Blu-Review: BROKEN EMBRACES

Written and Directed by Pedro Almodovar


If you’ve fallen before, it is easy to fall again and again for Pedro Almodovar. His works are always sumptuous and sincerely passionate, with strong female characters braving through emotional turmoil. His latest, BROKEN BEMBRACES, is certainly no different in terms of tone but Almodovar becomes his own worst enemy as he dives head first into a complicated plot that he barely manages to get out of.


Almodovar muse, Penelope Cruz, is a the top of her game, which is only more impressive when you consider that her character is essentially comprised of three different women. She is an actress playing a part in a movie but she also pretends when she comes home and plays the part of a doting wife to a controlling man she doesn’t love. The only time she can be herself is when she is in the arms of the director who is shooting the movie she is in. There is more than enough to work with there but Almodovar shoots in another ex-lover as well as troubled offspring and we haven’t even started talking about the movie within the movie within the movie. Almodovar is pushing himself visually but in order to get through to the other side of his own plot, he has to force some lengthy sequences that slow the film down significantly.


I was actually quite taken with BROKEN EMBRACES when I first saw it but I lost some interest the second time around and the BD extras, including a new short film from the director, did little to get that interest back. This is definitely not the film you want to use to introduce Almodovar to your friends. The traditional Almodovar tone is still intact and fans will forgive but unfortunately they may also forget.

FILM AND EXTRAS:

Black Sheep @ The Box Office

And Black Sheep returns to the box office after a long and arduous awards season. Arduous might be a bit of a stretch but I'm in a bit of a dramatic mood today so just roll with it. It would have been great to come back last weekend to celebrate the phenomenal success of ALICE IN WONDERLAND but there were those pesky Oscars last weekend. Instead, we're here to see the Tim Burton film cross the $200 million mark in only its second weekend. In fact, at ten days to cross, it is the 11th fastest film in history to accomplish the feat, just a few million shy of AVATAR's same pace. I'm not suggesting that we should expect AVATAR size business here but it's only about $40 million shy of surpassing BATMAN as Burton's most successful film.


Four other films debuted in the Top 10 this weekend but none made any sort of significant dent. Leading the charge was the Paul Greengrass / Matt Damon pairing, GREEN ZONE. Pulling in an average of less than $5K per screen means it will be a big stretch for this one to make back any of its reported $100 million budget. Stealing third place from Robert Pattinson is Canadian boy, Jay Baruchel's headlining act, SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE. The lighter fare brought in a light gross but one that improved over teen romance, REMEMBER ME as the weekend went on. Subsequently, the Pattinson vehicle had to settle for fourth, proving lack of interest in the star past his turn in the "Twilight" movies. Opening in sixth place was the Fox Searchlight title, OUR FAMILY WEDDING. Essentially, with ALICE IN WONDERLAND monopolizing the global business these past two weekends, little interest is being generated for anything else.


Speaking of little interest, although the Oscar telecast last Sunday was the highest rated since 2005, most of the films that took home awards were no longer playing in theatres. Best Picture winner, THE HURT LOCKER, was rereleased in 75 new theatres and took in about $825K, allowing the film to actually make back its reported budget. DVD/BD sales saw great increases but this is the lowest grossing Best Picture winner in Oscar history and that is not about to change. Meanwhile, if it had won, AVATAR would have been the highest grossing Best Picture winner and it suffered another scant 18% decline this week. CRAZY HEART, starring Best Actor winner, Jeff Bridges, slipped just 6% and THE BLIND SIDE, starring Best Actress winner, Sandra Bullock, saw a bum of 24% seventeen weeks into its run for a grand total of $252 million.

NEXT WEEK: Big week people ... THE BOUNTY HUNTER, starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, hits 3000 screens. On 3100 screens, family hopeful, DIARY OF A WIMPY KID opens. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are REPO MEN on 2400 screens. Sundance film, THE RUNAWAYS, with Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett hits 225 screens. And the latest film by one of my favorite directors, Noah Baumbach, GREENBERG, starts its limited run on 3 screens.

SOURCE: BOX OFFICE MOJO

GREEN ZONE

Written by Brian Helgeland
Directed Paul Greengrass
Starring Matt Damon, Amy Ryan and Greg Kinnear


Freddy: It is not up to you to decide what happens here.

GREEN ZONE marks the third time actor, Matt Damon, has worked with director, Paul Greengrass. Their previous work on the second and third “Bourne” films must have been pretty mind blowing because Damon has since vowed never to reprise the role that brought him international fame unless Greengrass is at the helm. This action pairing is a new Hollywood powerhouse or at least that’s what Damon and Greengrass would like to think and what the studio is selling. Just like the weapons of mass destruction that are being sought out in the movie though, these claims are based on false intelligence.


