Sarah Polley Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This past weekend kicked off the 12th annual Tel-Aviv International Student Film Festival, an event that was to feature master filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard as one of its honorary guests. But this morning, it was announced that Godard has backed out due to "circumstances beyond his control." Those circumstances, according to someone close to the filmmaker's office, are related to political pressures brought about by a group called The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Godard received an open letter from the group last week urging him to cancel his trip to Israel, making comparisons between the Jewish state and South Africa during apartheid.

Considering the recent celebrations of Cannes 1968, which was partially shut down by protesting filmmakers, including Godard (who wanted the festival to continue, though without prizes awarded), it's interesting to see the Breathless filmmaker still boycotting festivals after all these years. Of course, politics aside, it's probably of great disappointment to the young future filmmakers who were looking forward to meeting the cinema legend.

And the battle continues. In the beginning of March, I posted about how the Canadian government is looking to increase restrictions on which films get tax credits -- all to keep money from those lowest-of-low sorts of movies -- you know, the ones with "gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group." Under those terms, it would mean any action film or thriller, most films that discuss sex, and any comedy that teases well, anyone.

Now those within the industry are fighting back. The CBC reports that Sarah Polley, the actress and filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated Away From Her, and others in the industry have descended on Ottawa to have their say. Polley says: "It's the job of artists to provoke and to challenge. Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and, yes, occasionally offend in order to do so." Meanwhile, the Conservative Party of Canada issued a press release reportedly attacking Polley's political ties and stating that artists shouldn't tell "hard-working Canadians" how tax dollars should be spent.

Oh, the neverending and never resolved wars with taxation and censorship. Won't we ever learn?

There is a very short list of filmmakers who are so perfectly in tune with my sensibilities, so completely on my wavelength, that each of their projects threatens to collapse my critical faculties and reduce me to a drooling, adoring mess. One such person is little-known Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, whose enigmatic sci-fi mind-blowers Cube and Cypher were about as far up my alley as you could go before it starts to hurt. (I haven't seen Nothing yet, but I will soon.) So I've been hungrily devouring every morsel of information about his upcoming Splice, which is about a pair of scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who discover a way to create new kinds of creatures in the lab by splicing DNA, and then go and introduce human genes into the experiment. My squeamishness about genetic horrors (no joke: I consider Cronenberg's The Fly to be the scariest movie I've ever seen) and my affinity for Natali's approach makes me think this one could really do a number on me.

The San Francisco Film Critics Awards have been announced, and they're especially exciting for us here at Cinematical. Why? Because three of our writers are in the SFFC! Our very own James Rocchi, Jeffrey M. Anderson, and Richard Von Busack are all part of the San Francisco critic "scene." San Fran made some interesting picks, several outside of the expected Oscar nominees. So what were their choices? For Best Foreign Film, they selected Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I am watching when I finish this post). For Best Documentary, they selected No End in Sight (which didn't blow me away, but was certainly well done). Best Adapted Screenplay went to Sarah Polley for Away From Her (great script, one of the most kick-in-the-stomach depressing movies I've seen lately). And Best Original Screenplay went to Tamara Jenkins for The Savages.

Amy Ryan was named Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant portrayal of a highly difficult character in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan's co-star in that film, Casey Affleck, was named Best Supporting Actor for his outstanding work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Actress was Julie Christie for Away From Her and Best Actor was George Clooney in Michael Clayton -- two choices I approve of though I disagree with them. Joel and Ethan Coen took Best Director(s) honors for their latest masterpiece, No Country for Old Men. And -- drumroll please -- the Best Picture Award went to Jesse James. A surprising pick perhaps, but it was an absolutely fantastic film, and hopefully the award encourages more people to see it. The SFFC gave a special citation to an indie called Colma: The Musical, "a homegrown song-and-dance extravaganza about the paradoxical drudgery and surreality of life in a city where the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one." That old story again? See the list for yourself here -- it's a San Francisco treat!

"Can it really be awards season already?" Our own Eric D. Snider asked that question when reporting that IFP (Independent Feature Project) announced the nominees for the Gotham Awards, honoring the best of indie films in 2007. And now the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) has announced their awards categories. AWFJ has two types of categories: the traditional "Best of" awards (film, director, actress, actor, etc.) are presented annually, but the "Special Mention" awards categories are "subject to change each year, depending on the list of films released during the year," according to their site. The awards aim to recognize "the amazing work done by and about women -- both in front and behind the camera."

Most of the categories from last year are back -- AWFJ Hall Of Shame Award(s), Actress(es) Most in Need Of A New Agent, Best Of The Fests, Movies You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn't, Best Depiction Of Nudity or Sexuality -- but seven additional categories have been added for this year's awards. Three of them sound generic: Unforgettable Moment , Cultural Crossover, Bravest Performance. Actually, "Unforgettable Moment" could be cool if it recognizes an isolated scene of genius in an otherwise horrible film, but what constitutes a "Bravest Performance"? Acting without make-up? Risking your life to do a stunt, a la Zoe Bell in Death Proof?

I really love the other four new categories, though: Sequel That Shouldn't Have Been Made (there are so many candidates, how will the AWFJ narrow them down?), Best Leap from Actress to Director (I'm looking at you, Sarah Polley!), Best Seduction and Most Egregious Age Difference Between The Leading Man and The Love Interest. Not to play the sexist card, but the latter two categories -- especially the "Age Difference" one -- would never be considered by a male-dominated critical group. Here's hoping the awards will call attention to lesser-known, quality films and the women that make them.

Whenever the talk of genetics and ethics comes up, there's lots of chatter around what is allowed, and what isn't. But come on, no matter what the rules are, if a scientist is splicing stuff together, and feels a high at the thought of creating new animal life forms, or other scientific breakthroughs, how can they resist that little human touch? If not the everyday scientist, then maybe some evil, cackling one who fits all the stereotypes and has some sort of evil superfunding. Whatever the case, it's like a dentist living above a candy shop and telling his kids that they most certainly cannot go there for candy. The temptation is too great, no matter what the ramifications are.

This is the environment that Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are jumping into. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the pair will star in a new science fiction thriller called Splice, which is being directed by Cube helmer Vincenzo Natali (and Guillermo del Toro is one of the film's producers). The movie centers on "the world of genetic engineering in which two young scientists (Polley and Brody) become superstars by splicing different animal DNA to create fantastical new creatures. They ignore the legal and ethical boundaries and introduce human DNA into their experiment." The script was written by Natali, along with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, and will find life in front of the camera in Toronto this November. It's a cool idea, and I'd go see almost anything that pairs Brody and Polley, but we have to wait until at least 2009 to see what they'll make of it.

My pick of the week is the underseen Cautiva, a drama from Argentina. Cristina's biological parents were "disappeared" during the 1970s, but she knew nothing about it and is none too happy when she is torn away from her comfortable upper class existence to live with them. Cautiva (AKA Captive) does not dig very deeply into the political issues that it raises -- and I kept wishing that Cristina would react to her situation instead of simply slumping her shoulders -- but it is fascinating for its new twists on the old coming of age story.

More fully realized on every level, Away From Her marked the assured directorial debut of actress Sarah Polley. She paints a delicate portrait of a long-time marriage that reaches a breaking point from which it may never recover. In his Sundance review, our own James Rocchi wrote: "Away from Her is a truly romantic film, and it moves us because it knows the cruel, beautiful fact that how much love and life give us is often matched by how much they can cost." Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent star. The DVD includes an audio commentary with Christie, plus deleted scenes and commentary by Polley.

Triad Election is a riveting drama starring Simon Yam as a Hong Kong mob boss who desperately wants to stay in power. Johnny To masterfully directed. Cinematical's Jeffrey M. Anderson says that "the movie's real strength comes in the performances, the interplay, and the unknown levels of trust." Triad Election is actually the second part of a drama that begins with 2005's Election, which details Yam's rise to power. Unfortunately, Election won't be released on Region 1 DVD until November. Taken together, they are powerful, but even separated like this, Triad Election is well worth a look.

Other indie titles that may deserve a rental include Hungarian sports drama White Palms, character drama Snow Cake (featuring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver), and nightlife comedy The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down.

