THE ODD COUPLE Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
12/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
12
Trade Publication Article
The Universal movie admits right off it's based on "a true friendship" forged in the fall of '62 when Don Shirley dipped below the Mason-Dixon Line and plowed through cotton patches of Dixie ...prejudices. Shirley was an elegant, erudite virtuoso pianist wiith three PhDs who resided in the artists' units atop Carnegie Hall for 50-plus years. The segregated South was another world for him and a quite dangerous one for any African-American. Hoping for (but not getting) a kinder reception than what befell Nat King Cole six years earlier when he was brutally attacked onstage in Birmingham, Shirley opted to put some muscle and hustle behind the wheel a brawny Copacabana bouncer named Frank Anthony Vallelonga (a.k.a. Tony Lip, so nicknamed since he could talk or intimidate his way out of any dicey situation).
All About Abigail Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
12/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
12
Trade Publication Article
The Film Society of Lincoln Center jump-started the 56th annual New York Film Festival this fall by playing The Favourite for its Opening Night Attraction playing it twice, in fact, as that picture's ...director, Yorgos Lanthimos, pointed out with pride and delight. "Dual screenings the same night!" he beamed, not realizing back-to-back screenings is what traditionally happens to the first film out of the festival barrel. His previous NYFF brush the Lobster, starring two of his three Favourite women, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman came midway through the 2015 festival with much less celebratory commotion. An eccentric, surreal comedy in which humans became beasts when they couldn't find love, it was the first English-language outing for the 45-year-old Greek filmmaker and earned him and his regular writing partner, Efthymis Filippou, an Oscar nomination for Best Original (to say the least!) Screenplay. Their next foray in English "The Killing of a Sacred Deer with Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Alicia Silverstone" got them top script honors at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
lost and found Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
11/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
11
Trade Publication Article
What Elizabeth Chomko had before What They Had was a string of 16 under-distinguished film appearances--bits in indies or guest-shots-that-sometimes-swelled-to-recurring-roles in TV series--but ...running alongside this newbie actress was a writer trying to get out, followed quickly if not simultaneously by a director. Both emerged in a dazzling double-debut via this domestic drama from Bleecker Street that drew warm receptions at its US premiere at Sundance as well as its international one in Toronto.
The Sundown Kid Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
10/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
10
Trade Publication Article
The Sundance Kid is hardly a kid anymore. Then again, once a Sundance Kid, always a Sundance Kid. Exhibit A: The Old Man & the Gun is the Sundance Kid at sundown-an octogenarian Robert Redford still ...sticking up banks. And this was his idea, too! Seeing it as a great film to ride out on, Redford pounced on the screen rights to David Grann's same-named article way back in 2003 when it was first published in The New Yorker. Fifteen years later, this story is finally seeing the light of cinema-courtesy of writer-director David Lowery, who may have just invented The New Bank-Robber Movie-arguably, the quietest, politest and most humane ever made. "I did a lot of different drafts when I was working on the script," Lowery recalls. "It was based on a true story and this article, so I tried a more journalistic approach about all the true events.
PICKED UP PIECES Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
09/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
9
Trade Publication Article
Sony Pictures Classics' Puzzley as Yul Brynner used to sing, is a puzzlement. That's the way director Marc Turtletaub, working from a blueprint by adapters Oren Moverman and Polly Mann, de-signed it ...a low-flamed character study that lets us put the pieces together. The two missing pieces that eventually complete the picture are introduced at the outset when we first encounter the frayed, fragmented life that's being examined. Her name is Agnes. She's a mousy housewife in the burbs of Connecticut who has lavished her time and attention on her husband and sons for so long that she herself has virtually evaporated. We first see what's left of her, hosting a party for friends and family in the first scene, fussing over one and all. When a saucer is broken, she scoops up all the pieces she can find, bolts to the kitchen and Crazy-Glues them back into place.
Butterflies Aren't Free Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
09/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
9
Trade Publication Article
The first question to ask Danish director Michael Noer is: "What's the first question interviewers ask you about your Papillon remake?" The answer, he says, is "Why?" They're right to ask. The first ...Papillon French for "butterfly" (after the tattoo that adorned the chest of its central character, Henri Charriere, a Parisian hood who flew his coop on Devil's Island) was well-made in 1973, with an epic sweep by director Franklin J. Schaffner and stirring work from a pair of actors basking in primetime stardom: Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. Title player McQueen turned in a $2 million performance, compared to a $1.25 million one from Hoffman, as the rich prison pal Papillon protects, hoping he'll finance their flight to freedom.
Robin Redux Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
08/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
8
Trade Publication Article
Haun discusses Walt Disney Co's animated film Christopher Robin starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Marc Foster. McGregor, who played a psychiatrist for Forster in 2005's Stay, was the director's ...first choice for the titular role--here a grownup, but ground-down, businessman who has lost all sense of imagination. As scripted by Alex Ross Perry and Allison Schroeder from a story conjured up by Perry, it takes Pooh and the rest of the Hundred Acre Wood crew to help him locate it again, reactivate the child still inside him and participate in the family events that a demanding workaday life has denied him.
Haun talks about the film Leave No Trace directed by Debra Granik. The Bleecker Street release also has a starmaking centerpiece performance from a totally unknown teenage girl. Three years away from ...her Oscar, Jennifer Lawrence was 19 playing 17 in Winter's Bone, beating the bushes for her meth-cooking, MIA pa so she and her siblings wouldn't be evicted from their shanty. Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, 16 playing 13 in Leave No Trace and now 18, is the portable appendage of her widowed, PTSD military dad, living illegally off the grid in state parks for reasons known only to him.
Artists in Love Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
06/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
6
Trade Publication Article
Michael Mayer assembles an all-star cast for his version of Chekhov's signature drama, The Seagull. Mayer believes Chekhov, were he alive today, would be knocking out screenplays. Film, he feels, is ...the medium that catches the subtlety, intimacy and naturalism in which his characters thrived, and, to this end, Mayer and Karam have conspired to create a kind of cinematic Chekhov, where a look can speak louder than a line.
DARE NOT SPEAK Haun, Harry
Film Journal International,
05/2018, Letnik:
121, Številka:
5
Trade Publication Article
etween Glorias--his breakout Chilean film of 2013 and his forthcoming American remake of 2018--44-year-old writer-director Sebastian Lelio has struck a mother lode of cinematic gold and glory with ...the two films he premiered last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival. His IMDB tally: 29 wins & 25 nominations. The first--A Fantastic Woman, about a transgender woman fighting for the right to mourn her older, married, bisexual boyfriend--waltzed off with the Golden Guy as Best Foreign-Language Film at the 2018 Academy Awards. The other, his English-language debut--Disobedience, about a free-spirited female who returns to her Orthodox Jewish roots in North London and her lesbian lover from childhood--is coasting into general release from Bleecker Street April 27 on a wave of raves from its Toronto launch. This penchant for female-led film explorations, Lelio insists, is not some part of a strategy or agenda. I just believe in following my intuition, whatever intrigues me. These are not women we are used to being exposed to.
