The King's Speech Trailer!

It won at Toronto. I cannot WAIT for this one! I hope this is the one that finally gets Colin Firth his Oscar.

A Single Man - Mini-Review

Dear Mr. Ford,

I became interested in your film A Single Man long ago, when I first heard about who was starring.  I love Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode, and the story sounded very interesting.  I loved the beautiful trailers, and the production looked gorgeous.  I didn't expect to be so incredibly moved by your film, your directorial debut.

When I saw A Single Man, I first started to cry during the scene when Colin Firth's character George finds out that his lover of 16 years has died in a car crash.  You only see Colin Firth react to Jon Hamm's voice on the phone, who tells him "only family" can attend the funeral.  I was riveted by Colin Firth's performance, an amazing one for an actor I have followed for years.  You revealed new depths to his acting, especially in that scene.  At the end of the movie, I started to cry, and I sat watching the credits until the theater emptied.  When I was alone, I started sobbing.  I have not had a reaction like that to a film in I can't remember how long.  I was loudly sobbing -- me, a surburban homemaker, so immensely moved by this beautiful film about a man's loneliness and grief.  I may not have been your intended audience, and some may think this is a niche "gay" film.  But George's pain is both universal, and specific to him and his time.  I'm tearing up again just remembering and thinking about A Single Man.

George moves through this one particular day in his life, and he is determined to commit suicide, as live is not worth living with out the love of his live.  At first, I thought there was something wrong with my eyesight, as the film is often in very muted colors and looks washed out, but occasionallly becomes vivid with color.  I realized that it reflects George -- his life is muted and gray, and only comes into brilliant color and focus when he interacts with a few people that day.  One of his students reaches out to him, he meets a sexy hustler, and he spends dinner with his old friend (Julianne Moore) who wishes they had been more than just friends.

With your talents as a fashion designer, I expected the film to look beautiful, and it was truly stunning.  (Matthew Goode has never looked better!)  The production design was done by the same man from Mad Men, and every detail looked perfect.  It was beautiful to look at, but I didn't expect to be so incredibly moved.   Colin Firth very much deserved his Oscar nomination.  It's one of his career best performances.  Julianne Moore was also fabulous (and robbed of a supporting nomination in my opinion).

Thank you Mr. Ford, for making this film, and hope to look forward to many more from you.  Make me cry like that again.

Three and a half stars.  If you love Colin Firth as I do, then this is a must see film.  Just watch this scene where he finds out Jim, his lover of 16 years, has died in a car accident:



That scene continues a little longer with his reaction, and that's when I first lost it watching this movie. Watch the trailer here.

Also, Terry Gross of Fresh Air interviewed both Tom Ford and Colin Firth. Interestingly, Colin Firth talks about how difficult the scene above was to do because it was filmed on election day, and he was so happy that Obama won!

14 Romantic Movies I love from the Last Decade

Valentine's Day is out this weekend, trying to recapture the magic of Love Actually, one of my favorite romantic films from the last ten years.  Are these films all Oscar worthy? No. But I love them, and would stop and watch them again on cable any day. Not necessarily in order:

14. (500) Days of Summer.  That musical dance scene still makes me smile just thinking about it.  I love how this film is not constructed as every other romantic boy meets girl is scripted.  They was robbed for not getting a screenplay Oscar nomination!

13. Moulin Rouge. Ewan McGregor in an angst filled frenetic musical. What's not to love?! And it's Baz!

12. Amelie. A French film filled with whimsy.



11. The Holiday. Jack Black is sweet, but Jude Law redeemed himself to me (somewhat), and that took some doing. He's what we call mommy porn in this movie, and I just try to ignore Cameron Diaz.

10. Far From Heaven. Modeled after the melodramas of the 50's and just beautiful to look at, too.   I'm so excited to hear that the director of Far From Heaven will be doing the 5 part mini-series Mildred Pierce starring Kate Winslet on HBO.  Can't wait!