Jared Leto has come a long way since his stint as Jordan Catalano. While he probably could've rode the girl-admiration train for a while, he's been all over the map with his film choices -- he's ran, fought as a soldier and an Angel Face, loved mentally-troubled women, got slashed by a Huey Lewis-loving psycho, been an addict, traversed the Sunset Strip, menaced with cornrows and even threw on the weight to embody Mark David Chapman. Now he's getting a bit fantastical to even out the reality a bit with writer/director Jaco van Dormael's first English-language feature, Mr. Nobody. And, his co-star is none other than recent Away From Her director Sarah Polley.

The romantic drama is being described as a "multilayered love story inspired by the 'butterfly effect.'" No, not the questionable film, but what it was based on -- the part of chaos theory that claims that the mere movement of a butterfly's wings can cause atmospheric changes that start a chain of events that have large and far-reaching results. Leto is playing nemo Nobody, a 120-year-old man, and the last mortal, living amongst immortals in the not-so-distant future. Nobody spends his time reliving both "real and imaginary years of marriage." Whatever that means. Production begins next week, and will shoot in Brussels, Montreal and Berlin. Being in that stage where we only have the smallest bit of information, anything could be possible, but regardless, it's sounding like a pretty intriguing notion. That, and I'd like to see what Polley can pull out of Leto.

The 60th annual Festival de Cannes has concluded, and the Palme D'Or goes to ... not the Coens? Despite all the praise and hype, No Country for Old Men was passed over for the prize in favor of 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, an abortion drama that our own James Rocchi called "incredibly affecting, magnificently acted and superbly made." Looks like he called that one. The Grand Prix, which is second prize, went to Naomi Kawase's The Mourning Forest, a French-Japanese co-production that Variety says "had viewers and critics streaming for the exits." The 60th anniversary prize, which is third place, went to Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, a drama about a teen skateboarder in denial over having caused someone's death. James reviewed that one too, but wasn't exactly blown away by it. "I have to wonder when -- or if -- the fierce filmmaking of [Van Sant's] earlier career will return," he wrote.

Julian Schnabel took the best directing prize for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which has been snapped up by Miramax. Get a load of this line, again from Variety: "Perhaps imagining he was at the Oscars, Schnabel overstayed his welcome at the spotlight at least three times over, shaking the hand of every jury member, making his cast stand up and rambling as he thanked everyone he could think of." The screenplay prize went to The Edge of Heaven, from a Turkish-German filmmaker, while the best actress prize went to Jeon Do-yeon, a South Korean actress who appeared in Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. Best actor went to Konstantin Lavronenko for The Banishment. The jury prize was a tie vote between Persepolis, a French-U.S. production and Silent Light, about a mennonite community in Mexico.

At the jury press conference following the prizes, Stephen Frears was asked how Javier Bardem didn't win the best actor prize, Frears joked: "He's terrible, absolutely dreadful ... he's a wonderful actor. Why did we not give it to Javier? He owes me 500 pounds." Sarah Polley and Toni Collette were also asked to defend their odd choices, with Polley saying "I've never seen so many people listen to each other so closely." The jury also included Maggie Cheung, Maria de Medeiros, Abderrahmane Sissako, Marco Bellocchio and Orham Pamuk. If you want the full rundown, you can go to Variety and check it out.

"Never judge a book by its movie," said someone called J. W. Eagan, who appears to be famous only for saying that one thing. But he (she?) is absolutely right. It's a war that has been waged since the beginning of movies. Do movies steal the souls of books? Are books forever doomed to live in the shadows of their movies? Do we "stay true" to the source material or do we invent new, cinematic ideas? Or worse, what happens to all that stuff that gets lost in translation from page to screen? After all, we're talking two entirely different art forms with different approaches; the only thing they have in common is a narrative flow: a start, middle and ending.

Perhaps these questions are the reason I tend to like movies based on short stories. It's impossible to get a 400-page novel into a 120-page screenplay without losing something, but short stories are far more adaptable to the screen; instead of cramming and condensing, a movie can stretch out with a short story. Some terrific movies have come from short stories: In Old Arizona (1929), Freaks (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Stagecoach (1939), The Killers (1946), All About Eve (1950), Rashomon (1950), Rear Window (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), The Birds (1963), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Christmas Story (1983), Re-Animator (1985), Babette's Feast (1989), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Minority Report (2002), not to mention Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), woven from a selection of Raymond Carver stories.