VIDDY WELL HAS A NEW HOME

Dear readers,

Viddy Well will no longer be using Blogger.
You can now find us on the French website, Slate.fr, though we will continue writing both in English and French.
Here is our new address
http://blog.slate.fr/viddywell/
Hope you'll continue to read us :)
Viddy Well!
E.C & E.D

Note to the reader

Dear Viddy Well readers,

Please excuse the lack of posts for these past few days and for the few days to come. It's not that we are lazy... but the blog is going through some changes, which you will soon be able to see online!

Viddy Well,

E.C. and E.D.

Spotlight on photographer JASON BELL

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

- Jean-Luc Godard

I don’t know if we can take that as a truth universally acknowledged, Jean-Luc’s God being the art of cinema, but we would like to pay homage to the special bond that has always linked both arts together with a series of posts dedicated to photographers who have collaborated with actors and directors, thus contributing to their immortalization as movie stars. 

Spotlight on Jason Bell

British photographer Jason Bell graduated from Oxford in Politics, Philosophy and Economy and has, since then, worked with publications such as Vanity Fair, Vogue UK and Vogue US with series of portraits and fashion photographs. He is also the eye behind several film posters such as those of Billy Elliot, About a Boy and Love Actually.

His most recent work features pictures for Warner Bros with photographs of the cast of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, and of the cast of the British hit period drama Downton Abbey.

His photographs can be found at the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the permanent collection. Among his published books we count Gold Rush (2000), Hats off (2002), Giveget (2004), and An Englishman in New York (2010).

Despite a lot of commercial shots, some are quite visually striking as open windows on the world of cinema. Here is a selection of 11 photographs presenting his work.

For more photographs of his work including landscapes, check out his website: www.jasonbellphoto.com

Viddy Well, 

E.D.

Kristin Scott Thomas

Kate Winslet

Scarlett Johansson

Eva Green - Dark Shadows for Warner Bros

Stephen Fry

Susan Sarandon

Kelly MacDonald

Ethan Hawke

John Malkovitch

John Malkovitch

The cast of Downton Abbey for Dec 2011 issue of Vanity Fair

This Week's News !!!

This week was filled with very very good news!

Jean Dujardin and Martin Scorsese (gasp)!
Our very own Jean Dujardin has been cast in Martin Scorsese's next pic, The Wolf of Wall Street. Dujardin will play a Swiss banker in the film which already stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. This is certainly the most shocking (in an awesome way) news of the week.








Penelope Cruz is back!

And what a crazy return it is for the actress. Cruz was confirmed for Ridley Scott's The Counselor (thus making up for the weird choice of Cameron Diaz) AND will star in Pedro Almodovar's next film. Cruz is never better than when she acts in her own language so we are excited!

Arnaud Desplechin goes abroad
Benicio del Toro and Mathieu Amalric will star in the French director's next film, Jimmy Picard. Based on Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian by Georges Devereux, the film tells the story of a Native American and his friendship and long analysis with the French psychoanalyst.

 

Tarantino still chained to Django
You may have seen the trailer already, but it looks like Django Unchained is far from being done. Tarantino just added Jonah Hill to his already star-filled cast.

Rumor has it....
...that the cult TV show Bored to Death is getting the chance to come back as a 90 min film on HBO!

Lehane adapted, again.
This time, the author has adapted his own story for the screen. "Animal Rescue" is now a script and it looks like Neil Burger (Limitless) will be the one directing. I'm not sure if I like this, especially since Lehane's last book that was adapted was the magnificent Shutter Island turned into a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese.

In other news: Anton Yelchin has joined Jim Jarmusch's latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive. Ray Winstone will be Noah's enemy in Aronofsky's Noah.

Viddy Well!

E.C

THE MUSICAL POST - MY FAVOURITE THINGS

"When the dog bites, when the bee stings", I simply remember that Julie Andrews song in The Sound of Music, and then I don’t feel so bad. Because this grim weather has lasted far too long over the Parisian sky from under which where we are dropping these few lines, we thought a little musical tune might cheer you movie fans out there as well. 