9. Lost in Translation. Not everyone likes this film, but I adore it. Bill Murray is so great in this, and from someone who knows him, totally himself in it.

8. 40 Year Old Virgin. What could have been just a crass comedy, is actually incredibly sweet. The first of the Judd Appatow dynasty.

7. Pride & Prejudice. Nothing can match Colin Firth's mini-series, but this movie does a great job capturing the essence of the romance in a two hour film.


6. Bridget Jones Diary. Hilarious, and also you have Colin Firth spoofing his own performance as Darcy from the Pride and Prejudice mini-series.

Bridget: Wait a minute... nice boys don't kiss like that.
Mark Darcy: Oh, yes, they f**king do.

5. Twilight. Swoon! An excellent film version of the novel.

4. Once. A simply magical little film. The two musicians in the film became lovers in real life, although I heard they just broke up.

3. Brokeback Mountain. If Heath Ledger won the Oscar for playing the Joker, partly for being robbed for his amazing portrayal of Ennis. I dare you not to cry when he clutches those two shirts, one inside the other at the end.

2. Kate & Leopold. I absolutely adore Hugh Jackman in this movie as the Duke. It's my favorite film of his, and it tickles me pink that he and Liev Shreiber were reunited in Wolverine, where Liev will play Sabretooth.






Horse scene with the purse snatcher:

Leopold: I warn you scoundrel, I was trained at the King's Academy and schooled in weaponry by the palace guard. You stand no chance. When you run, I shall ride, when you stop, the steel of this strap shall be lodged in your brain.
[bag snatcher throws down the bag an flees, onlookers applaud]

Kate: Are you for real?
Leopold: I believe so.

1. Love Actually. I remember seeing this movie in the theater with a friend, and the first thing she said when it ended was, "I want to see it again!" There are so many great moments in this movie (Hugh Grant dancing!), but I love Colin Firth and his maid who only speaks Portuguese. He learns enough to come back and propose to her:

[in Portuguese]
Jamie: Beautiful Aurelia, I've come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person - because I hardly knows you - but sometimes things are so transparency, they don't need evidential proof. And I will inhabit here, or you can inhabit with me in England.

Actors and Directors in Vanity Fair

I got my Vanity Fair in the mail today, and here are three of my favorite pictures from the photo series of actors and directors:

 

 

Pics of the stars of A Single Man

A Single Man Director Tom Ford took these gorgeous pics of four of the stars of the movie - Colin Firth, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult and Julianne Moore.  Yowza!

New Clip from A Single Man

A Single Man 2nd Trailer

Wow. Just so visually gorgeous. You can tell the design is similar to Mad Men, which makes sense as it is the same team. I cannot wait to see Colin Firth's performance. It will have a limited run in December to qualify for the Oscars, but hopefully will make it out to the suburbs like mine in early 2010.

A Single Man is a 2009 American drama film directed by Tom Ford. The film is based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same name and stars Colin Firth as the protagonist George Falconer, a gay British college professor living in Southern California. The rest of the cast includes Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult. The film is Ford's directorial debut.

The production design was done by the same team that created the production sets in Mad Men, which is also set in the sixties.

A Single Man Trailer

I've been waiting for this one. It's getting great reviews in Venice at the film festival, and Colin Firth won Best Actor there.

Some of those shots of Matthew Goode are beyond gorgeous!

The film is the first directed by Tom Ford, the famous fashion designer, who also co-wrote the film.

Firth, who plays a gay professor mourning the death of his partner in Ford's adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's landmark 1964 novel, said on accepting the Volpi Cup: "I'm here for the gift that Tom Ford gave me."

The 48-year-old fashion designer "had a cause that he put in my hands, so it became a very important thing for me as well", Firth said.

Ford told AFP earlier: "I didn't want this to be a 'gay film.' It's a universal film, about love and connection ... The character happens to be gay, so what?"

Dorian Gray Trailer

Yum! I knew Ben Barnes had been working on Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, but I had no idea Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona) co-starred, or that Colin Firth was also in it!

