Movie Playlist: Jonathan Levine
Welcome to another edition of Movie Playlist, where we talk to the writers, directors, and stars about their favorite films. I’ve always found the celebrity playlists on iTunes to be interesting. Most everyone in the film business moved to Hollywood after discovering their love of films. And I’ve always love talking to people about their favorite films. So talking to the people who make the movies about their favorite films just seemed like a natural idea.
This week’s edition is with Jonathan Levine, the writer and director of The Wackness and All The Boys Love Mandy Lane. I first saw The Wackness at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where the movie went on to win the audience award. I’ve seen the film three times since January, and it still remains on my list of the top five films of 2008. Levine is an up and coming filmmaker who is sure to impress in the years to come.
Manhattan, written and directed by Woody Allen
“Just because of the sweeping kind of romantic scope of it and also the humor and the way it looks.”
Billy Madison by Tamra Davis
“I think it’s just really fucking funny.”
Band of Outsiders by Godard
I really like, well Godard, I think is, I really really like the way he makes films and the way he plays with form is really interesting to me. And I think it’s actually in many ways kind of consistent with hip-hop and sampling things and just the things he does with music and sound. I think he’s like a one of a kind, very unique, and I like to rip him off as much as I can.”
La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni
Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick
“It’s just like a tone, you know? As much as Woody Allen kind of revels in the emotion, those guys kind of have a healthy distance from the emotion that in many ways is just as impactful. There’s a misanthropy to it that is not cynical. It’s like you’re showing that the worst side of people but in doing so, you’re allowing… you know, it’s Tom Cruise, you’re like ‘oh shit! Like Tom Cruise is this scumbag… he has the weirdest thoughts and his wife wants to cheat on him with a marine and he’s Tom Cruise but he’s so fucking fucked up by it that he has to go put on a mask and go to an orgy.’ But you identify with these base desires and with the worst part of human beings and then you realize all right, it’s not that bad. The movie ends on this note where it’s like, oh yeah, we got fucked. I really liked that movie. It might not be my favorite movie… the only one of those movies that constitutes my favorite movie is Manhattan but the other ones do really interesting things that I respect out of movies.”
Check out Jonathan Levine’s latest movie The Wackness, which hits limited release this Friday.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Episode 1-02
(S01E02) “Sometimes I get paid to do the things I’ve always wanted to do.” — Belle
Like have sex with old Scottish men who have a penchant for horses? No, wait, that was last week. This week Belle went to an exclusive adult party (think Eyes Wide Shut, but not as creepy) and meet her favorite author. She also got to wear a black wig (think Chicago) and some feathers around her neck (think Big Bird).
Check out my review of Secret Diary of a Call Girl after the jump. I promise, no more references.Tonight Belle went to an orgy, a very exclusive one — with rules even. You had to be under forty, educated, beautiful to get in. Most importantly, you had to be invited. She was paired with an Eastern European scientist who researches sustainable resources. Seems like a good date and easy money for our London call girl. However, Belle was informed right away that she’s not to engage in any sex during the party. This poses a big problem when she meets her idol, author Jay Lorre, who wants to have sex with her at the party. (Oh, and his wife is into it too.)
I thought this episode could have been stronger. Firstly, I would have liked Cheri Lunghi who plays Stephanie, Belle’s agent to be involved. Stephanie makes 1/3 of Belle’s wages. I was wondering when Belle told her client that he’d be reimbursed what Stephanie would say. I was waiting for the angry phone call from her agent. Afterall, Stephanie did her job. Why should she get cheated if Belle wants to go home with her literary crush? It also seemed rather unprofessional of Belle, especially when you hold the decision up against the season premiere where Belle explains all her “rules.”
And secondly, I didn’t like the hokey “personal reasons” angle. She used it to get out of work. Then, in an ironic twist of fate, Belle’s sister gives birth and Belle tells Jay that she can’t go home with him and his wife for … personal reasons. I thought it was too neat for a witty show like this. It was a bit sitcom-esque in fact.
