![\"the](\"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-content\/photos\/departed1_1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFilm Review
\nOctober 24, 2006 by JAN ALBERT<\/p>\n
Film Lovers rejoice! The great movie drought of 2006 is finally over!
\nNow, there are so many good films flooding the theatres it’s hard to keep up.
\nHere are some pick hits in no particular order:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MATT DAMON and LEONARDO DiCAPRIO in THE DEPARTED<\/em><\/p>\n \nTHE DEPARTED<\/em>: A pure blast of testosterone! This is what you go to The three leads are surrounded by a truly awesome cast of supporting players who make Martin Scorcese masterfully orchestrates the action and keeps you at the edge of \n HELEN MIRREN and JAMES CROMWELL in THE QUEEN HELEN MIRREN RULES AS THE QUEEN<\/em>: Well, here’s a movie with a I saw this flick a few weeks ago and still haven’t been able to get it completely out of my mind, Screenwriter\/playwright Peter Morgan has made a bit of a parlor trick of filling in In THE QUEEN<\/em>, Morgan weaves in much of the real news footage we saw I have always admired Helen Mirren’s fearlessness as an actress, tackling everything from One of my all-time favorite actors, James Cromwell (Babe’s farmer dad, as well as the evil \nGWYNETH PALTROW in INFAMOUS<\/em><\/p>\n \n \nTOBY JONES and ISABELLA ROSSELLINI in INFAMOUS<\/em><\/p>\n \nHAVE A MARTINI AND DON’T MISS INFAMOUS<\/em>, even if you think you’ve The two films are completely different in tone, CAPOTE<\/em> was more explicit about INFAMOUS<\/em> is more taken with Truman’s legendary charm – how a Both films spend a lot of time at the scene of the crime and it is fun to compare the The way CAPOTE’s<\/em> director, Bennet Miller, painted the stark, lonely landscape Much of the characters’ dialogue is taken from their own mouths – as quoted in Lastly, (really firstly!) INFAMOUS<\/em> has one of the most stunning opening scenes thoughts on: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING<\/em> and RUNNING WITH SCISSORS<\/em> to follow shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Film Review October 24, 2006 by JAN ALBERT Film Lovers rejoice! The great movie drought of 2006 is finally over! Now, there are so many good films flooding the theatres it’s hard to keep up. Here are some pick hits in no particular order: MATT DAMON and LEONARDO DiCAPRIO in THE DEPARTED THE DEPARTED: A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe movies for – a cracking good story which picks you up and doesn’t let you go – the
\nbig screen filled with nail biting tension and handsome guys behaving badly and nobly.
\nYou’ve got Matt Damon playing a bad cop posing as a good guy and Leo DiCaprio,
\n(wound so tight he looks like he’ll shatter) playing a good cop burrowed deep in the
\ndastardly gang of a Boston mob boss, played by Jack Nicholson.<\/p>\n
\nthe most of William Monaghan’s blistering bravura dialogue, including Alec Baldwin,
\nMartin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, and Mark Wahlberg (yes, Marky Mark!), who all but
\nsteals the picture from under the noses of all these pros in just a handful of scenes, as
\na grandstanding bully boy, who nonetheless is on the side of the angels in this
\nShakespearean tale that illuminates the large grey area that life really is. <\/p>\n
\nyour seat, waiting to see which of these good\/bad boys will win the day. One
\nquibble: for a film that so masterfully observes the shades of good and evil in every
\nman, how come this excellent director and screenwriter settled for giving the female
\npolice shrink torn between the two main characters, such a one note role to play?
\nThis terrific film would have been even better if the woman’s part had been
\nas subtle and complex as the male characters! Still, all in all, let’s hear it for the BOYS!
\nCan’t wait to see it again.\n<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-content\/photos\/the_queen_movie.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\ngreat part for a woman, and actress Helen Mirren exceeds even this devoted fan’s
\nexpectations. She gives a restrained and truly riveting performance as Queen Elizabeth
\nduring the tumultuous week following Princess Diana’s fatal car crash in 1997.<\/p>\n
\nwhich is always a good sign in an age where movie plots vanish from your brain cells
\nbefore you even leave the movie theater.<\/p>\n
\nthe imagined scenes and conversations behind the real world news we see in sound bites
\non TV. Previously, he crafted a teleplay called THE DEAL<\/em>, based on
\nPrime Minister Tony Blair’s relationship with his political mentor-turned bitter rival,
\nGordon Brown. He is also the brain behind another current film,
\nTHE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND<\/em>, (now playing in theaters – review to follow),
\nwhich takes us behind the palace walls of dictator, Idi Amin, as seen through the eyes of the
\nyoung Scottish doctor who became his private physician. FROST-NIXON<\/em>, the
\nforthcoming 2007 film, (written by Morgan & directed by Ron Howard) builds on the
\nfamous series of interviews David Frost conducted with the American President.<\/p>\n
\nagain and again and again of Diana bemoaning “the 3 people” in her show marriage to
\nPrince Charles and the scenes of the British people arriving at the palace with tons of flowers
\nfollowing Di’s untimely death, waiting with increasing fury for the royal family to appear
\nand show some emotion! Then the writer makes a great leap away from the facts as we know
\nthem, to present a fully imagined portrait of the royal family under seige; a ruler who has
\nbeen carefully groomed to keep her feelings to herself since she ascended the throne as a
\nteenager and the modern young Prime Minister who helps bring her up to speed with
\nsome 20th century spin control.<\/p>\n
\nTennessee Williams to tough cop, Inspector Jane Tennyson, but this is an especially fine
\nmoment. Somehow, she abandons all vanity and becoms the matronly, bad hat-wearing,
\nbig black pocket-book-carrying queen. Without letting down the stiff upper lip altogether,
\nshe conveys the confusion, stubborn pride, humility and pain, Elizabeth must have felt
\nat not being the crowd favorite at this strange turning point. She makes the Queen a
\nhuman being.<\/p>\n
\nbad guy in LA Confidential<\/em>), is infuriatingly convincing as Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s
\nprig of a husband and Michael Gleason is fine as Tony Blair, shaking his head at the
\ncomplete cluelessness of the royals in the face of the public’s grief and scoring his first big
\npolitical points when he steps into the breach to hail Diana as “the people’s princess.”