Perhaps if Greengrass had not kept Damon running up and down dark alleys all the time, he might have been able to see that the premise of GREEN ZONE had already been brought to light years ago. Damon plays Miller, an army chief on mission to locate WMD’s in the weeks following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Shockingly enough, he does not find any and Miller, being the super soldier that he is, figures out that there must be something wrong with the intelligence if he keeps coming up empty handed. He then decides to take matters, and by matters I mean the entire Iraq war, into his own hands and figure out why the U.S. is there to begin with. You may not believe this but the conspiracy involves the C.I.A., the press and the American government.


Maybe if Greengrass hadn’t given instruction to the entire cast to yell at the top of their lungs most of the way through the film, he would have heard how dated the script was. How is accusing the American government on film of fabricating reasons to invade Iraq innovative at all? I almost wanted to laugh at how serious GREEN ZONE takes itself, as if it truly believes it is making a brave point. The laughter stopped pretty quick though and then turned to anger. This is not a brave point. This is exploitation of a now mainstream acceptance of how America duped the world. Brave would have been saying this years ago. Pretending to be brave is just plain cowardly.

Black Sheep Live @ The Oscars

Evening Black Sheepers .. Sitting here, drinkin' my G&T and about to feast on much yumminess and much extravagance. I'll be updating the winners all night and tweeting live with whatever musings come to my or any of my party guest's minds. If you're not already following, here is the link:

http://twitter.com/blacksheeprevs

Three awards so far and three great choices. Sure I would have liked to see a Fantastic Mr. Fox upset but an Up win is still a great thing. I'm also loving how they are actually honouring the nominted films and performers for their actual work. Even Martin and Baldwin and just going on about movies they love. This is what the Oscar's should be about.

Here are the winners so far:

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Christoph Waltz in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
UP

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
THE WEARY KIND from CRAZY HEART by Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett

I actually got the chance to catch the animated and live action shorts this year and I decided to vote what I thought should win rather than what was predicted to see how I would do. I was wrong on both counts. Just wait until I am a voting member.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
LOGORAMA

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
MUSIC BY PRUDENCE

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
THE NEW TENANTS

BEST MAKEUP
STAR TREK

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
PRECIOUS by Geoffrey Fletcher

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Mo'nique in PRECIOUS

BEST ART DIRECTION
AVATAR

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
THE YOUNG VICTORIA

BEST SOUND EDITING
THE HURT LOCKER

BEST SOUND MIXING
THE HURT LOCKER

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
AVATAR

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
UP

BEST VISUAL EFFECT
AVATAR

BEST FILM EDITING
THE HURT LOCKER

Is it true what they say about the picture winning Film Editing going on to win Best Picture?

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
EL SECRETO DE SUS OJOS

BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges in CRAZY HEART

BEST ACTRESS
Sandra Bullock in THE BLIND SIDE

BEST DIRECTOR
Kathryn Bigelow for THE HURT LOCKER

BEST PICTURE
THE HURT LOCKER

There you have it. folks. THE HURT LOCKER takes five out of nine awards and Oscar gets it right this year. A classy affair this evening. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am now zonked though. Good night!

Black Sheep Talks Oscar

Morning all. Yesterday I was on a radio show in Montreal entitled, Arts Week, to discuss the Academy Awards. Here is the audio from that broadcast. Click the link and it will download a file to your computer, which you can then listen to on your media player. The show runs an hour long but my first segment starts at 17 minutes in and my second smaller bit starts at 39:35.

Here is the radio link.

Black Sheep will be live Tweeting the Oscars tonight so if you have not yet subscribed to Black Sheep's Twitter page, now would be the time to do it. Click here.

Enjoy the radio show and enjoy the Academy Awards!

The 2009 Mouton d'Or Awards

Awards season has been particularly long this year with the Vancouver Olympics pushing the end date into March but the time has finally arrrived. It is now time to reveal the 2009 Mouton d'Or Awards!

2009 was a great year in film and with so many personal changes in my own life scattered throughout the year, it is wonderful to have so many standout films to associate with them. That said, it was not a year where any one film ultimately stood out past the others and this is reflected in the Mouton d'Or winners here today. The love has been spread pretty equally, with all the major nominees each picking up at least one award.

As this is the second time I actually write this piece because my computer shut down before I was able to save any of this yesterday, I suggest getting straight to it before I lose it all once again. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2009 Mouton d'Or Awards!



NOMINEES:
AVATAR
DISTRICT 9
STAR TREK
UP
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

This first award was not an easy decision. It came down to two films at the end and while I could not have been more impressed with STAR TREK, there was something even more other worldly about Neill Blomkamp's DISTRICT 9 that had me completely transported to that version of Earth. DISTRICT 9 gets better every time I see it and it was by far, the most exhilerating time I had in theatres all year.



