milos forman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

My indie pick of the week is Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited; which our own Monika Bartyzel has already reviewed elsewhere. My next pick is a film that Cinematical's Scott Weinberg recommended: Death at a Funeral. The title may be misleading: it's a comedy directed by Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors, What About Bob?) and Scott described it as "a very broad, very British and very funny farce ... that will definitely appeal to people over the age of 30." MGM's DVD includes an audio commentary by Mr. Oz, another by screenwriter Dean Craig and actors Alan Tudyk and Andy Nyman, and a gag reel.

New Oscar winner Javier Bardem also starred in last year's Goya's Ghosts, a bio-pic directed by Milos Forman; Ryan Stewart wrote: "It just comes across as odd and indicative of a serious lack of directorial focus." He further stated: "If it were not the work of a major director, it's hard to imagine why anyone would suffer the mental agitation of trying to figure out how its various pieces fit together ..." Ryan explained his disappointment very well, but if you're a glutton for punishment -- or a huge, huge fan of Bardem and co-star Natalie Portman -- you might decide to rent the DVD from Samuel Goldwyn, which includes a behind-the-scenes featurette.

The World Entertainment News Network (WENN) is reporting that Natalie Portman has second thoughts about doing a nude scene for Wes Anderson's short film Hotel Chevalier, which will play in front of The Darjeeling Limited when it expands to nearly 800 theaters tomorrow. According to WENN, Portman said: "I'm really sorry I didn't listen to my intuition. From now on, I'm going to trust my gut more. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is say no." Portman also says she'll never appear nude on screen again -- cue thousands of pervy men crying out like Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith: "Nooooooooooo!!!"

You might recall that Portman had second thoughts about nudity in the past. She played a stripper in Mike Nichols' Closer but then evidently convinced Nichols to cut out footage that was too revealing. Then rumor had it that she appeared in the buff in Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts, but the naked bits were provided by a body double -- and it was an unpleasant torture scene anyway.

What surprises me about her latest regret is that Wes Anderson financed Hotel Chevalier out of his own pocket. He's not exactly known as a hound dog director, exploiting actresses by making them take off their clothes, though most of his films (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) have included nudity. Is it possible that she's more concerned now because the interest in Hotel Chevalier has been driven almost entirely by her exposed bits? (All due respect to Anderson, but there's no way half a million people would have downloaded the short off iTunes if not for her appearance.) Or possibly she's tired of all the cute headlines calling her "Naked Natalie." (Guilty as charged.) Maybe we can all get it out of our system this weekend.

UPDATE: It was all a big misunderstanding. WENN based their news item on a press release by PARADE, touting Portman's first-person article, "What I've Learned (So Far)," which will appear in print on Sunday. In a statement that has been forwarded to Cinematical by a publicist representing Portman, PARADE states: "In the release, we say that Portman regrets doing a nude scene in the movie Hotel Chevalier. This is wrong. When Portman writes about this in PARADE, she does not mention a specific movie title. However, she tells us she was referring to a torture scene with a body double in Goya's Ghosts, which was taken out of context and leaked onto the internet. Portman is very happy with Hotel Chevalier and proud of her work in the film. PARADE apologizes for the error." The entire article is now available online.

Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours is back on the charts this week, playing on one lone screen, in Denver, according to my information. Among its other qualities and achievements, it marks the fourth collaboration of director Oliveira and actor Michel Piccoli (a fifth, a short segment in an anthology film, appeared earlier this year). At 81, Piccoli is practically a living legend, having worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, Mario Bava, and many other greats. He also appears in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1962 Le Doulos, currently re-released on 2 screens. It's a delicate relationship between director and actor; Piccoli and Oliveira seem to be developing a comfortable working relationship in which each brings out the best in the other. This has happened relatively few times over the past century. When it happens, it can be very exciting, but when a director and an actor don't click, everything can fall to pieces.

Milos Forman has coaxed and guided some great performances over the years, notably Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus and Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon. But he has rarely been praised for directing women, as evidenced by his awkward handling of Natalie Portman in the awful Goya's Ghosts (37 screens). The movie earned advance attention for its nude/sex scene, but will probably be remembered for fitting Portman with a set of humorously bad fake teeth and for her self-consciously dazed walk, newly released from prison, through a chaotic town square. Forman may be to blame, but Portman is out there, on the screen, all alone and in front of everyone.

The period setting, the high-art gloss, the fascination with historical bombast and the ghoulish depths people to which proud people can sink -- all of these are things Goya's Ghosts has in common with the rest of the Milos Forman filmography. What it's lacking is a confident narrative or, for that matter, a sturdy script skeleton which the director can lean on. In surer hands, what was intended as ambitious -- to put the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya in the film's title and in a prominent position in the film's opening act, but then to draw away from, and ultimately unmoor him from the story completely -- might have actually succeeded, but here it just comes across as odd and indicative of a serious lack of directorial focus. I won't be the one to say that the powers of 75 year-old Forman have decayed -- he's so unprolific that it's hard to see any kind of career-parabola, anyway -- but on the evidence of this film, he should probably make it a priority to finish out his career with the strongest possible writing collaborators.

Javier Bardem embodies one of Forman's favorite fool-archetypes here: the true believer who is double-blind in thinking that the system he loves loves him back and that his earnestness in upholding it will produce rewards down the road. Bardem plays Brother Lorenzo, a Catholic priest who argues passionately for the grisly torture of the Inquisition in the opening scene, as the other priests sit quietly and imbibe his passionate commitment to the cause instead of daring to debate any of his points. It's only later, when an unlikely turn of events sees him having dinner in the home of a man suspected of being a "Judiazier" that he's asked to give any kind of thoughtful defense to his beliefs. 'How could there be any value in a confession given under extreme physical torture?,' Brother Lorenzo is asked, to which he replies that God grants the innocent the ability to withstand the torture and not utter false statements, but allows the guilty to perjure themselves. A few minutes later, he's singing a completely different tune.

