Roger on Nicole

The estimable US critic Roger Ebert has provided a(nother) positive and timely comment regarding Nicole Kidman after viewing her latest film, Rabbit Hole.

I was interested in Nicole Kidman's performance. I've always believed her to be talented, since all those years ago when she and Thandie Newton starred in the wonderful "Flirting" (1991). She seems to be two people: the glamorous star of "Moulin Rouge" and "Nine," and the risky, daring actress in "Birth," "The Hours" and "Eyes Wide Shut." Celebrity has clouded her image; if she were less glamorous, she would be more praised. Age will only be an asset to her.

Roger Ebert defends Nicole

Roger Ebert, America's premiere movie critic and my personal hero, has posted a blog piece that criticises show biz journalism which is entirely apt and defends Nicole in the process.

Why do we thirst for movie stars to fail? Why are so many showbiz journalists like hyenas circling a crippled prey? Why do so many gossip columnists behave like jilted lovers or betrayed investors, livid with anger at what they once valued so highly? Why are a few stars singled out like the victims of school bullies? Why do the box office receipts of "Australia" appear in almost every news outlet, but an actual review of it appears in so few?

Read the full piece here.

My defence of Nicole and Australia is here.

In Defence of Luhrmann's Australia and Nicole

There is an abundance of negative publicity surrounding Baz Luhrmann’s latest film, ‘Australia’.
Tall Poppies
Criticism of ‘Australia’ seems to be strongest from the high brow movie watcher who appear guilty of a local cringe factor. It puts me in mind of the national consciousness in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony where a similar negativity was leapt upon by a waiting media, always happy to push any measure of bad news. And with headlines that scream “Australia disappoints at box office”, who can resist a knowing nod?
With a reported cost of $130m to make and promote the film, there is no doubt that this one film has cost more than any other Australian film. Coupled with a calculated business drive to promote the film heavily, which is unusual for Australian films, the nation’s “tall poppy syndrome” has been quick to set in.
Luhrmann’s use of Australian actors is welcome and his portrayal of outback landscapes is appealing. It is no wonder that Tourism Australia were keen to align themselves to his vision.
Despite the high price tag and popular nature of this film it has been far from a failure. In its first week alone its box office takings were in the order of $10m in Australia alone. It will run for a few weeks yet into the summer holidays and that figure doesn’t take into account any overseas takings either.
Contrast this with the Australian films nominated in the Best Film category at last weekend’s Australian Film Institute awards : The Black Balloon, The Jammed, The Square and Unfinished Sky. Have you heard of any of these films? Let alone actually watched any of them? Perhaps you have heard of The Black Balloon (which won best picture) or Joel & Nash Edgerton’s The Square, and that because they were advertised in some way more than the others. Their combined box office takings however are $3.9m. Total.
Furthermore their themes are broadly consistent with many Australian films of recent times, darker in tone and more serious in nature. By all accounts they are very fine films but do I, as a potential audience member, get excited about the prospect of seeing something dour and downbeat? To be sure, I will be watching these films as they hit our DVD shelves, if for no other reason than because they are Australian films, but don’t tell me that somehow they are success stories (other than the actual success of getting them made which is no small feat in and of itself) while ‘Australia’ is a failure. In every way ‘Australia’ outpoints these other films: in its profile, its popular sensibility and its takings.
The Nicole factor
The other reaction against ‘Australia’ is that of Nicole Kidman. For some reason she is ‘on the nose’ of Australian audiences and that is counting against the film.
As you all know, I am a fan of Nicole and have been for a long time and I don’t back away from that now.
I think the reasons for this anti-Nicole sentiment is two fold. The first is her tabloid profile and regular folks are heartily sick of seeing her mug on the cover of every women’s magazine. Being married to Tom Cruise placed her in the echelon of uber-celebrity and she has been a target ever since.
As an adjunct to that, facial surgery in early 2000s, initially (I believe) to reshape her nose and since then, who knows what else, has resulted in a face with no blemish or wrinkle. Certainly the absence of any “laughter lines” or the like give opportunity for people to complain of an expressionless, “plastic” face. Ironically she has the appearance of a Stepford Wife, a role she played in 2004.
Secondly, the movies in which she has played a part in recent years have not been either critically or popularly acclaimed.
Kidman’s great film roles occurred around the time of her break up with Cruise and which garnered a Best Actress Oscar : The Hours, Dogville, The Human Stain, Cold Mountain and Birth. The dark subject matter was more than met with the dark moods of her personal life. They were powerful and serious storylines.
Since then, lighter tones and more popular offerings that sadly have been less impressive: The Stepford Wives, The Interpreter, Bewitched, Fur, The Invasion and Margot at the Wedding.
All I will say in defence of Kidman and her choice of roles is that she takes risks. I can only imagine that an actress with her profile would be offered countless roles in blockbuster, ‘James Bond’ type movies. The fact that she has done very few of those types of films, and none recently, should be marked as a credit but it is not recognised.
For example, with Fur, she took the opportunity to work with director Steven Shainberg whose previous success was with the controversial and independent film Secretary. Fur turned about to be a bit too quirky for its own good.
Margot, to work with Noah Baumbach whose previous success was with The Squid and the Whale. Margot was a hard script to work through and would have sunk irrespective of the cast.
I believe that the opportunity to work on an Australian film and support the local industry was behind her motivation to work on ‘Australia’ and before that ‘Happy Feet.’
I tend to judge the success of an actor very simply. If, at the end of a movie, I am satisfied that I believed what I was seeing, then it’s a ‘pass’. It is my opinion that Kidman remains a fine actress although not every film she has appeared in, has worked.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I comfortably rate ‘Australia’ as a 3 out of 4 star movie. The fact that it is an Australian film that highlights our history and addresses some of our current day issues is to be celebrated and enjoyed.

