By Le Anne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine)

Colin’s review of  The Other Guys (see below) makes me more interested in seeing it now; from the trailer, the movie looks a bit asinine.  Perhaps it’s because the type of humor that really makes me laugh, not just smile or be amused, is odd, nonsensical, off beat humor, of which The Extra Man (Co Directors Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini) has in spades!

Who better than Kevin Kline to play the part of Henry Harrison, an eccentric, old ex-aristocrat who is both sexually repressed and misogynistic; yet spends a great deal of his time being an escort or “Rosen Knight” to a 90 year old Billionairess, Vivian Cudlip (Marian Seldes).  Because women tend to out live men,  a society widow often needs an “Extra Man” to invite to dinner parties, art openings, the opera and such. It’s a coveted position, as  the “Extra Man” reaps the benefits of dining sumptuously and rubbing elbows with a social set that would otherwise be out of his means.

Although I’m not an extra man, I did have a similar arrangement with a Vivian Cudlip of my own named Ms Monte. Ms Monte was a diminutive, fabulous, Chanel wearing, 80 something, grand dame. She was a benefactor to a theater company where I was working and for some reason she took a shine to me.  Started inviting me to concerts, ballets, fine dinners and  fashion shows – all expenses paid of course. My friend used to refer to her as my Miss Havisham from “Great Expectations”.  I made the mistake once of not calling Ms Monte to thank her for one of our evening’s festivities until almost a week later and found myself no longer in her good graces.  I sent a letter of apology, to no avail, she had moved on to a new companion.  I must say,  wouldn’t mind finding another similar arrangement; after all, I’m delightful company, know how to handle myself in polite society, and …  but back to the movie.

Louis Ives (Paul Dano) is a wan, self-conscious young man with a penchant for women’s clothing and under garments. After being relieved of his teaching position, precipitated by a bra incident.  Louis moves to New York to pursue writing and answers Henry Harrison’s ad for a room to rent. The apartment is a junk shop, filled with Christmas balls and God knows what. Louis’ room is small, sparse and barely private.  But he becomes intrigued by his idiosyncratic landlord and becomes his protégé of sorts.

The film has a literary feel; in fact parts of Louis life are narrated as he likes to imagine he’s a character in a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Often scenes end with a circle going black and opening again, adding to the feel of a much earlier time period. There’s a cast of other odd characters played by a very thin Katie Holmes, Dan Heyada, Celia Weston, Patti D’Arbanville and a most hilarious, John C. Reilly as Gershon.

As Henry is fond of saying – “So there we are, where are we?”

Mao’s Last Dancer

(Director Bruce Beresford) was shown at IHouse last week.  The film premiered at Toronto last year, but this was the first I knew of it.

The film is a biopic based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin, a ballet dancer who created an international incident in the early 80’s by defecting from the Republic of China. Cunxin was invited to the US as an intern with the Houston Ballet and was soon catapulted into ballet stardom.

I assumed I was going to see a foreign film from China; actually, it was produced in Australia and doesn’t feel like a foreign film at all.   There are scenes shot in China, which are subtitled and capture the cold, stark, oppression of  rural  Qingdao under Chairman Mao’s Republic of China, but on the whole the film truly feels as if it were filmed in the US in the late 70’s, early 80’s. It’s not just the sets, there’s something about the very color of the film that feels perfectly dated.  Along with the actors.

Bruce Greenwood is quite good as Houston Ballet Artistic Director, Ben Stevenson, his very kind manner of speech and effeminate gestures seem right on target.  I was also quite impressed with all the dancing we are treated to in the film. It makes me wonder if Li Cunxin could have been that much better than Chi Cao, who plays him in the movie.

Although the film can’t help but be a commentary on political freedom, at its heart its a film about the love of dancing.

I had a great Philly experience last night watching Rocky and Rocky II on the steps of the Art Museum as part of the PFS collaboration with 2010 Rolling Road Show.  It was so surreal seeing a scene in a movie take place exactly where you are and seeing the same exact view side by side, present and past!

With such a classic, simple story structure, Sly Stallone was able to capture something that catches an audience up in it every time.

I only made it through the first two films, give a shout out if you stayed til 3am to finish Rocky III!

By Le Anne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine)

Not only did PFS give us the opportunity to preview Drew Barrymore’s lasest comedy, Going the Distance Monday night, it included a Q&A with Director, Nanette Burstein.

