Showing posts with label Nigel M Smith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigel M Smith. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2016

30 minutes with Natalie Portman / 'The less I’m in a movie, the more I like it'

Natalie Portman
by Raymond Meier-

30 MINUTES WITH

Natalie Portman: 'The less I’m in a movie, the more I like it'

The actor talks about directing herself, the things she learned from Terrence Malick and Mike Nichols, and making a tourist trip to the Star Wars universe


Nigel M Smith
Friday 19 August 2016 09.47 BST

Natalie Portman
Photo by Mark Abrahams


Hi Natalie. You’ve moved back to LA after two years in Paris (1). What’s it like to be back in the belly of the beast?
People in LA are just wild. French people are very judgemental, or in Paris at least, about how you are and how you look. You would never wear workout clothes on the street or sandals or shorts or wild colours. It was fun to get back to where everyone’s just being free.

Did you move back because of the vegan cuisine? (2)
[Laughs] Took the words out of my mouth. Actually, Paris has improved a lot for vegans in the past few years. It was a lucky moment to be there as a vegan.
You premiered A Tale of Love and Darkness at Cannes (3), where critics are notorious for booing. Was it scary opening yourself up to that?
Amy Adams once said this thing that I remember all the time about how artists have to have a very thin skin. You have to be very emotionally ready, emotionally connected to everything but then, as a public figure, you have to have such a thick skin. People will say such harsh things (4). You need to be vulnerable for your work but you also need to be tough as nails just to keep up, and that combination is really hard to maintain.
Do you read reviews of your own films?
No. I avoid it. It’s inhibiting to hear bad things about yourself. It makes you afraid, and you can’t be afraid when you work.
So many actors hate watching themselves. How do you get past that?
I usually see a movie once when it comes out at the premiere and then never see it again. Usually I cringe through the premiere and hate everything I do. The less I’m in a movie, the more I like it.
How do you rate your performance in this film?
I will never tell you anything good about myself. I promise! At least I was able to have the distance to be like, “OK. This could be better.”
Would you cast yourself again?
[Laughs] Yes.





Pinterest

You’ve worked with some incredible filmmakers (5). Who influenced your directorial style?

Mike Nichols was a huge influence. He emphasised story so much. He was always telling the story over and over again to the cast so that everyone’s in the same moment. This is the moment they fall in love … this is the moment she realises he’s cheating … this is the moment he sees his mother as flawed for the first time. You name the big event of the scene and that helps you connect the dots.
Terrence Malick was a huge influence also. He’s completely different. He’s just constantly pushing to paint from life and not from other films. Whenever they say “It has to be a three-act structure” or whatever, he’s like: “That’s not true. You portray the world as you experience it.”
I read that while shooting Annihilation (6) at Pinewood Studios in London you visited the Rogue One and Episode VIII sets. What was it like to step back into the Star Wars universe? (7)
It’s always fun getting to visit a movie set as a tourist. When you go and it’s your job and you go everyday, you get a little immune to how magical it is. To experience it as a tourist just makes it magic again.
You have Jackie coming up, in which you portray Jackie Onassis. You’re being tipped for an Oscar. You seemed to enjoy yourself while on the awards trail for Black Swan ... (8)
Being sober the whole time is a trip! (9) I’ll tell you that. [Laughs] I felt unusual being that way relative to the room.

Footnotes

(1) Portman moved with her husband, Benjamin Millipied, and their five-year-old son Aleph, after Millipied became director of dance at the Paris Opera Ballet in 2014. He returned to LA Dance, the company he created in 2012, this summer.
(2) Portman has been vegetarian since her preteen years. In 2009, she declared herself vegan after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals.

(3) Portman’s feature directorial debut, an ambitious, Hebrew-language adaptation of Israeli writer Amos Oz’s autobiographical novel of the same name. She stars as an Eastern European Holocaust survivor who struggles to adapt to life in what will soon become the state of Israel.
(4) A Tale of Love and Darkness premiered in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section and earned mixed reviews. The Guardian’s Andrew Pulver called it a “serious, well made adaptation.”
(5) Portman has worked with film-makers including George Lucas, Mike Nichols, Terrence Malick, Darren Aronofsky and Anthony Minghella.
(6) The next film from Ex Machina film-maker Alex Garland. Portman plays a biologist who signs up for a dangerous secret expedition.
(7) Portman played Padmé Amidala in Stars Wars Episodes I, II and III.
(8) Portman won her best actress Oscar in 2010 for her performance in Darren Aronofsky’s ballerina thriller Black Swan.
(9) She was pregnant while campaigning for the award.
• A Tale of Love and Darkness is released in the US on 19 August




