In Contention

Tag: Catherine Keener

  • BERLIN: ‘Please Give,’ ‘Red Hill,’ ‘Submarino’

    Ryan Kwanten in Red HillFilm festivals have a curious way of either dulling one’s critical faculties or provoking them to an impolite degree. I almost never walk out of a screening under normal circumstances; at a festival, while compressing five-odd films into one day, it’s almost life-affirming to do so.

    Such was the case yesterday, halfway through “Caterpillar,” a Competition entry from widely admired Japanese veteran Koji Wakamatsu. An apparent Oshima knockoff combining catatonic narrative inertia with visual dinginess, it centers on a mute, limbless Sino-Japanese War vet rebuilding his relationship with his wife: “rebuilding his relationship” being a euphemism for working his way through the paraplegic Kama Sutra.

    After a sufficient number of po-faced sex scenes, interspersed with shots of cherry-blossom to indicate the passing of seasons — the film, it seems, was edited with a blunt axe — Tim turned to me and whimpered, “I can’t take it anymore.” We bailed and headed for “Gentlemen Broncos” instead; and you know now how that worked out.

    The film has its champions, mind. And I’m now convinced it will win something on Saturday just to spite me. After the cut, however, are three films I happily sat through in their entirety.

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  • The Great Performances: 2005

    Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain2005 was the year of Heath Ledger’s beautiful, moving performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” which I saw for the first time in Toronto.  It instantly became the talk of the festival, and the film became the one to beat for the Academy Award.

    Ledger was astonishing as the taciturn cowboy who is more surprised than anybody when his soulmate turns out to be another cowboy, portrayed superbly by Jake Gyllenhall. If there is a more deeply felt moment in film history than Ledger gently adjusting Gyllenhall’s shirt at the end of the film, his eyes filled with tears, I don’t know what it is. That’s loss, that is absolute heartbreak, that is one of the greatest acting performances of the decade.

    Phillip Seymour Hoffman would win the Oscar for his transformation into “Capote” and he’s very good, but just not in the same league as Ledger. I wondered from time to time if “Infamous” had been released earlier if Toby Jones might have won the Oscar instead of Hoffman. Each becomes Capote in a very different manner, and side by side it is difficult to choose the stronger portrayal. Certainly I prefer Hoffman’s as it is darker, and for me more realistic, but there can be no denying Jones.

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  • The Great Performances: 1999

    Terence Stamp in The Limey1999 was a strange year.  And it’s hard to believe a full decade has slipped past since.  There were some great award-winning performances, to be sure, but there seemed to be just as many not nominated that certainly should have been.

    Ten years later, I remain stunned that Reese Witherspoon was not nominated for her brilliant work in “Election” as a pathologically ambitious, grasping social climber student doing anything it takes to head up the student council in Alexander Payne’s astute and black comedy.

    Witherspoon won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actress, besting eventual Oscar, LAFCA and NYFCC champ Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry.” What made Witherspoon’s work so incredible was that we all must have known a Tracy Flick during our high school days, and the actress created such an accurate depiction.

    Swank was a most deserving winner for her superb performance, winning over nominees, Annette Bening in “American Beauty,” Janet McTeer in “Tumbleweeds,” Julianne Moore in “The End of the Affiar” and Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart” (perhaps the perennial Oscar favorite’s least accomplished nominated performance).

    Bening’s performance was brilliant, she won the Screen Actors Guild award for it, and though there seemed to be a swell of support for her as Oscar night approached, there was no denying Swank for her career-altering work.

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  • Older and wiser

    Hope Davis’s recent complaint about the issue of Hollywood ageism, prompted by being offered characters well over her actual age, seems to have struck a bit of a chord this week. The Guardian’s discussion of the matter was also recently picked up on in the New York Times, while Cinematical contributed to the discussion by celebrating Julia Roberts’ willingness to acknowledge her over-40 status in “Duplicity.”

    Coincidentally enough, the issue also crops up in a recent Guardian interview with the delicious Catherine Keener. Ostensibly to publicise Michael Winterbottom’s “Genova” (a sadly rather negligible work, though Keener is stellar is always), it’s more of a reflective career profile, opening with the staggering (to me, anyway) revelation that she is 50 years old. (Seriously?!) Here, she describes the pleasures of ageing as a character actress rather than as a movie star:

    “Interesting characters are pretty rare if you really want to be the lead. That’s the usual complaint of actresses my age, and they’re not wrong. They depend on you being beautiful. Since I’m not cast for my physicality, I’m not that interested in those parts. I find that playing so many characters in so many films is a way to stay in the moment.”

    She says she feels sisterly towards other women actors her age, and would concur that Hollywood remains ageist and sexist, especially when it comes to big-budget material. Somehow, she has found a niche that avoids these traps. She despairs a bit of the new generation of women coming up: “Everyone seems so frigging young and naive. They had some survey of younger women and they asked them what they aspired to be. The most popular answer was to be the assistant to a movie star – not the movie star, but the assistant!”

    Yeah, as if Catherine Keener isn’t sexy. Anyway, she’s a really smart, engaging interviewee; read the rest here. Meanwhile, with Michelle Pfeiffer shortly to appear on our screens as Rupert Friend’s decades-older seductress in “Cheri,” something tells me this isn’t the last we’ll hear on the “older women in Hollywood” issue in the months to come.

