50/50: Beating the Odds

by Kelly Bedard

It is amazing to me that the release and theatrical run of 50/50 came and went with very minimal hoopla. The film is everything Hollywood commentators love- clever and unexpected but somehow in adherence with current tonal trends, well cast, smartly written, genre subversive, thematically daring, backed by big names and based on a true story. 50/50 should have knocked Hollywood off its feet. I have no idea why it didn't, because I think it's a truly wonderful film.

Anonymously Making Stuff Up

by Kelly Bedard

In the weeks before Anonymous hit movie theatres I was asked no fewer than 20 times how I felt about the film. "Could it be true?" people wondered of the absurd tagline: 'Was Shakespeare A Fraud?'; "are you outraged?" demanded others, inquiring whether my bardolatry had me on the defense; "why is Xenophilius Lovegood in it?" some pondered, rightly wondering why the bright and witty Rhys Ifans was on the poster. "I don't know yet" was my answer to questions 2 and 3 since I'd yet to actually see the movie; question 1 has long had a definitive "no" attached to it, complete with a long rant about the gross pretentiousness that accompanies each and every theory positing that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wasn't educated or rich or respectable enough to be talented.

No, the outrage never came.  And as for Ifans, I suspect it had little to do with anything other than the studio's need for a familiar face who could speak in a straight line and the actor's need for a paycheck.

Why the Twi-hate?

by Rachael Nisenkier

I did not see the new Twilight movie at midnight. But I would have.

Here’s the thing. I get your point, hypothetical Twilight-hater. I don’t think that Bella and Edward have a particularly healthy relationship (in fact, I could and have written pages and pages on the anti-empowerment message the books so often embody). I don’t think the writing’s particularly good. The movies are essentially hours-long excuses to make Robert Pattinson look moodily gorgeous and Taylor Lautner take off his shirt. And the plot of Breaking Dawn could be the stupidest yet, with Bella losing her virginity, in a way that’s guaranteed to make even sex-positive feminists squeamish, before growing mystically pregnant. But my question remains… why do we hate on Twilight so much?

March 23rd: Be There

by Kelly Bedard 

The official Hunger Games trailer hit the world like a flaming District 12 tribute today after Josh Hutcherson (who plays fan favourite Peeta Mellark) introduced it on Good Morning America.

The superb, pulse-pounding teaser kicks off with the serene Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen meeting her tried and true best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) in the woods for their daily hunt. It's as peaceful a scene as Katniss ever enjoys and the sense of foreboding in Gale's pleas for them to run away together gives just the right sense of unease. Then we're on to the grey-tinted Reaping and Elizabeth Banks' frothily icky take on Effie Trinket, Lawrence's screams, the face of her terrified young sister Prim. The rest is a flash- the train, the prep team, Cinna's designs, Haymitch's training, Caesar's interviews and that crucial scene on the roof when Peeta first shows us who he is. 

J. Edgar

by Rachael Nisenkier

It’s heartening to realize that we have officially reached the point as a country when a mainstream director known for his tough guy movies and a leading man known for making teenage girls watch Titanic fifteen times in one week can make a movie together about a homosexual love affair. It’s even more heartening to realize, about halfway through the movie, that J. Edgar is probably the most conventional (to the point of boring) gay love story ever made. That’s right, we’ve officially reached the point where gay love stories are not the purview of edgy independent films, but rather window dressing in a typical Oscar bait biopic. Progress.

The Ides of March

by Rachael Nisenkier

I walked into The Ides of March terrified I’d be bored by a political thriller lacking heart. Instead, I found myself nearly bowled over by a moral thriller playing with the language and heartbreak of politics.

The movie is essentially a moral tragedy. It tells the tale of idealistic campaign manager Steven (Ryan Gosling), who is working on the presidential campaign for the upstart democrat, Governor Morris (George Clooney).

It’s A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas

Underneath their makeup and awesome hats,
these guys are providing one of the most insightful movies
into our culture all year. No, seriously. 

by Rachael Nisenkier 

As we come upon awards season, we’re starting to see the rollout of prestige films- delicate beasts that tackle serious issues in intriguing ways. We get to see biopics, war dramas, and for some reason a movie from the world’s most famous director about a horse. All signs point to Oscar times ahead at the multiplex.

And then there’s It’s A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. Which is, honestly, fantastic.

Exclusive: Amy Acker talks Joss Whedon's Top Secret "Much Ado"

photo by Elsa Guillet-Chapuis

by Kelly Bedard

Two days ago my facebook wall started lighting up with friends reporting the latest impossibly exciting story to reach well-rounded geek ears: that TV god/brilliant writer Joss Whedon had used his vacation time post-Avengers to adapt and shoot a new version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I immediately dismissed the possibility- clearly someone was playing a trick on me. There's no way one of my favourite cultural icons could have cast a squad of my favourite actors to produce a film version of one of my favourite plays ever written; there was no way it was true. But by the time the story hit EW.com yesterday there was no denying it- this thing was real.

Back in 2010, our fellow My Entertainment World branch, My TV featured an exclusive interview with My TV Award nominee Amy Acker. Now, Whedon's newly minted Beatrice (Much Ado's word savvy leading lady) has graciously agreed to answer a handful of my giddiest questions about the film, the exceptional cast, working with Joss and the super quick and top-secret 12 day shoot that ended on Sunday.