30 MINUTES WITH






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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Kristen Stewart / 'I'd love to work with Lars von Trier'



Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart: 

'I'd love to work with Lars von Trier'


 The Twilight actor, who has two films playing at Cannes, would next most like to collaborate with the controversial Danish auteur
Nigel M Smith in Cannes
Wednesday 18 May 2016 11.30 BST
Kristen Stewart has said that she would “kill” to work with Lars von Trier. Stewart confessed to her love for von Trier to the Guardian while discussing Allen’s Cannes-opener, Café Society.
Speaking at a press event for Cafe Society, Stewart was asked which film-makers she was keen to work with and said: “I love Lars von Trier. It’s hard for me to think of those things and I’m reluctant to say [who] because they follow you around. Seems horse before the cart. But I would kill to work for Lars von Trier.”
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Saturday, February 27, 2016

The 50 best films of 2015 / Room / No 36


The 50 best films 

of 2015 

in the US  

No 36 

Room


Room review: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay escape confining adaptation



Director Lenny Abrahamson seems uncertain of how to translate Emma Donoghue’s novel to the big screen – but his cast appear more confident

***

Nigel M Smith
Saturday 5 September 2015 07.58 BST
E
mma Donoghue’s novel Room was a literary sensation soon after its publication in 2010 – and rightfully so. Told from the perspective of Jack, a five-year-old boy who knows nothing outside of the small room he and his mother have lived in for his whole life, it’s an unsettling story of survival that’s life-affirming without being overtly manipulative. The triumph of the novel lies in how deftly Donoghue enters the psyche of a sheltered young boy – no easy feat.


Lenny Abrahamson is the man behind the inevitable big screen adaption, and while the film boasts exemplary performances, it fails to register on a level as profound as its source due to its director’s sometimes shaky grip on the material. The script, meanwhile – courtesy of Donoghue herself – distills the essence of the book without foregoing its elemental power.
Relative newcomer Jacob Tremblay is a startling revelation as Jack, a long-haired boy completely oblivious to the everyday struggle his mother goes through to find the will to live. In the lead role, Brie Larson registers as numb to the pain she’s been forced to endure since being kidnapped and held captive by a menacing man Jack only knows as Old Nick.
There’s no way around it: on paper, the subject material is grim and unforgiving. But seen through’s Jack’s eyes, their shared everyday existence is oddly whimsical and intimate. After all, it’s all he knows.



That factor is what made Donoghue’s novel a pleasure not a chore. But on film, the overall effect can be cloying, largely thanks to a superfluous voiceover, as well as an overwrought score that’s more annoying than affecting.
Abrahamson also unwisely cheats the child’s perspective to allow more breathing room for Larson’s character and their captor, Old Nick. In doing so, he removes the wonder and dread that made Donoghue’s story so compelling and unique.


Brie Larson and Lenny Abrahamson attend a screening of 'Room' during the BFI London

He exhibits more confidence behind the lens in Room’s second, more involving, act, when the action shifts to outside the shack that Joy and Jack call home. Jack’s inability to connect with his new environment is devastatingly rendered, aided tremendously by Tremblay’s remarkably credible performance, and Larson’s palpable pain. Joan Allen and William H Macy lend stellar support as Larson’s bereaved parents.
If anything, Room proves Abrahamson as a master actor’s director. The overall vision, however, is muddled.




The best 50 films of 2015 in the US
01. Son of Saul


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Friday, January 29, 2016

30 MINUTES WITH Rebecca Hall at Sundance / Hollywood is scared of 'ugly' female characters

Rebecca Hall
Poster by T.A.

30 MINUTES WITH

Rebecca Hall at Sundance: Hollywood is scared of 'ugly' female characters



The actor on starring in an acclaimed Sundance drama about Christine Chubbuck – the news anchor who achieved notoriety in the 70s for killing herself on live TV – and why she’s rarely offered parts this complex
Nigel M Smith in Park City, Utah
Friday 29 January 2016 12.02 GMT

Hi, Rebecca! How are you?
Full of a head cold, but otherwise fine.