You can read my review of 'Australia' here.

Baz Luhrmann's Australia movie review

Baz Luhrmann, writer, director and producer of Australia, promised an ‘epic’ and epic is what he delivers. Starting pre-war in 1939 with the arrival of Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole) on a Qantas flight from England, it finishes with the Japanese bombing of Darwin in 1941. In between time we drove 1,500 head of cattle from Faraway Downs station onto the ship in Darwin harbour with The Drover (Hugh Jackman), have the boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters) taken to Mission Island, as was the experience of many coloured and native children, have The Drover and Lady Sarah fall in love, be separated and then reunited, all the while compete with the voracious and avaricious King Carney (Bryan Brown) and his son in law Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), rival cattle barons and acquisitive land owners.
The thread of the story however belongs to Nullah, his ties to the land and his people. When his mother dies, he is left in the care of Lady Sarah who adopts him as her son.
The opening Act, that of Lady Sarah coming to Australia and to her property at Faraway Downs, is filled with vaudeville as Luhrmann plays up much of the Australian larrikin sense of humour. The Drover (whom we first meet looking up from under his hat a la Clint Eastwood) is centre stage for a brawling fist fight outside the hotel; Lady Sarah’s English ‘tourist’ is excited by her first sighting of a kangaroo; Jack Thompson’s inarticulate entrance.
The film really represents two distinct story arcs : the drove, and war-time. The Drover, clearly a white man, is a friend of the blacks and is seen as “black” by white society, and therefore shunned. Nullah, born of a white father and black mother, is seen as neither one nor the other by each race. The film goes to some pains to incorporate themes of the stolen generation, black dreaming and segregation but it is a testament to how well the story is told without it ever feeling like a ‘message’ movie. There is even an acknowledgement that the most sympathetic of white fellas, The Drover (and even, by inference, the filmmaker) doesn’t always fully understand. Take for example the confrontation between The Drover and his best mate, Magarri, after Nullah is taken by the Police. Even with the best of understanding, a child remains a child and should be protected and cared for by loving parents, not left to their own devices where they can unwittingly get themselves into trouble.
Nicole is fine as an English lady staring down a strange and remote environment. That English resolve is demonstrated here which founded a whole Empire. Hugh Jackman is a little too ocker (one too many “crikey’s”) but otherwise entirely believable as a hairy, sweaty, manly cattle drover who believes in mateship but is fearful of expressing his emotions. There is chemistry between these two and thankfully Luhrmann doesn’t throw in a gratuitous love scene just to please the formula writer. What is shown on screen is quite appropriate.
Brandon Walters is the real find of this film. He is such a handsome boy who is able to look into the camera with such innocence and openness. His manner, and the character he is playing, is so assured however he does not lose that vulnerable and childlike manner.
David Wenham does menacing better than most and the rest of the support performances are great : David Ngoombujarra (as Magarri), Jack Thompson (as Kipling Flynn, Lady Ashley’s accountant), plus old favourites, Barry Otto, Ben Mendelsohn, Bruce Spence and David Gulpilil.
While Australia is not a complex story, it is entertaining, takes us on a fun and dramatic journey and is most assuredly recommended.

The Invasion

A(nother) remake of The Body Snatchers, titled The Invasion, has just been released in the US and stars my Nic (and some others like Daniel Craig … James who ?). Here is the most piercing comment of a review I just read:

Fans of Nicole Kidman's acting will be disappointed. Despite a lot of screen time, she doesn't do much. She's mainly on hand to look good while playing the damsel-in-distress turned mother-protector. The role is physical but not challenging.

Oh dear.

