Tag: Kristin Scott Thomas

Magnolia Pictures Acquires BEL AMI

Robert Pattinson’s new film BEL AMI has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures. The distributor negotiated the deal with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, who will take charge of all other US media, and will open the drama on June 8.

Starring Robert Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci and Colm Meaney, BEL AMI is the chronicle of a young man’s rise to power in Paris via his manipulation of the city’s most influential and wealthy women. The film is based on the Guy de Maupassant novel.

For More Information: https://www.facebook.com/BelAmiFilm

 

SARAH’S KEY – The Review

This Summer the events of World War II have played a major role in the fantasy films CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER  and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.  Once again with the release of SARAH’S KEY we return to the 1940’s, but this time in a thought provoking drama. As in the recent ARMY OF CRIME we witness the occupation of Paris. It began with the round up of French Jewish citizens and then focused on several resistance fighters. Key uses that round up-the Vel’ d’Hiv- as it’s second timeline while flashing ahead to the modern day. Both films shine a light on a dark chapter in France’s recent past.

SARAH’S KEY begins in that older timeline-1943- as young Sarah ( Melusine Mayance ) plays with her younger brother in the bedroom of their Paris apartment. The quiet morning is shattered by the police pounding on the front door. The family-and many neighbors- is soon lead away on buses. The film then flashes forward to the present day as Julia ( Kristin Scott Thomas ) looks in on the workers remodeling the old apartment that has been in her husband’s family for many decades. The British born Julia returns to her job as a journalist at an international news magazine. She pushes for an article on the anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv and with the help of a younger staffer-who has little knowledge of the events-she begins her research. She learns that her husband’s family took over Sarah’s family apartment after they were taken away. Returning to the past we see the family being held at a bicycling sports area until they are transferred . Eventually they will be shipped off to German concentration camps. Battling illness and hunger, Sarah is determined to escape. Modern day Julia becomes a history detective as she tries to trace the story and find out what happened to that brave little girl.

SARAH’S KEY for most of it’s running time tells two stories. Unfortunately the modern day plotline of Julia’s marriage problems and family clashes seems fairly trivial compared to the life and death struggle in 1942. The brutal scenes at the sports arena ( as a young modern day staffer remarks that it was many times worse than the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina ) are very powerful. What stuns the 2011 characters is that these atrocities were inflicted on French citizens by French authorities before the German forces took over. Sarah’s journey is compelling while Julia’s arguments with her husband are not. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner is able to keep the tension going in those harrowing scenes of the past and gets a very strong performance from Mayance as the strong -willed young heroine. Thomas makes Julia a passionate, intelligent seeker of truth. This is the second French language film I’ve seen her act in and I was impressed how she effortlessly goes from her native tongue to fluent French. Another English-speaking actor, Aidan Quinn, shows up fairly late in the film as Julia interviews him during her research. I almost wish the film concentrated more on Sarah’s story, but the flash forwards to modern times doesn’t diminish it’s power. SARAH’S KEY is a journalistic detective story that  reveals a country’s shame while celebrating the  undefeated spirit of one of it’s youngest heroines.

Overall Rating: Three Out of Five Stars

SARAH’S KEY Official US Trailer

Watch the first domestic trailer for The Weinstein Company’s SARAH’S KEY. TWC snagged the U.S distribution rights to the film last September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Seems more like a film (along with Scott’s noteworthy performance) better served up during awards season, instead of a mid-summer release.

Synopsis:

Julia Jarmond (KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS), an American journalist married to a Frenchman, is commissioned to write an article about the notorious Vel d’Hiv round up, which took place in Paris, in 1942. She stumbles upon a family secret which will link her forever to the destiny of a young Jewish girl, Sarah. Julia learns that the apartment she and her husband Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand’s family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers – especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive – the more she uncovers about Bertrand’s family, about France and, finally, herself.

SARAH’S KEY will be in theaters on July 22, 2011.

SARAH’S KEY Poster and Trailer

I bet you missed me! Don’t worry… I’ll make it up to you! Here is a look at SARAH’S KEY, a film based on the bestselling French Novel by Tatiana De Rosnay. SARAH’S KEY stars Kristin Scott Thomas (THE ENGLISH PATIENT,NOWHERE BOY, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL) , Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot, Michel Duchaussoy, Dominique Frot, Gisèle Casadesus, Aidan Quinn, and Natasha Mashkevich, and is scheduled for limited release on July 22.

Synopsis:

Paris, July 1942:

Ten-year-old Sarah is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard – their secret hiding place – and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released. Sixty seven years later: Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own romantic future.

VISTIT THE SARAH’S KEY OFFICIAL WEBSITE HERE

SARAH’S KEY is scheduled for limited release on July 22 and is being distributed by THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

Review: NOWHERE BOY

As a Beatles/Lennon fan, I was very skeptical of this film. Especially with John Lennon being such a charismatic individual. I must say, they pulled it off well!

NOWHERE BOY is the true story of John Lennon’s childhood in Liverpool, England. As a youth, Lennon (Aaron Johnson) was constantly in trouble for his tom foolery and shenanigans in school. Raised by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and his Uncle, Lennon was brought up on classical music and rules. After his grandfathers death, he reconciles with the mother that gave him to her sister to raise at the age of 3-4 years old. Julia (Anne-Marie Duff) was a lovely woman, but fought a horrible case of depression that left her unable to raise Lennon herself. During their reconciliation, Julia taught him to play music, inspiring his first band, The Quarrymen. Through music, he would eventually meet a young Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster) and George Harrison (Sam Bell). Lennon would never be the same once music touched his life.