Everybody Cut Footloose!

by Kelly Bedard

The opening scene of the new Footloose is toe-tapping great and followed by the excellent addition of the game-changing car crash that sets the no-dancing law in motion. The last scene is even better- it had me on a glitter high and dancing in my seat. The iconic montage of Willard learning to dance to the tune of "Let's Hear it For the Boy" is expertly copied almost frame-for-frame but given tiny modern tweaks and played with wonderful comic panache by Miles Teller. If they'd screwed up any of those three things (2 iconic, 1 tone-setting), the film would have had failure written all over it. As it is, a 70% mediocre film gets such a big boost from the excellence of that crucial 30%.

Style, Punch and a Whole Lotta Driving

by Kelly Bedard

Ryan Gosling is on top of the world. With no fewer than 3 major major movies currently in theatres and Oscar buzz starting up again, Gosling is named-checked as The Guy right now, the one that all other men are stuck never living up to. But Ryan Gosling is a gangly Ontarian with floppy hair and a goofy smile. Isnt' he? At least that's the kid I grew up loving on Breaker High back when I was the only kid I knew who knew his name. Then he conquered the world, making everyone fall in love with him in the process- and my possessive pride is kicking in.

Playing Moneyball with Pitt, Hill, Hoffman and Pratt

by Kelly Bedard

I knew I would like Moneyball. I was hoping it wouldn't suck but I was fairly certain I'd love it either way.

The following are the reasons:

- My idol of all idols Aaron Sorkin worked on the script, even if it was rewritten for a third time before finally going into long-delayed production, and I've never not loved anything he's ever touched (yes, even Studio 60).

- I like Brad Pitt more than your average Joe, I suppose, and I can even get behind the unconventional casting of Jonah Hill.

- Chris Pratt as an unlikely hero baseball player? Has someone been reading my dream journal?

- I like a good true story. There's just something really great about life and its inherent cinematic quality.

but, most telling of all,

- I just love sports movies. All of them, even the crap ones like The Big Green and The Replacements. I love few things more than the metaphorically rich game of baseball, one of those things is movies about the metaphorically rich game of baseball.

So I was pretty sure they could completely screw up Moneyball and I'd still be all in.
But hey, they didn't screw it up.

Soderbergh's Contagion

by Rachael Nisenkier

I’m not usually a fan of thrillers- I find the sense of anticipation and the constant jolts to my system to be fake, and am rarely all that invested in the characters. Similarly, I’m not usually a fan of movies that throw tons of famous people together and just hope something cool comes out of it. But I am a huge fan of Stephen Soderbergh. Like… HUGE. So when Soderbergh gathered up seemingly every Oscar winning/nominated actor he could find to make a globe-spanning thriller about a killer virus, I swallowed my normal boredom at thrillers (and attempted to quell my hypochondria for a night) to check it out.

The result is a beautiful piece of genre filmmaking, masterfully blending real world anxieties with genre conventions.

The Help: from page to screen

Editor's Note: 
The Help is one of the biggest films of the summer. But the beautiful movie isn't one of those adaptations that lives a separate life from its source material. The movie is directed by the childhood best friend of the author and based on her book inspired by her childhood about a woman who writes a book inspired by her love of the woman who raised her. It's not a movie you can take out of context. Katheryn Stockett took a lot of heat just for writing The Help (a strange notion in context of the heat her character Skeeter and her subjects Minnie and Abilene get for writing the book "The Help" within the book The Help) and to think of Tate Taylor's film as somehow unburdened by that history takes away a lot of what makes The Help special. As such, senior contributing author Rachael Nisenkier (an author for both My Cinema and My Bookshelf) has written her film review as a companion piece to her previously published book review. You'll find both pieces here, published together in our efforts to capture all that The Help is.

One Day in Hollywood

by Kelly Bedard

The film adaptation of the truly wonderful book One Day, predictably, leaves much to be desired. While the presence of the always sensational Patricia Clarkson (perfectly cast in the pivotal role of Dexter’s idealized mother) certainly helped the film along, the incredible miscasting of the story’s leading lady proved devastating to the adaptation.

So much of the complication in Dexter and Emma’s relationship comes from their regional class differences. In casting an American actress (no matter how charming) without perfect accent skills, the filmmakers essentially robbed themselves of that crucial tool. Anne Hathaway could have given the performance of her life (which, for the record, she did not even come close to giving) and no one would have cared because her accent work was just so bad. It was inexcusable (though I will admit that no one pulls off an "awkward girl comes into her own" makeover quite like Hathaway).

A Gleeful, (mildly) Frightful Night

by Rachael Nisenkier

Colin Farrell is trying to sleep with your mom. Go ahead, take a second and digest that. Pretty freaking horrifying, right? And because he’s Colin Farrell, even if your mom is a tough-as-nails Toni Collette, she’s probably going to let him. But just in case that gonorrhea-influenced mess isn’t enough to send you into a stake-whittling rage, get this: Colin Farrell is trying to sleep with your mom, and probably also eat people, because Colin Farrell… is… a… vampire.