You'll Want to See Collateral Beauty

I read scripts for a living. Most of them aren't that good.  Some of them are so bad you despair for the movie industry. And some of them are so wonderful that when you read them, the hair on the back of your neck stands up because you know you're reading something that's going to make a great movie. I felt that way about The King's Speech.

Collateral Beauty is a lovely story. It will be out at Christmas. You should go to see it. The cast alone makes it worth the admission--Will Smith, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton.

Anonymous--a star-studded riff on the Shakespeare authorship question

It's always fun to read the articles about who "really" wrote Shakespeare's plays. In one of the only fan letters I ever wrote in my life, I asked Isaac Asimov (whose two-part guide to Shakespare is terrific) if he had an opinion on the issue. He did not. (Yes, he answered my fan letter with a typed index card reply. Which I still have somewhere. Yes. Isaac Asimov!!!!) But I digress.

I'm a fan of British costume dramas. They're often a little on the slow side but they almost always make up for it with fantastic acting. Anonymous is the perfect example. It's an Elizabethan romp starring mother/daughter actresses Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave as Elizaabeth One at various stages in her life.The premise of the movie is that Shakespeare's work was really written by an aristocrat and that Shakespeare himself was a nasty little man who acted as the aristocrat's "front" and killed Christopher Marlowe because he was about to out him.  (Speaking of fronts, if you love good acting, check out Trumbo.  The movie about the Hollywood Ten's most famous member is a feast of fine acting, with Louis C.K. and John Goodman outstanding in supporting roles and Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren at the top of their game.)

Sunday Shakespeare Goodness--Helen Mirren's TEMPEST for free

I've seen a lot of productions of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I've seen a Comnedia dell'arte production iperformed solely n Italian during the a cultural "Olympics" that accompanied the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics, I've seen a production in San Diego with three oversized seashells as the only set (Ellis Rabb played Prospero) and I've seen two more traditional versions, one with Anthony Hopkins and Stephanie Zimbalist and one with Christopher Plummer as the vengeful mage.

When I found out Helen Mirren was going to do a female version of the play with Julie (The Lion King) Taymor directing, I was intrigued but somehow I never managed to catch the 2010 production. But now, thanks to YouTube, I can see the whole movie for free! It was worth the wait. Djimon Hounsou plays Caliban, who has the best line in the play (and one of my favorite lines in all of Shakespeare) when he says, "You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse." 
This was Shakespeare's last play, the culmination of a career, a master at the top of his game.
Enjoy it here.

Hamlet--the real story in Royal Deceit

Before he donned the Batman's black cape, Christian Bale sported a red cape as Amled, prince of Jutland (Denmark) in this movie based on a chronicle by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, which was also the source material for Shakespeare's epic drama Hamlet.
In Royal Deceit (a really terrible title), the set-up is much the same as Hamlet--the young prince of Denmark has seemingly gone mad following the murder of his father (and in this case, brother as well).
Although the murder is blamed on two "scouundrels," the real murderer is the king's jealous brother (Gabriel Byrne), who co-opts the queen (Helen Mirren, looking luminously ageless). From the moment the uncle "modestly" accepts the crown in Amled's place, the story begins to diverge from the one we know, although elements remains--like the characters who became Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the girl who was the model for Ophelia, here called Ethel (long E, pronounced EEE-thul), and played by a very young Kate Beckinsale.  (She mostly wears shapeless costumes that make her look pudgy, which is unfortunate.)