I know people have commented on whether or not the show is a “comedy.” Showtime seems to think so but many of you readers disagree. I’m with you. The show isn’t conventionally funny in a Everybody Loves Belle way. It’s witty and sarcastic and a little gritty, but not laugh-out-loud funny. For example, I giggled a bit when Billie Piper tried to think of who Jay Lorre was. She said that she had to go through her “mental Rolodex” of everyone she’s slept with. Then she turned to the camera and blurted out, “This could take awhile.” That was well-delivered. But, things like Belle’s lying to the client coming back to bite her is just hokey because Call Girl is not that kind of show. What do you think?
Other Comments:
- I loved how “Anything Goes” played at the end of the episode.
- The name of the book was Jay Lorre’s The Irony Engine.
- I like the stylized establishing shots they do at the beginning. But, I could do without Belle saying something about London to start things off each week. Last time she said something glib about how she loved London’s anonymity — a quality rather conducive to her line of work. Tonight she said that everywhere in London people are having sex and some people are getting paid for their services. I already feel like Showtime is touting this show as a Sex and the City, making the city itself another character in the series. I’m not sure it’s working though.
- Best line of the episode: “But of course you should never meet your heroes. Everyone knows that.”
- How does Belle get away with not drinking with clients? I could see not getting inebriated, but not drinking at all?
Sydney Pollack Dies; Actor and Actor’s Director
Sydney Pollack helped make a sex symbol of Robert Redford, an Oscar-caliber star of Jane Fonda and a woman of Dustin Hoffman.
Pollack, the quintessential actor’s director of Tootsie, The Way We Were and more, who seemed most comfortable in the company of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and vice versa, died tonight of cancer at his Los Angeles home.
The filmmaker, a two-time Oscar-winner, was 73.
“Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better,” George Clooney said in a statement. “A tip of the hat to a class act. He’ll be missed terribly.”
Pollack recently worked with Clooney on Michael Clayton, which Pollack acted in and helped produce, and Leatherheads, which he executive produced.
Michael Clayton, a Best Picture contender at this past February’s Oscars, brought Pollack his sixth career nomination. He won his pair of statuettes for directing and producing the 1985 Best Picture winner, Out of Africa.
He also earned nominations for directing and producing Tootsie, the beloved cross-dressing 1982 comedy, and for directing the 1969 dance-marathon drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
A former acting teacher who became an in-demand character actor, Pollack had memorable on-screen turns in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and his own Tootsie, in which he played Hoffman’s exasperated acting agent.
Indicative of a career that seemed as vital as ever, Pollack can currently be seen in theaters as Patrick Dempsey’s father in the comedy Made of Honor.
Pollack, the producer, likewise was busy. He had a number of films in the offing, including The Reader, an upcoming Ralph Fiennes-Kate Winslet romantic drama, from the production company he founded with Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning writer-director who died suddenly in March.
With its central love story, The Reader seems a prototypical Pollack production. As the filmmaker told Online in 2000, “I have never done a film without a love story.”
And, he could have added, he never did a film without an A-list actor, either.
Hoffman, Tom Cruise (The Firm), Meryl Streep (Out of Africa), Paul Newman and Sally Field (Absence of Malice), and Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (The Interpreter) all worked with Pollack, the director.
Harrison Ford made two movies with PollackRandom Hearts and Sabrina.
Robert Redford made sevenHavana, Out of Africa, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, Jeremiah Johnson and This Property Is Condemned.
A star on a Pollack film, especially a Pollack film of the 1970s and 1980s, could almost bet on two things: the film selling a lot of tickets, and the film netting a lot of Oscar nominations. Actors who earned Academy Award nominations in Pollack films include Hoffman, Newman, Streep, Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) and Holly Hunter (The Firm).
While Pollack was known for deftly and successfully working with Hollywood giants, he also had a knack for discovering talent. Or, maybe it’s better put, he had a knack for recasting talent.
He spotted Greg Kinnear on E!’s Talk Soup, cast him as Ford’s younger brother in Sabrina and set the TV host onto an Oscar-nominated acting career.
He directed the post-Barbarella Jane Fonda, not then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar nomination in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
And he directed Jessica Lange, also not yet then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar-winning performance as Hoffman’s insecure love interest in Tootsie.
