The Screengrab : colin firth

Screengrab Review: "Easy Virtue"

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:00:00 GMT

The new comedy Easy Virtue opens on an English country estate in the 1920s, a repressive, pastoral setting presided over by Kristin Scott Thomas as an icy matriarch with a burnt-out war veteran husband (Colin Firth) and a pair of marriageable daughters (Kimberley Nixon and Katherine Parkinson). This creaky idyll is about to be temporarily busted open by the appearance of the prodigal son (Ben Barnes) and his new bride, a American race car driver and widow played by Jessica Biel. The movie is the first in quite a while to be based on a play but Noel Coward, a dedicated entertainer who, in the name of meeting the great mass audience halfway, was willing to work in movies, even co-directing (with David Lean) In Which We Serve, the wartime stiff-upper-lip film that he starred in, wrote, and directed. But he didn't appreciate seeing the theater pieces that he thought of as his real works fiddled with and dumbed down for movie audiences, and after Hollywood turned his operetta Bitter Sweet into a Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald vehicle, he vowed to never have anything more to do with the place.

Easy Virtue, which was directed by Stephan Elliott, from a script (by Elliott and his usual writing partner, Sheridan Jobbins), that is carefully calibrated to bring the original material into line with an eight-year-old's idea of the mature Coward's style of debonair, fashionable entertainment, is a sterling testament to the old boy's good judgment. I had started wincing at the strained broadness and the sound of feet not quite hitting the marks intended early on, but I didn't realize just how low Elliott was prepared to sink until the doodling period-jazz score began to sound eerily familiar. It took me a second to recognize the theme from Car Wash in a quaint jazz-band arrangement. That wasn't the really shocking part; that came a few seconds later, when the faint sound of a vocalist appeared on the soundtrack, crooning about how you might not get rich but that, unlike sitting through this movie, it was still more pleasurable than digging a ditch. In other words, not only does this movie include a '20s-style version of the Car Wash theme, but the filmmakers kind if want you to notice that. They're not ashamed of it.

Elliott, the Australian director best known for the drag spree The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, fills Easy Virtue out with this kind of silly shtick, which serves to advertise his presumed superiority to the material even as it exposes his low opinion of his audience. It's a movie made by people who are drawn to period material because they think the past is just the ginchiest. The sets don't look lived in, and the costumes don't look as if they've been off the rack for more than a minute; if they did, it would interfere with the museum-quality atmosphere. Except that, in keeping with Elliott's taste for in-your-face booga-booga comic effects, it's a museum that doubles as a pop-up book. People make wide-eyed leering faces while reading "scandalous" classics such as Lady Chatterly's Lover, and hand each other newspapers while mentioning that Houdini has died. Kris Marshall plays the family butler, who in the time-honored tradition of drawing room comedies is forever signaling his sardonic awareness of his masters' idiocies. Marshall has aplomb and dexterity, and he might have been very funny if the audience were allowed to notice his impertinence out of the corner of the eye. Elliott lobs him into your lap, so that you get tired of him surprisingly fast.

It's Biel who has the worst time of it, though. Strappingly tall and athletic-looking, with the camera fixated on her pert nose and perfect white choppers, she passes for a member of a superior race, and that's probably the idea: the conquering heroine from America coming to the old mother country to offer the liberating power of her starshine to anyone smart and loose enough to want to accept it, which turns out to mostly be the hired help. (The aristocrats, especially the womenfolk, just feel threatened by her.) Biel isn't dislikable--though her blonde bob makes her seem less warm and friendly than her usual long brunette tresses--but she isn't funny and she never seems relaxed. This kind of material should be a vacation for accomplished performers to breeze through, looking glamorously turned-out while making their witty lines sing; that's how Scott Thomas and Firth play it. (Firth walks off with the movie, because he has the luck to play a character whose wartime experience has left him alienated from the soft, trivial social world around him, which gives Firth the excuse to look as if he's loftily above the bad movie everyone else is sunk in.) Biel looks like she's working hard, and she has no idea how to give shape and music to her lines; she just rattles them off, while looking relieved that she'd managed to remembered them.

And Elliott, while focusing on making sure that she always looks great, still manages to fail to protect her. When the harpies around Biel sneer at her for her composed reaction to a piece of gossip about the death of her first husband, Biel huffs through a puff of cigarette smoke that she isn't about to indulge in "amateur theatrics" just to impress them. When your leading lady is giving a sophisticated-modern-woman performance that looks as if it belongs in a high school play, maybe you should just cut the line about how she doesn't go in for amateur theatrics. Easy Virtue was filmed before, by Alfred Hitchcock, as a silent movie, and a number of people have used this new version as an excuse to marvel at how wrong-headed it was to turn such a dialogue-heavy play into a silent movie. But after hearing the lines spoken by someone who doesn't know how to say them effectively, stone silence and some title cards would come as a relief.