Sundance-related?
I think so. I think it’s just travelling and generally being over-adrenalised and happily pulled in too many directions. But yes, cold!
The last time you were in Park City was with the broad comedy Lay the Favourite(1). 
It’s a completely different thing to go with a film that doesn’t have distribution(2); it’s a really different animal. I had no experience of that. The two I came with before both had distribution; premiering them there was more like just having a coming-out party. There were stakes with Christine. It was also playing in the competition, which was a different thing as well. There was a lot more nerve involved. You wait for reviews, for buyers to circle it, and then you wait for the juries. It’s a nerve-racking process.

I was at the Sundance premiere of Christine: did you sit through the entire movie?
I did, yes! I saw a cut, but it wasn’t with music. And I think there is a difference when you see something with an audience, so I wanted to sit through it. I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. I found it really hard.
It’s a tough watch for anyone. Watching it took me back to the space I was in when I was doing it. I wasn’t really conscious of it while I was watching, but halfway through I thought: God, I’ve got this really bad tension, and why is my shoulder seizing up? My posture was changing in my seat as I was watching.

Rebecca Hall

Then you had to face the audience after for a Q&A.
I’m happy to talk about this film, because I think it needs talking about. Part of the reason I wanted to do it is because I wanted to portray some sort of empathetic version of a mental-health disorder, which often doesn’t get portrayed truly. I wanted to do it with no filter or worrying about being liked – but also for the audience to sympathise with her on some unimaginable level.
Getting up and doing a Q&A after people have just seen it is not exactly comfortable. You’re looking at a group of people who have the expression of: what did you do that for? And there are always people who are going to ask: why did she do it? I don’t know. None of us will ever know. I can make a guess as to why my version of Christine did it, but we will never know what was going on inside her head.
That’s not the focus of the film, solving the riddle that is Christine.
Absolutely not – exactly.
Before learning of your film, I was totally unaware of her story. Had you heard of her?
No, I’d never heard of her. It’s a funny one, because when I talk to people about it, lots of people have an odd reaction, like you have towards some urban myth or legend. People say they’ve seen the footage, and I’m always thinking: no you haven’t, because it doesn’t exist (4).

But there’s something in the consciousness that people vaguely understand the story, or the way in which it’s been filtered down through films such as Network (5).
Given that you had so little footage of her to play off, how did you prepare and feel you were sufficiently ready to embody Christine and do her memory justice?I felt that I had to be faithful to the script, above anything else, to bear in mind always that this was a piece of art, that I wasn’t trying to re-create someone who existed – and in the process, capture the spirit of someone who did something tragic. I thought it was important not to glorify the act, not to turn it into some sort of macabre act of heroism, leaning into the political statement of what she did. It’s first and foremost a tragedy. She should have led a good career and died of natural causes.
I had 20 minutes of her on TV, and that was incredibly informative because it was 20 minutes of her presenting a show that was in no way indicative of how she walked or talked throughout her whole life. To do an impression of that would have been a mistake, but it did give me a jumping-off point in the same way you can have a first impression of someone you meet and how often that gets misguided the longer you know them.

The script alleges she was a virgin her whole life. How did you factor that into your performance?
In my head, she was someone who got stunted at the point when most of us are developing who we are and how we are: in adolescence. It was a conscious choice for all of us – it’s why she had a pink bedroom and an interest in romantic songs. Behind this severe exterior, there is this adolescent little romantic girl, who’s not developed really. That was very informative.

What do you make of the irritating fact that often, the best roles for women are found in smaller films?I really think that Christine is one in a million, in terms of independent or studio. But I know what you’re saying: that there are many more opportunities in independent film for women. But I do think that Christine is unusual, in that I was allowed to be bold and not be concerned about being liked.
I think that female roles: they can be victims, they can be sympathetic, they can be in pain, they can be in suffering – but they can’t be ugly. I think there’s so much fear surrounding that, that it makes a film unlikeable, that it won’t sell. If I’m going to be honest about it: I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren’t regularly allowed to do that, and I don’t know why people are so frightened by it. The moment you do, I’m struck by how many people come up to you. Since Christine started screening, I’m overwhelmed by the response from women and men – that it’s so rare to see something like this. We’re just not given the opportunity so much.

Rebecca Hall

Footnotes:

(1) In the Stephen Frears-directed comedy, Hall played an ex-private dancer turned gambling prodigy. Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones co-starred.
(2) Christine is still seeking distribution in the US.
(3) The footage of her suicide is untraceable on the internet.
(4) It’s believed by some that the 1976 newsroom satire was loosely inspired by Chubbock’s suicide.

THE GUARDIAN



30 MINUTES WITH







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