Happy Valentine’s Day! Romantic Movie Moments #1: Moonstruck
Posted on February 14, 2015 at 8:00 am
Interview: Ali Faulkner of “The Song”
Posted on February 13, 2015 at 3:28 pm
Ali Faulkner is in every way the heart of the new faith-based film, “The Song.” She plays Rose, who inspires the title song and marries the musician who wrote it for her. Unlike most films, this one does not end with the wedding — it is only after they get married that the story really begins, as their marriage is tested when her husband spends most of his time touring. We are honored to have an exclusive clip about the film to share.
I spoke to Ali about the challenges of playing a good person and how she helped to define her character with some important costume decisions.
“When I first tried out, I definitely was intimidated because I first thought ‘this person is perfect and I’m far from that. How am I going to do her justice?’ But then I got some really good advice from an acting coach. He said, ‘Her name is Rose and every rose has a thorn.’ And that just really struck home with me and so it kind of gave me a little bit of freedom to know that even though this is an incredibly beautiful person, she still has her weaknesses and but of course no person sees their own weaknesses until something big happens. So I just tried to rely on the truth of who she was. I mean you can’t get round the fact that she’s a wonderful person but her flaws showed up naturally in the film and I just tried to be as true to that possible.” Writer/director Richard Ramsey reassured her not to be afraid to give Rose a lightness and sense of humor. “He was like ‘Don’t be afraid to let her be beautiful and shine in her own way and have fun. She doesn’t have to be matronly.’ That is something that you definitely wanted to shy away from because no young girl is going to relate to that.”
The story covers many years and several different stages in the relationship, but they shot out of order. Ali and co-star Alan Powell had to go backwards at times, from the complicated scenes of hurt and betrayal to the earlier scenes of easy intimacy. “It’s just about talking, recognizing where you are in the relationship and the physical stuff helped a lot. I tried to wear like bangs when she was younger and then have a more mature look when she was older. Naturally you’re just thinking about what they’ve been through at moment right before the scene and then that kind of helps. I wanted her to wear a lot of light colors because it just felt unnatural to have her wearing black. In fact the only time I really wanted her to wear black was at her dad’s funeral,that’s it. And even there was one part where she wears a little sash around her dress and it was originally black and I changed it to brown. I don’t know it is one of those things where she’s just such a light spirit that I couldn’t, I just couldn’t put her in dark colors so Rose wore a lot of creams and ivories that really looked and felt beautiful and sweet and conservative but still at the same time womanly in her own way.”
Ali’s first interest in performing was singing. “Singing was my first love and then I got into musical theater and really loved that and just fell in love with the acting side of it and about seven years ago I decided to get into the film world and I just loved it and haven’t a looked back since. I just feel like film gives such opportunity to create things that live on. Our human instinct is going to create thing that will live on in some way.” She is guided by the advice not to try in acting, but “to allow. If you are open enough you can really allow yourself to connect with certain characters but if you try too hard you kind of get in your own way. So that I think is the biggest challenge and struggle that I’m always working on and that I feel like is really important.” Her early inspirations included opera and big, epic films like “Gladiator.” “They seem to pull me into a world that just resonated so deeply and I love it so much. Those are the films that inspired me the most probably.” The movie she’d recommend for a date night is “Love Actually,” which she describes as uplifting and warm.
Ali hopes that the couples who watch this film learn that “no matter where they are in their life we see things in a different way. I just want to them to take away whatever touches them or what ever aspect of the film speaks to them in any sort of positive way. But specifically I guess that challenges can be overcome, that there is hope for relationships that have been broken. And that the beautiful thing that forgiveness is and that forgiveness can heal.”
Sergei Polunin Dances to “Take Me to Church” by Hozier, Directed by David LaChapelle
Posted on February 13, 2015 at 7:49 am
This stunning ballet was choreographed by Jade Hale-Christofi
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Posted on February 12, 2015 at 5:55 pm
“James Bond? Jason Bourne?” Our hero is being asked for the inspiration for naming his dog JB. “No,” he explains, “Jack Bauer.”
This is a cheeky, nasty, meta, po-mo update of the spy genre, self-aware enough to name-check not just Bond, Bourne, and “24,” but also “Nikita,” “Trading Places,” “Pretty Woman,” and “My Fair Lady.” I also caught a reference to the 60’s television show “The Man from UNCLE,” about to get its own big-screen reboot later this year.
Some of the core elements of the sophisticated spy story are here, from the elegant suits to the very specific cocktail order, as well as the super-cool weapons and gadgets we will have the fun of seeing deployed later on. And the villain has an assassin/sidekick who goes one, or maybe two better than iconic characters like Oddjob and Jaws. Spanish dancer Sofia Boutella plays the acrobatic Gazelle, who runs on Oscar Pistorius-style blades as sharp as scalpels. She can slice a man in half lengthwise with one slash of her leg. And does.
Other aspects of the usual spy story are tweaked or outright upended. That old favorite, the talking villain, who has such a profound need to explain the genius of his nefarious plan that it gives Our Hero time to thwart him, is explicitly disposed of. The look of the film is as sleek and sophisticated as the score from Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson.
