My Week with Marilyn- Review

Year: 2011

Writers: Adrian Hodges (screenplay), Colin Clark (book)

Director: Simon Curtis

Starring: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Watson, Julia Ormond, Judi Dench, Toby Jones and Dominic Cooper.

Plot: Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier's witnesses the tense production of the Prince and the Showgirl and falls into an unlikely relationship with the fragile Marilyn Monroe.




So I have just got back from seeing this movie with a good friend and thought I would get the review down on the blog for those of you looking for weekend movie viewing inspiration. My Week with Marilyn is based on 'The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, and 'My Week With Marilyn,' two memoirs by Colin Clark which detailed his time spent as Third Assistant Director on The Prince and the Showgirl filmed in England in 1957.

The Prince and the Showgirl was a troubled production from the start. Laurence Olivier, a classically trained Shakespearean actor grew frustrated with Marilyn Monroe's obsession with Method acting and her need to have her acting mentor Paula Strasberg accompany her everywhere she went on set. For Laurence Olivier acting was just that, acting, but Paula Strasberg had instilled in Marilyn the idea that she had to find and understand the character completely and not do something in a scene if she didn't feel that it was true to the character. Fragile Marilyn was struggling with a third possible failed marriage to Arthur Miller and her entourage was keen to keep her doped up on pills to make her easier to control.

My Week with Marilyn has been considerably hyped due to the performance by the lead actress Michelle Williams and I would say that overall this hype is thoroughly deserved. Michelle Williams performance is utterly convincing. She manages to successfully convey the sensuality and movie star charisma of the public Marilyn while at the same time tapping into the vulnerability and instability of the woman behind the spotlight. There are times in the movie when Marilyn hints at her fractured childhood and her desperate need for children and Michelle Williams plays this with such subtlety and pathos, that at times it was very sad to watch knowing what we now do about her tragic death. The only time I felt she failed to achieve Marilyn's magnetism was when she was recreating the scenes from the movie. She didn't have the same sparkle as the original.

Kenneth Branagh was for me a slight week point in the production. He has publically stated how much he admires Olivier and I often felt like his performance, although excellent, was a little bit too much of direct impersonation and slightly hammy. Eddie Redmayne was the heart of the story as the naive Colin Clark and his relationship with Marilyn felt believable. The rest of the cast should also be commended, especially Judi Dench who plays Dame Sybil Thorndike, the ageing actress who tries her best to make Marilyn feel comfortable on the increasingly tense set and Zoe Wanamaker as Paula Strasberg. Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh barely has anything of consequence to do and she failed to make any impression in a role which could have made more of the obvious jealousy that Vivien would have felt towards Marilyn.

This film is incredibly enjoyable and manages to mix humour and pathos in equal measure. At 99 minutes it is an easy watch and plays more like a good old fashioned English comedy drama then a heavyweight movie biopic! It appears to be the director Simon Curtis' first film, having previously focused on directing BBC period dramas such as Cranford and David Copperfield.

I would definitely recommend this and look forward to hearing what everyone else thinks about it. Check out the trailer below and a clip from one of my favourite scenes.

Trivia: For Downton Abbey fans, this movie has two links to the period drama. Not only does Carson the Butler have a small role as a pub landlord, but the director Simon Curtis is married to Elizabeth Mcgovern  who plays Cora the Countess of Grantham!

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

I have just got back from my monthly book group where our book of choice to discuss was The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. So I thought I would get my book review done on the blog while still fresh and also add some views that came out of the book group tonight.




Plot:  Unlucky in work, love and life, the Andreas sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother. But each sister has a secret she's unwilling to share – each has come home to lick her own wounds. 


The Andreas family is an eccentric one. Books are their passion (a trip to the library usually solved everything), TV is something other families watched. Their father – a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespeare who communicates almost exclusively in Shakespearean verse – named all three girls for great Shakespearean women – Rose (Rosalind), Bean (Bianca), and Cordy (Cordelia); as a result, the girls find that they have a lot to live up to.

With this burden, as well as others they shoulder, the Andreas sisters have a difficult time communicating with both their parents and their lovers, but especially with each other. Each sister has found her life nothing like she had thought it would be – and suddenly faced with their parents' frailty and their own disappointments and setbacks, their usual quick salve of a book suddenly can't solve what ails them. Can all three escape their archetypal roots and find happiness in a normal life? As it turns out, the small town of Barnwell and their sisterly bond offer much more than they ever expected.


