,
>Hidden Dragon" — will rescue your faith in the medium and deliver you, in
>metaphorical terms, to the promised land.
It's done well at every film festival at which it's been shown (it was
a favorite at Cannes, even though it wasn't an entrant) and has
garnered a record 13 award nominations at the Golden Horse awards in
Taiwan... even though it is not an Asian film, strictly speaking. (It
is considered an American film due to funding, even though Ang Lee is
from Taiwan, Michelle Yeoh from Malaysia and Chow Yun-Fat from Hong
Kong. Oh, and Zhang ZiYi is from the Mainland.)
I've seen it and it *is* good, though I think Michelle Yeoh steals the
entire film. It's not my favorite of Chow Yun-Fat's roles, but I
enjoyed it nonetheless.
Leigh
--
A Free Man In Hong Kong: the other side of Chow Yun-Fat
http://nbi.com/hk/cyf/index.html
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