Happy Birthday: Carl Weathers

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carlweathers.jpgCarl Weathers

Born: January 14, 1948 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve worked in a lot of things where I had those kinds of experiences with actors who were perceived as very macho guys, everybody from Lee Marvin to Charlie Bronson to Harrison Ford to Robert Shaw.

I really try to take care of myself. I really put forth the effort to make a regimen just a part of my life. When I can’t, for instance if I’m in a location someplace and I can’t work out because of the schedule of the picture or whatever it is, as much as I normally do when I’m home, I still do something.

Rocky III
1982
dir. Sylvestor Stallone
starring
Sylvestor Stallone
Talia Shire
Mr. T
ROCKY IVRocky IV
1985
dir. Sylvestor Stallone
starring
Sylvestor Stallone
Dolph Lundgren
PREDATORPredator
1987
dir. John McTiernan
Cast
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Weathers
Rocky
1976
dir…

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Happy Birthday: Faye Dunaway

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fayedunaway.jpgFaye Dunaway

Born: January 14, 1941 in Bascom, Florida, USA

I really hate talking about Mommie Dearest (1981)! It is like an obsession with people! Why do people need to focus so much on one film I made over 20 years ago? It was not a great time in my life and the film was not an experience I want to think about. Period!

The rhythms of being an actress are by definition intensity and then letting out. It’s like a heartbeat.

Bonnie and Clyde
1967
dir. Arthur Penn
Cast
Warren Beatty
Faye Dunaway
EARTHQUAKEEarthquake
1974
dir. Mark Robson
Starring
Charlton Heston
Ava Gardner
CHINATOWNChinatown
1974
dir. by Roman Polanski
starring
Jack Nicholson
Dunaway
movie posterTHE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
1998
dir. Norman Jewison
Starring
Steve McQueen
Faye Dunaway
Three Days of Condor
1975
dir. Sydney Pollack
Cast
Robert Redford
Faye Dunaway
NETWORKNetwork
1976
dir. Sidney Lumet
Starring
Faye Dunaway
William Holden

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Happy Birthday: Emily Watson

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emilywatsonEmily Watson

Born: January 14, 1967 in Islington, London, England, UK

“The first Oscarcast, I was definitely functioning in a surreal mode. It was like I was watching myself watch the ceremony. Yet I had a good time. Hey, wearing a beautiful dress and being surrounded by beautiful people is not a terrible way to spend an evening. And I had a great time at all the parties. The second Oscarcast, I just went and planned on enjoying myself. People think of me as such a serious actress, but I find myself behaving like a gadabout.” – On her sudden success and America’s award shows.

“I wasn’t prepared for the way people responded to ‘Breaking the Waves.’ Suddenly, I was being interviewed and being asked all sorts of questions. All my life, I’ve loved movies, but I didn’t foresee the glamour of the Academy Awards. In England, the awards are…

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Happy Birthday: LL Cool J

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llcoolj.jpgLL Cool J

Born: January 14, 1968 in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York, USA

Married to: Simone Smith (7 August 1995 – present) (4 children)

Am I James Todd Smith now or LL Cool J? Pick a name baby. Pick a name and ride with it. I don’t wanna abandon my identity as LL Cool J, but at the same time, I had to figure out how to let people know that I’m really serious about making these movies. You know when you do 25 or 30 movies and people are still asking you ‘how does it feel making the transition?’ you know you’re not communicating correctly. So I just put the James Todd Smith thing there to let people know I was serious. It’s not like I made it Lawrence Cool J or something!.

LAST HOLIDAY
2006
dir. LL COOL J
Stars:
Queen Latifah
LL Cool J
Any…

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Film Review: NELLY (Canada 2016)

nelly.jpgDirected by Anne Émond

Starring: Mylène MacKay, Marie-Claude Guérin, Catherine Brunet

Review by Gilbert Seah

Quebecois writer/director Anne Émond impressed cineastes with her first two features NUIT #1 and LES ETRES CHERS for their complexity and honesty. There is more of the same in her latest feature called NELLY which is based on the works and life of controversial writer Nelly Arcan (born Isabelle Fortier).