I knew that myself and 'The Weird Sisters' were going to get along just fine when I opened the book to the first page and found myself confronted with a quote from my favourite Shakespeare play of all time. 'I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters.'


Shakespeare plays a principal role throughout the book as his words are used by each of the members of the Andreas family to convey their feelings during times of personal stress. Books and Shakespeare are the loves of the Andreas family and I found myself falling in love with them too as the story went on.


Being an only child I found the relationship between the three sisters endlessly fascinating, the way they could one minute be saying the cruellest things to each other and in a heartbeat be offering words of comfort like nothing had happened. Eleanor Brown manages to write each sister with such depth that you begin to know their character differences intimately and how they will react to any given situation. You become invested in their struggle to shake off the trappings of their Shakespearean namesakes and find themselves and the life they truly desire.


The use of Shakespearean quotes is inspired and Eleanor Brown should be applauded on the amount of research she must have done into Shakespeare's works in order to fill the book with such a high quantity of quotes which all seem to add something to the story and provide us with more insight into the characters' emotions. 


 I also loved the descriptions of their home town of Barnwell which painted such a vivid portrait in my mind of a small university town with the quaint library, student frequented coffee shop and homely church. I could have stepped inside the book and made myself right at home.


The scenes describing their mother's illness and her treatments are heartbreaking and difficult to read at times, but incredibly truthful. You find yourself willing this woman to get better as the book goes on and you see glimpses of her character but she is not as well rounded as the other characters in the story.


Within our book group I was the most enamoured with this book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was sad to leave these characters behind when it came to the end. The one thing I didn't enjoy so much was the narrative voice, meant to be the three sisters narrating as one separate entity. Although I can see it allowed for more scope and objectivity compared to a first person narrative, I found the concept a bit confusing and difficult to get into at first.


I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a well written, engrossing story about family relationships and the trials we have to go through to find ourselves. 

Oscar and Pacino

I wasn't planning on doing a post this evening but I have just listened to an absolutely fascinating radio programme on the Radio 4 website about Al Pacino and his love for Oscar Wilde's play Salome. Now being both a huge fan of Pacino and Mr Wilde this was a treat. The programme focuses on a recent drama documentary that Pacino has written, directed and starred in which mixes performance of the play Salome filmed over a week in New York with a footage of Al Pacino on a journey to discover the history behind the play and the truth about Oscar Wilde.

The film premiered at the Venice film festival back in September to, it would seem mixed reviews. Variety were not enamoured with it (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117945964/) , the Hollywood Reporter were much more gushing in their praise (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/wilde-salome-venice-film-review-231024). Interestingly enough Salome herself is played by Jessica Chastain, who I was incredibly impressed with by her performance in The Help, so I am eager to see how she performs in a theatrical enviroment.

Despite his incredible success in movies, Al Pacino has always stayed true to his theatre origins and Wilde Salome appears to be very much in the same vein as 'Looking for Richard (1996) which if you have yet to see I throughly recommend. In that film, Al Pacino attempted to explore Richard III in a similar way to Salome, with performances of the play starring amongst others Winona Ryder and Kevin Spacey, in-depth discussions of the play and exploration of the historical background. If you have not seen this already I heartily recommend that you do even if you are not a die hard Shakespeare fan.

Despite searching high and low on the internet I cannot seem to find a nationwide release date for this film in the US or the UK, but it does not appear to be on dvd as of yet. There is a website (http://wildesalome.com/) and you can follow the production on twitter @WildeSalome. But for now here is the link to the radio programme and the trailer for the movie.

I would love to know if you are a fan of Pacino or Oscar Wilde and if so what your favourite quotes, favourite films or favourite plays are.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0174dzr

Review of Due Date

Year: 2010

Writers: Alan R Cohen, Alan Freedland, Adam Sztykiel and Todd Phillips.

Director: Todd Phillips

Plot: High strung father-to-be Peter Highman (Downey Jr) is forced to hitch a ride with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay (Galifanakis) on a road trip in order to make it to the birth of his child on time.






The first thing to note about this movie is that it has a hell of a lot of writers. Perhaps that is why for the full 95 minute running time I kept thinking that this had to be the by-product of a creative writing session for schizophrenics. I also don't feel I am over exaggerating when I say that it is a long 95 minutes!

