Posted on May 14, 2011 at 10:24 am
The folks at Idol Chatter are assembling a list of the most inspirational movies of all time. I’ve sent in my suggestions! Please visit and add your choices.
Posted on March 29, 2011 at 8:00 am
Ballet is more than a profession or even an art form; it is a calling, almost a cult, that demands the ultimate commitment. Ballerinas give everything they have. Director Darren Aronofsky, always drawn to stories about obsession, now takes us inside the mind of a woman who is becoming unraveled.
Ballet is about art but also about discipline and control. It tests every muscle in the body and every bit of resolve of the spirit. Natalie Portman plays Nina (the very name evoking a sort of uncertain syllabic wobble), the daughter of a failed ballet dancer (Barbara Hershey) who has focused on Nina as her second chance to realize her dreams of stardom. Nina is a child-like adult, completely sheltered by her mother and her nun-like commitment to dance.
She wants more than anything to have the lead role in that most revered of ballets, Swan Lake. It is really two lead roles — the story is about a princess who is turned into a white swan. Her chance for breaking the enchantment is lost when the prince is seduced by her nemesis, the black swan. The director (a faun-like Vincent Cassel) tells her he is certain she can perform the part of the white swan with technical perfection. But he is not sure she has the passion, the sensuousness, the willingness to take risks to play the black swan. As she struggles to both maintain and lose control, the world around her distorts. Her mother’s art studio is filled with dozens of portraits of Nina, and their eyes move as she walks by. Nina keeps catching glimpses of herself in mirrors and reflective surfaces. The company’s newest dancer is Lily (Mila Kunis), her name another wobble on the tongue. Is she a friend, a rival, to be feared, hated, desired, overcome? Is she just another of Nina’s reflections?
Visual and narrative symbols of duality and doppelgangers are everywhere, with black, white, gray, and toe shoe pink as the movie’s palette. The script is heavy-handed at times, especially in the scenes with Nina’s mother. But Aronofsky draws us into Nina’s struggles with reality until, like her, we are never sure whether we can trust our eyes. Portman, who studied ballet for a year and did most of the dance moves herself, is superb her struggle to stay in control showing in every muscle, her yearning to break free fighting with her need for approval. Cassel’s louche manipulator, Kunis’ confident rival, and Winona Ryder’s brittle rage as the fading prima ballerina whose role (and lipstick) Nina covets are all exceptional and like Nina herself we experience the performance of the ballet itself as both tragedy and triumph.
Posted on February 10, 2011 at 8:00 am
How many can you identify?
Posted on January 5, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Here’s your chance! A piece of movie magic is for sale on Ebay — one of the ruby slippers made for “The Wizard of Oz.” At least seven pair were made for the film and you can see one pair that appeared in the movie on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. (In the book, they were silver slippers, but red shows up better on film.)
Now’s your chance to have one for your own collection. It’s just one shoe, so you won’t be able to try clicking your heels together to see if they will take you home. Oh, and you’ll need $3 million, plus another $500 for shipping costs.
If you buy it, let me know!
Posted on November 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Five minutes into this movie, which means five minutes into its first action sequence, one of its stars explains to his colleagues he is about to fire off a warning shot. He then blows a guy’s torso into what another character will later refer to as “red sauce and jello.” And then we have a lot of shooting and a lot of stuff blowing up and hand-to-hand combat, and thousand yard stares and boy, do we have a lot of red sauce and jello.
“The Expendables,” is a mash-up of action stars and action movies. It would take less time to explain who is not in this movie (Stephen Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme, who both declined) than who is: Sylvester Stallone (who co-wrote and directed), his “Rocky IV” nemesis, Dolph Lundgren, WWE superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin, Ultimate Fighting Champion Randy Couture, martial arts master Jet Li, former NFL player Terry Crews, “Iron Man 2’s” Mickey Rourke, and “Transporter’s” Jason Statham — plus brief appearances by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here is the plot: there are some bad guys. The good guys go after them. It doesn’t go so well at first. Bros before hos. Chases and explosions. Very big guns (the muscle kind and the weapon kind) and very big knives. Airplanes, trucks, motorcycles, and various other symbols of manliness. And a lot of red sauce and jello. It’s Tarantino without the irony.
The chases and explosions and shoot-outs are well-filmed, as are the big fight scenes, especially a brutal battle in a tunnel and the opening sequence where Somali pirates suddenly find the thin red beams of automatic weapons touching many parts of their bodies. But the most satisfying moments come from seeing these guys do what they do best, one on one. Couture takes on Austin. The very compact Li takes on the giant Lundgren. “Bring it, Happy Feet,” the big man tells Li. Statham takes on a bully. And then his pals.
Stallone as co-writer, director, and star manages to keep the tone light and affectionate for the genre and its fans without getting meta or condescending. These action heroes take their fun seriously without taking themselves seriously. They have time for some commiseration about the faithlessness of females and some manly banter as they load their weapons. One explains how he got his cauliflower ear and another tells the story of when he lost his capacity to care about anything or anyone. But mostly it’s just red sauce and jello, macho bonding, and silly character names: Hale Ceasar, Toll Road, Lee Christmas.
Following the Somali pirate hostage rescue, our heroes are up for three jobs. “Two are a walk in the park and one is to Hell and Back.” Guess which one they take? Option 3 is a country called Vilena, with an evil Gringo and a puppet general who has a mercenary army. There’s also a brave and beautiful young woman. Various characters are chased, captured, and rescued and a lot of stuff gets blown up. Which, after all, is what we came for.