The movie does a decent job telling the tale of Lennon’s childhood. The one thing to take into consideration is that it is, after all, a movie. Things are going to be left out, distorted, or crunched together to tell a story in a couple of hours. I was actually quite impressed by Johnson’s portrayal of Lennon. Whenever anyone plays an iconic historical figure (which Lennon truly was) the bar is going to be set high. Johnson did a great job of capturing Lennon’s dialect and attitude.

For those of you expecting more of a Beatles history, you will be disappointed. I was not a fan of the casting  Thomas Sangster as Paul McCartney. Don’t get me wrong, he isn’t a bad actor or anything, but he did not do McCartney justice. He looked way too young for a 15 year old, and didn’t really capture Paul McCartney’s personality or musical charisma. The kid could be great in other roles, but this was not the role for him.

They definitely went the route of basing the majority of the story on the dysfunctional part of Lennon’s upbringing. He fought with wanting to know his mother and knowing where he truly belonged. There was the definite pain of wanting to be with his mother and realizing just how sick she really was. She had a family, and her present husband was very worried that surrounding herself with Lennon would trigger her illness again. In a way, it did. The film depicts a very manic side to Julia at times, which would flip to depressed and cold in an instant.

The problem I have with the portrayal of Julia is that they made her estranged. Julia was always present in Lennon’s life. She was present until his death, when he was just 17 years of age. They did the same type of alteration with Mimi. Mimi was a disciplinarian, but she was not nearly as cold as the film portrayed. In fact, Lennon always spoke highly of Mimi. Smith always knew that she would raise him. She was quoted to say “I knew the moment I saw John in that hospital that I was the one to be his mother, not Julia. Does that sound awful? It isn’t, really, because Julia accepted it as something perfectly natural. She used to say, ‘You’re his real mother. All I did was give birth.”” Still, Duff and Thomas gave magnetic and fantastic performances.

Also, while I do not dispute that Lennon was quite the troublemaker that they portray him to be, they concentrated more on that side than his happy-go-lucky nature. I was pleased to see that they included his fondness for drawing. His cartoons and illustrations are simply brilliant.

For a movie, I think that they did a decent job of making an entertaining, watchable film. As a Lennon/Beatles fan, I really wish that they didn’t stretch things so much. I would have appreciated a more straightforward story.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review: ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’

confessionsshopaholicmovie

Jennifer:

It is always interesting to see a book brought to life in a movie. Stories with which we are so familiar seen through the eyes of another. Some adaptations are a success, others, not so much.

Tonight we saw a sneak preview of ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ which is based not only on the best selling novel of the same name but also the second book in the series ‘The Shopaholic Takes Manhattan’. The movie stars Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers) as Rebecca Bloomwood, a twenty something journalist who believes that the road to happiness should be traveled in style.

After adjusting to the idea of the story taking place in New York instead of London and the changes in the specifics of Becky’s job (as a stepping stone to a job at another magazine in the same publishing house) I settled in to enjoy a surprisingly funny movie. While I had expected to enjoy the whole thing I did NOT expect my boyfriend – who attended under duress – to like it as much as he did.

The spirit of the story is faithful to the books while the sequence of events (and events themselves!) are not. Becky is a journalist who takes a job giving financial advice for ‘Successful Savings’ magazine. She is able to explain sometimes complicated aspects of personal finance into easily understandable terms by likening them to shopping. This approach really resonates with the audience of the magazine and Becky quickly finds herself catapulted to a seat on a morning TV show to dole out advice in person. All of this would be a dream come true were she not hiding from a number of increasingly persistent debt collectors – one of whom is tipped off about the appearance and attends the broadcast.

The movie is quick paced and fun to watch. The entire cast is excellent in their roles but Fisher easily outshines them all. The character of Becky (especially in some of the outfits in this movie. It looked like Rainbow Brite was the wardrobe designer!) could all too easily be a hysterical caricature of herself – look for the dance scene, one of our favorites. Fisher manages to give her warmth and innate likability.

‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ opens in wide release on Friday February 13, 2009. It is a perfect date movie delivered just in time for Valentine’s Day.

[Overall: 4 stars out of 5]

Chad:

So, Jennifer (my girlfriend) and I saw Jerry Bruckheimer’s vision of ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ and I have to say, it was pretty good. It was much better than I had initially expected. The movie is based on two books, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, from the best selling author Sophie Kinsella. The movie itself was trite and fun, which I think was the main part of it’s appeal.

The film had two things going for it. It was far from predictable, which was very refreshing for me, and it had plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. The story follows shopaholic Rebecca Bloomwood, played by Isla Fisher (‘Wedding Crashers’), as she traverses the outrageous worlds of high fashion and high finance. The only problem is that she finds herself on the wrong side of both. Her addiction, buying the peak of fashion items, has gradually sunk her deeply in debt with her credit card companies.

Her debt becomes a problem when an alcohol-induced mailing mistake lands her in a writing position with a finance magazine of all things. However, with the help of her editor Luke Brandon, played by Hugh Dancy (‘Blood and Chocolate’), she finds her voice. The fashion metaphors she uses to explain the almost too complex world of money and finance really resonate with the general public. She even lands a spot on a television show, which is an awesome opportunity for her. That is, until they open the floor for questions and one of her bill collectors takes the mic.

All in all, this was a fun film. I was pleasantly surprised at that. To all the guys out there, this is a perfect date movie. It’s witty, funny and your ladies will enjoy it.

It opens this weekend, just in time for Valentines Day!

[Overall: 4 stars out of 5]