  • With love from me to you

    I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed Variety’s recent series of articles in which prominent actors champion some of their personal favourite performances of 2008, including many of the most discussed contenders of the season. It’s a simple idea, but executed with real thought and sincerity.

    The pieces are interesting not just because of the more empathetic perspective a fellow actor can offer on a colleague’s craft, but also because the selections and combinations are so varied and frequently unexpected.

    It’s not exactly surprising that an indie queen like Catherine Keener should love Michelle Williams’ exquisite portrayal in “Wendy and Lucy,” but Andy Garcia isn’t the first person I’d think of to celebrate the work of yesterday’s interviewee, Elsa Zylberstein, in “I’ve Loved You So Long.” I particularly liked Garcia’s piece because he understands just what a collaborative effort a performance can sometimes be:

    It is not about the big scenes. It’s about the whole personality and how it is orchestrated. Kristin Scott Thomas is the protagonist, but Kristin’s and Elsa’s performances are joined at the hip. On the page, Elsa’s subtext may not appear as dramatic an issue as the subtext Kristin has, but there’s a great delicacy with which Elsa invites us to understand her character’s troubles and insecurities and how they relate to Kristin’s character. It is the overall crafting of the performance that is so beautiful to watch.

    In turn, Kristin Scott Thomas is profiled by Scarlett Johansson, the younger actor evidently inspired by the elder. Reversing the generation gap, Dustin Hoffman is awestruck by Melissa Leo’s fearless turn in “Frozen River.” Meanwhile, James McAvoy’s take on Anne Hathaway shows the same respect and affection for a contemporary as Blythe Danner’s valentine to Richard Jenkins.

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  • LONDON: “W,” “Genova,” “Il Divo” and more

    We’ve reached the midway point of the London Film Festival, and today’s big event is the European premiere of “W.” As I eavesdropped on assorted critics’ reactions coming out of the press screening this morning, the dominant feeling appeared to be one of pleasant surprise; I have a feeling the film may find a rather warmer reception here than in its home country.

    I’m still gathering my thoughts on the film, which I thought riveting in some respects and messy in others, though it’s clear Stone has transcended the limitations of Stanley Weiser’s script. Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks offer such persuasive, full-bodied characterisations that the Madame Tussaud’s quality of certain supporting players (Thandie Newton in particular) pales by contrast.

    With that, here’s another roundup of notable films from the last few days, beginning with yesterday’s starry but rather under-the-radar Mayor of London gala selection:

    GENOVA (**1/2)

    There is much to engage the eye and ear in “Genova,” the new film from restless Brit auteur Michael Winterbottom. A return to his usual, more organic directorial style after the disappointingly conventional “A Mighty Heart,” the new film teems with activity: from the loose, jazzy rhythms of the editing to the fragmented, eclectic soundtrack overlaying busy dialogue, and above all, superb location work that turns the labyrinthine alleys of the eponymous Italian coastal city into a playground of threat and desire.

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  • Steve Lopez and ‘The Soloist’

    I stopped by Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena yesterday evening to hear Steve Lopez read from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music,” fully expecting a run-of-the-mill book release PR thing. As it turns out, Lopez is a quick-on-his-heels delight of a public speaker, engaging, never tedious and insightful when it really counts.

    And actually, there was no book reading, since Lopez had “lost his glasses for the third day in a row.” Instead, the LA Times columnist simply recounted, in maybe an hour’s time, his relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless resident of downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row — and a Juliard-trained musician all the same, whose story might be hard to believe, but can be captivating to the most cynical.

    L.A. residents are quite familiar with Lopez’s “Points West” column that runs daily in the Times. One of the few living, breathing journalistic spirits of considerable heft at the paper, it seems, Lopez turns a phrase and transforms the mundane into the captivating with a truly gifted sense of the English language. He has introduced readers to members of an entire scale of notoriety, always with equal aplomb, and his articles about Ayers lit a spark for many Angelenos.

    The articles, of course, have been adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant into a film to be released later in the fall by DreamWorks. And Lopez’s book release this week is the beginning of a long road for Ayers’ story, one that will bubble to the surface on a much larger scale when the film lands in November. But what I learned listening to Lopez speak yesterday was how much of a concerted effort the book was for forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the United States, ailments that leave the public stigmatized, a dirty secret, of sorts, that the country seems unwilling to deal with in any up-front manner.

    There are those, I’m sure of it, who feel this project seems a grating experience on the horizon of the film awards season. I, too, had my doubts as to something this potentially schmaltz-laden hitting the screens. But my view has shifted somewhat after hearing Lopez tell it. However opportunistic it might seem to the jaded for the film industry to seize upon a story like this, I have to say, I believe a lot of good could come of it in the end. I look forward to Joe Wright’s work even more so with this added context.

    In the film, Lopez will be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., while Jamie Foxx will portray Ayers. Oscar nominee Catherine Keener also stars.

    I recorded Lopez’s talk, which runs right at an hour. I thought it would be a great way to initiate a new multimedia aspect of In Contention, and so, I offer it to you now. It’s a funny and insightful 60 minutes from one of the industry’s best columnists.

    Have a listen:

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