This romantic comedy also feature’s Barrymore’s real life love interest Justin Long and Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) for added comic relief. The movie deals with the pitfalls of long distance relationships. Garrett (Long) meets Erin (Barrymore) when he blocks the screen of her old school centipede arcade game – “Who does that?” What starts out as a casual hook up, turns into the real thing.  Problem, Erin is in NY for a summer internship at the Sentinel Newspaper and plans to go back to San Francisco to finish her degree. Garrett is just establishing himself as an A&R rep at a small record label.

Personally, I’ve never been in a truly long distance relationship, but I once dated a guy that lived in Delaware (less than 2hrs away) and he broke up with me citing -logistics. Dated another guy in Allentown, (again, less than 2 hrs away in the other direction) sent him a text once with a very steamy promise if he agreed to drive to me after work. His reply, “Not during the week, cause I’d  have to leave your place super early in the morning to get to work on time”.

So the movie’s theme is very real and relate-able. The chemistry between the two is good. Their initial “sleep over” involving Top Gun soundtrack is laugh out loud funny. The standard falling in love montage works. Things like trust issues, phone sex, and surprise visits are all covered with good humor and realism. Side issues like both characters working in industries that are in states of major change and severe cutbacks add to the dilemma. Christina Applegate and my personal favorite comedian, Jim Gaffigan are fun as Erin’s dry humping sister and brother-in-law. And Garrett’s two side kicks, mustachioed, Box (Jason Sudeikis) and bathroom open door policy Dan (Day) keep him busy during Erin’s absence.  Still, somehow, I feel the movie is a little flat.

As always, feedback is welcome.  If you attended the preview screening and disagree or agree, write a comment.

Nanette Burstein Q & A excerpts:

Q: What attracted you to the film?

NB: The story was such an honest premise and I’d been in a long distance relationship before, so I really related to the subject matter. And it was very funny.

Q: The dialogue seems really realistic, was there a lot of improv involved?

NB: Yes, we would shoot the script, but then we would improvise all the scenes as well, so we had both options in the edit room. Everyone brought their improv chops to the set, so we got some really funny moments.

Q: Your real life long distance relationship was how far?

NB: LA  – NY.  In fact, he was in the music industry. Bi-Coastal’s tough.

Q: How did you get the supporting cast, do you know them?

NB: No. We just asked them to do it. Jason actually auditioned. Although I already knew I wanted to cast him. This was Charlie’s first movie, so he was excited. I got all my first choices, I was really lucky.

Q: How about the leads?

NB: In the very first draft of the script the characters were younger, they were in their mid twenties, so I was thinking of different leads at the time given their age, then we decided to make them older. 1) because it made the stakes feel higher. As you get older, issues of love and career seem to grow in intensity and 2) Drew expressed interest in the script and I was excited about that. I had met her in person – you’re so used to her playing America’s sweetheart, but in real life she has a different personality. She has that same charm you always see on screen, but she’s also tough and vulnerable and speaks her mind and is quite funny, so I thought she’d be perfect to play the role. So that’s how it happened.

Q: The very first scene in the bar tells you this is not your usual romantic comedy.

NB: Yeah. I think the model, at least tone wise for me, was the movie Knocked Up. Realistic premise had a lot of humor, was raunchy but never inappropriately so, and it was really equal between the man and woman’s point of view, which we tried to do in this movie too.

Q: Do you feel Drew and Justin’s off-screen relationship added to the chemistry?

NB: I would say so. Not only chemistry, but intimacy, some of the more comedic love scenes like the phone sex or having sex on the dining room table, can be awkward with actors that don’t know each other; but because Drew & Justin know each other so well and are so comfortable with each other, it made those scenes easy.

Q: Since this was your first feature length movie, while you were preparing, what made you most nervous?

NB: Everything! Across the board! It was like, “what have I got myself into?” You have to seem incredibly confident eventhough you’re figuring it out as you go. I didn’t even know what most to be nervous about until I got in the situation and then I quickly figured it out. I guess the biggest challenge was with shooting the script and shooting the improv and trying to make it look good as well; you only have so much time in the day and we were not exactly scheduled properly given all I wanted to do, so you’re always under the gun time wise and that’s always a little stressful.

Q: How did you get involved with the script?