NOMINEES:
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
THE HURT LOCKER
J'AI TUE MA MERE (I KILLED MY MOTHER)
SIN NOMBRE

Each of these five films was a unique experience for me when I saw them and each one reminded me how much I like smaller movies that accomplish bigger things than they probably thought they could. Kathryn Bigelow's THE HURT LOCKER is the perfect example of how you can go into something with little resources but a well thought out plan and come out with something mind blowing. THE HURT LOCKER is the technical success of the year!



NOMINEES:
THE FINAL DESTINATION
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
THE LOVELY BONES
OBSERVE AND REPORT
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON

Fine, you're right. Richard Kelley's THE BOX was not originally nominated in this category. Let me assure you though that this only speaks further to how horrible it truly is. Had I caught this film in theatres last year as I was originally scheduled to, it most certainly would have been included amongst these nominees. Timing should not stop me from declaring what a dreadful mess this movie is though. From the very beginning, it is one ludicrous decision after another and it never recovers. An interesting hypothetical does not a good movie make.



NOMINEES:
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
AVATAR
DISTRICT 9
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
UP
UP IN THE AIR

DISTRICT 9 did not make the graphic as it received the least number of votes in this category. The remaining nominees all split their votes almost equally. Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS however, easily doubled the next highest vote-getter. This is the second year for this category and I've got to say you guys made the right choice once again. It may not have been shortlisted for my top films of the year but there is no denying how incredible this film is. Good choice, readers! I love you guys!



NOMINEES:
Marion Cotillard in NINE
Vera Farmiga in UP IN THE AIR
Anna Kendrick in UP IN THE AIR
Mo'Nique in PRECIOUS
Julianne Moore in A SINGLE MAN

Mo'Nique is a monster in PRECIOUS as a mother who is continuing the cycle of abuse that she has suffered her whole life with her daughter. Her turn is so ferocious that every other nominee here, though great, could not come close to the intensity Mo'Nique captured here. She has earned herself great credit and shown a side of her talents that I'm not sure anyone saw coming. Mo'Nique has created an iconic screen villain.



NOMINEES:
Matt Damon in INVICTUS
Alfred Molina in AN EDUCATION
Christopher Plummer in THE LAST STATION
Stanley Tucci in THE LOVELY BONES
Christoph Waltz in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

This category has been locked up all year and that is in part due to a lack of competition. Christoph Waltz exploded off the screen in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and everyone has been talking about him since. Nobody even knew who he was before this. Well, Tarantino must have. There was no more hilarious moment in film this year then when Waltz bursts into hysterical laughter at the sound of Brad Pitt's ridiculous Italian accent.



NOMINEES:
AVATAR
DISTRICT 9
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

I had the opportunity to catch Spike Jonze's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE a second time this week and I was once again blown away by the visual style. Not only do you have the starkly realistic look applied to such a fantastical story but you also have these gorgeous, mammoth monsters. It was imaginative and yes, wild, but it was the fact that it all looked believable that made it unforgettable.



NOMINEES:
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
NINE
A SINGLE MAN
UP
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

I am a huge Michael Giacchino fan. He is one of today's most incredible composers and the score he created for UP is some of his finest work. He captures the feel of flying through the air but is sure to ground the incredible story in some very real moments. When you leave the movie, you will leave humming his tunes.



NOMINEES:
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS
CORALINE
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
PONYO
UP

This award has always been called the Trevor Adams Animated Feature Award and this is the first year that I have removed his name from the title. The award was originally named after Trevor, a great friend of mine, because he single handedly showed me a side of animated film that I had not yet seen. The reason his name has been removed now is because I cannot see him getting on board with voting Wes Anderson's FANTASTIC MR. FOX over a Pixar feature. Still, Anderson created something truly marvelous to behold and I hope that it finds a wider audience as the years go by.



NOMINEES:
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
THE HURT LOCKER
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
A SERIOUS MAN
UP

There is one movie I saw this year that constantly makes me beam with happiness. That movie is (500) DAYS OF SUMMER. It isn't perfect and the tone isn't always right but this modern exploration of relationships is the closest thing I've seen to the real thing since ANNIE HALL. It breaks my heart but gives me hope all at once. With everything I went through personally this year, it's wonderful to remember that love isn't perfect but beautiful while it lasts. And it will forever remind me of one guy.



NOMINEES:
DISTRICT 9
AN EDUCATION
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
A SINGLE MAN
UP IN THE AIR

One movie this year taught me some very important lessons about life, love and what it means to be a girl. That movie was AN EDUCATION and Nick Hornby's brilliant screenplay captures the nuances of where a girl's life could go with such subtlety and grace. His words are so carefully chosen and so eloquent that they resonate moments after they're uttered.



NOMINEES:
Helen Mirren in THE LAST STATION
Carey Mulligan in AN EDUCATION
Maya Rudolph in AWAY WE GO
Gabourey Sidibe in PRECIOUS
Meryl Streep in JULIE & JULIA

I cannot understand why all of the awards buzz has been handed out to Streep and Bullock when there are such powerful performances from newcomers, Mulligan and Sidibe. I have to favour Sidibe though because I actually met her this past year. She was the complete opposite of her character in Lee Daniels's PRECIOUS, which gave me mad respect for her. It also further exposed the same ignorance inside of me that the film did.



NOMINEES:
Jeff Bridges in CRAZY HEART
George Clooney in UP IN THE AIR
Colin Firth in A SINGLE MAN
Morgan Freeman in INVICTUS
Michael Stuhlbarg in A SERIOUS MAN

I have to say that I have never really been a big Colin Firth fan but to watch him in Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN is almost to see him for the first time. The weight with which he carries the character of George is so dense that it is impossible not to give him your entire heart. As beautiful as the entire film is, it is Firth's performance that makes the whole thing memorable.



NOMINEES:
Kathyn Bigelow for THE HURT LOCKER
James Cameron for AVATAR
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for A SERIOUS MAN
Lee Daniels for PRECIOUS
Jason Reitman for UP IN THE AIR

Jason Reitman just knows what he's doing. After just three films, he has proven that he can tackle almost anything. His sensitivity is moving but still he tells his story with such class and frankness that you cannot help respect him for all that he's done. He tapped in to a contemporary sensibility that is rarely achieved in film in such a quick and effective manner. He will surely grow a great deal more as his career progress.

And finally, without any further ado, I am pleased to present the 2009 Mouton d'or for Best Picture ...



NOMINEES:
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER
DISTRICT 9
AN EDUCATION
PRECIOUS
UP IN THE AIR

There you have it, folks. Another great year for film; another great year for Black Sheep. Thank you for all your continued support and thank you for celebrating the 2009 Mouton d'Or Awards. I was happy to have you.

Best of Black Sheep: THE HURT LOCKER

Written by Mark Boal
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty


Colonel Reed: What’s the best way to go about disarming one of these things?
Staff Sergeant William James: The way you don’t die.

It is no secret that Iraq war movies are a hard sell to both audiences and critics these days. Audiences seem to want nothing to do with watching the hardships of their fellow countrymen on screen and critics can’t seem to agree on any one picture that gets it right … until now, that is. Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER still has to prove itself at the box office but has almost universally wowed the critics, including this one. It has done so by stripping itself of any pretense or need to speak out against the war. No, Bigelow’s take is not one of condemnation but one that is simply humane and frank about reality. THE HURT LOCKER may just usher in a new breed of post-war films, despite the war not actually being finished. Perhaps this is why the film works – because it isn’t about the war itself but rather the effort to clean up the mess that was made.


The title, THE HURT LOCKER, refers to a place of pain that you cannot get out of. In this case, the hurt locker is Baghdad but there is hope. For Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Remmer) and his crewmen, JT Sandborn and Owen Eldridge (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty), their particular hurt locker has an expiry date on it when we meet them. These three men, all admirable and all seemingly stable, form a team called the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). This is a fancy way of saying bomb squad and together, they have about three weeks or so left in their tour. Bigelow shot over 200 hours of footage, using sometimes four cameras at a time when shooting, to capture an authentic documentary style. The cutting is sometimes so quick that we go from patrolling the perimeter to guarding the rooftops to being right at the side of the bomb. Subsequently, we are the fourth members of this EOD and this becomes our hurt locker as well.


Bigelow (perhaps most famous for directing Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves in POINT BREAK, way back when the first gulf war was coming to a close) brings a feminine sensibility to THE HURT LOCKER that removes the obnoxious male ego we are so accustomed to in war films. Sure, team leader, James does things his way and that gets him into trouble from time to time but he doesn’t do it to get in anyone’s face and he doesn’t do it to prove he is a big man. He does it, from what I gathered because Bigelow is subtle enough to let us do the thinking ourselves, because he is good at it. For James, this is not a hurt locker; this is home, where he knows that who he is and what he is good at is being put to its best use. Remmer (most recently seen in TV’s now cancelled “The Unusuals”) is a great leader for both the team and the film; his presence and dedication command respect from them and admiration from us.


Of course, dismantling bombs is no Iraqi picnic. The true genius of THE HURT LOCKER stems from Bigelow’s handling of Mark Boal’s delicate script. (Boal spent time with an EOD squad to write the script.) Like the men on screen, Bigelow has no interest in the superfluous. She has a job to do and if she doesn’t do it right, it will blow up in her face and take down anyone in the immediate radius. Despite this, she gets right up in the face of the bomb without fear at all times and somehow manages to make an explosive film about making sure explosions don’t happen.

Best of Black Sheep: PRECIOUS interviews (part two)

An interview with director, Lee Daniels and star, Gabby Sidibe


Now that PRECIOUS has started playing in limited release, I will finally get an answer to something I’ve been wondering since I saw it last September. Will audiences choose to see a film in theatres knowing that it will likely kick them in the gut repeatedly, leaving them bloody and bruised on the floor? It broke records on 18 screens last weekend and unrolls onto another 174 screens this weekend. Lionsgate plans to push it to 600 screens in time for Thanksgiving, a holiday that Precious herself would never have had the opportunity to experience.

It has been selling out screenings all week so the future looks bright. I am both pleased and relieved by this. The biggest impact PRECIOUS has on its viewer is to bring a mirror to the viewer’s face, exposing a layer of ignorance so deep that the viewer may not even be aware of it prior. Precious is the kind of girl one walks right past in the street while casually judging her weight and making presumptions about who she is as a person. PRECIOUS forces you to think about how every person has a story that brought them to precisely where they are. The film has the potential wake people up, to make them more open but we cannot see how closed we are if we never walk past her to begin with.

When asked how he did it, director, Lee Daniels, attributes this effect to one specific approach in his direction. “I just tried to capture moments of truth.” And the truth subsequently follows through on its promise to set things free.


These moments of truth depended on Daniels getting his cast to understand their characters’ truths and with a cast that consists of an unknown, a comedienne and a diva, that could not have been easy.

“I knew exactly what I wanted from every one,” Daniels answers when asked about the eclectic cast. “I knew when I hired them what I was going to get.”

I’m glad he knew because I would never have suspected that any of these actors were capable of pulling the sincerity from their souls that they did. In fact, I would never have necessarily referred to a couple of them as actual actors. Again though, it is about opening your mind and that is clearly what Daniels got them to do.

“Mr. Daniels and I had so many conversations about who this character was and that helped me get it,” Precious herself, Gabby Sidibe, admits when asked how she found this character. Her trust in her director was so strong she even refused to talk to the author of the original book, Sapphire, prior to filming. “I didn’t want any different direction about who this character was. The creator of this character, she really could have thrown me off.”

With that much trust in the captain, how exactly does he run his ship? “When I am doing a film, it is very much like a theatre piece,” Lee begins. “There are no egos except mine.” Having worked in theatre, I can attest that this is pretty much the only way it comes together but does Daniels seriously expect me to believe that Mariah or Mo’Nique left their egos at home?


“Mariah came with zero – no posse, no makeup – and she remained that way. She was putting makeup on Gabby. Mo’Nique was feeding people at the service table.” Daniels beams with pride as he tells me this. “It was a union nightmare but I believed that we were one. I think that’s the magic of the film.”

With material as difficult as this, I cannot imagine the cast not bonding. If anything, they would need to in order to just get through it all. Still, it could not have been an easy set to be on.

“The air was stale and shady sometimes,” admits Sidibe. “Most of the time, Mr. Daniels would call cut and we would laugh. With other scenes though, between takes we would just sit there and avoid eye contact.”

Daniels remembers it the same way but he seems as if part of him is still there. “I get transported back into just being there,” Daniels confides but not before getting choked up and noticeably emotional. “It was a very powerful thing, to just let the material speak for itself.”

So what is the secret formula to make something as tricky as this work so beautifully? “Anything to get the performance!” Daniels proclaims before getting specific about his technique. “I didn’t want tears at all. By not wanting tears, we got the truth. So by not directing them, I did direct them. I knew that if we were just in the moment, then it would happen.”

I will point out at this stage that there are plenty of tears in PRECIOUS. Daniels may not have asked for them but he still got them.


Mariah and Mo’Nique aside, Sidibe, the only actor coming in with zero experience, is perhaps his greatest achievement. The performance he pulled from her is so transformative that when I met her in person, I was myself floored by her outgoing personality. I never saw that coming.

“I don’t know if I can yet say that I am proud of myself because I can’t really see that yet,” Sidibe earnestly confides. “It feels like such a conceited notion to be proud of yourself. It is a completely different girl up there though.”

This whole other girl is changing the lives of everyone she comes in contact with. But has Precious and the subsequent whirlwind the film has been picked up into changed the girl who brought her to life?

