Julie Delpy

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to the titles below you can view Cate Blanchett's award-nominated performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and The Jane Austen Book Club, which I featured as one of my February Must Haves. Additionally, the Jodi Foster thriller The Brave One, which I liked well enough, is now on DVD.

The Assassination of Jess James by the Coward Robert Ford
This movie adaptation of Ron Hansen's acclaimed novel brings to life two infamous personalities of the American wild West. Notorious outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt) befriends what amounts to a latter-day celeb stalker, Robert Ford. Played by Casey Affleck who has been nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal, Ford is a man looking for fame and will do just about anything to attain it.

I enjoyed this movie, despite some awkward pacing and artifice. The visualizations of the West and solid performances make this a great choice for home-theater viewing.

It's a fun week for DVDs so read more

This movie is intriguing for the incredible ensemble cast, although when that's the only good thing its own stars have to say about it, that's not a good sign. The Air I Breathe opens in New York and Los Angeles tonight and I wanted to get your thoughts on the preview, as I'm a little torn. There's a lot of talent piled into this flick (Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, Julie Delpy, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emile Hirsch), but I'm a little confused by the trailer . . . which is maybe the point.

Apparently the plot follows several intersecting stories based on "four emotional cornerstones: happiness, pleasure, sorrow and love." IMDB continues, "A businessman (Whitaker) bets his life on a horse race; a gangster (Brendan Fraser) sees the future; a pop star (Gellar) falls prey to a crime boss (Garcia); a doctor (Kevin Bacon) must save the love of his life."

The New York Times reports that debut feature director Jieho Lee describes his movie this way:

"[It's] a film noir variation of The Wizard of Oz and an exploration of the theme of character as destiny."

Huh. Okay. To check out the trailer and tell me what you think, head on over to iVillage.

Photo courtesy of ThinkFilm

It was all about the guys at last night's LA premiere of No Country for Old Men. Thandie stood out in her colorblock dress in the midst of cuties like Casey Affleck and Olivier Martinez. Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem star in the film, which is the Coen Brothers first Western. Javier recently talked to Parade about his reservations about using a gun on-screen, saying,

"I've done only two movies, where I hold a gun. Once I did it in '96. It was an experience. I hate it. It's not that I hate the movie. I think the movie is fun. It was called Perdita Durango. Here it was translated as Dance With the Devil. It was very violent. I had good fun with the director, but I hate the experience of killing people. Eleven years after, I do a movie with the Coens (No Country for Old Men) where I am a killer. It took me a little while to say yes to this even though the Coens are my favorite directors."

It's pretty sweet to hear about an actor who doesn't care for playing with guns and being the bad boy. We bet his girl Penelope Cruz appreciates his soft side even more than we do.

Lots more pics from the premiere including Julie Delpy, Gina Gershon and Tommy Lee Jones looking a little haggard so just read more

Julie Delpy is almost frighteningly talented. She writes, acts, directs, and composes music — and she does all four in 2 Days in Paris, one of my favorite films of the year so far. Delpy and Adam Goldberg play Marion and Jack, a lovably mismatched couple who spend a disastrous two days with Marion's family. The movie goes beyond culture-clash humor and settles in the much richer territory of romantic relationships, which is what Delpy and I talked about on her recent trip to San Francisco.

You’re really all over this story: you’re in it, you wrote it, you directed it. I’m wondering where it came from for you.
Well, I wanted to do a story about something that scares me the most, which is — apart from death or losing someone I love physically, outside of the big, really horrible stuff in life — breaking up with people. I just wanted to approach it in a comedic way, because all my life, breaking up has been horribly painful — or being dumped, even more painful. But breaking up with someone is very painful too. It's almost impossible for me. I get too attached to people, I can't hurt people. I’ve done it a few times. I did it very badly too, because I don't know how to manage, so I disappear, like I could be dead, I’m so bad at it. And when I feel that someone doesn’t love me anymore and I can see that in their eyes, it's heartbreaking.

I went in thinking "Oh, it's going to be one of those culture clash things." But it's so much more about their relationship.
I mean, the culture difference stuff is fun, but it's mostly about conflict within a relationship and how to make a relationship work. Especially with two neurotic people. Psychotic and neurotic.

They’re so imperfect together, and then that’s kind of perfect.
Yeah, yeah, I know! Adam was always worried that my character was so unlikable. He kept telling me all the time, "She’s so horrible, your character" and "my character, I don’t want to make him unlikable." And to me it was much more exiting to make unlikable characters likable. He’s always grumpy, and he’s kind of an unbearable guy, but at the same time, with all the shit that happens to him, you start to really feel for him. She’s unbearable — I mean, she snaps at people, she's flirtatious, she’s like the worst nightmare — but at the same time, she snaps at racists, at pedophiles, you know and she's in a way protecting him. So to me it was a lot of fun to take these characters that are so anti-heroes and make them into almost likable people, or at least people you follow and embrace until the end of the film.

More from Julie, so read more

I'm almost afraid to write about 2 Days in Paris, as if somehow, by writing about it, it won't be a precious memory in my mind anymore. That sounds sappy and overwrought, but the fact is, I adored this movie more than any other movie I've seen in a long time. It's possible that the movie happened to hit all the right notes at all the right times for me personally. It's also possible that 2 Days in Paris is just a very good movie. I believe it's the latter.

Julie Delpy (who also wrote, directed, and composed music for the film) stars as Marion, a French photographer with an eye defect who goes on a vacation to Europe with her American boyfriend, Jack (Adam Goldberg), a hypochondriac with a jealous streak. In the movie's first moments, you see the couple asleep on a train, she wearing a silkscreened T-shirt with a picture of a gun that is, not coincidentally, pointing right at Jack. The two of them are on their way back from a trip to Venice that, while not exactly a disaster, was not a whirlwind of romance either. Before heading home, they need to pick up their cat at Marion's parents' house in Paris — and that's where things really get bad.

Jack, who speaks not a word of French, feels marooned in a foreign land where everything is moldy and everyone has dated his girlfriend. Marion is no saint, either, having dallied with her share of men; she plays right into Jack's phobias by stroking the sweater of a fireman who comes to the apartment one morning and taking Jack to a party filled with probable exes. They're already a bickering couple, but Jack's suspicions — and Marion's egging on — propel them to quarreling of world record proportions. The "crazy American in Paris" stuff is funny, but where the movie really hits home is in its portrayal of flawed adult love, so read more

Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg came out to celebrate their new movie, 2 Days In Paris at the Hollywood premiere last night. Unfortunately Christina wasn't on Adam's arm, but he was looking remarkably (and semi-unrecognizably) cleaned up for the event. The funny looking independent film comes out in NYC and LA on Friday and in selected cities a week later, but stay tuned later this week to read Buzz's interview with the fabulous Julie Delpy! Fun.

More of Adam and Julie so read more

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