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Four years after the phenomenal All About Eve, Joseph L Manckiewicz moves away from Broadway and lands in Hollywood. Naturally, everything in Hollywood is bound to be louder, more vulgar, more shallow and more expensive and surprisingly less relatable, less credible. Ava Gardner is breathtakingly beautiful and Jack Cardiff photographs her like a goddess but that's no match for any of the exchanges between Bette Davis and Thelma Ritter in All About Eve. Here the soap opera elements dominate the tale. The Italian aristocrats as played by Rossano Brazzi and Valentina Cortese take the story for a ludicrous spin. Josseph L Manckiewicz as a writer and director makes sure the film doesn't become "The Legend Of Lylah Clare" for instance. Humphery Bogart plays the lead and I forgot to mention it. I wonder why. He's wonderful in it but the Oscar went to Edmond O'Brian for his unbearable press agent. Ava Gardner presence transformed this lurid tale into a classic and it's bound to remain so for ever.

Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson are two of the young actors I follow and wait for with a certain amount of longing. So imagine my shock. I always refer to them as "pure actors" the kind of actor that will never go for the buck. I, naturally, forgot the power of the buck but in this case is terribly depressing. I'm sure the "Watchmen" have a following but so did Charles Manson. I love movies and very rarely use the word "hate" referring to a movie but this time I was tempted. I even stayed for its interminable and unendurable length. I must grant you that it may just be me. A generational thing but that doesn't prevent my depression. I had to run and watch "Angeles In America", "Little Children", "Jesus's Son" and "Stage Beauty" to fall in love with Crudup and Wilson all over again and eliminate the sense of disgust that "Watchmen" provoked in me.

Shapeless epic with a shifting center. Everything feels fake even the real magnificent scenery but it's really the script that tried to be about a lot of things but ends up being about nothing. The potential poetry in the plight of the Aborigines smells of opportunism, at least, it wasn't filled with the honesty of Philip Noyce's "Rabbit Proof Fence" for instance. On a personal, and maybe shallow perspective, I'm truly upset about Nicole Kidman for whatever she's done to her face, I was so aware of the swelling in her upper lip that it distracted me away from any sort of emotion. Hugh Jackman is gorgeous but his acting here is so exterior that I couldn't believe him for a moment. He is the new Rock Hudson and I think he'll be at his best in bright feel good, sexy comedies. Buz Lhurman's "Australia" seems filmed by a foreigner. There is not a hint of the Australia I got to know and be fascinated by of the films of Peter Weir just to name one great Aussie director. Buz Lhurman has been a lucky director with lots and lots of of chutzpah. Let's see what happens next.