Morning Deal Report: Post-Election Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The news out of Hollywood is a little scarce this morning. Apparently there was some kind of political thing going on last night or what-have-you. Things are so slow, The Hollywood Reporter is headlining Jonathan Lipnicki news. You remember Lipnicki, right? The kid from Jerry Maguire? “The human head weighs eight pounds”? Well, the lad is now a senior at Los Angeles' Agoura High School and plans to star in the psychological thriller The Other Side of Innocence. (That would be “guilt,” I think.) He’ll play “a damaged young man who becomes romantically involved with the unhappy daughter of the local chief detective while a serial killer is threatening their town.”

Tough guys galore have signed on for 13, an English-language remake of the 2005 French pic 13 Tzameti. Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, Jason Statham, Sam Riley, 50 Cent and Ray Liotta are all on board for the story of “a young man who stumbles into an underground competition where the wealthy gamble on human beings in a Russian Roulette-like competition,” per Variety.

Ginnifer Goodwin and Nicholas Hoult have joined Colin Firth and Julianne Moore for A Single Man, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel. “Goodwin is Mrs. Strunk, a suburban mom who doesn't share her husband's dislike of their neighbor, a gay professor (Firth). Hoult will play Kenny, a sexually ambiguous grad student who shows an unusual interest in the professor,” per THR.

Related:
Mickey Rourke Gets Up Off the Canvas
The Most Unnecessary Movies of 2007

DVD Digest for November 4, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week is a big one for classic TV on DVD, plus an old-school sci-fi franchise gets the Blu-Ray treatment.

DVD of the Week: My pick this week is only applicable if you have a Blu-Ray DVD player, which exempts a number of Screengrab readers including myself. However, if you have a Blu-Ray player, nothing this week can touch the release of Planet of the Apes: 40 Year Evolution Blu-Ray Collection (Fox). Of course, even fans of the series acknowledge that the Planet of the Apes films are widely uneven. Yet unlike most franchise box sets which pile the lion’s share of extras on the classic films and leave little for the others, Fox has lavished plenty of care on all of the Apes films, regardless of quality. The biggest news for fans is the newly-restored cut of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which went largely unseen since the 1972 studio test screenings. According to Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak, the new version of Conquest is much more darker and violent than the version that was eventually released in theatres. The set also contains a number of new extras, including new making-of featurettes for each of the sequels, a documentary on the evolution from Pierre Boulle’s original novel to the screen, and isolated score tracks for each of the sequels. In other words, everything that one could possibly need to satisfy even the most ravenous Planet of the Apes fan, although for the rest of all the movies are also sold separately.

For us non-Blu-Ray types, the big news this week is the release of the Fraggle Rock Complete Series Collection (Lionsgate), which collects all 96 episodes of Jim Henson’s classic HBO series in a massive 20-disc box set. In addition, the collection includes an exclusive new Fraggle Rock short directed by Cory Edwards, who will direct the upcoming Fraggle Rock feature film, which I hadn’t heard about until today. Other notable TV on DVD releases include: Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner), Futurama: Bender’s Game (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series (Lionsgate), and Reaper Season 1 (Lionsgate).

The highest-profile recent release coming to DVD today is the big-screen update of the classic series Get Smart (Warner, also Blu-Ray). This week also brings the indie trifecta of Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian (First Look, also Blu-Ray), Luke Wilson in Henry Poole Is Here (Anchor Bay), and Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in When Did You Last See Your Father? (Sony). And for the kids, there’s Alvin and the Chipmunks Special Edition (Fox) and Shrek the Halls (Paramount).

The annual onslaught of holiday DVDs continues this year with the A Christmas Story Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), although for my money nothing beats watching this over and over on TNT. Also of note this week is the re-pressing of two John Cassavetes classics, A Woman Under the Influence (Criterion) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Criterion). Finally, there’s the Waterworld Extended Edition (Universal), in case that’s your kind of thing.

Finally, this week’s non-ape Blu-Ray only releases include Monster’s Ball (Lionsgate) and Universal Soldier (Lionsgate). And honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more unlikely pairing. Satantango and Rush Hour? Pretty Woman and Irreversible? I’ll have to think about this one…

Trailer Review: Mamma Mia!

