BuzzSugar

Movie Preview: Flash of Genius

BuzzSugar — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:15:47 -0700

Honestly, if one were trying to get folks excited about a movie, a good way to fail would be to say it's about the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper systems used on cars.

But what if we're told the movie stars Greg Kinnear as the inventor and the lovely Lauren Graham plays his wife? Add to that a real-life David vs. Goliath tale in which Goliath is the auto industry stealing the windshield wiper idea from David, and we're getting toward a movie worth talking about.

With the help of Dave Matthews, the trailer for Flash of Genius is already tugging at my heartstrings, and it looks beautifully shot with that nice soft lighting. While this is definitely a plot we've seen before in different incarnations over the years, I'm still curious about it, especially because the cast is so darn appealing (the movie also features Dermot Mulroney and Alan Alda).

The movie opens Oct. 25. To see the trailer, read more.

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Book-to-Movie News of the Day: Die a Little and The Memory Keeper's Daughter

BuzzSugar — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:20:18 -0700

Another day, another couple film projects based on books. First, there's Die a Little, a crime thriller based on Megan Abbott's novel. The movie will star Jessica Biel and "explores how the lives of a schoolteacher and her LAPD detective brother are turned upside down by a mysterious woman." The story is set in 1954 but the movie will take place in present day.

I haven't read that one, but I have read The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a weepy dramatic book by Kim Edwards. This project, which will star Emily Watson and Dermot Mulroney, won't make it to the big screen, but will be a TV movie made for Lifetime. In the telepic, "Mulroney plays a doctor who delivers his own twin babies - one with Down's syndrome. In order to spare his wife heartache, he tells her the child with Down's died at birth. The doctor tells his nurse, played by Watson, to put the girl in an institution, but instead she raises the baby as her own."

Reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter, I could easily envision it turning into a film and figured it was just a matter of time. Now that they have Emily Watson on board, too, I'm intrigued to see this heartstrings-yanker brought to life.

Biel photo source
Watson photo source

Movie Preview: Gracie

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:30:25 -0700

Elisabeth Shue starred in some of the most iconic movies of my youth, like The Karate Kid, Adventures in Babysitting and Cocktail. In the later years of her career, however, she hasn't scored too many great roles, so I'm eager to check out Gracie, which was written by Shue's brother Andrew, and which is based on the Shue family's real history. Opening this Friday, June 1, Gracie takes place in 1978 and follows a teenage girl who, after her brother's tragic death, fights to take his place on the all-boys competitive soccer team. Carly Schroeder plays Grace, Elisabeth Shue plays her mother and Dermot Mulroney has the role of Grace's gruff father. To see the trailer, read more

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Georgia Rule: Not In Georgia, Doesn't Rule

BuzzSugar — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:19:21 -0700

In Georgia Rule, Lilly (Felicity Huffman) has her hands full with her smart and troubled teen Rachel (Lindsay Lohan). Lilly hopes that a few summer weeks in Idaho with her grandmother, the rule-loving Georgia (Jane Fonda), will straighten Rachel out before she goes off to college. But alas, things don’t start off well. In the opening scene, Rachel walks alongside her mother’s fancy car after a fight screaming “Get out of my life!” Only later do we find out that a dark secret fuels her bad-girl antics.

It’s hard not to think about this scene in retrospect and wish that not only Lohan but the entire talented cast of Georgia Rule had been able to bolt from this shallow movie. It has a split personality: the dark script goes in one direction while the tone of the film, under the direction of Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, A League of Their Own), goes in another. As a result, its excellent cast is adrift in a film that doesn’t know if it wants to be a comedy or a drama. Although Georgia Rule attempts to blend the two, it ends up exploiting - rather than exploring - its heroine’s demons. To find out what I mean, read more

We find out very quickly that mother/daughter strife is multi-generational. Lilly is so uncomfortable being with her mother that she leaves right away, saying she has plans with friends. When Rachel shows up and hears this obvious lie, she deadpans, “She stopped drinking, smoking and hating herself, too.” Sounds like a laugh riot so far, no? Rachel quickly tests her strict grandmother, whose set of rules the film’s name references. “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” goes a typical refrain. “Georgia Rule.” Rachel’s response? “Don’t tell me what to do. Rachel Rule.” And what, primarily, does Rachel want to do? Seduce men.

The first man who catches Rachel’s eye is a handsome Mormon teen named Harlan (Garrett Hedlund) who first spots Rachel dozing on the side of the road. (Her relationship with him is one of the film's lame subplots.) Shortly after he gives her a ride into town, she hops into another stranger’s car, belonging to the town’s resident hunky vet and widower, Simon (Dermot Mulroney), who, it turns out, once dated her mother. He, too, resists her big city “forward” ways, ignoring her cleavage and leg-flashing. (She’s supposed to be from California, “the land of fruits and nuts.”)

Here’s where Georgia Rule gets into big trouble. Like those around her, the film doesn’t know how to handle Rachel sexually acting out. When it’s revealed that perhaps she’s been sexually abused by her stepfather, the sensitive viewer will be troubled by how Rachel’s shockingly self-destructive sexuality has been played for laughs and how the camera has been lingering lasciviously over her scantily-clad body for the entire film.

It’s the acting, primarily from Huffman and Lohan, that made Georgia Rule bearable for me. Huffman’s performance as a weak woman trying to deal with her daughter’s demons when she hasn’t even conquered her own is heart-rending. And no matter how you feel about Lindsay Lohan’s off-screen antics, she lights up the screen with her manic energy, humor and aggression. Nevertheless, in spite of its feel-good ending, Georgia Rule doesn’t have much affection for its female characters. They remain misunderstood until the very end.

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