(Photo by Janet Mayer/Everett Collection)
We take a look at the directing life and career Peter Bogdanovich, including his generation-defining Best Picture nominee (The Last Picture Show), comedy classics (What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon), and esteemed documentaries on Tom Petty and Buster Keaton.
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(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
While a certain action thriller about an undead Egyptian scourge currently hogs all the primetime TV spots, you may recall that the last time Universal fired up its Mummy franchise, the world took notice of a young Rachel Weisz. Thanks to her considerable talents, Weisz has been able to work with directors as diverse as Darren Aronofsky, Sam Raimi, Wong Kar-Wai, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Peter Jackson across a variety of genres, and in 2006, she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardner.
This week, she stars in Roger Michell’s adaptation of the Daphne du Marier novel My Cousin Rachel, about a young man who becomes smitten with the older cousin he suspects of murdering his guardian. It’s a meaty, complex role for Weisz, who skillfully carries the film on her shoulders. We spoke to her about her Five Favorite Films earlier this week and learned she has a special love for the work of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich. Read on for the full list.
I’m going to go with Harold and Maude, by Hal Ashby. I think it’s definitely one of the most unusual love stories that I’ve seen. Maude is one of the most inspiring characters. She reminds me to see the world positively and forgivingly and put past troubles behind me. The Cat Stevens soundtrack is sublime. The comedy is delicious. The performance of Ruth Gordon – you know, she’s a woman in her 80s acting like a 16-year-old – is one of the most extraordinary performances I’ve ever seen. I believe it got very bad reviews when it came out, almost unanimously, but is, I think, probably one of the great comedies ever made.
I would say What’s Up, Doc? with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, by Peter Bogdanovich. It’s one of the best screwball comedies I’ve ever seen. Barbra Streisand is beyond beautiful and seductive and funny, and she’s playing Bugs Bunny, basically. And it has the best car chase ever.
It’s really hard for me not to put Paper Moon on there, which is also Bogdanovich and Ryan O’Neal, and Tatum O’Neal, his daughter. It’s one of the great stories about criminals who you love. Tonally, it’s just outrageously delicious and sublime.
I kinda want to go for another Hal Ashby; I want to say Being There, with Peter Sellers. I think it’s the funniest performance ever, but it’s 99 percent drama, 1 percent comedy. It’s the tiniest dose of funny, because he’s so serious. He’s very profound about human projection, which is very relevant for My Cousin Rachel, because it’s all about what people project onto her, how they interpret this film – is she guilty or innocent?
I think I’m going to go for a Fellini film, and I’m going to go for Nights of Cabiria. The look that Giulietta Masina gives the camera at the end – she looks right at the camera and says, basically, “I’m surviving. Nothing’s going to take me down.” I think it’s one of the great moments in cinema.
My Cousin Rachel opens on Friday, June 9, in limited release.
First-time writer-director director Max Winkler isn’t a household name like his dad, but that may very well change in the future. The 27-year-old son of Happy Days‘ star and producer Henry Winkler has several buzzed-about projects in the works, including the comedy The Adventurer’s Handbook, starring Jason Schwartzman, Jason Segel and Jonah Hill, the intriguingly-titled fantasy The Ornate Anatomy of Living Things, and a film he’s written with Jason Reitman attached to direct, Whispers in Bedlam.
Reitman also serves as executive producer to Winkler’s directorial debut released this week, the comedy-drama Ceremony, in which precocious fantasist Michael Angarano crashes a wedding to pursue his older ex, played by Uma Thurman. An impressive debut, the film exhibits the influences of Wes Anderson, Hal Ashby and Noah Baumbach — which is a good thing — and it’s something that Winkler is the first to admit.
“The Squid and the Whale changed my life when I saw it,” Winkler says of Baumbach’s 2005 movie. “Just in how you could have these great characters and not be so easy on them all the time. The Jeff Daniels character is one of my favorite characters on film: he believes in the myth of himself rather than who he really is, and I think that’s apropos for [Angarano’s character].”
Winkler says he wrote the film, at Reitman’s urging, from a personal place. “He’s sort of the worst parts of myself,” he laughs, referring to Angarano’s protagonist. “It’s a really honest portrayal of what you’re like in that young, reckless part of your life; you feel everything almost too much, and you feel like you have the monopoly on all the world’s suffering and heartbreak and pain.”
The director likens his experience to that of Reitman, who also had to work in the shadow of a famous father. “I think that’s one of the reasons that we probably work so hard and produce movies at a young age,” he explains, “immediately trying to get past the misconception. We saw our fathers work that hard, and we wanted to get right out of the gate and make something that was particularly us.”
We asked Winkler to submit his Five Favorite Films… and here they are.
Tremendously influential to me, especially in regards to Ceremony. The writing, the tone, the camerawork, the happy and sad moments; often playing against each other at the same time. Bogdanovich blows my mind continuously.
The Last Detail (1973, 92% Tomatometer)
Probably the seminal movie in regards to what it means to be a man in changing times. Hal Ashby is one of the great legends of tone and emotion without it ever feeling too forced. A movie that also argues the important point: “It’s just as easy to get it the way you want.”
Stardust Memories (1980, 71% Tomatometer)
I could choose any of Woody Allen’s movies and would be able to sleep well at night. A true master of cinema and way more of a director’s director than people give him credit for, especially in his collaborations with the great
cameraman Gordon Willis. With the exception of Hannah and Her Sisters and Manhattan, Stardust Memories has always left me the most emotional.
When I was 13 years old my father took me to see the matinee showing of Bottle Rocket at the AMC Century City theaters. At our lunch following the picture, I proclaimed to my father with great certainty that all I wanted to do in life was to make movies. All of Wes’s movies have had a tremendous impact and influence on my generation but I believe his 4th film, The Life Aquatic, is perhaps his most underrated and in many ways the funniest. Everybody needs an Esteban in their life…
In my humble opinion this movie is perfection. It’s a summer blockbuster for kids where the authority figure, played flawlessly by Walter Matthau, drinks beer with bourbon as he drives, like, 10 kids in his five seat car.
Ceremony is in select theaters this week.
JoBlo brings us the latest word on what’s going down in Shrekworld, and it seems that the second sequel will NOT be called "Shrek 3," but instead "Shrek the Third," as if that makes any sort of difference. Aside from the stunning bit of news, DreamWorks also treated us to a mini-synopsis, which you can read right here…
"SHREK THE THIRD finds Shrek and Fiona reluctantly reigning over Far, Far Away. But if they can find the heir to the throne and bring him back, they can return to their swamp. While Shrek, Donkey and Puss in Boots are in search of the heir, Fiona holds off a coup d’etat by Prince Charming."
Returning for a third go-round are Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy, and they’ll be rejoined by sequel-pals Julie Andrews, John Cleese, Rupert Everett, and Antonio Banderas. Oh, and Justin Timberlake is in there, too, just so you know…