NB: I had made documentaries (American Teen 2008 , The Kid Stays in the Picture 2002 “Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America” 2001)
so I was being sent scripts from Hollywood to be considered as a feature length director. I really responded to this script and met with the producers; I don’t know what I said, but they decided to hire me. I then brought in new writers that are not credited because of WGA rules, but we rewrote the script quite a bit. It’s hard to say what someone else would have done; I just tried to take a very realistic approach to it and also find very talented funny, actors so we could do a lot of improv. It was important to make the sets feel honest. Most movies for example, people live in these fabulous apartments in New York and it’s totally unrealistic, that’s a pet peeve of mine.  I just tried to make it feel really honest and have a lot of heart and humor.

To listen to the complete Q&A click HERE.  The commentator is a host from co-sponsors Wired 96.5.

Maybe your script could be the next one that Nanette Burstein responds to – PFS is offering a screenwriting course with Marc Lapadula, professor of screenwriting at Yale University and former SW professor at University of Pennsylvania. He will lead a 3-week seminar in the craft of screenwriting at Philadelphia Soundstages. Click HERE for details.

What’s happening on Tinsel & Tine?  Our dining experience at Buddakan.

By Le Anne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine)

Director Level PFS members were invited to a screening of The Kids Are Alright, at the Main Street 6 theater in Manayunk, which meant no parking garage fees or kiosk hassles for me for a change – yay!

To recap the plot of the film, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are a lesbian couple who each had a child by the same sperm donor, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). The kids, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) and Joni (Mia Wasikowska, Alice from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland) are now at an age where they’ve decided they want to find their donor father.

Co-writer and Director Lisa Cholodenko, decided to make it a lighthearted look into the non-traditional family. There’s a social commentary being made; however, entertainment value was obviously the director’s main objective.  Which I don’t have a problem with at all; but those looking for a more creative, Indie feel, may feel it’s too studio. Those looking for a Gay film may feel it’s not issue driven. And on the other hand, those looking for a mainstream comedy with two hot (well, formerly hot) stars having sex scenes, may be disappointed.  It straddles all three genres, I would say with good balance, but I’m certain many will disagree with me.

After the screening I got to chat with four intelligent movie-goers who also happened to be lesbians. Two were a couple together 14 years, the other two, just friends.  One of the friends thought the film was very enjoyable and agreed with most aspects of the plot and the relationship between Jules and Nic.  She’s a proponent of adding a mainstream element to some gay films in order to get them made and out to the public.  The other friend felt there was way too much heterosexual sex taking place, and she didn’t like or identify with any of the characters.  The couple, felt the characters were unlikable by design, to create a certain stereotype, not just the lesbians, but Ruffalo’s character as well.

Jules character is that of an eat organic, create a compost, can’t commit to a career choice.

Nic is the matriarch of the family, a doctor with strict rules on etiquette and discipline.  She disapproves of  one of her son’s friends and describes him as being “untended”.

Paul is a motorcycle riding, free spirit type, who is just now starting to put down roots with a new restaurant and home.

Joni is a smart, good-girl, now ready to fight for some independence from “Mom’s”.

Laser is on the cusp of  being either a decent kid with some abilities as a jock, or being a smart mouthed, screw up.

Tanya (Yaya Dacosta) is Paul’s hostess and “f” buddy, before he meets his kids, which has nothing to do with the plot, but I like this model turned actress and just wanted to give her a shout out.

I didn’t find the characters to be unlikable, neither by impression or design. I thought Moore and Bening were convincing as a couple and both pulled off a slight masculinity that made them credible as lesbians.

Another point brought up in our after film discussion was about the dialogue interjecting too much “Oprah Speak”,  they felt although lesbians do have a tendency to process everything to death, this film went a little overboard to illustrate the point.

My main problem with the film was that Paul was made to be the villain, yet he was no more guilty of tearing the family apart than Jules.  Although perhaps I’m biased, after all, Mark Ruffalo is my second favorite Hollywood Crush after Robert Downey, Jr., so I can totally see why even a lesbian would have trouble staying out of his bed.

Reminder, deadline is drawing near for the 19th Philadelphia Film Festival (Oct 14-24) create a trailer competition.  Click HERE for details.  I think it’s great they’ve opened it up to the public this year. Normally, the festivals work with a team of students at one of the Philadelphia Universities. If chosen it really is great exposure for an up and coming filmmaker!

By Le Anne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine)

I fell down on my PFS blogging duties, as I wasn’t able to attend last Thursday’s screening of Almost Famous, as part of the Rockin’ Reels at the Piazza summer series, in collaboration with 102.9 WMGK.