Paul Clark — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The Broadway smash Mamma Mia! is an example of the phenomenon of "jukebox musicals" — stage productions whose song score is comprised primarily of pre-existing music (in this case, ABBA) — which aren't to be confused with stage musicals based on non-musical movies. Personally, I'm not a fan of the phenomenon, as it feels primarily like a way of attracting tourists to spend hundreds of dollars on a Broadway show by giving them the impression of attending honest-to-goodness theatre while wrapping them in a musical comfort blanket. But while I'm not exactly excited for Mamma Mia!, I must admit that the cast intrigues me. After A Prairie Home Companion, I'm curious to see what Meryl Streep can do in an honest-to-goodness musical, especially now that she's gotten to the stage of her career where she's loosened up and is free to do whatever the hell she wants. Likewise, the rest of the ensemble, from the actors playing the would-be dads (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård) on down — is classier than one would expect from a movie like this. My enthusiasm for this project remains guarded, but I'm certainly more curious about than I'd anticipated.

Meryl Streep IS "Mamma Mia!" Deal with It!

Phil Nugent — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Mamma Mia!, the Broadway hit that is half-jukebox musical devoted to the hits of ABBA, half-unauthorized remake of the 1968 movie Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell, is coming to movie screens thus year. Granted, it could be that some of you have only a limited interest in the circa-'76 Swedish singing sensations or the comedy stylings of Telly Savalas. But even if that's the case, a couple of things make this project kind of interesting. First, while you might assume that the creation of "the most successful musical on the planet" had its genesis in some producer feeding some Billboard charts, a couple of obscure IMDB pages, and the estimated cost of his new beach house into a computer and hitting "Puree", but it turns out that it's really a labor of love by a team of three women: producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson, and director Phyllida Lloyd. Having worked together to create the stage show, they've since collaborated on the movie--with pretty much total creative control, since Craymer had the foresight to hang onto the film rights. Though Lloyd has extensive credits in the theater and directed a TV version of the opera Gloriana for the BBC in 2000, this will mark her feature film directing debut.

The other notable thing about the movie is that it stars Meryl Streep, who will make her movie musical debut tackling a part that was originated (in Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell) by Gina Lollobrigida and performing the songs made famous by Benny, Bjorn, Anni-Frid, and Agnetha. Streep, who's done enough heavy lifting in her film career to build the pyramids, has been mixing it up with comedies (Defending Your Life, Adaptation) and even the occasional action flick (The River Wild) for a long time now, but she's still probably the classiest thing to happen to Abba since Lasse Hallstrom directed Abba: The Movie. Being very bad people, our first reaction to the news was to assume that Streep probably wanted to buy a small Caribbean country or maybe had a gambling problem. (Incidentally, I personally first learned that she was in Mamma Mia! when I went to the movies and saw her skipping about happily in the trailer. I can testify that this was definitely the best way to find out about it, assuming that you think the proper way to celebrate such news is to choke on a Milk Dud while spilling your Coke in your lap.)

But it turns out that Streep, too, is in this one for the love. According to Judy Craymer, "Our passion for Meryl and Meryl's passion for the show made it work. She saw the show on Broadway and wrote us a fan letter saying what a great time she'd had. And it all happened rather fast. We spoke to her agent, her agent spoke to her, and apparently she said: 'Mamma Mia!?? I AM Mamma Mia!?' " Streep's participation made it easier for the filmmakers to go after big game in fleshing out the supporting cast, which includes Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård. Praising Streep's work in the film, Lloyd says, "She finds a line into a character and the way she should be like nothing I've ever seen before, and everyone else just raises their game as a result." So however badly the rest of the movies this summer might stink, at least we can look forward to the prospect of seeing what Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard look like singing when they're Abba songs with their games raised.

Morning Deal Report: Amy Ryan on a Hot Streak

Peter Smith — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Amy Ryan is doing well these days, with parts in Dan in Real Life and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and a highly acclaimed performance in Gone Baby Gone. (I just finished watching her fine work in Season 2 of The Wire, to boot.) Now she and Greg Kinnear are joining Matt Damon in a Paul-Greengrass-directed thriller based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's non-fiction Iraq chronicle, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. This also marks a reunion of Damon and Greengrass, which any Bourne fan knows is a good thing.

Jessica Biel costars with Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas in the Noel Coward adaptation Easy Virtue.

Boys Don't Cry and Stop Loss director Kimberly Pierce wants to adapt Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. It's always interesting when a serious, realism-minded director steps into sci-fi. Let's hope this happens.