Birth - movie

{Spoilers Ahead}
Birth tells the story of a woman, Anna (Nicole Kidman) who loses her beloved husband, Sean, to a heartattack while jogging in Central Park. Ten years later, a boy turns up at Anna’s appartment and says simply, “It’s me, Sean.”
If you view this story as a supernatural mystery akin to The Sixth Sense (“I can see dead people”) or The Exorcist then you will be sorely disappointed. While the mystery of husband Sean’s rebirth as young Sean is a bit creepy and the build up first rate, how the film concludes ultimately is dissatisfying. Young Sean eventually “loses” his psychic alter ego and disappears back into the schoolyard as a regular 10 year old.
While this is how the film was marketed, this is not the story ! The story is all about Anna while the rest of the cast orbit her grief.
Still mourning her husband from 10 years prior, Anna knows intellectually that it is time to move on. Her family tell her it is time to move on. She finally accepts the advances of Joseph (Danny Huston) and agrees to marry him; the opening act is of their engagement party. Emotionally and spiritually, Anna cannot or will not move on from her first husband. In fact, the first time we see Anna she is paying her respects at Sean’s grave. When young Sean first appears, we can see she is troubled and unsure. She wants to believe that her beloved Sean has come back to her (“I wanted him to be Sean”). The rest of the family are less convinced, assuming young Sean to be a hoax or a nasty coincidence.
After young Sean collapses in a hallway we watch Anna’s face in the next scene, during the prelude of a concert. The camera focuses nowhere else. Slowly, surely her resolve falters. What we are watching is a woman who has not come to terms with her grief.
Young Sean however is not the Sean. He is a mystic projection of Anna’s memory of her husband. What she knows about Sean, he knows about Sean. What she doesn’t know about Sean however “breaks the spell.” The event, precipitated by Ann Heche, is like a pebble that breaks the surface of a still pond. The images reflected on the glassy surface shatter and fragment.
Intellectualism reasserts itself briefly to a happy wedding in the beach house gardens in Spring. Being an optimistic, ‘glass half full’ kind of guy, I assumed that they walked off arm in arm to live happily ever after but the evidence doesn’t point to that. Instead of a sunny May (equivalent November) day for their wedding the weather is bleak and cool. Anna can’t smile for the camera and Joseph finds her down on the beach, alone and crying as the waves break around her feet. The evidence is that of a woman who has finally succumbed to a complete mental breakdown, who can’t see a way over her grief.
The colour palette is blue-hued with the warmer red and yellows desaturated. Many visual images stick in the mind, of winter in the Park and the lush apartment in Manhattan. Credit here to cinematographer Harry Savides. The cast ably support Kidman : Cameron Bright as the young Sean, Danny Huston as Anna’s fiancé and Lauren Bacall and Alison Elliott as Anna’s family. And the classical music scoring the film is sumptuous also.

What I Did In The Holidays - Happy Feet

Happy Feet : Unfortunately I have to say this song and dance animated feature was a disappointment. The animation itself is first rate and the depiction of the South Pole as a wonderland is excellent.
Do I really want to sit through animated, song and dance routines though ? Yes, they’re catchy. Yes, the voices are appropriate (Hugh Jackman, Elijah Wood, Nicole [only a small role and not enough to get excited about … pity], Robin Williams – a bright spot with his brand of comedy pitched at just the right level). No, it just doesn’t sustain interest. And the ending – urgh ! What a terrible way to end. “Quick, lets cram in an environmental message, go for “happy” and play the ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

Cold Mountain - GG

One of the main reasons to watch Cold Mountain (Fri 7 830P) is the cinematography of Aussie John Seale who has teamed up with writer/director Anthony Minghella before on The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley. Set during the Civil War in south east America, Cold Mountain has some confronting battle scenes that are populated by rural men and boys who weren’t professional fighters but ordinary farmers, husbands and sons. Both Seale and Minghella wanted to portray the men of the period as being of the earth and a number of scenes show an almost seamless blending of bodies to ground. Take for example an early scene where men lie dying and the blood seeps from their bodies, turning slowly from red to brown as it mixes in the mud. And later, a pile of corpses, apparently heaped at random, but if you take a second look, actually stacked in a complex criss-cross pattern.
Filmed in Romania, as a proxy for the wilds of Virginia or North Carolina, the scenery in and of itself is quite beautiful and then we have the film’s centre piece, Nicole Kidman, who, if truth be told, looks out of place. Set in the middle of the war, without the men to run the farms let alone produce sufficient food, there is our Nic., all rosy cheeks and glorious radiance, wearing the latest in Country Road fashion. About two-thirds of the way through, Nicole, flanked by the girls, walks up a hill like a Vision Splendid with light snow falling like tiny angels. She looks too good is the problem.
The story is a fairly straightforward one. Inman, played by Jude Law, goes off to war, is injured and then flees on foot, back to Cold Mountain and Ada, played by Nicole.
What motivates a man to cross the Appalachians on foot during winter, desert the army, be tracked by bounty hunters, face indignities, all the while nearly starving to death, to find one woman, whom he only spoke to once, over three years before ? I read one review that suggested that Ada must have been this ethereal figure, this Vision Splendid, in Inman’s imagination for him to do the things that he did.
Its unlikely. But that’s the set-up of the story. Things become so dour and depressive during the first hour (too many blues and greys) as both Inman and Ada mope around missing the other desperately, that it is a welcome breath of fresh air when Renee Zellweger steps onto the stage and dominates every scene she is in. She injects the story with energy and warmth and was no surprise to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Throw in a local baddie played by Ray Winstone who does ‘evil’ as well as anyone, a girls own brigade at home led by Renee and Kathy Baker, and a superb supporting cast, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman and Aileen Atkins, and you have enough to enjoy in this two and a half hour epic.

My Nic

A gratuitous photo of my nic.
just to rile you all !