Four Actors You Might Not Expect to See Playing Shakespeare

Keanu Reeves--In Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film of Much Ado About Nothing, Reeves plays Don John. Don John is the villain of the piece and Reeves was fine in the role (and looked mighty fine).  Here's a brief clip of him as Don John, about to spread vile rumor about a lady.
Joss Whedon's next movie, by the way, is a modernized adaptation of the same play, with Nathan Fillion playing Dogberry. (In the Branagh film, Michael Keaton played Dogberry.)
Another unlikely Shakespearan is comedian/actor Russell Brand, who appears as Stephano in the Julie Taymor-directed production of The Tempest, with Helen Mirren as "Prospera." Stephano is part of a comic subplot involving Caliban and Brand is featured in the trailer, doing justice to the language. You can watch it here. That's Djimon Hounsou as Caliban and Alan Cumming as Trinculo.
Molly Ringwald was an uncredited Cordelia (the good daughter) in Jean-Luc Godard's 1987 sci-fi, comedy-drama mashup of KingLear, which starred Woody Allen as "Mr. Alien" and a few other big names (Julie Delpy, also uncredited, and Stage Director Peter Sellars as "William Shakespeare Junior the Fifth," which gives you an idea of just what a strange movie this was). Here's a short clip showing Molly with Burgess Meredith, playing Don Learo, her father.Five years earlier, Molly played Miranda in John Cassavetes' modernized version of The Tempest.  (Raul Julia played Kalibanos). Here's a clip from the opening of the movie featuring Molly, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.
Bill Murray doesn't often get a chance to do drama but in 2000, he played Polonius in a modern-day retelling of Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles, and Liev Schrieber and Steve Zahn as Rosencrantz.  Set in modern-day New York, the movie preserved the language of the play and in this scene, Murray gives the famous "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" speech to Schrieber, who is playing his son Laertes. For me, Murray never seems natural--he never quite clicks into the conversational cadence--and the language sounds stilted. Schreiber, on the other hand, is spot on. Stiles would go on to star in a modern-day retelling of Othello (O, co-starring Mekhi Phifer.

Feminist Fiction (Film) Friday

I played hooky earlier this week and went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I didn't really have the time to spare but I knew if I didn't go to see it this week, it would be gone by this week. And I was right. Marigold is not a particularly good movie. Every single plot twist in the film is telegraphed before hand. And yet...messy as it is, predictable as it is, the movie is totally enjoyable. Not the least of the pleasures is watching the actors. Judi Dench. Bill Nighy. Maggie Smith. Tom Wilkinson, Dev Patel (of Slumdog Millionaire). It's kind of like watching an actor's master class.
Nighy and Dench have worked together before in Notes on a Scandal, and although that is a very different movie it has something in common with Marigold--it has a couple of terrific parts for women who are no longer young; who are in fact ... old. Both Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are 78. (Tom Wilkinson is 64; Nighy is not yet 63.) Both Smith and Dench have resumes that go back to the middle of the last century. Dench's first credit on IMDB is 1959; Smith's first listing is 1955.  That's 1955 people--pre-Space Age.
In Marigold, both actresses play women who have been betrayed by the people they love. They're victims who ultimately refuse to be victimized and on their own terms, find happiness. They are not glamorous women. The camera zooms in on their fragile, wrinkled skin and it's a cruel contrast to the lovely, smooth-skinned ingenue who plays Dev's girlfriend in the film. And yet, the stories the audience want to see belong to the older actresses. (Nighy and Wilkinson are terrific in their roles too, but we are talking of women here.)

A day after I saw the movie, I started seeing the stills from the next James Bond movie, Skyfall. and there was a photo of Dench as "M" looking...stunning. Judi Dench and I are the same height (5'1") and believe me when I tell you how short that is. And yet...she looks like she could face down a couple of dictators before breakfast and still have time to whip out an economics treaty. In the movies that have always defined a very particular male fantasy, she is the woman in charge. I love that.
Then there's Maggie Smith.  Her role as the Dowager Countess is the reason everyone is so addicted to Downton Abbey. She is playing a powerful woman whose power has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with intelligence and cunning.
I love that these women are still getting terrific roles. As with Helen Mirren (67) and Meryl Streep (63), they are defining what it means to be a woman of une certain age on screen They play women of substance.
Just as I was the oldest person in the audience when I went to see Twilight, I was by far the youngest person in the audience at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I sat behind a row of women in their 80s who loved every single moment of the movie. A lot of movies coming out of Hollywood these days marginalize women, make them into sex dolls and cartoons. But there is hope. Women like movies too--even women old enough to be great-grandmothers. It's nice to see a movie that celebrates life even in the "golden years."