I also missed last Saturday’s screening of  Wings (1927), the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (the only silent film to ever do so),  screened at Macy’s (Old John Wanamaker Building) with live organ accompaniment.

And although I’ve yet to catch the wave of dedication and passion for the Twilight saga ; it would have been fun to witness the pandemonium of screaming fans who showed up to the Free screening of Twilight: New Moon, introduced by second tier stars Jackson Rathbone and Bronson Pelletier which also took place on Saturday.  Click HERE to see Rathbone and Pelletier Q&A footage, filmed by PFS Managing Director before the screening.

If any readers were at any of the above events, we’d LOVE to hear your comments and feedback!

My reason’s for not being able to attend some PFS happenings, had to do with blogging conflicts with my own site, Tinsel & Tine – check out my posts from the movie premiere event  The Evils and coverage of the NYC FoodFilm Festival.

Last night PFS offered a limited number of tickets for the preview screening of Despicable Me (Directors Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud). The latest in what seems to be a slew of Computer-animated 3D films.  Steve Carell gives voice to the super-villain, despicable Gru, who’s in the midst of hatching a plan to steal the moon, assisted by his near senile, evil scientist, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand) and his brood of commercially viable minions (pictured).  The plan goes awry when he decides to involve three orphaned girls, Margo, Edith & Agnes (Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Elsie Fisher) and gets further complicated by the young, super-nerd villain, Vector (Jason Segel).

The film’s humor and writing is not as spot on ridiculously funny as the Shrek movies or as clever as the Toy Story movies, but it is delightful!  Its silly humor often caught me off guard, creating sudden bursts of laughter.  And I am a sap; there’s a Grinch’s heart growing out of the frame element to the movie that will melt the hearts of children and adults alike.

Next up: Shine a Light (7/15 7pm Piazza at Schmidts) A career-spanning documentary on the Rolling Stones, directed by Martin Scorsese.

DVD Swap (7/21 6:30-8pm Triumph Brewery) One man’s trash is another man’s treasure – plus for singles it could be a really cute meet! I might pretend I wanted Beowulf, if the guy holding the DVD was hot enough. $10 admission benefits the upcoming Philadelphia Film Festival (Oct. 14-24)

By Le Anne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine)

How great was it that PFS got John C. Reilly to come to the preview screening of his film Cyrus? – Really great!  The screening was packed with PFS members who are fans of Reilly’s work and Reilly was laid back with good quips for the audience at the Q & A following the film. (read Q&A highlights below)

I had seen a trailer for Cyrus, but hadn’t read any reviews from Sundance.  The trailer led me to believe it was a total comedy, maybe not as broad as Step Brothers, but close.  If you’re looking for that type of movie, then you’ll be disappointed in Cyrus, but if you are looking for something much more real and relatable, then you’ll feel like me, pleasantly surprised.

John C. Reilly plays John, a guy in his 40’s who is just mediocre; he even describes himself as Shrek, which is so on target.  And as Shrek found his Fiona, John finds Molly (Marisa Tomei) and although Molly stays a sexy, adorable “princess”, not an “ogre” underneath, there’s still wonderful chemistry between them. Really, even to the point where you could actually picture John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei being together in real life.  But come to think of it, she also had good chemistry with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, so I suppose one day she’ll be honored for her body of work, and they’ll say, she showed an amazing talent for portraying women turned on by cartoon-faced men.

Anyway, their romance has only one hitch, a big fat hitch named Cyrus (Jonah Hill), Molly’s 21 year old son that makes Oedipus look like a mere Mama’s boy.  He acts like he’s cool with his mother’s new relationship to her face, but despises John when Molly’s not around.

I make light in my description of the plot, but in actuality it’s a thoughtful movie, a snap shot of life.  After all, there are a lot of single women out there that are in their early 40’s, still really hot and vital and ready to get back to dating; after giving all their attention to a child or children for basically the last 20 years of their life. And how does that child or children react to the change?

The only semi-contrived aspect of the film, is Catherine Keener’s role as John’s ex-wife and best friend, Keener played this same type character in The Soloist with Robert Downey, Jr. and I think the toss away aspect of these roles do her a disservice.

But otherwise, I felt the character’s conversations were so natural; which we later found out during the Q&A, the Duplass Brothers, (director/writers) wrote a lose script and instructed the actors to improvise most of the dialogue. By the way, these are the same filmmakers of Baghead, a unique film to rent if you haven’t yet seen it.

