Pity the artist who falls in love with his own creation. This is another take on the Greek Pygmalion myth, which inspired George Bernard Shaw. The artist in this case is Calvin (Paul Dano), a one-hit-wonder novelist with lots of acolytes, but no friends unless you count his dog (prominently featured), his brother (a wry Chris Messina), and his shrink (Elliott Gould). I’d thought maybe the writer’s block plot was inspired by the attempts of the film’s directors, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, to follow up their six-year-old hit, Little Miss Sunshine (whose zany tone is no guide to this). But no, it’s a first screenplay by the doll-faced lead actress, Zoe Kazan; her eponymous character springs fully formed (well, almost) from Calvin’s imagination, just as he wrote her, and, after the expected how-did-this-happen-is-she-real-am-I-crazy machinations made-to-order girlfriend.
Somewhat funny in predictable ways, the movie takes awhile to get to the more interesting part, where Calvin gets to a dark place and realizes he cannot have the perfect girlfriend when he himself is a narcissistic child. Compare a movie like Adaptation for a more original, twisted take on writer’s block. (Although, as plots about blocked writers whose stories come true go, it certainly beats the hell out of Alex & Emma, which succeeded only in convincing me that the main character was a hack.) Barring that, it would’ve been fun for Kazan to write more bizarre character transformations for herself. All Calvin has to do is type it, and Ruby becomes it, which is too much power for anyone, but Calvin’s a little too nice to truly exploit this plot point. Still, it’s fun when he/Kazan does. Not a gem, this Ruby, but a reasonable first effort for its 28-year-old screenwriter.
viewed 7/9/12 7:30 pm at Ritz East [PFS Screening with directors and stars in attendance] and reviewed 7/9/12
Showing posts with label writer’s block. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writer’s block. Show all posts
Friday, August 3, 2012
Friday, November 5, 2010
Tamara Drewe (***)
A small-town setting is a good way to bring together a collection of characters, and a newcomer is usually the best way to stir up some plot among them. Tamara is that character, a duckling-turned-swan journalist who’s returned to the English village where she unhappily grew up. A good Cinderella story is nearly irresistible, and irresistible is what Tamara (Gemma Arterton) has become since her recent nose job. Tamara is not so much the lead character as the one around whom all of the action revolves, though she’s a nice role for Atherton, recently the female lead in Prince of Persia. This particular village is a writer’s colony, currently populated by a pompous, adulterous mystery novelist (Christopher Hitchens lookalike Roger Allam) and his wife, an American with writer’s block, a pair of mischievous teen girls, and the guy who dumped the teenage Tamara. Soon enough, there’s a rock drummer. And there’s cows, lots of cows.
Based on a series of comics by Posey Simmonds, in turn based loosely on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd—the American writer is a Hardy scholar—the light comedy is directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity). Neither farcical nor subtle, it’s a pleasant romp about a few people whose lives need sorting out. You’ll hardly notice it takes two hours to do so, even though what needs to be done is pretty obvious from the start. No, this won’t be the film at the top of Frears’s résumé. Tamara Drewe is neither Hardy nor hardy fare. It’s more like a piece of candy whose familiar taste makes it no less pleasing.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/10/2010
Based on a series of comics by Posey Simmonds, in turn based loosely on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd—the American writer is a Hardy scholar—the light comedy is directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity). Neither farcical nor subtle, it’s a pleasant romp about a few people whose lives need sorting out. You’ll hardly notice it takes two hours to do so, even though what needs to be done is pretty obvious from the start. No, this won’t be the film at the top of Frears’s résumé. Tamara Drewe is neither Hardy nor hardy fare. It’s more like a piece of candy whose familiar taste makes it no less pleasing.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/10/2010
Friday, December 25, 2009
Nine (**3/4)
A look at the principal cast—Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie—might lead one to suspect that the title refers to how many Oscars they’ve collectively received, but that number is actually seven. (The late Anthony Mingella, who co-wrote the script, won one as a director.) The title is a play on 8½, the classic Federico Fellini film adapted first into an Italian play, then a 1982 Tony-winning musical with songs by Maury Yeston. There are a dozen songs, including three new ones by Yeston.
