I’m thrilled and honored to welcome you to the first of several virtual roundtables featuring Oscar’s nominee class of 2012 — commencing today with those behind the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature. They are (in alphabetical order):
“When he stepped down as Oscar producer in November over the use of an anti-gay slur , Brett Ratner committed to work with GLAAD on issues pertaining to LGBT images in Hollywood. Now the media advocacy group announced a new video campaign, which will be produced and directed by Brett Ratner. The upcoming video series will feature Hollywood celebrities, athletes, musicians and politicians ‘coming out of the closet’ as supporters of equality.” I’ll Brett you’re GLAAD that’s settled, amirite ? Sigh. [ Deadline ]
Wispy but sweet as spun sugar, The Secret World of Arrietty feels like a modest but exquisitely trimmed Japanese gift to fans of The Borrowers , British author Mary Norton’s classic children’s books. Having originated in Japan’s Studio Ghibli, home to animated films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away , the American version of Arrietty is its third translation; when Disney signed on it added a second director in seasoned sound designer Gary Rydstrom (the Japanese version is directed by Ghibli animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi). And yet the look and feel are unmistakable, adding anime flavor to a story so beloved in the West that the BBC took a crack at it with a live-action version just last year. In many ways it is a felicitous collaboration: The Japanese are known for their appreciation for all things miniature and scrappy young heroines. The two are combined in 14-year-old Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler), a “borrower” living underneath a rural home with her parents, Pod (Will Arnett) and Hominy (Amy Poehler). Borrowers, you soon figure out if you don’t already know, are basically just people who happen to be the size of a full-grown string bean. They lead a parasitic kind of life, though they operate with more stealth and grace than the crow that swoops in on the recalcitrant family cat to peck up a few fleas in the opening scene. The Borrowers need “human beans” to borrow from — their size makes any other kind of subsistence impossible — and yet they live in terror of their benefactors. Instead of instilling fear in Arrietty, constant warnings from her gruff, super-stoical dad and hysterical mother only make her more curious about the young boy who shows up at the house. Shawn (David Henrie) is sickly, and has been sent to the home of his aunt and her housekeeper Hara (an antic Carol Burnett) to convalesce for the summer. Where Arrietty’s parents focus only on her, Shawn’s mother is too wrapped up in work to care for him. But instead of exploring whether a broken-hearted kid might get lonely enough to start seeing tiny redheaded girls rappelling down his bed stand at night, the script (written by Karey Kirkpatrick, it feels very much adapted from the Japanese version, by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa) keeps us closer to the concerns of its title character. Which is to say they make gentle suggestion of a young girl’s romantic awakening and negotiation of the world of big-eyed, giant-handed boys. Or perhaps that is a bit of a stretch. As someone unfamiliar with the series (outside of this memorably poignant This American Life segment about a young girl’s abiding belief in the existence of Borrowers), much about The Secret Life of Arrietty feels enigmatic, maybe even a little undercooked. Why are the borrowers so spooked about big people? Why is Shawn so unfazed by little ones? What’s the deal with Hara and her grudges? Why is Pod so hardcore about not using dollhouse implements to make life easier? What’s the point of being that small and how did they get that way? That you are compelled to either ignore or try and fill in the answers on your own is a testament to the film’s soothing charms, although occasionally the treacly music cues and trembling moments of wide-eyed apprehension are so twee your tweeth hurt. It’s a matinee treat for the very little ones, after all, though in its final scenes Arrietty veers into cigarette-and-turtleneck territory. Shawn, who is facing heart surgery, outlines his mopey philosophy of life: “We all have to die,” he says to Arrietty, by way of goodbye. “Sometimes you just have to accept the hand of fate.” Just when you are ready to stop caring whether a story takes shape to match the lushly hand-drawn layers of this enchanting world — which is to say after an hour or so of half-hearted allusions to human excess, the precious illusions of childhood, possible borrower genocide, and entrenched bigotry — Shawn’s speech pokes you with another tentative stab at meaning. No doubt those legion of Norton fans in the know will be moved as well as dazzled. With a little more care, the rest of us might have been let in on the secret as well. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Here is a new-ish 60-second bit of viral video that I wouldn’t mind installed in my living room: The first minute of every James Bond film, played on one screen divided into 22 parts. You won’t be able to take your eyes off it. As a bonus, find an older, longer complement that may finish the mind-blowing job commenced by the more recent video. Also: You’ll need full-screen and — if you’re at work — headphones for maximum effect. Turn it up! [Via Grantland ]
Whatever you say, Nicolas Cage: “I think that if you go about making movies to win Oscars, you’re really going about it the wrong way. I think that it’s… right now, what I’m excited about is trying to create a [pauses] kind of a cultural understanding through my muse that is part of the zeitgeist that isn’t motivated by vanity or magazine covers or awards. It’s more, not countercultural, but counter-critical. I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking.” [ Moviefone ]
