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It looks as though, as of July 20th, "Goya's Ghosts" has been released in the U.S. but only in limited areas. It's in San Francisco, so keep a look out for it in smaller, independent theaters if you want to see it.
The great Czech director Milos Forman has spent 40 years jumping from one historical period to another, leaping entire genres in a single bound—and yet somehow he always winds up making the same movie. Whether we’re talking about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Hair or The People vs. Larry Flynt, when you sit down at a Forman film you know you’re going to see the story of marginalized outcasts rising up against the oppressive forces of an unjust society.
Forman’s parents were killed at Auschwitz, so it’s pretty easy to understand why he’s devoted his movie career to battling fascists in every imaginable setting, sometimes even in opposition to his own source material. (His last film Man on the Moon bent over backward warping and distorting the life of Andy Kaufman, trying to turn the prankish, confrontational genius into a cuddly folk hero.)
At first glance Goya’s Ghosts, Forman’s first picture in seven years, seems tailor-made for the filmmaker’s antiestablishment bent. This unwieldy, rocky ride takes on both the Spanish Inquisition and the Napoleonic Wars.
Talk about getting two for the price of one.
A prestigious, handsomely mounted costume piece with a messy, modern sensibility, Goya’s Ghosts doesn’t have to stretch very far to find present-day parallels. Religious fanaticism and state-sanctioned torture have made great comebacks recently, and if nothing else the screenplay (by Forman and Jean-Claude Carrière) possesses the outsized, commendable fury of some extremely pissed-off aging hippies.
Perched perilously on the edge of camp, Goya’s Ghosts is a heedlessly overwrought melodrama boasting some of the most cheerfully insane casting blunders of recent years. Where else can you see Randy Quaid playing the king of Spain?
Stellan Skarsgård stars as Francisco Goya. If you can get over the shock of this great Swedish actor donning a wig of frizzy curls and a bulbous prosthetic nose, it’s actually not a half-bad performance. He portrays the legendary painter as an expert politician, sweet talking his way around the whims of royalty and clergy. As has always been the case throughout history, every artist must also be a hustler.
His nemesis arrives in the form of Javier Bardem’s Brother Lorenzo, a puffed-up plaster saint of piety who suspects Goya’s muse Ines (Natalie Portman, horrible) might secretly be Jewish. Bardem is one of the world’s most captivating performers right now, and although there’s not much to Brother Lorenzo on the page, the actor brings a wild collection of tics and whimpers to the role, oozing human weakness like an oil slick. Bardem’s so damn good, he even sells us on the preposterousness of his character raping and impregnating Ines.
Much harder to swallow is one hoot of a dinner party sequence, during which Ines’ parents question Lorenzo about the church’s interrogation techniques, and outlandishly have enough props on hand to start staging a little cross-examination of their own. You’ll half-expect a Monty Python alum to come wandering into the frame, shouting: “Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition!”
Fifteen years later it’s Napoleon’s turn. Bardem’s Lorenzo has somehow refashioned himself as an Enlightenment crusader, and the sly actor even strikes poses with his hand inside his unbuttoned shirt, emulating his hero. He and Goya knock heads again, this time trying to locate Ines’ illegitimate daughter (played disastrously by Portman again, now with a spray-on tan), currently a prostitute working the war-torn streets of Madrid.
Obviously Forman has a lot of steam he wants to blow off here, and the underlying concerns of Goya’s Ghosts couldn’t be more admirable. It’s all about the interchangeable corruption of hard-line ideologues, and the responsibility of the artist to speak truth to power. Too bad the film also happens to be plotted like a trashy romance novel, and the endless barrage of can-you-top-this twists and some overscaled performances make it unintentionally hilarious.
There are few things funnier than Portman’s work as the older, prison-ravaged Ines. Gaunt, bald and dentally challenged, she spends the picture’s second hour caterwauling and shrieking to such a point, she should rightfully become a camp icon. (It’s amazing how someone can chew so much scenery without any teeth.)
Yet this Razzie-worthy turn somehow suits the film’s wildly misjudged, go-for-broke quality that’s improbably entertaining, often in spite of itself. Goya’s Ghosts has a reckless, angry energy that’s somehow riveting—especially when it’s terrible.
We have been filming this new feature film "The Other Boleyn Girl"at DoverCastle
I was at the fabulous Dover Castle today were I spoke to the English Heritage staff, there were giving me the own down on
We have not seen Scarlett yet but watched Natalie Portman and Eric Bana do a scene together which was wonderful."
All the staff at English Heritage have been looking out for Scarlett and Natalie Portman. The scene filmed there is where Anne is imprisoned in the tower (Dover Castle's Keep looks very similar to the Tower of London in the stonework and is easier for filming) as well as her execution. I asked him how the cast were and first thing he blurted out was what a total 'long-faced cow' Scarlett J. was. I was quite taken a back as the strength of these feelings as he has been there for years and not too into the celebrity thing. She apparently insisted on having at least 4 women accompany her to the toilet, insisted on 2 blankets covering her shoulders between takes in the outside scenes (whilst all the other cast and extras were happy to freeze their asses off!) and basically was very unfriendly to the point of rudeness. The volunteer on duty during the filming had a more intimate encounter with one of the actresses on the day.
He said: "I was in the restroom which is next to the toilet and Natalie Portman came in with a minder wearing her voluminous, corseted, costume.
"She disappeared inside and when she came out I said I bet that was difficult' and she threw back her head and laughed out loud.
He said also Natalie Portman was a fine sort and he gathered from the staff and other extras during smoke breaks she was the most popular of the 2, and that Scarlett was rather 'hated' on set. The execution scene (most pivotal of course) took ages to film; they redid it countless times I was told.
TORONTO - "Last I heard, they have a list of directors and screenwriters," novelist Charles Frazier smiles. "As for the lead, I have not been able to come up with a name for who I'd want to see play Will.
"I've been trying to think of actors in their mid to late 20s, but I haven't seen a lot of movies the past few years. So," he chuckles, "I'm somewhat unaware of the younger actors that are out there right now."
Placing his coffee cup down on a glass-topped table in the third floor conference room of his Canadian publisher's office, Frazier, 56, was in town earlier this month to talk about his immersive new novel "Thirteen Moons," his much-anticipated follow-up to 1997's best-selling American Civil War Epic - "Cold Mountain."
That love story, brought to celluloid life by Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella and stars Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, spent over a year on the New York Times best-seller list and has sold over four million copies worldwide.
Straight out of left-field, the former university professor watched his debut snatch the National Book award from Don DeLillo's heavily favoured hands and then sat back as a bidding war ensued for the rights to distribute his next literary tome.
Reportedly, after reading a one-page outline, Random House beat all the other suitors, offering Frazier an advance worth more than $8-million. Then, Hollywood producer Scott Rudin ("Wonder Boys," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Closer") stepped in, lavishing the bristle-haired author with another $3-million for the movie rights.
And so begun Frazier's almost-decade long journey back to book shelves across North America. But it was a journey, he says, that started when he was penning "Cold Mountain" in the mid-'90s.
"When I was doing some of the library work for 'Cold Mountain,' I had run across this reference to a very old man (William Holland Thomas) in an institution who some days only spoke Cherokee," he says. "He didn't have a place in that book, but I kept coming back to that man, wondering what that story was about. And I found out that he was a guy who at age 12 or 13 went out by himself to the edge of the Cherokee nation to run a trading post. He was then adopted into that group of Cherokee and from then on his life was tied up with these people."
When the curtain lifts on "Thirteen Moons," readers glimpse an elderly Will Cooper, grappling with the dawn of the industrial age and wrestling with the one true love that got away. At the frontier of his life, he recounts being orphaned and then sold into servitude at age 12 to manage a trading post in Cherokee territory in western North Carolina.
Learning the Cherokee language, Will becomes friends with the local chief, Bear, and is adopted into their tribe. With his heart set on acquiring as much land as possible to ensure the livability for future generations, Will sets about helping Bear.
"I grew up as a neighbour to the Eastern Band of Cherokee," Frazier says. "Most people are aware of the Trail of Tears (the removal of the Cherokee to the Western territories) but most people aren't aware that there was this small group of Cherokee that was able to stay. So I was interested in finding out that story, finding out how it is that that one group of people has managed to stay. Has resisted this overwhelming force of the government. They're still there, preserving their culture. They succeeded where most other Native American groups were not able to.
"But really," he continues, sitting back into his chair, "this is a book about that whole period of transition. From the early 19th century to the early 20th century. And a big part of that for many areas in the United States was the conflict between white settlers and Native Americans.
"So we can understand how we came here, how we came to occupy this place, that whole history of Native Americans anywhere in North America is a story people need to have a greater understanding of."
Traversing both the white and native worlds, Will educates himself. Becoming a lawyer he acts as both the legal and political voice of the tribe as the United States government plots to forcibly remove them from their southeastern ancestral lands, into the newly created Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
Fixed mostly in Will's middle years, at its core, the book shares "Cold Mountain's" romantic yearning. Like Inman, Will's life is forever altered by a chance meeting with Claire, a beautiful, ghost of a woman who haunts the peppery narrator throughout his life.
As Will's adventure takes him from store clerk to the upper echelons of Washington, it's his periodic meetings with Claire - who is married to a wealthy "white Indian," named Featherstone - that give "Thirteen Moons" most of its heart. And it's Will's eternal yearning for Claire that invests the book with the same unresolved longing that lined "Cold Mountain."
"Well," Frazier says, "in a sense I see this one as having a happy ending, to the degree that nobody's dead in the snow."
Breaking for a moment, Frazier stares outside as a midmorning sun blankets King Street toward St. James Park, and then goes on in his low Southern drawl. "But seriously, Will has this long life. He succeeds at a great many things and fails at a few. Maybe not fails, but doesn't succeed; doesn't get everything he wants in life just like few of us do.
"Claire is one of those things that doesn't resolve itself the way he wished it had. So, as a 90-year-old man, he's still yearning for her, still wishing his life had worked out differently in some regards and he's still waiting for that brand new telephone hoping Claire will be on the other end.
"Everybody ends up with some things that they're still wishing had happened differently or ended differently."
Calling Jim Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" a great inspiration for much of the style of "Thirteen Moons," Frazier says his aim with this book was to pen something "so crisp, so condensed that it just moves right along."
He also strove to craft a narrative that covered a long period of time more quickly. "With both 'Cold Mountain' and this one, I found myself thinking about the history of that place. I'm interested in the Southern Appalachians. I'm interested in the natural history, the human history, and the landforms, everything about that place.
"It's home for me. It's a place I love and a place I know, so it's kind of like, my subject matter."
Unmoved by New York's bustling literary scene, Frazier hid out at his home in Ashville, N.C., before heading out on this latest book tour. And even though "Thirteen Moons" is rooted on best-seller lists across the continent, the author seems most ecstatic when he's talking about the book's reception amongst natives.
"That's been one of the most gratifying parts of this book," he says looking pleased. "The reception I've got from the Eastern Band has been so generous. I was awarded the Cherokee Phoenix award, which is an award that's given to non-members of a tribe for their work in helping the Eastern Band preserve their culture. The thing that I've liked the most is how people have said, 'You got our humour right.'"
He's even helping facilitate plans to translate "Thirteen Moons" from English to Cherokee. "Right now there are no children's books in Cherokee, so we're hoping this ends up being a continuing project. Hopefully this could be a way to immerse kids in Cherokee."
Frazier, who is readying himself for a flight to London later in the day, smoothes his hands over freshly pressed jeans and admits that while he liked Tinseltown's adaptation of "Cold Mountain" just fine, he has no ambitions to nab a Best Adapted Screenplay anytime soon.
"I won't adapt it," he stresses. "I can hardly understand screenplays when I try to read them."
But after almost an hour in conversation, he's thought of a leading lady for Claire. "Actually, Natalie Portman," he says. "She's only in 'Cold Mountain' briefly, but her scenes were just remarkable. Yes, Natalie Portman."
It turns out that a Camera Man a "focus-puller" happens to be making a movie with Natalie Portman, and Ms. Portman happens to play a poker player, and it happens to be that someone needs to help Ms. Portman understand what it’s like to play poker. As it happens this person turns out to be Jean Barbe.
I ask him just what such a job entails
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The crew have spent the last couple of weeks chilling, I flue back home for 7 days. It's really refreshing to being home. Not living out of a suit case. I went shopping in New York I hope I will get all this stuff in my suit case. Now I am all excited about getting back, on the road with this film crew we are now all back on location. All refreshed and we haven't had anything problems so far… I reckon that we will be here until the end of Jan 2007.I guess that some of the guys will have to decide if they what to go home for the holidays etc. This week we were filming near by the village of Sandgate we were installed into the Sandgate Hotel this building is a part of the 19th century terrace, Sandgate Hotel stands opposite a pebble beach, just a stroll from the antiquarian shops and busy bistros of Sandgate village, near Folkestone and Dover, England.
At the week end the crew the was in the bar at the Hotel and in walked Actress Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, who asked the hotel to shut the bar at 10pm, then disturbed other guests with 5am yoga sessions. Also Natalie persuaded staff to prepare a lavish party for her, Scarlett and crew all the crew attend we all had a great time. I think the hotel staff were relieved when we all left. One member of the Hotel staff said to me that no one of " Nat's people never answer there incoming calls”...?
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TORONTO - "Last I heard, they have a list of directors and screenwriters," novelist Charles Frazier smiles. "As for the lead, I have not been able to come up with a name for who I'd want to see play Will.
"I've been trying to think of actors in their mid to late 20s, but I haven't seen a lot of movies the past few years. So," he chuckles, "I'm somewhat unaware of the younger actors that are out there right now."
Placing his coffee cup down on a glass-topped table in the third floor conference room of his Canadian publisher's office, Frazier, 56, was in town earlier this month to talk about his immersive new novel "Thirteen Moons," his much-anticipated follow-up to 1997's best-selling American Civil War Epic - "Cold Mountain
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This is not necessarily a problem as plenty of people working in the industry are totally useless. Some of them are Executives working in the Studios. If you don't know what this means, go to the part on Studio Executives, although it may not be very helpful, as I've never quite worked out what they do. Some people, who work on the floor, i.e. actually making the film, are totally useless but they usually don't last very long, unless they are either very enthusiastic or very entertaining or very pretty or all three.
All the creative jobs on film require intense co-operation with your colleagues. This is part of what makes it so fascinating, so you need to understand that if you want to work in Movies, your ideas will be just added to the pool, and will generally go unrecognized, except by the few that know what you are doing. So you have to "congratulate yourself" when you get it right and try not to be miserable when you don't
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I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan. Just...really huge fan. Anyways, Wes is doing a film in India with Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, (of course) Owen Wilson and supposedly - according to an Indian tabloid - NATALIE PORTMAN! Here's someone's comment from IMDB:
The tabloids here report that they are currently shooting in Udaipur and Jodhpur, both cities in the desert-palace state of Rajasthan. It also mentions that its a story about three brothers - Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman - who journey through India. "The script has been co-written by Roman Coppola , son of Francis Ford Coppola, and Schwartzman. We hear that Wilson and Anderson took a ride in the second-class compartmnet of an Indian train for research. The crew is expected to shoot in India till February. Actress Anjelica Huston and Natalie Portman also star
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“The Other Boleyn Girl” in the UK. I plan on having a showing and going to my bed. But I know that was an imposable dream because has soon has my lights went on in my house. I had friends around giving me all there gossip and wanting to know all about the film location and what the film is all about.
For three mouths that’s how long I have been away I had the best and mouths of 2006 especially working with this film crew and of cores Natalie Portman. I have worked on films with Ms Portman before but that was me being apart of a big film crew, this time it was a little bit different that it was all English film crew and she know me from before, obviously it was had work. I'd loved ever time of it.
Scarlett Johansson along with Eric Bana and Natalie Portman are the A list stars that will be spotted around Lacock this was the first film location
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