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Buzz's 10 Favorite Actors With Famous Parents

BuzzSugar — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:30:39 -0800

Mery Streep's 23-year-old daughter Grace Gummer just landed a new gig at Nickelodeon - and it got me thinking about all the big names out there with famous actors for parents. From A-listers like Angelina Jolie and Ben Stiller to small screen stars like Spencer Grammer, take a look at 10 of my favorite actors with famous parents.

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New York, I Love You: A Jigsaw Puzzle That Doesn't Quite Fit

BuzzSugar — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:30:00 -0700

As a city with so much personality and penchant for possibility, it's no surprise that the follow-up to Paris, Je t'aime heads to New York. New York, I Love You is a tale of the connections and personal missteps that occur every single day in the city that never sleeps. It plays out like a movie version of a song mash-up: some story lines are linear and independent of the rest while other characters wander in and out of each other's lives. Throw an all-star cast in there, and you could possibly have a recipe for perfection.

Unfortunately, the ingredients don't blend together as well as I had hoped, and instead we're left with an engaging but bland look at a handful of trials and tribulations in relationships. To see what I mean, just read more.

Made up of a series of short films, New York, I Love You is an homage to the city as well as the residents who hold it near and dear to their hearts. The "anything can happen" theme is alive and well, as strangers become acquaintances and friends, putting so much emphasis on each and every interaction that we take part in on a regular basis.

You meet a few characters that represent New York well enough; Bradley Cooper is the guy who's constantly jumping into a cab the same time as someone else, Orlando Bloom is the struggling musician who turns to Central Park for inspiration, Hayden Christensen is the pick-pocket who's as sexy as he is dangerous. But sometimes it feels just a little too forced; like the film is primarily concerned with proving that New York is a melting pot. Rather than seeing a few love stories shine through stereotypes, I was more distracted by the fake accents.

As with Paris Je t'aime, some of the stories shine brighter than others. Natalie Portman directs a sweet piece about a relationship between a father and daughter; Olivia Thirlby and Anton Yelchin are refreshing as a younger pair who makes the prom a night to remember. The lighter films are breaths of fresh air amongst others that are trying too hard to be hip and stylized.

The ensemble cast certainly gives the movie a boost; even when it's not provoking the deepest of emotions, the film always had my attention. There are solid performances all-around, particularly from Chloris Leachman and Eli Wallach as an aging couple who are still bickering when they aren't helping each other cross the street. It is the most hopeful of the scenarios, and by far the sweetest and most touching.

The film provides plenty of the standard money shots of Manhattan: a typical day in Grand Central Station in fast forward, subway rides, hours of people watching in a coffee shop. The encounters feel authentic and realistic, but the failure lies in the inability to make us feel something on a deeper level. Sometimes you can relate to the characters, and sometimes you feel sorry for them, but it doesn't squeeze your heart nearly enough - and with a title like New York, I Love You, this a disappointment.

The Life Before Her Eyes: Beautiful But Puzzling

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:30:06 -0700

The film adaptation of Laura Kasischke's lovely novel The Life Before Her Eyes begins with close-up images of gorgeous, colorful flowers shifting and morphing, one blossom blooming as another one dissolves. The symbolism of this - birth, bloom, change, eventual decay, and rebirth - shows up in a variety of ways throughout the film, both in visual metaphors and in the action and language within the story. It's a beautiful film, full of water and flowers and food and cats, but it all gets to be a bit too much by the end. And the end - for anyone who has read the novel, which was my April book club book - is rather baffling.

The story hinges on one fateful day in the lives of high school best friends Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maureen (Eva Amurri) when a classmate brings a gun to school and goes on a rampage. He enters the girls' bathroom and tells Diana and Maureen that he will have to kill one of them. From here, we flash to an adult Diana (Uma Thurman) living a wonderfully steady life: a beautiful young daughter, handsome husband, spacious house. But the adult Diana begins to notice strange things happening, quirks about her daughter that seem off and other occurrences that leave her unsettled. The narrative bounces from scenes of adult Diana to scenes from before the day of the shooting which fill in some of the story of Diana's friendship with Maureen, and her adolescence in general. Every so often, we return to the girls' bathroom and learn another tiny piece of what happens on that terrible day.

To see what else I thought about the movie, read more.

Uma Thurman's journey in this film is layered and intimate. Some of the most powerful scenes feature a confused and agonizingly haunted adult Diana fighting like mad to keep it together as her perception of reality unravels. Evan Rachel Wood is equally arresting in her portrayal of a young woman testing out the bad girl's life while fiercely loving and secretly admiring her born-again Christian best friend, Maureen.

It takes a true visual artist to interpret Kasischke's dreamy, poetic language into vivid painting-like images that burst with color, texture and emotion. For this, I commend director Vadim Perelman. In regard to the story and the adaptation of Kasischke's work, there are aspects I loved, like the honest-feeling friendship between the young Diana and Maureen. But some parts - particularly certain deviations from the story and some hammer-over-the-head symbolism ("The heart is the body's strongest muscle" is repeated way too many times to count, for example, in case we missed the double meaning the first time) left me feeling frustrated.

For the trailer and video clips from The Life Before Her Eyes, check out movies.ivillage.com.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures