: a widow holding a title or property from her deceased husband
: a dignified elderly woman
(That word is courtesy of Dame Maggie Smith's character in Downton Abbey)
Well, it's all movies today, folks. The first two major critics awards of the year have been announced - the New York Times and the less prestigious National Board of Review.
It's looking like this might be the year of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathyrn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their surprise Oscar winner of three years ago, The Hurt Locker. Released within the next two weeks, this is the exciting, gritty account of the hunt for (and eventually killing) of Osama Bin Laden; in the lead role, Jessica Chastain has suddenly become a major Best Actress candidate. The film is set to sweep the critics awards.
Everyone's frontrunner Daniel Day-Lewis (as Honest Abe) Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Sally Field (Lincoln), Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained), and Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike and Bernie) have all won early awards too alongside Chastain.
Out of the blue winners Rachel Weisz and Ann Dowd have burst into the hunt too with their performances as, respectively, a depressed, suicidal woman in the acclaimed adaptation of the great Terrence Rattigan play The Deep Blue Sea (one of my fave plays) and, in Dowd's case, a fast-food manager ordered by a mysterious policeman to question one of the store's employees in the independent, insanely well-reviewed Compliance, a based-on-true-events nightmare that I had hitherto never heard of - but now really really really want to see; Dowd also was a character actress nominally unfamiliar to me.
Golden Globe and SAG nominations are announced next week!
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Here are the new movies opening this weekend:
Playing For Keeps Well, despite the abysmal reviews, I still want to see this sporty romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler as a former soccer pro wooing all the suburban Virginia mommies (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman, Judy Greer), trying to reconcile with his wife (Jessica Biel), coach his son's team, and a generally just being a well-intentioned misogynist fool - classic Butler. Dennis Quaid co-stars.
Verdict: Mildly Intersted
Hyde Park on Hudson It seems to possess all the credentials for a great Oscar season film: excellent director (Roger Michell, Morning Glory, Venus, Notting Hill)l a historical account/lesson involving royalty (including some of the characters featured in The King's Speech) and a U.S. president; knockout performances - by Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as his spinster cousin; wartime intrigue; sex. So why the tepid reviews?
Verdict: Interested
Deadfall This one looks like a kindred spirit of A Simple Plan. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are a couple of casino robbers trying to make their way through a blizzard to the Canadian border. It's a movie, folks, so you know it won't be easy. Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek, Kate Mara, and Treat Williams co-star. Critics are saying it's run-of-the-mill.
Verdict: Interested
Bad Kids Go to Hell Just what the title says. A horror-film take on The Breakfast Club, this jokey, gory outing about a group of bad kids who mysteriously start getting picked off one by one during an afternoon detention session. Judd Nelson had a cameo, natch. Need I say more?
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Lay the Favorite It's always a treat to have a Stephen Frears movie on our hands... alas, critics say, just not this one. Good cast: Rebecca Hall, Joshua Jackson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon. Hall is an ex-stripper who moves to Las Vegas and finds unexpected success as a sort of muse for a powerful bookie (Willis). It just doesn't even sound that good.
Verdict: Not Interested
The Fitzgerald Family Christmas A new Edwards Burns movie! In which he returns to his Brothers McMullen style: the bickerings and tribulations of an Irish working class family on Long Island! Are we excited yet?
Verdict: Not Interested
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A new month - well, six days ago it was new - means it's time for ten more films to be added to my list of Charles' 200 Essential American Films. This will take us up to 120.
(Mostly-Comedy Edition)
The Awful Truth (1937; directed by Leo McCarey)
As a divorced couple and opposing counsels on a difficult marital case, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are so lovable, funny, fast-talking, and quick-witted that you could never see anybody else in these roles or with this chemistry.
Blue Velvet (1986; David Lynch)
That surreal opening set to the Bobby Vinton song; the ear in the field; Dennis Hopper in the gas mask; Dean Stockwell singing "In Dreams"... Need I go on?
Bringing Up Baby (1938; Howard Hawks)
Zany, zany, zany! Hepburn, Cary Grant (how many great movies has he been in?) and that adorable, sneaky pet leopard!
His Girl Friday (1940; Howard Hawks)
Magic. Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, and co-stars talk so fast, so so so so fast in this sidesplitting (a word I almost never use) look at a crack newspaper team. Grant is in perfect form, bur Russell just might give the greatest performance by an actress in a comedy ever.
It Happened One Night (1934; Frank Capra)
Gable + Colbert = Oscar gold. There's so much to like about this mismatched-lovers-on-the-road comedy. All the scenes and moments you know still hold up. Favorite for me: The Wall of Jericho.
My Left Foot (1989; Jim Sheridan)
In which you can make a serious argument that Daniel Day-Lewis gives the greatest performance in the history of movies.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008; Danny Boyle)
A fast-paced, style-drenched, Dickensian, romantic, bouncily-scored romp through modern India, with great songs and images, lorded over by the unique, dizzying mastery of Danny Boyle. Jai Ho!
Other monthly selections:
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942; Orson Welles)
Manhattan (1979; Woody Allen)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962; Robert Mulligan)
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Animal of the day:
Deep-sea Blob Sculpin
Yikes! Found in the deep, deep waters of the northern Pacific, this bottom cruiser is one ugly creature. They have massive rubbery heads and are covered all over by cirri - spine-like little daggers. They are sluggish and lazy, waiting for their food to come to them, and are often caught up in the trawls of deep-sea fishermen.
Images courtesy of:
http://twentyfourframes.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/theawfultruth-photo.jpg
http://ttcritic.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mp_main_wide_hisgirlfriday.jpg
http://moviemusereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/my_left_foot_the_story_of_christy_brown_1989.jpg
http://gothamist.com/attachments/byakas/hyde-park-on-hudson-murray-fdr.jpg
http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/02e5/BadKidsGotoHell.jpg
Information courtesy of:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4205
http://fishbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/blob-sculpin-psychrolutes-phrictus.jpg
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