Colin Firth is sleekly perfect as Harry, also known as Galahad, part of an elegant, upper-class cadre of international gentleman spies operating in total secrecy and using pseudonyms based on King Arthur and his knights. Their made to order suits are both exquisitely tailored and bulletproof.
He points to a wall of framed newspaper headlines about triviality — political squabbles and celebrity scandals — explaining that while these things were going on, he and his fellow Kingsmen were repeatedly saving the world. The person he is explaining it to is Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a possible new recruit. Eggsy is a smart, tough, brash kid who grew up in what the British call council houses and we call the projects, the son of a widow whose second husband is an abusive thug. Eggsy’s late father sacrificed himself to save Harry and other members of the team, so Harry feels a sense of responsibility — and a suspicion that Eggsy might have inherited his father’s courage and sense of honor.
While they had previously limited themselves to the wealthy upper class, Harry persuades the Kingsman’s leader (Michael Caine as Arthur) to allow Eggsy to compete for a spot on the team. The competition is tough and the tasks are tougher, the most imaginative and entertaining section of the movie. Then of course comes our supervillain, Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, a lisping technology billionaire whose frustration with the failure of the world to reckon with global warming has led him to devise some drastic plans. Once he gets involved, the self-aware air quotes get less interesting and so does the storyline. “Bond films are only as good as the villain,” he says. True, and he is no Goldfinger.
In the last half hour, things really go off the rails. The carnage is balletic and portrayed as darkly comic but it is still disturbing, particularly the involvement of a specific real-life world leader. The humor is not just dark; it is crude for the sake of being crude and seems rather desperate. A film that began with a confident sense of sophistication, wit, and edge knows what it is not (“This is not that kind of movie”) but not what it is.
Parents should know that this movie is extremely violent, with hundreds of characters injured and killed and many exploding heads. Characters use very strong language and drink alcohol. There are explicit and crude sexual references and brief nudity.
Family discussion: Which of the tests would have been the hardest for you? What did they prove about the candidates?
If you like this, try: the James Bond films
Fifty Shades of Grey
Posted on February 12, 2015 at 5:50 pm
The Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy by E.L. James
I am not referring to the domination in the bedroom — or the red room of pain. I am referring to the fantasy of having a bad boy love you so much he turns into a pliable good boy. As a friend of mine once put it, “A lot of women dream of marrying Han Solo, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to turn him into Luke Skywalker.” From “Beauty and the Beast” to “Jane Eyre,””Wuthering Heights,” “Gigi,” “Jerry Maguire,” and “Pride and Prejudice,” the fantasy is of the female beauty and purity of spirit that are strong enough to tame a cold-hearted man (whose cold heart is of course the result of being lonely, misunderstood, and never having met the right woman, not in any way because he is a psychopath, a sociopath, or just a terrible person).
Beauty and purity are here in the person of the lovely and virginal Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), an English lit major about to graduate from college. The role of The Beast is taken by uber-taker Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), handsome, wealthy, successful, and equally adept at piloting a helicopter and playing classical piano. Ana arrives at Christian’s office with a list of questions from her roommate, who was scheduled to interview him (for an allotted ten minutes) but who is home with a bad cold. Though she trips over the doorway and forgot to bring anything to take notes with, Christian, a self-described superior judge of people, immediately and accurately spots some, well, steel in Ana. It is not her weakness that attracts him; it is her strength. “I Put a Spell on You” we hear sung over the opening moments, “because you’re mine.”
Who is the “I?”
Ana.
After one “vanilla” sexual encounter and a signed non-disclosure agreement, Christian shows Ana his special chamber stocked with every possible kind of whip, riding crop, handcuff set, and binding material, explaining, “I do this to women, with women, who want it.” He offers her a detailed contract spelling out the duties and restrictions expected of a submissive. Ana shows that, sexual inexperience aside, she and Christian have a lot in common. Their highly charged but playful “negotiation” in an office conference room is more erotic than the many sex scenes.
Ah, the sex scenes. Very Skinemax, very perfume commercial, not very non-vanilla, not, to my mind anyway, very exciting. Dornan never seems particularly passionate or tortured. Even the big whipping scene (six lashes, discreetly portrayed with no images of the whip hitting the skin or any marks left) comes across like another item to be crossed off a busy executive’s to-do list. For most of the movie, the porn-iest parts are the loving depictions of the trappings of wealth. Christian has a spare but luxurious office, staffed with women built like human whippets, all with tight blonde ballerina buns and impeccably tailored grey suits. His cars, his apartment, it’s all like the pages from a glossy shelter magazine. There’s a lot more kink in any given episode of Dan Savage’s podcasts, and more intensity, too.
Dornan has some appeal but never makes Christian seem dangerous. Johnson is the movie’s greatest asset. For a role that requires a lot of lip-biting, she has the two most important qualifications — a lovely lip and the ability to make biting it look natural. She has a natural warmth, intelligence, and humor that come across on screen and go a long way toward making the movie less silly than it could have been.
Parents should know that this movie includes very frank and explicit sexual references and situations including domination, bondage, and infliction of pain, nudity, drinking and drunkenness, and very strong language.
Family discussion: What made Ana different from Christian’s previous girlfriends? What do their names tell us about the characters? How can giving up control feel freeing?
If you like this, try: “9 1/2 Weeks” and the books by E.L. James