DebraWinger Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Rachel Getting Married is a terse, smart, funny and tough family drama about forgiveness and failure written by Jenny Lumet; it's also a loose, smart, broad and bright film about family and love directed by Jonathan Demme. When these two things are in sync, the end result is something truly impressive – a moving story that appeals to your heart and soul without insulting your intelligence, a film full of big scenes that never stoops to the most obvious possible iteration of those big scenes, a movie loaded with great and sincere performances from the top down. When the two parts of Rachel Getting Married fall out of synch – as they do, most notably, in the last third of the film during Demme's raucous, joyous post-wedding reception – it's less catastrophic than it is curious, and the final film is still very much worth watching.

Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) is getting married; her little sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) is coming for the big event ... which involves getting picked up from her most recent stay at a rehab clinic. A cynic could look at Hathaway's part in Rachel Getting Married and paraphrase Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder: Always go full rehab. And while it's true that the Academy and critics tend to reward gritty, hyperbolic portraits of drug-addiction's misery, the fact is that Hathaway's Kym is not quite as simple as that. Kym knows all the things she's done wrong; she also knows she'll keep doing some of them. Immediately, in the car, the lines of battle are drawn, with Kym going on the offense as part of her defense mechanisms, asking her dad (Bill Irwin) and step-mother (Anna Deavere Smith) about how Rachel's holding up: "Are all of her latent food issues coming up? Is she still hoarding Snickers and Cool Whip under the bed?" Soon, Kym's plunged into the thick of the preparations for Rachel's wedding, responding to the chaos by adding to it. ...

Less than an hour ago, I'd not a clue about the Jonathan Demme-directed, Anne Hathaway-starring dysfunctional family dramedy, Rachel Getting Married, and having now watched the new trailer over at Yahoo! Movies, I find myself equally reminded of two films I felt were of opposite worth: the winning Pieces of April and the wearying Margot at the Wedding.

Following a string of documentaries, this is Demme's first feature film in four years since his remake of The Manchurian Candidate, apparently embracing a more free-form, hand-held style on this project. Hathaway, meanwhile, seems to have shed all evidence of her tough-girl persona from Get Smart as the rehab-frequenting Kym, save for perhaps her eyeliner. And it can't hurt to have Debra Winger and Rosemarie DeWitt around, playing her mother and sister, respectively.

Jeff Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere seems to have the only opening date around, with the film going limited on October 3rd. With any luck, whatever buzz comes from its Venice and Toronto premieres (and, in all likelihood, also Telluride, Toronto, or all three) will carry it into the looming awards season.

[Thanks, Andrew!]

There's a new script gearing up for production for Sony Classics, and while we know pretty much nothing about what it will entail, we do know the names behind it -- which aren't too shabby. Dancing with Shiva is a new ensemble comedy from Jenny Lumet, who just happens to be Sidney Lumet's daughter. While this is her first feature script, she has done a few roles over the years as an actress, her most popular being 1988's Running on Empty. Jonathan Demme has been tapped to direct and produce the film, and a solid cast has already been lined up.

Anne Hathaway, who just became Jane Austen, will star, with Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle, Bill Irwin (who I always mix up with My So-Called Life dad Tom Irwin), The West Wing's Anna Deveare Smith and that Dangerous Woman, Debra Winger co-starring. The movie will head into production after Demme finishes He Comes in Peace, which means sometime next month in the wonderful state of Connecticut. Since it's all coming together soon, we shouldn't have too long to wait to hear what this whole thing is about. Being that there isn't anything more to say on the project, I'll throw my dancing wish out there -- I want to see some Skinny Legs and All dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils, with an anthropomorphized can of beans, dirty sock, painted stick, conch shell and spoon -- preferably with Terry Gilliam directing. Now that would be a dance!