In Contention

Tag: Heavenly Creatures

  • Which Peter Jackson will show up for ‘Lovely Bones?’

    The Lovely BonesAs we begin to count down the days to the official unveiling of “The Lovely Bones” in London later this month (yes, I’m as stunned as you are to realize it’s November already), the film still stands as the biggest wild-card of the season’s prestige offerings.

    The trailer for “Invictus” confirmed it’s (for better or worse) the model of film we had in mind, and we have some idea what to expect from “Nine” … but even a lavish trailer didn’t answer half the questionmarks lingering over Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s decidedly tricky source novel (discussed here).

    What emerges dominant in the story’s strange genre fusion of fantasy, serial killer thriller and domestic drama? How has Saoirse Ronan’s lead role been beefed up from Susie Salmon’s passive presence in the novel? How will Jackson’s effects-heavy imagery mesh with the novel’s more delicate dramatics? And will the novel’s millions of fans be appeased or alienated by his wilder stylistic impulses? It seems to me the film stands little chance of a middling reception — it’ll hit or miss big.

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  • Far from heaven

    Ever since it was announced that Peter Jackson had succeeded Lynne Ramsay at the helm of “The Lovely Bones,” I have been hopeful that the project would see him veer closer to the eerie understatement of “Heavenly Creatures” than the extravagant kitsch of “The Lord of the Rings.”

    The premise of Alice Sebold’s novel may indicate delicate drama, but its fantastical elements need a light touch to avoid tipping over into gauzy sentimentality. (We will, of course, be discussing the novel in our Page to Screen series, which starts next month.)

    So I’m pleased to read, in USA Today’s chat with the filmmaker, that restraint appears to be high on his agenda. Though he rightly picks up on the redemptive aspects of Sebold’s narrative (“Susie holds on to love, and by doing so, she transcends the horror of her murder”), he’s wisely taking an open-ended cinematic approach to the issue of the afterlife:

    “It’s God-less in the sense that when Susie dies, she finds herself caught in a place between Earth and heaven — she is in an ‘In-Between,’ as Alice Sebold calls it.” When she moves on, “we’re happy for audiences to imagine this new world in whatever way makes them comfortable.”

    Empire, meanwhile, offers a still that provides an intriguing glimpse of this ‘In-Between’ world. I’m feeling more and more optimistic about this.

    Saoirse Ronan in The Lovely Bones

  • ‘Lovely Bones’ next year’s Oscar victor?

    Cover of The Lonely BonesKris recently took his initial stab at predicting next year’s Oscar nominees, so I thought I would join the madness by planting a flag for “The Lovely Bones.”  I read the book in three days at the suggestion of my daughter, who knows that I admire Peter Jackson and that this is his next film. On the way to my office, the train offered a quiet solitude.  I’ll never forget this book.

    The greatest tragedy a parent can suffer is losing a child.  I simply cannot imagine the pain this must cause. As the father of two beautiful girls, 17 and 9, they are the lights of my life and reason for smiling everyday. Should anything ever happen to them, they might as well throw me in the ground with them, because I would be dead.

    “The Lovely Bones” deals with the rape and murder of a young girl, who then watches her family, and her killer, from heaven for years after the event. The father suspects the next door neighbor (great instinct) while the mother cannot deal with the agony and leaves the family to forge a new life. The sister experiences something rather extraordinary that I will not give away, while the heroine grieves for her loss of family as much as they grieve for her.

    Jackson is, in my opinion, an enormously gifted filmmaker. I stand among those who believe “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy was the greatest risk in movie history, which paid off tremendously. The final film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” is a masterpiece that deserved every single Oscar it won, the NYFCC Best Picture it won, and actually should have been nominated for a couple more. I remember the emptiness I felt after seeing the film, armed with the knowledge that the trilogy was over and there was no film to look forward to seeing next year from the director.

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  • Kate Winslet: the greatest actress of her generation?

    Kate WinsletAt nearly 33 years old (eight days and counting) and with five Academy Award nominations under her belt, Kate Winslet may just be the greatest actress of her generation. Her work has not yet revealed any limitations.  Like Meryl Streep, she offers an authenticity in her work, even the lesser films.  She seems incapable of uttering a false line.  She defines authenticity at every turn.

    Her work in “Titanic” transcended the material, a shoddy screenplay that saw her running about the doomed boat making decisions about what to do next, and I’ll be damned if Winslet did not make it work. In the hands of a lesser actress, the performance, and perhaps the role, would have come across as silly, but she made a character out of Rose we dared to care about.

    There was heat between Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the screen.  We believed the love, we believed the devotion, and she did this at a very young age. Earlier still she had gone toe-to-toe with Emma Thomson and Alan Rickman in “Sense & Sensibility,” earning an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress. Further back, you’ll witness chilling work in Peter Jackson’s “Heavenly Creatures” and one sees a major actress developing before our very eyes.

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