The film is bookmarked with Nelly’s performance on stage of the catchy well-known song “Those Were the Days” in French. At the start of the movie during the rendering of the song, the camera lowers to the front row of the audience where Nelly is signalled to lower her voice. It is a scene that impresses, that shows how details like these can capture the attention of a director’s audience.

Fortier published Putain (Whore) in 2001, causing a sensation in literary circles with a tale of prostitution based on her own experience in the trade. But with the success of that debut novel came crushing anxieties, all of which found their way into her work.

Émond portrays the onscreen NELLY as a composite of Arcan’s many personas and her fictional characters, bringing her to life in an astounding, kaleidoscopic performance by Mylène Mackay – and an excellent almost faultless performance at that. Émond blurs the line between the real and the fictitious character so that he audience is unaware what is happening is real or imagined. In this way, as the film moves from one striking passage of the author’s oeuvre to the next, from elating highs to desperate lows, the audience is immersed in her lush and punishing world. The character Nelly would do things in real life to test out for her characters in the book to do. There is a segment involving rough sex that is as sexy as it is deadly.

NELLY is not a biopic in the normal sense. NELLY is not portrayed from child to her death in her early thirties. In fact the cause of her death (an early one at 34) is not even mentioned in the film, illustrating the fact that, that fact is not the important point in the film. The film traces just the window of her life within a year where everything that takes place establishes the writer for what she is. Her relationship with her lover is also displayed in all its complexity. The one scene in which an argument ensues for the fact that he refuses to share a line of coke with her explains the volatility of their relationship, as also hinted in the disturbing scene in the swimming pool change-room. Here, Nelly is shown mentally unstable, writhing on the wet floor of the change room screaming at her lover. Nelly does spend some time in a sanatorium (which she describes as a rest house) which she deeply resents.

NELLY has been deservedly chosen as one of Canada’s Top 10 films and it sits as one of the better ones. It is a small budget production, efficiently made, effective and like her other works, complexed but honest.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/177441312

 

 

 

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Film Review: LIVE BY NIGHT (USA 2016)

live_by_night_movie_poster.jpgDirected by Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper

Review by Gilbert Seah

Ben Afflecks’s fourth film (after ARGO, THE TOWN and GONE BABY GONE) is based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane which like BURN,BABY, BURN is a novel that contains a lot of plot. But LIVE BY NIGHT contains too much plot dealing with as many issues as there are plot turns. Unfortunately, Affleck’s script is unable to cope and the film fails despite worthy efforts.

Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the story follows Joe Coughlin (Affleck), the prodigal son of a Boston police captain (Brendan Gleeson). Joe is a World War I veteran of Irish decent who is in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), mistress of the notorious gangster Albert White (Robert Glenister), the boss of the Irish Gang of Boston. Joe’s father disapproves of Emma. Joe and Emma decide to move to California escaping the wrath of White, but to their misfortune the head of Albert’s rival Italian Mafia Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) finds out about their affair and blackmails Joe to kill Albert. The story goes on, leading Joe to finally work for Maso and rising in the ranks. Success comes with a price with a lot of casualties in the process.

The best thing about LIVE BY NIGHT are its impeccable performances. Gleeson at his growling best, plays Joe’s chief of police, who unfortunately dies 20 minutes into the film. The gap, fortunately is filled by Chris Cooper as Irving Figgis, another chief of police, who is as pious as he is crazy. The other supporting cast members are uniformly good from Matthew Maher (as a creepy Ku Klax Klan member) and Anthony Michael Hall as an overconfident lackey for a crime boss.

Affleck’s script is all over the place and tries to handles too many issues like father/son relationship; romance; crime; good vs. evil; racism and loss of innocence just to name a few. The dialogue also includes a fair amount of ‘f’ words including the ‘mother f” words that are out of place in a film set in the roaring twenties.

The handsome mounted production from the vintage cars (in the robbery car chase) to the wardrobe, music and props make the film a memorable period piece. Affleck dresses himself very sharply, always in pressed white suits and hat.

As the story deals with war between crime families, LIVE BY NIGHT will inevitably be compared to Francis Ford Coppola’s GODFATHER films. Joe keeps his criminal activities from his wife, Gracilea (Zoe Saldana) reminiscent of how Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) hid his crime duties from his wife played by Diane Keaton. This is when one can detect the inferiority of of LIVE BY NIGHT. The power and bite are just not there.
LIVE BY NIGHT is well paced with a good speed in the first third of the film. The varying pace from the highly edited car chase to the slow paced meeting a a tea shop between Joe and Loretta Figgis (Elle Fannng)
.
The film also contains dialogue with heavy Irish accent (from Gleesona nd Miller) which is occasionally hard to understand.

The film could have done with some script doctoring. Affleck taking the co-producing, writing, directing and lead acting duties has obviously got his plate full in this $65 million production.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtFZcAuH-qI

 

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Died Today: David Bowie (1947-2016)

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davidbowieDavid Bowie (1947–2016)

Born: January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London, England, UK
Died: January 10, 2016 (age 69) in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Nicknames The Thin White Duke
Ziggy Stardust
The Picasso of Pop
The Dame
The Master of Reinvention
The Chameleon of Rock
Aladdin Sane
Major Tom

Married to:
Iman (6 June 1992 – 10 January 2016) (his death) (1 child)
Angie Bowie (19 March 1970 – 8 February 1980) (divorced) (1 child)

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

[on Kurt Cobain] I was simply blown away when I found out that Kurt Cobain liked my work, and I always wanted to talk to him about his reasons for covering “Man Who Sold The World.”…

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Happy Birthday: Jemaine Clement

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jermaineclement.jpgJemaine Clement

Born: January 10, 1974 in Masterton, New Zealand

Married to: Miranda Manasiadis (August 2008 – present) (1 child)

The way [Bret McKenzie] and I work and the way [Taika Waititi] and I work are different. Bret and I, we don’t like the same movies. We like the same music but we don’t like the same comedy stuff often. He would rather watch Sex and the City (1998), whereas I could not sit through that. He loves Knocked Up (2007) and things about groups of friends having babies and stuff, whereas I look around at the audience in total confusion. But he walked out of Step Brothers (2008). At the time, I thought it was one of the funniest movies I’d seen in years. So we have to work on a subset of what we both find funny. I think sometimes that raises the quality because you get rid…

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Happy Birthday: Sarah Shahi

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sarahshahi.jpgSarah Shahi

Born: January 10, 1980 in Euless, Texas, USA

Married to:
Steve Howey (7 February 2009 – present) (3 children)

I know it sounds weird, but my definition of ‘sexy’ has changed as I’ve gotten older. And being smart and informed makes me feel sexier than any outfit.

To be beautiful in Texas, you had to be blonde and blue-eyed and have a name like Ann.

NFL cheerleading is harder than most people think. They train up to six hours every day with games on Sundays. They gave me a great work ethic.

BULLET TO THE HEAD
dir. Walter Hill
Stars:
Sylvester Stallone
Jason Momoa

MOVIE POSTERI DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
dir. Douglas McGrath
Stars:
Sarah Jessica Parker
Pierce Brosnan

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Happy Birthday: Emily Meade

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emilymeade.jpgEmily Meade

Born: January 10, 1989 in New York City, New York, USA

You grow up loving movies, and your first instinct is you want to be an actor, because those are the people you see in the movies. But when you actually become an actor, you’re like, ‘Oh, wait, this is actually only a small portion of the storytelling. If I want to really tell a story, I’d want to be a director.’

I always have a very complex personal life as far as romance goes. Sometimes I have a little too much time to get into too much trouble… and drama. It’s either I’m working, or I have nothing to do but focus on my personal life. It’s a little hectic

YOUNG ADULT
dir. Jason Reitman
Stars
Charlize Theron
Patrick Wilson
MOVIE POSTERTRESPASS
dir. Joel Schumacher
Stars:
Nicolas Cage
Nicole Kidman
MY SOUL TO TAKE
dir. Wes Craven
Stars:

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