It took me ten minutes to recall that it was Day-Lewis in the role of Guido Contini, a great Italian director modeled on Fellini, and not some Italian actor. (He speaks English, like everyone else, but with an accent that even comes through when he sings.) Contini is a vastly popular figure who has, however, had a couple of recent flops and can’t come up with a story for his newest film, despite the fact that pre-production is already well under way. Cotillard has the second largest role as his sweet, cheated-upon wife. Writer’s block is the storyline, but the theme is all of the women in Contini’s life: his mother (Loren), his mistress (Cruz), his leading lady (Kidman), his costume designer (Dench), his childhood object of lust (Fergie), and an American journalist (Hudson). All of them appear in the first musical production, a fantasy sequence involving a bevy of skimpily clad women on what’s supposed to be a film set.
Nine follows the sci-fi films 9 and District 9 into theaters in ’09. It would be unfair and too easy to say that Nine is “by the numbers,” but the storyline feels overfamiliar, or at least the infidelity theme does. It is more correct to say that the film is “for the (musical) numbers,” which are elaborately staged and surprisingly well sung by the actors, who are generally not known for singing. Of course, Fergie is the exception, and belts out “Be Italian” with fervor. Yeston’s songs are wordy rather than clever or elegant, but are very descriptive of the storyline. A couple of them stuck in my head. All in all, though it might be obvious to say, this is a movie for lovers of big, fancily costumed musical production numbers. I am not such a person, but I still loved director Rob Marshall’s previous musical adaptation, Chicago. That was, in a way, just as much about moviemaking as this, since it was really a parody of a gangster movie, and the clever songs worked well with that kind of storytelling. Here the mixture of frothy production and serious themes tends to underscore how little is actually being said.
IMDB link
viewed 12/26/09 at Ritz East and reviewed 1/2/1o
It took me ten minutes to recall that it was Day-Lewis in the role of Guido Contini, a great Italian director modeled on Fellini, and not some Italian actor. (He speaks English, like everyone else, but with an accent that even comes through when he sings.) Contini is a vastly popular figure who has, however, had a couple of recent flops and can’t come up with a story for his newest film, despite the fact that pre-production is already well under way. Cotillard has the second largest role as his sweet, cheated-upon wife. Writer’s block is the storyline, but the theme is all of the women in Contini’s life: his mother (Loren), his mistress (Cruz), his leading lady (Kidman), his costume designer (Dench), his childhood object of lust (Fergie), and an American journalist (Hudson). All of them appear in the first musical production, a fantasy sequence involving a bevy of skimpily clad women on what’s supposed to be a film set.
Nine follows the sci-fi films 9 and District 9 into theaters in ’09. It would be unfair and too easy to say that Nine is “by the numbers,” but the storyline feels overfamiliar, or at least the infidelity theme does. It is more correct to say that the film is “for the (musical) numbers,” which are elaborately staged and surprisingly well sung by the actors, who are generally not known for singing. Of course, Fergie is the exception, and belts out “Be Italian” with fervor. Yeston’s songs are wordy rather than clever or elegant, but are very descriptive of the storyline. A couple of them stuck in my head. All in all, though it might be obvious to say, this is a movie for lovers of big, fancily costumed musical production numbers. I am not such a person, but I still loved director Rob Marshall’s previous musical adaptation, Chicago. That was, in a way, just as much about moviemaking as this, since it was really a parody of a gangster movie, and the clever songs worked well with that kind of storytelling. Here the mixture of frothy production and serious themes tends to underscore how little is actually being said.
IMDB link
viewed 12/26/09 at Ritz East and reviewed 1/2/1o
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