The truth is I wanted so much to love this movie! I am such a big fan of Robert Downey Jr and will tell anyone who wants to listen that the man is an acting genius of the highest degree, but even his comedy talents and strong jawline, could not make this movie anymore bearable. It was a film that really had strong potential in its two leads and the cameos from people like Juliette Lewis and Danny Mcbride, as well as the storyline. However, this is where it falls down. The problem is that we have seen this story done before and miles better in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and while watching Due Date, I kept thinking how good that movie was and wondering why I was watching this instead. I could have switched off at anytime and I would not have felt  worse off for having not seen the ending.

Zach Galifanakis and Robert Downey Jr seem to have thrown everything they could into this movie, but the problem lies in the fact that their characters just aren't very likeable. Galifanakis is an over the top caricature and seems to struggle to incite any empathy from the audience during emotional scenes, while Downey Jr is a vicious character who at one point spits in a dog's face and punches a child.

The film didn't seem to know what it wanted to be and maybe this is a result of having too many writers. One moment you are witnessing a masturbating Galifanakis and his dog and the next minute he is crying about his dead father while Downey Jr relates a story of how his father walked out on him as a child!

My best advice is stay well clear, because this movie sucks! I'll leave you with the trailer, because the best bits of the movie are in those 2 minutes and 9 seconds.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Review of The Help

I have been a bit slack with my movie reviews of late, so today you get two for the price of one. The Help which I saw last weekend at the cinema and Due Date which was our Tuesday night movie courtesy of Lovefilm.

The Help - currently in cinemas.

Year: 2011

Writer: Kathryn Stockett (novel), Tate Taylor (screenplay.)

Director: Tate Taylor

Starring:  Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janey

Plot:  Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer. But she turns her friends lives and a Mississippi town upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families.



As I have already posted about the novel on this blog back in September I am not going to go over the plot in detail again or reiterate my love for the original source material. I want to focus more on how faithful the movie is to the novel and also how it plays to those coming to it with fresh eyes.

Having absolutely fallen in love with the novel while reading it for my book group and hearing so much Oscar buzz about this film since July, I came to it with the same apprehension as when I went to see One Day. While I was pleasantly surprised with that film, this movie exceeded my expectations! Top marks go to the casting directors Kerry Barden and Paul Schnee, who managed to find Skeeter's geekiness and empathy in rising star Emma Stone, Minny's sassiness in Octavia Spencer, Hilly Holbrook's prejudice and vengefulness in Bryce Dallas Howard and Aibleen's quiet strength in Viola Davis.

To be honest I could go on, as there is not single female performance in this movie that deserves to go unmentioned. It is great to see a mainstream movie with such a wide range of well developed female characters and I can imagine that every actress in Hollywood was fighting to be a part of this picture. Particular praise has to go to Jessica Chastain as dizzy blonde Celia Foote. She is the spitting image of how I imagined the character to be when reading the novel and her portrayal of Celia as being a naive girl with a big heart avoids the dumb white trash girl route that other actresses may have been tempted to take.

At no point during the movie did I feel anyone in the cinema getting restless and the balance of humour and pathos was just right, tears were shed in sadness and happiness!

If I had to come up with one negative point about the film, it would be that I feel it does shirk away slightly from some of the more controversial plot points or negative aspects of the characters. For example, in the boo  at no point do you feel any sympathy for Elizabeth Leefolt in her neglect of her daughter, while in the movie the character seems more conflicted in her actions. Readers of the novel may also be annoyed by the fact that the whole plot strand involving the reasons for the firing of Skeeter's childhood maid has been completely changed to something much more simplistic and less taboo.

To summarise this is a fantastically scripted and directed movie with some fantastic female performances and I am sure it is bound to come away with many Oscar nominations!

I would love to know if you have seen this film and if so what you thought of it? If you read the book, did it meet your expectations?

Read it Swap it

Being a self confessed book addict often means having a dwindling bank balance and although there is nothing more I love than spending hours in book stores perusing the shelves for exciting new treats to throw on the ever growing 'to read' pile, my aank Account says otherwise. As a big advocate of the importance of libraries in society for young and old, I would suggest that your first port of call for a free read should always be your local library. However, if your library is anything like mine (way too small for the city), then it is good for when you are looking for a spontaneous read, but not if you have a particular book in mind. 