No one, as far as I know, has come to the Berlinale in search of Gillian Anderson, the strawberry-blonde vixen who set millions of hearts aflutter — and not just male ones — with her role in the supernaturally beloved ’90s show The X-Files . But Anderson has surprised those of us who love her by showing up — in small roles, but still — in two films here, James Marsh’s Shadow Dancer and Ursula Meier’s Sister . In Shadow Dancer , a thriller set in early-‘90s Belfast, she’s a British secret-service officer who squares off against a colleague (played by Clive Owen). In Sister , she’s the well-heeled patron of a tony Swiss ski resort — and a mom — who befriends a young thief and rapscallion who barely knows what it means to be a child. Anderson hasn’t really been in hiding. She was one of the best things — perhaps the only good thing — in last year’s Johnny English Reborn , and she recently played Miss Havisham in the British TV adaptation of Great Expectations . She chooses her roles carefully and doesn’t seem particularly attracted to big Hollywood vehicles — though it’s more likely that Hollywood isn’t particularly interested in her, which is certainly its loss. There are plenty of movies to parse and examine here at the Berlinale, but at dinner last night with some colleagues (who happened to be guys), Anderson came up in the conversation, and we just looked at one another: “Gosh! Isn’t she something?” is the gist of what we said. Perhaps we love her more because she shows up so infrequently and so fleetingly, like a ginger comet. Her role in Shadow Dancer is small and tokenlike, but it’s interesting for its metallic coldness, not a quality we usually associate with Anderson. Then again, maybe it’s really just a mirror angle of the clinical skepticism she brought to the role of Dana Scully in The X-Files : She’s good at playing characters who can turn the warmth off when it gets in the way of the goal at hand, and in Shadow Dancer , she plays a character who’s all about goals. In Sister , Anderson isn’t strawberry blonde but truly blonde, and the first glimpse we get of her is a mane of glorious, rich-girl hair. At first I could see only the oblique planes of her face and, not knowing she was in the movie, I thought to myself, “Could it be…?” Her role is small but potent: Her character, skiing at the resort with her own kids, meets the young thief Simon (played, beautifully, by a kid actor named Kacey Mottet Klein), and the two are immediately charmed by each other. He pretends to be a the son of the resort’s owner, when really he’s a mighty mite of a hustler who scrambles to make a living for himself and his sister (Léa Seydoux). Anderson scrutinizes his face as he advertises this fanciful false background — you can see, in this tiny but potent scene, that she’s amused by him and yet somehow, instinctively, she also feels protective. It’s not that she doesn’t believe his tale (she seems to buy it all); it’s that her better judgment tells her that this kid is in need of something, and though she can’t be the one to provide it, she grants him the kindest gift she can: She takes him seriously, reacting to him as if he were the miniature adult he’s trying so desperately to be, meeting him on his own scrappy turf. That’s a lot to pack into a few small scenes, and it’s a bit frustrating that her character’s role in the drama isn’t better worked out — her final encounter with Simon doesn’t feel true to the woman we met earlier. On the whole, the picture is unevenly worked out, but it’s ultimately touching, thanks to the bittersweet grace notes scattered throughout. Anderson is one of those grace notes; her presence is as subtle as a sigh, but it’s the kind that sticks with you long after the credits roll. Read more of Movieline’s Berlinale coverage here . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Because one good Lynchian turn deserves another: “I found myself intensifying the experience of Jeffrey’s scenes with Dorothy with a kind of conceptual narcotic inhaler: it involved, ahem, imagining Isabella Rossellini was her mother and that Kyle MacLachlan was actually playing this love scene with Ingrid Bergman. And it is very easy to do – not merely because Rossellini looks and sounds so much like Bergman, but because of the film’s intense noir atmosphere. Perhaps I need therapy. But there is something in the infectious and mesmeric weirdness of David Lynch which makes it feel all right.” [ The Guardian ]
This should be interesting: Variety’s Gregg Goldstein reports from Berlinale that Billy Bob Thornton is working on a script for an “‘ethereal’ road movie” entitled And Then We Drove . Based partly on experiences from his time with ex Angelina Jolie , Thornton says “[it’s about] a guy who’s on a road trip and picks up this girl along the way, and what happens to them. It’s about the question of life: ‘What is this? Where do I fit in?'” Or, maybe: Honey, Have You Seen My Vial of Blood? Thornton, who premiered his latest directorial effort Jayne Mansfield’s Car in Berlin, will also direct. [ Variety ]
Happy Monday! With filming underway on Lovelace , one of two competing biopics about ’70s porn actress turned anti-porn advocate Linda Lovelace, the New York Times has a look at a faux-vintage poster featuring Amanda Seyfried as the XXX starlet in her star-making 1972 skin flick, Deep Throat . Lovelace’s life story, as we’ve touched on before , is a very dark one; after rising in the porn ranks, Lovelace broke off and accused husband Chuck Traynor of abuse and forcing her into sex acts and prostitution. The NYT profile addresses the darkness of Lovelace’s tale, curiously enough, as an element producer Heidi Jo Markel and Co. wanted to balance out with levity; it also highlights the link and difference in approach between Markel and rival Lovelace project Inferno , which Markel was once helping to develop. But first things first: Before the Lovelace war really heats up, and until we see just how directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman pull off their version of things (check out the James Franco-as-Hugh Hefner propositioning Lovelace anecdote at the end for a taste), let’s take a closer look at Seyfried as the porn icon. Is Seyfried in period pose untangling your tingle? • ’70s Sex Star Fascinates a New Era [NYT]
“Wes Anderson goes surprisingly well with Ja Rule,” wrote Andrew Sullivan over the weekend. Perhaps? My exploded about 40 seconds in. Here, you try it — and if you survive that, give the Anderson slo-mo supercut scored to Drake a try. No one here gets out alive! Bwwaahahaha, etc. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Breaking Sports Video
