Thelma Schoonmaker: Three Oscars, Martin Scorsese, and Why She Misses Working on Silence
Posted on April 5, 2017 at 3:50 pm
Thelma Schoonmaker, winner of three Oscars for editing, and long-time creative partner of Martin Scorsese, has a great interview in Crave.
When we edit, I do the first cut, but then after he’s through shooting, we cut everything else together. I mean every single thing. So we talk to each other constantly in the editing room. It’s just a give-and-take that goes on every second we’re in this room. We also talk about all kinds of other things, but it is a constant communication that goes on about the editing. I wish more people could see it, because it’s fascinating, how his mind works. A very high level. He has very high standards. And he’s very tough on himself. And it’s just incredible to be in this room. I wish everybody could see it .
Like Scorsese, she loves to spend time exploring the nature of spirituality. “I loved living in that world. A world of spirituality. Which is something you don’t see much of. And I miss it. I wish I was still working on it, frankly.” Their next film together is “The Irishman,” about aging gangsters. But she thinks they will return to “Silence”-type themes of faith and doubt in the future.
My enjoyment of this series was never driven by figuring out who died and by whose hand; I had no expectation that there would be some phenomenal “didn’t see that coming” type of twist. The murder serves mostly as a convenient narrative device that draws the audience into the story, then allows us to soak up the thorny dynamics between these fascinating women, who happen to be played by dynamite actors relishing putting on a weekly fireworks display. That said, the finale is so well-executed that it actually made me more anxious than ever to find out what happened during that explosive confrontation at the Audrey & Elvis party. Writer David E. Kelley and director Jean-Marc Vallée turn up the dial on the tension with such careful deliberateness that it’s impossible to feel any way other than on edge while watching.
The show started out by threatening to become a glossier, more art-house-pretentious answer to ABC’s Desperate Housewives, with a scrambled-up structure that sometimes interfered with the momentum of otherwise nicely shaped story lines. The regular cutaways to the police interviews grew tiresome, and even in the second half, which was stronger than the first, there were obnoxious moments when the series would cut to different subplots, rather than letting a strong scene build and crest. At the same time, though, there was real beauty in its cutaways to rolling, crashing waves, which complemented the loose, handheld camerawork, the silent-with-music montages, and the many unnerving moments when the dialogue dropped out.
The boldest thing about Big Little Lies, though, is the way it centers on women’s experiences as wives and mothers and depicts their internecine fights with each other as a distraction from a larger, ongoing conflict with men — some of whom truly love them. A show populated by one-percenters who live in mansions by the sea would seem an unlikely venue for a smash-the-patriarchy narrative, but damned if Big Little Lies didn’t deliver one.
As well as thoughts from the director, Jean-Marc Vallée, who explains why the audience does not hear what the characters are saying in a crucial moment:
The girls are being interrogated and we don’t hear them. It’s because we are seeing them from the detective’s perspective, from her point of view, and she didn’t want to listen to them. She turned the intercom off.
And from Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the abusive husband of Nicole Kidman’s character, where he says the final scene
made me think of like a nature documentary where you see a larger predator being taken down by a group of smaller predators, where they collectively attack him from all angles. He could take them down one-on-one, but as a group, it just exhausts him. It’s too many of them. It’s like when you set a bunch of dogs on a bear.
Behind the Scenes of Buffy, Ghost, Daria, and More in Entertainment Weekly
Posted on April 2, 2017 at 2:56 pm
This week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly is a treasure trove of behind the scenes information about favorite movies like “Love Actually” and “Ghost” and favorite television shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and “Daria.” Be sure to pick it up to find out about deleted and never-filmed scenes, cast replacements, and where some of pop culture’s most iconic moments came from. I especially enjoyed the conversation between Kenya Barris (“Black-ish”) and television legend Norman Lear (“All in the Family,” “Good Times,” “One Day at a Time,” “The Jeffersons” and many, many others).
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, is a book by Mark Harris about five of the greatest directors of all time who joined the war effort to document it and to promote morale at home. It is also about how the experienced changed them and inspired them to come home after the war and create richer, more complex, and more powerful films than they had before. George Stevens, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, and John Huston created films during and after the war that helped shape our views on the war but also on America and what kind of world we would create when the war was over.
The book is now a series on Netflix, narrated by Meryl Streep and featuring commentary from today’s top directors, including Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg, as well as clips from films we know by heart like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Best Years of Our Lives,” and film that has been rarely seen since the war, including stunning documentary footage.
Critics Pay Tribute to a Guilty Pleasure: Ice Castles
Posted on March 29, 2017 at 7:47 pm
As part of rogerebert.com’s annual Women’s Week, three critics got together to pay tribute to one of their favorite films, the ice skating classic, Ice Castles.
Christy Lemire, Sheila O’Malley, and Susan Wloszczyna shared their memories of first seeing the film and acknowledged that despite its cheesiness and some uncomfortable elements, they can’t help loving it.
Released in 1978, it has disco-era signposts aplenty: Melissa Manchester’s unbridled rendition of Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager’s magical Oscar-nominated theme song, “Through the Eyes of Love,” then-It Boy Robby Benson as the hockey hotshot romantic interest and Dorothy Hamill-inspired wedge haircuts galore….
CHRISTY LEMIRE: “Ice Castles” has a really great, gritty sense of place that also keeps it from being teenage nonsense. That town feels so real and so insular. Are there actual bowling alley/ice rink combos in the world?
SHEILA O’MALLEY: I was going to mention that! I totally agree. She really comes from somewhere. It’s very real. The snow, the bowling alley, the frozen pond. A boyfriend who plays hockey. I really hope there are such combos. I’d love to visit. Especially if Colleen Dewhurst is running the show, sipping whiskey from a flask.
CHRISTY LEMIRE: She gives this film so much weight, so much emotional heft.
SHEILA O’MALLEY: She is acting her ASS off, if you’ll pardon the expression. She’s ferocious and filled with emotion and personal regrets and smoking butts and sneaking sips of whiskey at the hockey game. She’s awesome.
