DAVID MCCULLOUGH, GLASS: A PORTRAIT OF PHILIP Screening

David McCullough: Painting with Words (top); Philip Glass in GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts (bottom)

David McCullough: Painting with Words and GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
Directed by Mark Herzog and produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, David McCullough: Painting with Words takes a look at the career of Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough (Truman, John Adams). Herzog will be present to take questions from the audience following the screening.
Shot on [...]

NOTES ON A SCANDAL – Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett

Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Direction: Richard Eyre
Screenplay: Patrick Marber; from Zoe Heller’s novel
Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, Phil Davis, Anne-Marie Duff
 

Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal
 

Directed by Richard Eyre, Notes on a Scandal is a must-see for those who enjoy a cleverly constructed plot that explores human relationships to the core.
Jaded older teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) contrives to ensnare young and beautiful new teacher Bathsheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). In the meantime, 15-year old student Steve Connolly (Andrew Simpson) entices Bathsheba into a turbulent affair, while Sheba’s husband (Bill Nighy) and children all tear at Sheba’s loyalties.
Credible characters fill Patrick Marber’s clever script (from Zoe Heller’s novel): The management-minded headmaster, the happily [...]

Best Films – 2002

A man is dead. Who among the greedy, ruthless, amoral singing-and-dancing suspects stuck in the snowbound countryside mansion has done it? 8 women is an acquired taste, bien sûr. What seems silly the first time around becomes increasingly wittier and funnier — though no less bizarre — with each repeated viewing. Beautifully shot by Jeanne Lapoirie and chock-full of bitingly sardonic lines and situations (adapted by director François Ozon and Marina de Van, from Robert Thomas’ play), this murder musical is dotted with 8 of the brightest stars of the French cinema of the last 7 (!) decades.
More than seventy years after her film début, Danielle Darrieux, in full form both as an actress and as a singer, joins [...]

THE HOURS II – Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore

THE HOURS Review: Part I
As a plus, instead of the plasticky makeup Kidman has used in her other roles (including her destitute heroine in the purportedly gritty Cold Mountain), she has an ugly fake nose plastered on her face for this one. Whether the fake nose possessed magical properties, I don’t know, but Kidman — though no Virginia Woolf replica — has never looked as interesting or acted as movingly. With a glance, she is able to convey in heartbreaking fashion Woolf’s yearnings for freedom from her constraining life, while her lowered tones add the appropriate somberness to the precarious psychological state of her character.
Finally, to her belong the two emotional highlights of the film: the first, when Woolf [...]