This musical post is dedicated to two Oscar winners and prolific composers: Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers. The lyrics for "My Favourite things" which first appeared in the 1965 musical were written by Oscar Hammerstein II. The music was composed by Richard Rodgers, to whom we owe more than 500 titles among which the soundtrack of L.A. Confidential. Both composers have since then worked together on many soundtracks including that of American Beauty, Moulin Rouge, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 

And now the bummer version of the song, (because the weather forecast is not looking any better), by the self-proclaimed best director of all times: Lars Von Trier. His talent of turning anything joyful into the most depressing theme is remarkably rendered here in a scene from the very traumatizing musical drama Dancer in the Dark. 

Blind Björk is waiting in her cell for a dooming death sentence, the only comforting thing to her being the sound of music she hears through the wall...

Viddy Well, 

E.D.

GREAT GATSBY - Trailer review

When I first hit the Play button to watch the trailer of the new Baz Luhrmann film, I thought I had made some mistake and that I was in fact watching the first seconds of a r’n’b videoclip. But no, this was indeed the trailer for the adapation of Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gasby, starring the talented Leonardo Di Caprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire.

For those who are fond of Baz luhrmann’s style, you might rejoice in this «bling bling» version of the classic and look forward to the opening of the film on January 11th.
The director seems quite faithful to his usual aesthetics and photography and to what made the success of his previous films.

For others, more conventional perhaps, you might watch in sheer horror the vulgar spectacle portrayed in these few minutes of film - heavy make-up, hard partying scenes, the excessive use of crane shots, zoom in and zoom outs that make you sea-sick... Is this to be Moulin Rouge revisited? And more importantly, have we read the same book? 

Because I like being shocked and surprised I WILL go to the theater to be proven wrong and hope that what appears to be yet another exemple of bad taste, will transform into a refreshing, up-to-date adaptation of an all-time classic. However if that is not the case, I am glad Leo has other releases to fall back on this year.

Viddy Well, 

E.D.

WHY I STOPPED LOVING MAD MEN

BEWARE, SPOILERS AHEAD

I have always been one of Mad Men’s strongest fans. I watched the show immediately when it started airing and it was love at first sight. For once, here was a show that did not care what the audience wished or expected. The pace was slow and analytical, the dialogues rich and subtle, the characters deep and complex, and the acting reached perfection. The first four seasons I adored, and watched them at least four times each. After the fourth season, I started to get worried. The announcement that season 5 would be delayed seemed ominous: how can a show survive such a long break? I was also worried at some signs that I saw in season 4 that some of the characters were becoming more and more Manichean, and thus more caricatural. Of course, I mean Betty here. Throughout season 4, Betty became increasingly mean, and even more of a bad mother than she was before. Gone was the emotional complexity that had been exposed during the first three seasons. The subtlety of Betty’s character started slowly to fade away when she was one of the most complex characters on the show.

This phenomenon did not stop there, unfortunately. When season 5 began, I was at first shocked to see that in the two-hour premiere, there was no Betty. But still, the two episodes were nice and entertaining. Some themes though, treated with a lot of delicacy in the previous seasons, seemed a bit more heavy-handed. The script insisted a tad too much on the fact that Don was now getting old and that the age discrepancy between him and his very young new wife was going to be a problem. I was not very enthusiastic but still kept my faith in Matthew Weiner. The discovery of “fat” Betty, then gave me quite a shock, and I believed that it was the way for Weiner to bring back the many layers that Betty once had. How wrong was I. As the season progressed, I became increasingly displeased with the show. I used to believe that Weiner knew where he was headed with his numerous characters, but that belief diminished episode after episode.

                       Running in circles

It’s always the same old song. Don still has the same frown, it’s hard to tell whether or not he’s happy with his new life. He stopped cheating, that seems to be the main change in him. However, from his various fights with Megan and his disappointed look when she emancipates herself from him, you can tell that it’s only a matter of time before he starts sleeping around again. It seems a bit thin for a character the size of Don Draper. Now that we know his whole story, now that he stopped lying to the people he loved, Weiner has trouble giving his main character something to do other than drink and look depressed. There’s nothing that we haven’t seen before: his running away and abandoning Megan on the stop during their brief getaway, his anger towards Peggy as his little protégé starts to become more and more independent, his harshness towards those he believes are like him when they are not, his refusal to deal with his guilt issues. To me, this is the greatest problem of all. For the past four years, we have seen the character evolve into this man constantly caught up by his guilt and his dark secrets. Don never liked himself, not as Dick and not as Don either. So each time he builds a new life, hoping that it will cover up for his shame and self-hatred. But apart from the resurgence of Adam, the brother he led to suicide, Don seems pretty fine with himself. He even starts to trash Betty when he is the one who lied to her for years and years. And Weiner asks us to sympathize with the liar more than with the cheated wife. In one episode, Don says that he doesn’t want Betty to put “her fat nose” into one of his matters, and wishes that Megan “won’t end up like Betty”.  This contempt for his ex-wife seems to be coming more from Weiner than it would from the character. Don would know that he led Betty to what she became: an unhappy housewife. 