Q&A with John C. Reilly

Q: Was Marisa Tomei really that hot in real life? (asked by a woman)

Reilly: Yeees,  She’s really hot, I saw her naked body and she saw mine unfortunately, and she’s still recovering.

Q: How long did the little Niagara scene take to film in The River Wild?

Reilly: Wow, your getting very specific, that movie was… I don’t remember how long that scene in particular took, but it was ridiculous how long we spent on the water, they had to helicopter everything in cause the gag of the movie was the canyon would not let us out… but who cares about River Wild, bless your heart, but let’s talk about Cyrus.

Q: How does your taste as an actor differ from your taste as an audience member? And do you prefer scripted to improvised?

Reilly: My tastes tend towards salty. (laugh) I like a lot of documentaries that’s where I feel you learn about the human condition. (some favorites: Food Inc, Grizzly Man, The White Diamond, Stevie) In terms of whether I prefer improvisational or not, depends on how well the script is written. If it’s a great script then you don’t need to improvise.  This one was crazy, it’s almost all improvised. The script was written, and it was a really great script; the Duplass Brothers worked really hard on it. Then we got to the set and they said, we don’t want to rehearse and we would really like to use the first take of everything you do and we want you to forget the script and not use the dialogue that we’ve written.  So we used the script as a kinda blueprint and we kinda just felt our way through the scenes as we got to know the characters and each other better. And so yeah, 90% of what you see is the first take and improvised.

Q: Did that require a lot of conversations between you guys before you got in front of the camera?

Reilly: No. They were very adverse to that. At times, I’d be like, what do you want exactly? And they’d say – just go with your instincts.  And I’d feel like, my instinct is to go with what you want. But umm it was a challenge, and at times very uncomfortable, but I’m really glad they insisted working that way, because that’s how they made The Puffy Chair and Baghead.

Q: How  was working with Jonah and Marisa?

Reilly: It was really fun, I know Jonah, he had a small part in Walk Hard.(loud clapping from audience)  Apparently a lot of people really love Cox. For those of  you who didn’t see the movie, I’m not being dirty, that’s the character’s name.

Marisa and I, we only met one time, and we shot this movie in order, so as you see me getting to know Marisa in the movie, that was really me getting to know Marisa. So I felt really lucky to have that organic process, what you see is what you get.

Q: Can I offer you a Smirnoff Ice?

Reilly: Yeah sure, does it have like jungle juice in it or something? Is this a promotion? Did Smirnoff pay you to come up here?

(Audience boos)

Q: No. It’s a huge thing going across the country in colleges.

Reilly: Sounds like a promotion, but thanks, I’ll drink it later, it’s a little warm.

Q: Who wrote the music that the character Cyrus was supposed to have written in the film?

Reilly: Mike Andrews. He’s a brilliant musician and song writer who wrote music for Donnie Darko and all the music for Walk Hard.

Q: I really related to Cyrus, this is my life, this is the story of my life.

Reilly: I came from a family of 6 kids, so I ran screaming and running out of the house by the time I turned 18, so it’s tough for me to relate to Cyrus’ experience.  But the movie has appeal for a lot of different people.  Older people do relate to bringing a sexual partner into the house with children at home. (audience silence) it got real quiet (laughter). And younger people, well, I asked this guy who was driving us around at Sundance what he thought of the movie and this guy said:  “There were many times when I came home from college and my Mom would be dating some dude and it was really awkward. First I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening cause you don’t want to imagine your mom having sex with anyone, and secondly, I didn’t know if the relationship was going to last, so should I be nice to the guy?”  So anyway, it struck a chord with him and I’m glad it struck a chord with you.

Q: Have you heard Paul F. Tompkin’s impression of you?

Reilly: I’m friends with or thought I was friends with Paul Tompkins and I have not heard this alleged impression. But very few people do an accurate impression of me, Leo DiCaprio is the only one I’ve ever heard really nail me, and he did it when he was 17 years old!  (pretend outrage) I was like, How dare you, rats!  I’ll hear Paul’s impression of me when he has the guts to do it to my face.

Q: How do you choose a script?

Reilly: Do you have a script that you’d like me to read?  Is that where this is going?  Are you about to ice me bro? (laughter)

I usually look for something I haven’t done before, I try to surprise people, try to do something different than the last thing I did and try to work with people that seem really inspired and enthusiastic about what they want to do, cause then your in good hands.