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My Sister's Keeper: Climb Aboard the Weepy Express

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:30:17 -0700

In My Sister's Keeper, young Anna knows that she was genetically engineered and brought into this world in order to serve as a donor for her ailing sister, Kate. Well, My Sister's Keeper was engineered to make people cry - over and over and over again, for two hours. Anna sues her parents for medical emancipation, and by the end of this movie I wanted to file for emotional emancipation.

Anna (played sweetly by Abigail Breslin) was conceived after her parents, Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric), learned that their young daughter Kate (the teenage version played by Sofia Vassilieva) had leukemia and their other child, Jesse (Evan Ellingson), was not a perfect match to be a donor for his sister. Throughout her life Anna has been required to give all sorts of things from her body to help keep Kate alive and now, at the age of 11, Anna finds a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for medical emancipation. The lawsuit comes at a critical time: Kate's kidneys are failing, and without one of Anna's kidneys, Kate will die - soon. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that fill in some blanks about the family's journey up until this point. The flashbacks are interspersed with scenes of the present-day situation as Kate's condition worsens and Sara, a former lawyer, prepares to fight her youngest daughter in court. For more on this terribly sad movie, read more.

This drama is, of course, very moving. It centers around a kid with cancer! Of course there's inherent sadness just within that plot, and essentially, nothing more is really needed to make most people feel. But My Sister's Keeper takes this story and milks it for all its worth, stretching out heart-wrenching scene after heart-wrenching scene. I don't fault the movie for being sad, and I don't even think it's that poorly done, but it could have benefited greatly from some strong editing. Despite trying to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time (we hear perspectives from each character - including quite a bit from Kate herself), the movie drags on languorously in many parts, and I just wanted to yell at the screen that we get it. It's sad. We're crying. There's so much more to this story, please move on!

At first, it takes a little while to warm up to these people - particularly so with Diaz's Sara, not because her character is a tough cookie but because Diaz is so shrill at times it's hard to take her seriously. I wondered if this role was too heavy for her to handle; there's just something insubstantial about the way she portrays Sara. It doesn't ruin the movie, but I still wish they'd cast someone else in that role. Sofia Vassilieva's performance as Kate is well done and requires a delicate touch that Vassilieva capably displays - she's sympathetic as a cancer patient, of course, but she also convincingly plays another side of Kate: a giggly, sometimes insecure teenage girl who wants to date boys and look pretty.

I knew going into this that my emotions would be manipulated, and they really do pull out all the stops - including the use of a heartbreaking song every eight minutes or so (like Greg Laswell's slow, haunting version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"). But even with all the music and all the horrors of cancer, by the end of the film, the sweet and complex bonds between these parents and these siblings are what deliver the gut-punch that forces the tears to start flowing.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Buzz News Roundup, 3/27

BuzzSugar — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:30:08 -0700

Woody Allen has added Nicole Kidman into the cast of his as-yet-untitled next project which already included Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins. - Reuters
Queen Latifah will star in the romantic comedy Just Wright, described as "a modern-day Cinderella tale." - Variety
Summit Entertainment has picked up feature-film rights to the book The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, which insinuates that Harry Houdini acted as a spy for Britain. - ComingSoon
Summit is also in the process of picking up Marc Haimes' original screenplay Elevator Men, a dark thriller which "takes a less romanticized look at the human-vampire interactions." - The Hollywood Reporter
Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Bloom are in talks to star as a mysterious stranger and a policeman in the movie Main Street. - Zap2It
NBC has pulled The Chopping Block and replaced it with repeats of Law and Order: Criminal Intent.
Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, Alpha Dog) has signed on to direct the conservation-themed drama Peaceable Kingdom. - ComingSoon
Fox's Summer schedule includes a medical show called Mental and more Hell's Kitchen. - Zap2it
Lionsgate has acquired the feature rights to the stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. - Variety

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Keira May Play Zelda...Who Will Be Her Fitzgerald?

BuzzSugar — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:30:20 -0700

Director Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, Alpha Dog) is hoping Keira Knightley will play Zelda Sayre in a "period love story" titled The Beautiful and the Damned. The Hollywood Reporter has more info:

Damned revolves around Zelda Sayre (Knightley) and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who became Jazz Age icons known for living large, soaring high, and crashing hard. Although toasts of town in the 1920s, their courtship and marriage was festooned with jealousy and acrimony. Fitzgerald used their relationship as material for his novels, and Sayre - who tried hard to find an artistic identity of her own and ended up being admitted to a sanitarium - did the same.

Now for the question: Who should play F. Scott Fitzgerald to Keira's Zelda?

Source

My Sister's Keeper Gets Fanninged - Twice

BuzzSugar — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:25:25 -0700

Well, for all of you who were none too pleased by the casting choice of Cameron Diaz in the film adaptation of My Sister's Keeper, this news may not help: Elle and Dakota Fanning have been cast to play the two sisters in the film.

Elle Fanning will play Anna, the girl who sues her parents for medical emancipation, while Dakota will take on the role of Anna's sick older sister Kate. Cameron Diaz is playing their mother. According to Variety, "The girls are younger than they were in [Jodi] Picoult's novel, but a decision was made to cast them younger because it was age-appropriate for Diaz."

Oh, Nick Cassavetes. What are you doing?!

Fans of the book, what do you think of this news?

Fanning photos source

Cameron Diaz Is a Sister's Keeper

BuzzSugar — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:30:42 -0700

The Facts:

Jodi Picoult's novel My Sister's Keeper is being adapted for film.
Cameron Diaz will star as "a former defense attorney who returns to the courtroom to defend herself and her husband when they are sued by their 13-year-old daughter for emancipation."
Nick Cassavetes, who directed The Notebook, will direct the project.

Ms. Diaz is one busy lady.
What with the Ashton Kutcher comedy What Happens in Vegas... and then the suspense-thriller The Box, My Sister's Keeper won't go into production for a while. Cammie's rather in demand these days, no?

The Book:
I enjoyed Picoult's Vanishing Acts, so I should probably get to reading Keeper before it comes to the big screen. Anyone read the book already? Thoughts?

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