Owning Mr. Darcy

From The Times

Today, a handful of die-hard fans were engaged in a bitter bidding war to own a piece of the smouldering aristocrat who won the hearts of millions in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice.

A portrait of Firth as Mr Darcy, which hung in the character’s fictional mansion in the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel, was finally auctioned for £12,000 at Bonhams today, double its estimated price. The oil painting, which shows the actor gazing soulfully through the canvas in full period costume, featured in the fourth episode of the drama in which Elizabeth visits Darcy’s ravishing country estate, Pemberley.

It was accompanied at auction by a signed letter from Firth, who sent women nationwide into a collective swoon when he emerged from a lake tousled and dripping in a wet shirt during the same episode.

The actor wrote: “The painting was basically a bit part player in episode four of the BBC’s 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice.

“Looking at him now I would say he has weathered better than most of us. In fact, he is the only character you can meet in person who looks precisely as he did the day he was filmed.

“Whatever you think of him today, you can consider yourselves fortunate to have been spared his earliest incarnation. Mr Darcy Mark 1 came across as a shabby, insubstantial, derelict-looking actor.”

The so called “wet shirt scene”, which comes just after Elizabeth is shown gazing dreamily at the portrait hanging in Pemberley’s Great Hall, is credited with being one of the most unforgettable moments in British TV history.

The painting sold for twice the estimated amount, and proceeds were donated to charity.

You can see the $16,500 portrait in my friend Sooth's Pride and Prejudice fan video set to the song Eden. One of my all time favorites that I love to watch on my iPod.

Mamma Meryl!

Great article in the TimesOnline about the upcoming Mamma Mia! I didn't recognize that Stellan Skarsgard of Beowulf is in Mamma Mia!!

Reports from early test screenings are universally positive - the audiences who have seen it at a secret showing in San Diego came out raving about the transfer of the musical to the big screen.

The surprise?

That Meryl Streep, at 58, is athletic, has a big voice - clear, true and strong - and delivers the goods on Abba's classics without a trace of embarrassment. It is, obviously, her first musical, and the deep thinkers in Hollywood are amazed by the way she is apparently happy to demolish her reputation as a serious-minded Oscar-winning grande dame.

And yet Streep, who is known for her hard-to-live-with perfectionism and love of tricky bits of acting technique and odd accents, emerges from this film as a woman who is accomplished at physical comedy and actually funny when the occasion demands.

'Meryl is very good - it's a revelation,' says one who has seen the film, in which she plays Donna, the mother of a bride-to-be who is confronted by three potential fathers on the eve of her nuptials.

It transpires that Streep saw the stage show in New York with her daughter as a birthday treat and wrote a fan letter to the producers afterwards.

When it came to casting the movie, the letter was remembered and she was approached.
They called and said: "You probably won't be interested, but…"

I said: "Are you crazy? I would love to do this." It was a done deal,' said Streep.

There seems to have been a little on-set rivalry and tension between the men - not to mention anxiety - about how they were doing so far out of their usual leading-man comfort zones. It's a long way from playing Darcy to belting out Dancing Queen.

Brosnan, who, of course, played James Bond, was discomfited to be filming musical numbers at Pinewood directly after Daniel Craig's Casino Royale wrapped.

'I looked in the mirror and there was 007, and he was getting ready to expose himself to possible ridicule.
'One of my fears was that I'd be strutting across the carpark in sequined tights and I would bump into Daniel looking very Bond-like. It never happened, I'm pleased to say, but it was a recurring nightmare.'

Firth, though, seems to be the most embarrassed of all of them by the undignified performance he has given.

Firth said his singing voice was 'somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem'.

He added that the scene in which the three men appear in Lycra catsuits was particularly mortifying.

'There are bulges where there should not be bulges and no bulges where you wish there were.'

Read the rest here!

Colin Firth on Daily Show

Colin Firth discusses his penis being photographed with Jon Stewart: