a discomforting blend of the intense and the restless
*sniffle*
The power was out in my neighborhood all day (planned outage) so I took myself off for a bit of pampering: pedicure, lunch and movie.
I haven't been to see a movie in the theater since, uh, Kingdom of Heaven? Revenge of the Sith? So I treated myself to Ralph Fiennes' rugged gentlemanly distracting visage in The Constant Gardener.
All the customers clamoring for the book recently (sold out, the reprint on order) have affirmed that the movie only makes you want to read the book. Definitely in agreement. The cinematography is gorgeous, all that digital grading is so beautiful and moody. The acting is intriguing, Rachael Weisz is so convincing as the ardent, passionate advocate, Tessa Quayle. It's a feat to make one feel so attached to a character from the first moment you meet her/him. As Anthony Lane at The New Yorker put it:
Yet Fiennes isn’t funny for long, because, as with Michael Redgrave, you are left with that discomforting blend of the intense and the restless-the blue eyes that bore into you and then glance away, seeking another target.
I'm all sniffly from the movie and actually from one of the trailers for North Country a movie based on the book Class Action about the first big class action suit on sexual harassment in the iron mines of northern Minnesota. A lot of the locations and law firms I know a little bit about first hand, so it was a painful book to read. Charlize Theron looked amazingly not glamorous in the leading role, and made me tear up in just the few scenes in the preview.
ETA: holy whahuh? Rachael Weisz also played Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell/Princess Nefertiri in "The Mummy Returns"? whoa, she's so much better than that drivel! ;) and! she played one of Ralph Fienne's three characters' illicit lovers in Sunshine (love that movie) so they weren't strangers for this film
The power was out in my neighborhood all day (planned outage) so I took myself off for a bit of pampering: pedicure, lunch and movie.
I haven't been to see a movie in the theater since, uh, Kingdom of Heaven? Revenge of the Sith? So I treated myself to Ralph Fiennes' rugged gentlemanly distracting visage in The Constant Gardener.
All the customers clamoring for the book recently (sold out, the reprint on order) have affirmed that the movie only makes you want to read the book. Definitely in agreement. The cinematography is gorgeous, all that digital grading is so beautiful and moody. The acting is intriguing, Rachael Weisz is so convincing as the ardent, passionate advocate, Tessa Quayle. It's a feat to make one feel so attached to a character from the first moment you meet her/him. As Anthony Lane at The New Yorker put it:
Yet Fiennes isn’t funny for long, because, as with Michael Redgrave, you are left with that discomforting blend of the intense and the restless-the blue eyes that bore into you and then glance away, seeking another target.
I'm all sniffly from the movie and actually from one of the trailers for North Country a movie based on the book Class Action about the first big class action suit on sexual harassment in the iron mines of northern Minnesota. A lot of the locations and law firms I know a little bit about first hand, so it was a painful book to read. Charlize Theron looked amazingly not glamorous in the leading role, and made me tear up in just the few scenes in the preview.
ETA: holy whahuh? Rachael Weisz also played Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell/Princess Nefertiri in "The Mummy Returns"? whoa, she's so much better than that drivel! ;) and! she played one of Ralph Fienne's three characters' illicit lovers in Sunshine (love that movie) so they weren't strangers for this film