On the other hand, Weiner, like Don, has fallen in love again, much to the viewer’s dismay. Though Jessica Paré is a fine actress, and Megan appears to be very nice and very proper, I find nothing fascinating at all about this character. At first, I thought she was a very ambitious girl who had married Don to get ahead. But that thought was invalidated when Megan decided to leave the company. So in the end, we are left with a nice girl, who treats Sally as a friend, who loves her husband in spite of his many flaws, and who wants to be an actress. In the last episode, there was one interesting sentence that shed some light on Megan. Her mother tells Don that her daughter’s problem is that she has an artistic temperament but that she is not an artist. That is an interesting theme, but I failed to see it in the many scenes Megan was in. All I saw was a girl just trying to get a job in the acting business. And from her good performance in Zou Bisou, I hardly see why she would not be talented. Weiner’s fascination is hard for me to understand: Megan’s screen test in the last episode did not bring any emotion in me the way “Carousel” did, when Don watched images of Betty and their children. Weiner centers most of his episodes on Megan and Don, leaving the others with cheap and soapy plot lines. I am really getting tired of Pete, for example, he too treads water. Always whiny, always dissatisfied, always the same sad little boy who never gets what he wants. I thought that gaining power inside the company would change him a bit, make him progress (whether that progress is good or bad). I found his affair with Beth horribly irritating. And what about those electroshocks? Has Weiner been watching a little too much of Homeland before writing that one? The other absurd extra-marital affair of the show was Harry and the girl from Hare Krishna. That scene was a climax in ridicule.

                       “Getting tired of this dynamic”

In season 5, Betty has obviously become the Wicked Witch of the West. She continues to be horrid to Sally (apart from their final and nice scene together) and still sulks in another unhappy marriage. I have always loved the way January Jones handled her character. The actress, it is obvious, has absolute faith in Weiner’s decisions. And boy, did she have to handle some nasty stuff this season. Weiner is decided in humiliating the character (or the actress?) over and over again. She has to swallow some cream right out of the can, stuff herself with ice cream (hers AND Sally’s). And then, confronted to Megan’s thin young body, she decides to wreck havoc in Don’s marriage. But fails, because she is a nasty woman, whereas Megan is the nice, perky, never-tired-of-having-sex wife. Mad Men has become a soap, where they are good guys and bad guys. The Evil Betty versus Marvelous Megan dynamic started to tire me after the first four episodes. Perhaps the main problem is that the dynamic of the show hasn’t changed at all. All the plot twist are far too predictable. Lane’s fate, for example, is far from being shocking, and we are not really concerned by his departure, nor moved. The end of the season is also far too easy. From the first episode I thought the season would end on Don’s relapse. I hoped he would relapse in an unexpected way, but it’s the usual boring way that won. Weiner seems to give in to easy tricks. The elevator scene, Sally’s “dirty” line, Glen’s supposedly philosophical thoughts… All seemed fake and cheap and unworthy of a show that used to deal in subtlety and finesse. Gone too Weiner’s taste for detail. Julia Ormond as Megan’s French Canadian mother is painful to watch. Why hire a real French Canadian for the father and not the mother? The discrepancy in accents is quite unsettling. Furthermore, I doubt that divorce was so common in the 60’s. Now, most of the characters are divorced, or have been, and do so quick as a flash. Roger (twice now), Joan, Don…

There were some good things in this season too. The episode that reunited Dawn and Peggy, for example, was one of the best episodes of the season. Michael Ginsberg is an interesting character and I hope he will be more developed next year. I am harsh only because Mad Men used to be a passion of mine and I am sad to see it decline. What has happened to Matthew Weiner for him to drift away from the essence of his show? Is it because his focus is now on the production of his first feature? Or has the long break killed his creativity?

I do not really care for the answer. All I wish for is that next year, when I’ll watch the premiere of season 6, I’ll find the Mad Men I used to love. 


Viddy Well. 


E.C

TOP 10: Scenes that traumatized my childhood

BEWARE, THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS (shocking scenes often happening towards the end of films)...

I think that everyone has been traumatized by a scene in a film when they were kids, at least once. I've been traumatized many times, images getting stuck in my mind and leaving a permanent imprint. These ten films have traumatized me in a good way, turning me into the movie fan I am today. Some scenes were just so visually striking that I was shocked, while others were really tragic and sad and had to impress the mind of a child. So here is my Top 10 of the most traumatizing scenes of my childhood. 

1. Dumbo's mother cradling him with her trunk while she's in a prison cell in Dumbo (1941)

2. Dave murdering HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

3. John Merrick crying "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being!", in The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) - the film is my number 1 in the most traumatizing films EVER.

4. Edward destroying his hands while his creator is dying of a heart attack in Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)

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5. The death of Victoria Page in The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

6. The black mask and costume of Wolfgang's father, later worn by Salieri in Amadeus (Milos Forman, 1984)

7. Myra's suicide in Waterloo Bridge (Mervyn LeRoy, 1940)

8. The transformation of Sarah into a vampire at the end of The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski, 1967)

9. Maleficient's raven turning into stone in Sleeping Beauty (1959).

10. E.T leaving Earth in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)

How about you? What scenes traumatized you as a kid?

Viddy Well!

E.C

NEWS OF THE WEEK

Eastern Promises 2!
Apparently, David Cronenberg's project of making a follow-up to Eastern Promises is much more advanced than we knew! Viggo Mortensen will return as Nikolai and Vincent Cassel is in talks to return. No word however on Naomi Watts. But we really hope she'll be on board as well!

Abbie Cornish and Robocop....Really?
Abbie Cornish is sadly not making a great career. Since her astonishing performance in Jane Campion's Bright Star, we haven't seen much of the actress. And now, there are talks that she'll play the wife in the remake of Robocop... The film will certainly help putting her on the map but still... It's Robocop.

Twelve Years a Slave
Now here's a film we're really excited about. Steve McQueen's next film has an amazing cast: Chiwitel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Taran Killam, Garrett Dillahunt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti and Sarah Paulson. Ejiofor is starring as a free man captured and forced into slavery in New Orleans. Fassbender will play Edwin Epps (the "evil" character in the book), a plantation owner, who cheats on his wife (Paulson) with one of his slaves. Giamatti will be Freeman, the man who takes possession of the slaves when they arrive in New Orleans, and Cumberbatch will play another plantation owner.

         

               


It's a Scandal!
Henry Ian Cusick (oh, dear Desmond) is leaving Scandal, Shonda Rhimes' latest TV show, after one season. Too bad really, he was the only reason I was watching the show.


Zombies are the worst.
That's clearly what the producers of World War Z are thinking right now. They have just hired Damon Lindelof to rewrite the third act of the film. Reshoots will then follow. The film, in which Bard Pitt stars, was supposed to come out in December and has now been pushed back to June 2013.

Noah's Ark has a lot of people on board. 
Emma Watson is the latest actress to have joined Darren Aronofsky's Noah. Russell Crowe is playing the title character, with Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth cast as his sons. Watson will play a girl romantically involved with one of the sons (Booth apparently). Julianne Moore is rumored to play Noah's wife while Liev Schreiber might be playing Noah's enemy.

Prometheus parody: watch this great parody of David's viral video, with Joel McHale



That's it for this week's news!

Viddy Well.

E.C

THE MUSICAL POST - MORNING SPECIAL

Because we all need a little shot of good humor some mornings, and because usually one song is not enough to cheer us up, here is a double dose of musical comedy to cast your potential grumpiness away.

The first clip is from... Singin’ in the rain! Yes, again. But it could not be helped when there is a song specifically titled «Good morning!» in the film.  

The second one is from Captain January (1936) with the song ‘Early Bird’, starring America’s little darling: miss Shirley Temple, also known as «Dimples» or «Little Curly Top».

So enjoy! To watch with a cup of coffee on a foggy morning!

Viddy Well, 

E.D.