One of the greatest living filmmakers, Werner Herzog makes movies with an unquenchable curiosity combined with an intrepid fearlessness. His films brim with a kind of madness in an era when Hollywood wishes to control everything and leech out any unexpected qualities. Herzog's newest film Rescue Dawn (57 screens), starring Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, has opened to strong reviews and has pulled in over $1 million in U.S. box office. After a career stretching back five decades, it's his first film produced by a Hollywood studio. Though far from selling out, Herzog has brought his unique vision to the otherwise timid and brain-dead mainstream. This is good news for everyone; many Americans will see their very first Herzog film (though his 2005 documentary Grizzly Man didn't do half bad), Herzog himself may qualify for prizes usually reserved for those with half his talent, and his example may reverse an irritating trend that has prevailed for almost a century.

The 64-year-old filmmaker began in the 1960s as part of what would come to be known as the German New Wave, sharing the spotlight with, among others, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wim Wenders. Herzog made a small splash with his amazing early feature Signs of Life (1968), and followed it up with the peculiar Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), which delved into the lives of little people and blind-and-deaf people with no hesitation or repulsion. His masterpiece Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) made him an art-house sensation, with its use of the physical, jungle landscape intertwining with man's obsession and insanity. While Herzog continued this exploration of untamed nature and human foibles, Wenders heeded the siren song of Hollywood, while Fassbinder burned out and left a good-looking corpse, well before Hollywood even noticed him.

Here's one project you can probably put to bed for good -- the supposed biopic of poker legend Amarillo Slim, starring Nic Cage and directed by Milos Forman. I brought it up during a conversation with Forman at this week's Goya's Ghosts junket in New York, and he looked at me like I'd insulted his mother when I did. Forman said he never had any serious attachment to the project in the first place. "That's typical Hollywood," he said. "About three years ago somebody from Los Angeles called me if I'd be interested to make film about Amarillo Slim with Nicolas Cage. Amarillo Slim is interesting character, love Nicolas Cage as an actor ... I said 'Sure, I would be interested, but I'll tell you after you send me the script. It depends on the script.' So they put it in the press that I'm doing it. Till today, I haven't seen the script."

The chances of a big-budget Hollywood biopic happening are further reduced when you consider that in 2003, the notorious proposition gambler was, as Wikipedia puts it, "indicted on three charges of indecency with his 12-year-old granddaughter," and ended up copping a plea. Oscar voters tend to frown on that kind of thing, don't they? Another interesting tidbit from my conversation with Forman: he claims to have had absolutely no idea who Natalie Portman was before she came to his attention during the casting process of Goya's Ghosts. I'll be posting a full report from the junket as soon as I have time to type it up.

With only 2 months until Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts is sent out into limited release stateside, a trailer has finally hit the Internet. The movie centers on Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) and his painting subject, Inés (Natalie Portman). After posing for the painter, she is picked up by the Spanish Inquisition under accusations that she's a heretic who practices Jewish rituals. She's tortured, confesses and is kept in the dungeons until Napoleon's army arrives and frees the Inquisition's victims. The pair are further tied together by Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) who proves to be only a little brotherly, and more dastardly. And just to make the mix more interesting, there's also Randy Quaid as King Carlos IV.

Most of the previous buzz about the film didn't center on this being Forman's first feature since Man on the Moon, but that Portman had a nude torture scene. The trailer only briefly focuses on that, and instead fleshes out what looks to be a pretty interesting movie. There's a lot of attention places on Goya's art as much as Inés' plight. However, the trailer powers that be have really got to get a handle on when those cheesy voiceover voices are appropriate. In April, I shared the Bug trailer that was all sorts of goofy, and now Ghosts is a bit tarnished by the disembodied voice giving the run-down. With scenes of troubled painting, inquisition and torture, do we really need to hear things like "...a woman adored for her beauty" all deep and gravelly when Portman pops up on-screen? These voices have their place, but not for a period piece about one of Spain's most famous painters -- especially when it clashes with the accents on-screen.

While Natalie Portman undoubtedly has her share of admiring male fans, she's steered clear of much of the 'lusting' demographic in her career. It's actually pretty easy for a respected actress to do -- just avoid almost-nude pictorials for any of the men's magazines and you'll be on your way. Nevertheless, when Portman was in Closer, anxious buzz and hopeful eyes were expectantly waiting for glimpses of Amidala's nethers, only to get nothing. The scenes were cut, the footage reportedly destroyed (will it be uncovered one day as shocking, almost-lost footage?)

Then came Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts. Last July, Cinematical shared rumors that Portman was once again removing her clothes for the upcoming film -- namely, for a torture scene. Now IESB has links to a few rough, troubling scenes and some images. (Obviously NSFW.) However, before you rush over there in anxious, Portman-nudity hunger, there's not much and it seems to be a body double -- not to mention the fact that it is a torture scene. The site has three clips. The first is the torture, which makes me feel pretty wimpy after a night of Wii playing, and then a prayer scene and a brief follow-up. If you're wondering what the hell it's about -- Ghosts revolves around the famous painter, Francisco Goya, whose muse (Portman) is deemed a heretic during the Inquisition. The film will be released in the U.S. this July.