This is where Read it Swap it comes in (http://www.readitswapit.co.uk). I first read about Read it Swap it in India Knight's fantastic 'The Thrift Book' where she comes up with lots of great ideas on 'how to live well and spend less,' definitely worth checking out! 

Read it Swap it is a UK based online book swapping website. It is free to join and once on there you have access to currently 371,272 books from all over the UK. The idea is that on your account, you build up a list of the books you have available to swap. This is really easy to do because you can just input the ISBN number above the barcode on the back of your book and the website immediately pulls up all the information about that book. You just need to describe the current condition of the book and it is important to be honest in this case, because once your swap is completed the recipient of your book will mark you on how honest you were about the description of the book.

You also have a wishlist where you can add all the books you are interested in reading and when another member adds that particular book Read it Swap it will send you an email notification so you can request a swap.

How does the swap work?

Once you have found a book you like the look of, you click to swap with that member. They will then receive an email notification and a link to your collection of books. They can refuse to swap with you if there is nothing they fancy reading , but if they find a book they like, they will confirm the swap and then the user will be able to see your postal address.  Once you have each received each others books, you will confirm on the site and rate your fellow swapper based on the speed of the swap and the condition of the book (was it as described?). 

Swapping tips

• Always try and post your book within two days, if this is not going to be possible for some reason, email your fellow swapper and let them know there will be a delay.

• I have found that most people tend to send books second class, so don't waste your money shipping first class because as long as the books come within a week you are unlikely to receive a bad rating.

• The best way to send your book is to buy brown parcel wrapping paper and then wrap the book in three layers to ensure the book stays undamaged. The Post Office tend to consider this as a large letter so you will probably pay under £1.00 to post it. At first I was using large padded envelopes but it was getting too expensive.

I have completed 22 swaps up to now and am now officially a Read it Swap it addict!! Not only does it mean you can interact with fellow book lovers around the UK and maintain your reading addiction minus the expense, but there is also something old fashioned and exciting about receiving books in the post!!

Let me know if you are already on the site or plan to join and your experiences of it. Apologies if you are not UK based, but I would love to hear if you have something similar in your country.

Is there a Dewey system for films?

Whenever I enter a person's house for the first time I carry out the same process every time. It involves a Sherlock Holmes style investigation of their book and film collection.  Now don't get me wrong this isn't some judgemental process where if their books or films are deemed not to reach a certain standard, then I summon the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who enters, tells them they have chosen poorly and their face melts off!

No this is my attempt to get to know them better. You see I believe that almost everything you need to know about a person can be determined by their film or book collection and it is not just the content, it is also about the way they present it. That is why on Sunday while supervising the construction of our third and final Billy bookcase, I suffered a mild panic attack when I realised that maybe I was just too boring in my choice of organisational system.

One particularly traumatic evening I had the fantastic (or so I thought at the time) idea of organising my film collection according to lead actor/actress (depending on who was more famous) and director (but only if they were considered an auteur). I know, I have no idea why I thought it would work. Not surprisingly, it did not and I ended up chucking all my films back on the shelves in an extremely dull alphabetical order. Followed by DVDs and TV shows bringing up the rear.

Book wise I have attempted to be slightly more inventive. I have non-fiction in alphabetical order to start, followed by children's books, penguin special editions, travel books, history books, psychology and politics, film, TV, autobiographies and old antique looking books.

This all got me wondering what other possible, more interesting ways I could organise my stuff to shake things up a little and display a little more of my personality. So I made a little list:

1. Colour coordination - A friend has all her DVDs colour coordinated. This works in a way, because the design of film posters lends itself to mainly pink or white for Rom coms and Chick Flicks, dark moody blues and blacks for thrillers, and light blues for drama. So there is some logic in this aesthetic choice, but what a nightmare to find anything.
2. Date of publication or of release could work. It would make a very interesting way of charting the history of literature or movie making if you read or watched them in that order over the course of a year.
3. Size- this only really works for books and is suitable for the extremely obsessive compulsive of the population.
4. Genre - pretty self explanatory - although if you base the movie organisation on IMDB classifications then this could be a real headache. Mamma Mia for example comes under Comedy, Romance, Musical ahh!!!! I would need three copies.