“No,” Sidibe asserts by tacking on at least ten more O’s on the end of that word. “There are maybe ten days out of the year where I’m a big deal so this is still something big for me.”

Wait until you hear your name called out for an Oscar nomination, Gabby. Talk to me then.

It was a pleasure meeting both of these talented, appreciative people. I urge anyone who reads this to see PRECIOUS when it plays in your city. We all need to be set free.

Best of Black Sheep: PRECIOUS interviews (part one)

Interviews with PRECIOUS director, Lee Daniels and star, Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe


It didn’t always have this name. Back in 1996, when Claireece “Precious” Jones was first introduced to the world, it had another name altogether. Back then, it was a book and it was called “Push”. It was still called “Push” when its film incarnation debuted at the Sundance film festival in January of this year. In fact, it was still called “Push” when it went on to win both the audience and the critic’s award at that festival, a rare feat. It was only then that things changed. It had moved people; it had floored them. It was then that “Push” became “Precious”.

More specifically, the film adaptation of Sapphire’s acclaimed novel is called PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL “PUSH” BY SAPPHIRE. And to be fair, the name change did not come about because the new title was more emotionally evocative than the original. A superhero movie called PUSH that came and went pretty quick this spring owned the rights to that name so it was necessary to change it when Lionsgate came on as North American distributor at Sundance. I personally prefer the new title.

“Really? I was so hurt by the change.” This is the first thing that Gabourey Sidibe says to me when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival. Things are off to a great start.


When a little known film producer named Lee Daniels first approached Sapphire about adapting the novel that meant so much to so many, she wanted nothing to do with him. It wasn’t until he had some concrete experience directing (his first feature was the critically panned, SHADOWBOXER, starring Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr.) that she even allowed herself to consider his request. Sapphire appreciated Daniels’ seemingly natural interest in difficult subjects – Daniels had previously produced THE WOODSMAN and MONSTER’S BALL – and figured him the best man for the job.

Once Daniels had the rights, he was not letting go of the direction he wanted to take. “I had fought so long to get to do PRECIOUS. I knew what I wanted and what I was doing. I didn’t care what anybody else said,” Daniels tells me when we meet at TIFF. “It was my book. It was my story.”

While this may at first sound somewhat arrogant, I assure you there is nothing remotely smug about Daniels. In person, he is self-effacing and clearly overwhelmed by the heaps of praise both he and the film have received. He is also warm, receptive and surprisingly candid, whether he is talking about the film, his cast or himself.

Daniels worked with first time screenwriter, Geoffrey Fletcher, to adapt Sapphire’s harrowing stream-of-consciousness novel. It was not easy. “If I had done the book the way it is written, it would be x-rated,” he proclaims rather starkly. “Sapphire’s book delves deep into the truth and stays there. Just when you think you can’t take it anymore, she just goes right back there.”


To alleviate some of the tension the novel manifests, which is not to suggest that Daniels and Fletcher sugarcoated any aspect of it, they included a fantasy world for Precious to escape to whenever necessary. This is the most significant departure from page to screen and, so far, enthusiasts of the novel have not had any major issue with the addition. Of course, everyone involved in the project wanted to honour the book and its fans. “Being a fan of the book, I just really, really wanted to get it right,” confides Sidibe, perhaps the person with the most pressure to perform after Daniels himself. “I wanted to stay true as a fan myself,” she continues. “I hate it when adaptations don’t get it right.”

To meet Sidibe in person is mind-blowing. How could this jovial, delightful girl have transformed herself into such an introvert? Sidibe landed this demanding role in what seemed to her like the blink of an eye. “There weren’t a lot of girls who met the physical requirements of the role,” she quips as if her weight, which was beefed up an extra seventy pounds prosthetically during filming, was the only reason she got the role. “Monday was the audition; Tuesday was the callback; Wednesday I got the part without having to audition again.” Sidibe had responded to an open casting call in Manhattan and prior to this, she had only appeared in some college theatre productions. She seemed destined for this part and now she is an Oscar front-runner. Not bad for her first role.

Destiny, whether that be a great personal triumph or a great tragedy, is central to PRECIOUS. And right now, it would seem that PRECIOUS is destined to reach many people and move even more. Of course, lots of movies move people on a regular basis but PRECIOUS is different. PRECIOUS is an experience that most infrequent filmgoers are unaccustomed to. It deals with illiteracy, poverty, abuse of all kinds, teen pregnancy and incest. When was the last time the masses came out for something like that?


Suddenly, the girl that everyone would walk right past in the street without noticing is the one that everyone wants to see. And who do we have to thank for that? Oprah, of course.

