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Post by RhodoraO on Feb 17, 2017 6:33:22 GMT
Discussion and tidbits related to Mio in the Land of Faraway (1987), Henry V (1989), Royal Deceit (1994). Pocahontas (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and The Secret Agent (1996).
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 7, 2017 21:45:28 GMT
From The New York Times review of Henry V: - The Branagh version, opening today at the Paris Theater, is comparatively small. It's almost pocket-size, but it is big enough to encompass the emotional impact of the extraordinary text as acted by the mostly superlative actors.
- Note also the quietly sturdy performance of Christian Bale, the young man who played the lead in ''Empire of the Sun,'' as Falstaff's Boy, a tiny but important role.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 7, 2017 22:42:07 GMT
From the Janet Maslin, New York Times review of Pocahontas (1995): - for all the blatant liberties it takes with Pocahontas's story (and notwithstanding a slight taste for numbing pieties), it's still a success. Gloriously colorful, cleverly conceived and set in motion with the usual Disney vigor, "Pocahontas" is one more landmark feat of animation. It does everything a children's film should do except send little viewers home humming its theme song.
- The reasons it doesn't do that: The songs are a shade less jolly this time, with an emphasis on heartfelt ballads-
- Only by aging the brave and precocious Pocahontas from 12 or 13 into the flirty, full-grown vixen she becomes here, and by making her so concerned with finding Mr. Right, does the film send any regrettable message.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 7, 2017 22:48:37 GMT
From Stephen Holden's review of The Secret Agent (1996) at NYtimes: - The movie doesn't dwell on the absurd grandiosity of its characters and their destructive fantasies. And except for one remark about how the job of the police is to keep the city's have-nots from stealing from its haves, it has scarcely a political thought in its head. Mr. Hampton treats the novel as a period domestic drama about Verloc's marriage to Winnie (Patricia Arquette)-
- The only performance to convey an appropriately sinister chill belongs to an uncredited Robin Williams as the Professor, a mad, misanthropic nihilist and demolition expert who walks around like a grim automaton with explosives strapped to his chest and a detonator in his pocket. As he sermonizes about an age in which the weak will be exterminated, echoes of a dozen 20th-century dictators resound in the cold self-satisfaction of a voice that means business.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 8, 2017 1:00:25 GMT
This Janet Maslin New York Times review of Portrait of a Lady (1996) is intriguing and makes me want to see the movie: Instead of faithfully reiterating James's novel, Ms. Campion chooses to reimagine it as a Freudian fever dream. Fantasies intrude; prison bars or doorways or mirrors offer tacit commentary; the story's well-bred heroine abruptly sniffs her boot or tries to hide an undergarment hanging on a door. With startling intuitiveness, Ms. Campion traces the tension between polite, guarded characters and blunt visual symbols of their inner turmoil.
This approach, brilliantly eccentric even when it yields mixed results, has the liability of sometimes leaving its characters stilted and opaque. And it is stymied by the story's finer subtleties... Still, Ms. Campion's film stands as a fascinating experiment, alive with elements of imagination and surprise.
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Post by RhodoraO on Mar 8, 2017 23:41:27 GMT
An excerpt on the Prince of Jutland (Royal Deceit; 1999) from an article on it's director Gabriel Alex: www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/movies/video-another-helping-of-feast-from-a-lean-body-of-work.htmlTALK about one-hit wonders. The Danish director Gabriel Axel won a best foreign language film Oscar in 1988 for his wondrous adaptation of Isak Dinesen's marvelous short story, ''Babette's Feast,'' then disappeared off the cinematic radar.
Oh, sure, Mr. Axel resurfaced in 1994 with ''Prince of Jutland,'' a three-hour epic based on the Danish Prince Amled, the real-life model for Shakespeare's Hamlet. But the director (who turns 83 this year) had fallen ill during editing and never completed post-production; the rough cut languished for several years, then was released on video by Miramax in 1999. Naturally, it was shorn of nearly half its length -- rendering threadbare even the credible performances of Helen Mirren, Gabriel Byrne and Christian Bale -- and blessed with a new score and a supposedly better title: ''Royal Deceit.''
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Post by ripley on Jun 12, 2017 22:40:38 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2017 8:51:05 GMT
Wow! This article is a gem! Thanks!
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Post by ripley on Sept 2, 2017 12:21:26 GMT
Could you procur a translation? "The idea that CB's first movie is a soviet production is a pride." Something like that (sorry I am not sure)
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 13, 2019 3:56:02 GMT
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 22, 2020 12:42:44 GMT
CB's comment related to playing Jesus on TV: ew.com/article/2000/04/28/psyched-out-cybertalk-christian-bale/”I played Jesus in this TV thing after doing American Psycho — I had nightmares the whole time, like I haven’t had since I was 10 years old. Sitting up in bed, sweating. Stigmata nightmares, those dreams where you think you’re awake and then suddenly you realize you’re still asleep and there was blood dripping from the ceiling and hitting my palms and things like that. And I was waking up going ‘Aaaaaaahh!’ — rubbing my palms in the middle of the night, heart going. But Patrick Bateman? Nothing.” — American Psycho‘s CHRISTIAN BALE, when asked if he was ill at ease playing a serial killer, on ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY ONLINE
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Post by RhodoraO on Dec 25, 2020 0:04:06 GMT
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