Seduced and Abandoned is director James Toback’s (The Pickup Artist, Tyson) documentary about that overlooked aspect of filmmaking: the pitch. The camera follows Toback and his star Alec Baldwin through the Cannes Film Festival as they try to get funding for their new movie. The project they are pitching is Last Tango in Tikrit. One can only imagine…
Toback is shameless in his pursuit of backers: “250 years from now, the only reason anyone will know your name is when it rolls on the screen as producer of my movie”. When Toback and Baldwin learn that a young actor-wannabe has a very rich dad, they pounce and dangle a newly written role for the son. Toback is willing to dump Neve Campbell for a younger box office hottie and to change the plot from a Middle East story so he can shoot in the US. It’s all very sly.
Seduced and Abandoned is playing on HBO. Here’s the teaser.
Peter Skarsgaard and Cate Blanchett in BLUE JASMINE
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is a remarkably profound portrait of a woman seemingly ruined by circumstance and trying desperately to cling to who she thought she was. In a stunning performance, Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a New York socialite whose billionaire swindler of a hubby has lost his freedom and his fortune to the FBI. Jasmine’s identity has been based on the privilege derived from her money, her marriage and her social station – and all of that is suddenly gone. Flat broke and reeling from the shock of it all, she seeks refuge with her working class San Francisco sister.
Despite her desperate situation, Jasmine arrives still brimming with deluded entitlement, Woody having calculated an undeniable resemblance to Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. But Blue Jasmine is more accessible than the great play Streetcar because it’s so damn funny. Jasmine’s pretensions are as pathetic as Blanche’s, but it’s very, very funny when her top shelf expectations collide with her current reality.
Cate Blanchett will certainly be nominated for an Oscar for this role. Blanchett is able to play a woman who is suffering a real and fundamental breakdown through a series of comic episodes. She flawlessly reveals Jasmine’s personality cocktail of charm, denial, shock, desperation and sense of authority.
I know that a lot of folks are put off by the creepiness of Woody’s real life marriage, but he has written a great female lead role for Blanchett, and he’s directed actresses to four Oscars in the past, as outlined in this recent New York Times article.
In my favorite scene, Jasmine faces her young nephews across a diner’s booth in a diner. They ask her questions with childish directness and inappropriateness. Her answers are candid from her point of view, but nonetheless astoundingly deluded – and just as inappropriate. The scene is deeply insightful and hilarious.
Who and what has brought Jasmine to her knees? Certainly she has been victimized by her amoral sleazeball of a husband, but she vigorously refuses to consider taking any responsibility herself. Can she be forced to look within? And is she strong enough to face what she would see?
Sally Hawkins is equally perfect as Jasmine’s good-hearted sister Ginger, a woman who doesn’t expect much from life and still gets disappointed. Andrew Dice Clay, of all people, is excellent as Ginger’s ex, a lug who rises to a moment of epic truth-telling. Louis C.K. brings just the right awkward earnestness to the apparently decent guy who takes a hankering to the long-suffering Ginger. Alec Baldwin nails the role of Jasmine’s husband, a man whose continual superficial charm almost masks his cold predatory eyes, and it’s a tribute to Baldwin’s skill that he makes such a natural performance seem so effortless.
Playing a primarily comic character, Bobby Cannavale delivers a lot of sweaty energy, but with too much scenery chewing. The great actors Peter Skarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg do what they can with far less textured characters.
The Wife thought Blue Jasmine dragged in places, and she was distracted by some components that didn’t ring true about the San Francisco setting – two key working class characters with Tri-State Guido accents and a Sunday afternoon cocktail party where the men wear neckties; she’s dead right on both points, but they didn’t bother me.
Blue Jasmine may not rise to the level of Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives, but it’s a pretty good film with a superlative, unforgettable performance.
The title says it all – To Rome with Love is Woody Allen’s affectionate missive to Rome, more amusing than the average greeting card but no more substantial. It’s not great Woody, nor is it bad Woody. But minor Woody (like To Rome with Love) is still funny and smart, even wise sometimes.
Allen cuts between four unrelated and more or less simultaneous stories. In the first, a comedy of manners, Woody and Judy Davis play an American couple in Rome to meet their daughter’s (Alison Pil) Roman beau and his family. There’s a culture clash and the impulses of Woody’s character create comic havoc.
In the second (and best) tale, Alec Baldwin plays a man in his fifties who is recalling the Roman adventure of his twenties, this time imparting his life wisdom to his younger self (Jesse Eisenberg). What mature man wouldn’t want to relive his single days knowing what he now knows about women? In this case, Eisenberg’s girlfriend introduces him to her alluring but surely unreliable gal pal, played by Ellen Page. Baldwin’s sage is warning him off, but the younger man can’t help but become entranced with a woman who strews relationship carnage behind her. When Eisenberg thinks that he is seducing Page, Baldwin cynically points out that Page has just popped a Tic-Tac to be ready for a kiss. When Woody has him “melt” Page’s actress with a line about her being deep enough to play Strindberg’s Miss Julie, we recall that the real Woody has dated the likes of Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, Stacy Nelkin and Mia Farrow. It’s good stuff.
The third story, and least successful, is a farce in which a young Italian bridegroom must impress his uptight relations despite some contrived mistaken identity.
The fourth story is an allegory on today’s culture of silly and unearned celebrity. Roberto Benigni is perfect as an ordinary Giuseppe plucked out of his hum drum routine and made an instant celebrity. No comic can play befuddlement or nouveau entitlement like Benigni.
To Rome With Love stars the usual splendiferous Woody cast. Judy Davis, Penelope Cruz, Alison Pil, Alec Baldwin and a host of Italian actors are all just fine, but don’t have to stretch; (this also applies to 2012’s annoyingly ever-present Greta Gerwig). But Woody himself is outstanding, as are Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Roberto Benigni.
The Broadway musical Rock of Ages comes to the screen – a love story of hopeful young performers set on the seamy Sunset Strip in the age of Journey, Styx, Bon Jovi and the ever popular Whitesnake. It really doesn’t matter that there is only a barest shred of a plot – this is a musical, after all, and we just need an excuse to break into song.
The two young leads are fine, but the laughs come from the impressive crew of supporting actors: Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mary J. Blige and Bryan Cranston. Cruise self-mockingly plays an Axel Rose type rock star, only more unreliable.
The inspired musical production numbers are staged ironically (there’s no other way to do a Quarterflash song). You haven’t really heard Foreigner’s I Want to Know What Love Is until you’ve seen Tom Cruise really selling it. At one point, Brand’s rockers belt out We Built This City in a duel with Zeta-Jones’ pastel clad church ladies singing We’re Not Going To Take It. All lighthearted and funny; it’ll be a good DVD/stream pick in a few months.