\nDirector Stephen Frears’ attention to visual detail and subtle ‘fly on the wall’ camera eye
\nkeeps the viewer locked into this intriguing glimpse behind the throne, but the show rests
\nsquarely on the shoulders of The Queen and Helen Mirren more than earns her crown
\n(and maybe the Oscar?? at award time).<\/p>\n![\"infamous-gwyneth](\"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-content\/photos\/infamous_Gwyneth.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"INFAMOUS-Toby\"](\"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-content\/photos\/infamous_Toby.jpg\")
\n <\/p>\n
\nseen it all before: There’s a saying in the wonderful world of journalism from whence I come,
\n‘Give 5 writers (or producers or directors) the same story to tell and you’ll end up with five
\ncompletely different stories’. That’s what makes INFAMOUS<\/em>, aka “the other
\nTruman Capote movie”, especially fascinating in my view. It comes just a year after CAPOTE<\/em>
\nwon Philip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar for his extraordinary performance in the title role.
\nBoth films (which cover the exact same period in Truman Capote’s life – when he researched
\nand wrote his masterpiece, In Cold Blood<\/em> were actually in production at the
\nsame time. One can only imagine the groans and gasps this strange timing must have induced
\nin both camps and yet, after seeing INFAMOUS<\/em>, I can report: there’s definitely
\nroom in this world for two different takes on this incomparable character.<\/p>\n
\nthe way the nakedly ambitious Truman sold his soul for success – a deal with the Devil
\nhe never stopped paying for. It touches on how a journalist manipulates the truth in order
\nto tell ‘his’ story, and how Truman came face to face with his “evil twin\/dark brother”
\nwhen he met murderer Perry Smith in Kansas.<\/p>\n
\nflamboyant Southern gay man with a strange and unforgettable voice used his formidable
\nwit and sensitivity to become the pet of Manhattan’s upper crust. He remarks to Babe or
\nSlim or another one of his “swans” (as he called the society ladies who took him to lunch),
\n– “I can alchemize my pain into art, but at what cost?” (and it cost him plenty when he later
\nbetrayed their trust by using their life stories to propel his fiction.)
\nThis is the Truman I remember seeing during my childhood on the Tonight Show with
\nJohnny Carson and thinking how great it was that there was room on this planet for such
\nkooky, unusual people who stood out from the crowd. <\/p>\n
\nactors’ and directors’ choices. First of all, British actor Toby Jones, (he’s the voice of
\nDobby in the Harry Potter films) is tiny, like Truman was. Personality-wise, I have no
\nidea if the role required the kind of stretch we saw Philip Seymour Hoffman make,
\nbut Jones is quite wonderful in his own right. I thought Sandra Bullock was a
\nrevelation as Harper Lee, (Truman’s childhood friend, who used his persona for the
\ncharacter of Scout’s neighbor boy in To Kill A Mocking Bird<\/em>) lovely and grave.
\nLikewise, Jeff Daniels (as the Kansas prosecutor Truman must woo to get access to his
\nstory) and Daniel Craig as Perry Smith play their parts all together differently than their
\ncounterparts in CAPOTE<\/em>. INFAMOUS<\/em> stresses the romance that
\ndeveloped between the writer and the prisoner.<\/p>\n
\ngot under your skin. INFAMOUS<\/em> director\/writer Douglas McGrath captures
\nthe social scene of Christmastime in small town Kansas; the living rooms of the residents
\nwho finally invite Truman into their homes to hear him tell how he beat Humphrey Bogart
\nat arm wrestling. McGrath and his production designer, Judy Becker, and costume designer,
\nRuth Meyers, revel in Diane Vreeland’s famous red room, Manhattan’s chichi dining spots
\nand Truman’s satin sheets and velvet dressing gown.<\/p>\n
\nGeorge Plimpton’s 1998 oral history: Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends,
\nEnemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall his Turbulent Career. <\/em>It would be
\nhard to improve on this stuff and Doug McGrath includes some of the best of it here.<\/p>\n
\nof any film in recent memory. Truman and Babe are at El Morocco, cocktails in hand,
\nenjoying a swinging number by a beautiful chanteuse (played to perfection by Gwyneth Paltrow,
\nwho never reppears in the film after this scene!). She has the crowd in the palm of her hand,
\nthen suddenly seems to lose her place in the song and stops for the longest moment, as the
\naudience holds its breath, wondering if the star has crashed to earth or will shine again.
\nThat is the tightrope walk Truman Capote took and it is something to behold while it
\nlasts.<\/p>\n