Finally if you wanted to completely lose your sanity you could follow John Cusack's lead in High Fidelity and arrange everything based on autobiographical chronology. Now what was the first movie in my collection I   ever saw?? They would find me a week later quietly weeping on a pile of DVDs and muttering about whether 

I saw Goodfellas before Casino, still have no idea!

So plenty of ideas, but for my sanity and the safe keeping of the bookcases, I'll stick with what I have. Let me know how your film and book collections are organised. I would love to know if any of you have some really original ways of displaying them!

Photo sources. bookcases (colourlovers.com) DVDs (Gresswell.co.uk)

Nostalgia for childhood books and movies.

Last weekend marked another birthday and a further step on the way to the big 30! It was my belief that as the years went on I would become a wiser, more cultured individual. Taking countless trips to the opera, listening to classic FM, reading the great philosophers and watching French cinema.

However, to my surprise and initial horror I have found myself immersed in a deep nostalgia for childhood pleasures. Books and films that I discarded at the entrance to my teenage years with some disgust have now become my new obsession. It all started when I was called back to the parents' to clean out my room, which had pretty much been left as it was since I decided to become a Midlander in 2008. I came across all these children's books I had completely forgotten about such as Matilda by Roald Dahl, Horrible Histories, My Friend Walter by Michael Morpugo. Intrigued to see if I still found them as a good a read as back in the day, I took them back home and I was hooked!  

I started remembering all these books I loved as a child and wanted to read again, Secret Seven and Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh etc. Unfortunately it turned out that I had given away most of my books in my haste to become a moody, cynical teenager. So began my trawl through charity shops and second hand bookshops to try and compile the perfect childhood collection of books for pure escapism. This quest did not stop at books, I have also started collecting old childhood Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast and Winnie the Pooh and I forgot how fantastic they were!

So why has this nostalgia come about? Is it just another obsessive rung on the addictive personality ladder to madness or could it be something deeper than that? An article in The Telegraph in September this year asked this exact question of Dr Louise Joy, a Cambridge University academic. Her theory is that adults go back to reading childhood books because they are looking for a world where "self-consciousness is overthrown and relationships are uncomplicated." Put more simply, life is so stressful these days that sometimes we don't want to be reminded of the harsh reality of modern living and would prefer to regress to the fantasy world of talking bears and faraway trees provided by our favourite books from childhood.

It would seem more and more people are discovering that childhood books can be the key to stress relief and happiness. In her book 'The Happiness Project', Gretchen Rubin talks about how her initiative to start a children's literature book group for adults and her discovery that more people than she thought shared her passion for children's books. For Gretchen it was about 'returning to the world of stark good and evil, of talking animals and fulfilled prophecies.'

For me it was all about the nostalgia for a time when I could curl up on the sofa and disappear into a great book or film without nagging thoughts about work, money and other daily stresses circling around my head. So next time you are feeling stressed out with modern life, why not take a trip to the library and pick up a children's book, it maybe just what you were looking for.

Do any of you still read children's books or watch movies from your childhood? Why do you find yourself still drawn to them?


All pictures courtesy of Amazon.co.uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8783522/Why-do-adults-like-childrens-books-Blame-modern-life.html

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/07/are-you-looking.html

When obsession leads to a hidden treasure.

Ever since Gladiator first captivated me eleven years ago and introduced me to the wonderful world of cinema, I have obsessed with seven actors who all fall into the handsome, talented, intense performers category.

My addictive personality ensures that when I develop an interest in an actor, I have to know everything about them and their body of work. I will track down any magazine article, surf the web for interviews and attempt to watch and collect everything in their back catalogue of work.

Recently I realised that these back catalogue collections  have led me to discover some underrated film treasures that would normally have gone unnoticed had it not been for my obsession.

Often it is easy to get stuck in a rut of movie watching. Influenced by cinema listings, movie magazines, sequels, remakes and our favourite genres it is easy to stay within your comfort zone of film viewing. However, the discovery of an actor or actress can lead you to some fascinating little gems.

So over the next few weeks, I plan on delving into these actors' back catalogues and picking out for you, what I believe is their stand out performance and an underrated gem, which I feel you should check out.  My chosen actors are Joaquin Phoenix, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr, Gary Oldman, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Tom Hardy.

In the meantime, I would love to know which actors/actresses are your favourites and which of their films you believe is a hidden gem.

All photos courtesy of IMDB.