Of all the stars he worked with, Pollack was most associated with Redford. This Property Is Condemned, released in 1966, was Pollack’s second feature as director, and one of Redford’s first as a leading man. The two went on to work together on one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1970s, the love-song-inspiring The Way We Were, to one of the more notorious busts of the 1990s, the bad-review-inspiring Havana.
“I’ll tell you something,” Pollack said of Havana to the New York Times. “If I had to do it again, I’d do it. I loved that character that Redford played.”
Pollack was biased. He saw in Redford “the quintessential American hero,” he told Online, and “the loner, the guy who wanted to make his own rules, the guy who learns to become a real human being through the love of a woman,” he expounded on to the Times.
A man who becomes a better man by becoming a woman was the premise of Tootsie, arguably Pollack’s greatest success as director, Oscar wins notwithstanding, and his only film to make the American Film Institute’s list honoring the 100 best U.S.-made movies.
Tootsie, in which difficult actor Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) becomes a soap star by pretending to be spunky actress Dorothy Michaels (also Hoffman), earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and reignited Pollack’s left-for-dead acting career.
According to the filmmaker, Hoffman suggestedno, demandedthat Pollack play Michael Dorsey’s agent, instead of Dabney Coleman, who’d been cast.
“Dustin was very fond of Dabney, but he felt he was a colleague and a peer,” Pollack told Online. “He said, ’If a peer says to me, ’You’re never going to work again,’ I’m not gonna put on a dress. If you say to me, ’You’re never gonna work again,’ then maybe I’ll put on a dress.”
Coleman ended up playing the movie’s boorish soap director; Pollack ended up on other directors’ call sheets.
He played the midlife-crisis-suffering husband in Allen’s Husbands and Wives. He played the tony Long Islander with a penchant for clothing-optional costume parties in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. He played Clooney’s law-firm boss in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.
Pollack also did a good amount of TV, including stops on The Sopranos, Frasier and Will & Grace, where he occasionally appeared as Eric McCormack’s prime-time father.
Born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., Pollack once said of his childhood to the Times, “I think of it with great sadness. It was a real cultural desert.”
Pollack found a home in New York City, where acting class kept him busy as both student and teacher. Of his teaching career, Pollack said it only came about because he couldn’t find work as an actor.
The turning point came in 1959 when John Frankenheimer, a prolific director of the era’s live TV dramas who would later helm such films as the original Manchurian Candidate, hired Pollack as an acting coach. The gig led to TV directing gigs, which led to his first feature, The Slender Thread, a 1965 suicide hotline drama with, as would become Pollack’s way, two stars, Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
Pollack’s last dramatic film as director was the United Nations-set The Interpreter, which was released in 2005, the same year as his lone documentary as a filmmaker, Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the noted architect.
A prolific producer and executive producer, Pollack helped make high-profile Oscar fare (Minghella’s Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley), smallish films (Sliding Doors, Searching for Bobby Fischer) and even a John Goodman vehicle (King Ralph).
In the end, Pollack was defined by big stars and big movies. He knew it. And embraced it.
“Not all those big movies are good for you. I suppose there’s a lot of bad onesI’m sure people would say I’ve made some of them,” Pollack once told National Public Radio. “But the good ones do move you.”
Nicole Kidman’s Charitable Efforts
Nicole Kidman’s Charitable Efforts
With an awesome example of celebrity benevolence, Nicole Kidman hosted a private screening of her new film “The Golden Compass” for hundreds of patients, their families and the staff of Sydney Children’s Hospital.
Even cooler still, the “Eyes Wide Shut” actress gave an extra special Christmas present to five long-term patients and their families, spending private time with them prior to the large group time.
And when it came time to say “thank you” to the Aussie actress, seven-year-old cancer patient Cooper Smeaton presented her with flowers on behalf of everyone in attendance. He told her, “You put a big smile on all our faces and make us feel happy. Thank you for everything you do for us, we love you.”
The Chief Executive of Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation, Elizabeth Crundall, expressed her gratitude for the “Bewitched” actress, who has been an ambassador to the hospital for over six years. “We’re deeply grateful to Nicole for her constant generosity to patients, their families and staff. For many of the children who attended, this screening was a rare and welcome break from fighting serious illness in Hospital.”