Oprah Winfrey and independent movie mogul, Tyler Perry, both signed on as executive producers after PRECIOUS premiered at Sundance. As a result, the attention the film is getting is almost deafening. It was honoured with standing ovations at Cannes. It won the Audience Award at TIFF. It broke records for limited releases when it hit theatres last weekend, pulling in nearly $2 million on just 18 screens. A Best Picture nomination is almost guaranteed.

How does this affect the director? “I am humbled by all of it,” Daniels states with sincerity and cracks in his voice. “I have to embrace this moment, savour it. That is ultimately what PRECIOUS is all about, appreciating what you have.”

Imagine, there’s only more greatness to come.

Best of Black Sheep: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Written by Spike Jonze and David Eggers
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Max Records, Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo
Voices by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose


Judith: Happiness isn’t always the best way to become happy.

Editor's Note: Sorry guys but this week is a busy one for me. Rather than post Blu-Tuesday yesterday, I will just be reposting this original review of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, now available to rent or own on DVD or BD from Warner Brothers.

It’s been a fair amount of time since I was a young boy. Fortunately for me, it has not been so long that I have grown past the age where I can get completely lost in the wonderful world of Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Jonze must have had to fight his own wild beasts during his lengthy and tumultuous journey to bring the 1963 Maurice Sendak classic picturebook to such exquisite life. Originally due to be released in the spring of 2008, Jonze had to fight the studio to make the film he wanted and believed in when it was being criticized for being too dark a work to be considered a family film. A year and a half later, Jonze has made a film that both parties are happy with and, while it still may be too dark to play to the littler ones, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a modern family classic in every possible sense.


In the original Sendak tale, Max (played here by the precocious boy with the power name, Max Records) is sent to bed without supper for being bad. From there, he escapes to another world complete with a monster community that he incorporates himself into quite nicely. When his adventures are over, he returns home to find a plate of food waiting for him by his bed. At under 500 words, it’s pretty sparse but Jonze, alongside AWAY WE GO co-writer and novelist, David Eggers, has transformed WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE into a contemporary exploration of how a child might deal with the changing face of his family and finding a way to fit in it. Max’s Mom (Catherine Keener) still sends him to bed without supper for acting up but his wild outburst now has context and his adventure offers a healing that stretches past the troubled boy to touch the inner child of anyone watching.


The wild things themselves are mostly giant, furry monsters and precisely where Max stumbles upon them is never pinpointed but, once he gets there, he declares himself king and rightfully so. After all, this place is essentially inside his head and even with the wild things running, well, wild in there, he is still aware enough to know that he is in charge of all these extensions of his own personality. Max’s family issues are mirrored in Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), a monster with his own difficulties keeping his rage in check. Whether the monsters and Max are trying to build a perfect living space or whether they are just pouncing on top of each other in one big giant pile, they are doing things together and the conversations that take place in between are simple musings, not unlike those that Max might have with himself in his mind. Never do Max’s two worlds resolve each other perfectly but nor could one live without the other.


WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is simply unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The screenplay is elegant and uncomplicated; its ferocious beauty is matched only by the magnificence of its aesthetic. With the help of two-time collaborator and handheld guru, Lance Acord, Jonze creates a world that is at times tender and warm while at others, frightening and fragile. Who would ever expect a family film to be so visceral, let alone so disarming? Learning to accept your family, or even life, as it is can be difficult at any age but leaning into it brings security and tames the wildness of the mind. Perhaps we all could stand to learn a lesson from Max and get a little wild when needed instead of always quieting what needs to get out. While WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE may be lost on the truly young, it will not be lost on the young at heart.

Best of Black Sheep: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Bard Pitt, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender, Christoph Waltz and Melanie Laurent


Col. Hans Landa: What a tremendously hostile world that a rat must endure. Yet not only does he survive, he thrives. And that, Monsieur, is what a Jew shares with a rat.

This might sound odd at first but bear with me. Without giving anything away, the final shot of Quentin Tarantino’s sixth film, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS – this is where I need you to bear – shows two characters looking directly into the camera and one declares to the other that this may be his best work yet. It’s just another one of those cheeky Tarantino moments we, that is “we” as in fans of his work, have come to expect and relish in his mostly masterful works. There are times though when a moment like this one ceases to be witty and serves only to allow Tarantino’s gigantic ego to overpower his usually inspired words. This is precisely one of those moments for me. Seeing this, or rather hearing this, did not make me want to stand up and cheer to show how desperately I agree with his assessment of his own work. Instead, it gave me slight pause and allowed me to remove my Tarantino-tinged glasses and ask, “Really, Quentin? You think this is your best work?”


INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS opens and is almost instantly a parody of itself and Tarantino’s previous work. I can’t say this for certain but I don’t think this was his intention. A dramatic spaghetti western score plays over the bold-faced, colorful credits and you watch to see which obscure actors Tarantino handpicked to pop up at pivotal moments (in this case, Mike Myers as British military officer) and more importantly, to see how Tarantino will bill his own credit (in this case, the surprisingly humble, “A film by”). And then the title announces that we are about to witness “Chapter One”, just as we did in KILL BILL. There is nothing wrong with adapting a similar structure for your films to distinguish your style – heck, Woody Allen does it all the time – but, while Allen’s touches are understated, Tarantino’s tone is so distinct and loud that it borders more on bravado than brilliance. Seeing as how the story hasn’t even started at this point, it feels as though he has already shot himself in the foot.


At a 2½ hour running time though, it is hardly fair to judge the film based solely on its opening credits. What follows is a scene that justifies and gives some much needed context to the film’s obnoxious marketing campaign – You haven’t seen a WWII movie if you haven’t seen Tarantino do it (or something relatively like that). It is no secret that Tarantino likes to hear himself speak. His scenes go on far longer than most other directors would allow and the dialogue wraps around itself so many times that it’s a small miracle that his players don’t get dizzy when they stand up. And while this is all play when you have a bunch of guys sitting around a table debating the meaning of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, it is something else entirely when the scene involves an SS officer known as “The Jew Hunter” and a French farmer suspected to be hiding a Jewish family in his home. The longer it goes on, the more tense it becomes and by the time it inevitably turns violent, Tarantino takes no prisoners, just like the Nazis. The style flows about as abundantly and as smoothly as the Nazi blood for the rest of the run time.


At times, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS seems unfocused and overtly gratuitous, even by Tarantino’s standards. (When Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine declares that he wants his scalps, he isn’t kidding.) While it is technically fantastic (safe for a continuity error with Pitt’s unfastened bow tie at one point that I can’t believe Tarantino didn’t notice) and also deeply engrossing, it is the liberties with history that just don’t sit too well with me. During a chilling climax, there are so many dying Nazis surrounded by burning swastika banners that one can practically feel Tarantino watching from the wings to see just how uproarious the cheers from the audience will be. It is hard to cheer though when you know that none of this happened really, that we are being manipulated as an audience to revel in this alternate reality where the doers of one of history’s greatest evils, get what they deserve, Tarantino style. This is especially true when what really happened was already horrific enough.

For Your Consideration 2010

Anybody who knows me, knows that I will take any opportunity to make a new mix CD. This would explain how I'm well past ten years of compilations entitled, "For Your Consideration". This particular mix gets made every year around this time to coincide with the Oscars and features music from the movies of the year prior. I try to include music that represents all the films I loved from the year but that doesn't always work with the flow of the CD. That's why every year, and this year is no different, there are songs included from movies that I didn't care for (NEW MOON, MY SISTER'S KEEPER) and music from movies I adored (WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER).

I am sharing this year's playlist with you in hopes that you too will piece these songs together and enjoy the tunes as your Oscar party guests arrive for the red carpet. I hope you like it.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION 2010

1. A Story of Boy Meets Girl ~ Mychael Danna and Rob Simonsen (500 DAYS OF SUMMER)
2. Us ~ Regina Spektor (500 DAYS OF SUMMER)
3. Married Life ~ Michael Giacchino (UP)
4. Almost There ~ Anika Noni Rose (THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG)
5. The Times They Are A-Changin' ~ Bob Dylan (WATCHMEN)
6. All my Days ~ Alexi Murdoch (AWAY WE GO)
7. Ten Million Slaves ~ Otis Taylor (PUBLIC ENEMIES)
8. Hearing Damage ~ Thom Yorke (THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON)
9. Smoke Without Fire ~ Duffy (AN EDUCATION)
10. Love ~ Nancy Adams (FANTASTIC MR. FOX)
11. Someone Else's Life ~ Joshua Radin (ADAM)
12. Help Yourself ~ Sad Brad Smith (UP IN THE AIR)
13. All Is Love ~ Karen O and the Kids (from WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE)
14. Be Italian ~ Fergie (NINE)
15. Daydreams ~ Abel Korzeniowski (A SINGLE MAN)
16. Great Day ~ Paul McCartney (FUNNY PEOPLE)
17. Amazing Grace ~ Willie Nelson (THE MESSENGER)
18. I Can See in Color ~ Mary J. Blige (PRECIOUS)
19. The Weary Kind ~ Ryan Bingham (CRAZY HEART)
20. She's Out of my Life (demo version) ~ Michael Jackson (THIS IS IT)
21. Feels Like Home ~ Edwina Hayes (MY SISTER'S KEEPER)
22. Out Here On My Own ~ Naturi Naughton (FAME)

Go ahead, download the cover while you're at it! Enjoy.