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Why I Love, Oscar Edition: Sarah Polley

BuzzSugar — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:30:56 -0800

Even the dark strike cloud hovering over Hollywood can't dampen the annual awards season excitement about certain projects and actors (Juno! Daniel Day-Lewis! Atonement!). Yet, there's one woman enjoying an equally exciting year who has remained characteristically low-key about it all: Sarah Polley.

Polley has been acting for years, from the TV series Road to Avonlea to off-beat films like Dawn of the Dead and The Sweet Hereafter, and recently she's turned her sights to writing and directing. Her feature length directorial-debut, Away From Her recently earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Julie Christie, the star of Polley's film, has already nabbed the Golden Globe and the SAG Award for Best Actress, and may just win the Oscar for her performance. Not too shabby for this 28-year-old's first time behind the camera.

There's more to love about this accomplished lady, however, so read more.

Accolades and serious talent aside, one reason I'm dedicating some space to this performer/filmmaker is how grounded and dedicated to her craft - read: not fame - she seems to be. This is particularly refreshing as she seems to have kept her head about her despite experiencing a high degree of success at an early age (I'm going to go ahead and admit here that I was addicted to Road to Avonlea when I was a little one). Doug Liman, who directed her in Go, spoke of her humility to the New York Times:

"I've offered Sarah a part in everything I’ve made since Go, including the female lead in The Bourne Identity, and she keeps turning me down,” he said. “She has a tremendous amount of ambivalence about this profession, but that makes her a better actress. She has no interest in seeing herself in a magazine, but she does have an acute sensitivity to real human beings. Even going out for lunch with her, it’s hard to scream, ‘Where’s my Diet Coke?’ when Sarah has just been incredibly kind to the waitress.”

Nice to waitresses? And she calls herself a movie star! Thankfully, despite her ambivalence toward show business, this multi-talented lady has plenty of projects in the works, and with all the attention her movie is getting this year, she'll have even more power to only work on what speaks to her. That can only lead to good things for all of us.

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Who Should Play Ramona Quimby, Age 8?

BuzzSugar — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:25:54 -0700

Guess which rambunctious 8-year-old is coming to the big screen? That's right, Ramona Quimby! Based on the beloved series by Beverly Cleary, Fox 2000 has greenlit a film adaptation titled simply Ramona.

Elizabeth Allen (Aquamarine) has just signed on to direct, but no actors are attached to the project as of yet. There doesn't appear to be a definitely plot determined yet, either, so who knows which of Ramona's adventures will make it into the big-screen project.

Back when I was watching the "Ramona" TV show, I thought Sarah Polley made a perfect Ramona. Of course, Polley is all grown up and directing movies of her own these days, so who should play Ramona now?

Put your thinking caps on, Buzz readers: Who would make the best Ramona Quimby?

Casting News: Sarah Polley and... Jared Leto?

BuzzSugar — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:29:04 -0700

Here's a weird news item for the day: Jared Leto has been cast in a romantic comedy titled Mr. Nobody. Wait, it gets weirder: his costar in the movie is Sarah Polley, the smart, thoughtful writer/director of Away From Her, one of this year's best movies (mark my words!). According to Hollywood Reporter:

Nobody is described as a multilayered love story inspired by the "butterfly effect," the chaos-theory notion that the beat of a butterfly's wings can cause a storm thousands of miles away. Set in the not-so-distant future, the story follows Nemo Nobody (Leto) who, at 120 years old, is the last mortal surrounded by happy immortals as he relives his real and imaginary years of marriage.

Nobody is serving as the English-language feature debut for Belgian director Dormael, who has been trying to get Nobody to the screen for the past six years. The production, due to start next week, has a budget in the $40 million-$50 million range and will shoot in Brussels, Montreal and Berlin.

Am I the only one who thinks this is super bizarre? Last time I checked, Leto had started down the one-way street toward becoming an angsty, eyeliner-loving, blogger-hating, fight-starting punk. Yet here he is, playing a 120-year-old man and yukking it up onscreen with the likes of Sarah Polley. Hmm...Maybe he'll be amazing?

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Away From Her: Poignant But Not Sappy

BuzzSugar — Fri, 11 May 2007 06:44:25 -0700

I went into the Away From Her movie screening with a stack of tissues, fully prepared to bawl my eyes out over this story about a marriage being tested by Alzheimer's. Yet the sobfest never happened. The story is mostly sad, it's true, but it is also realistically told and casts an unapologetic light on each character. So while there is great sympathy for them, the movie never cycles through devastation to rest on being trite. This is a relief - not to mention a difficult balance to strike for a first-time director like Sarah Polley.

The luminous Julie Christie plays Fiona, a woman who appears to be developing Alzheimer's disease at a surprisingly young age. Her husband Grant (Gordon Pinset) is reluctant to admit this despite Fiona's inability to remember the word for "wine," and lapses of memory which cause her to wander the streets of the town they've lived in for 20 years. Fiona insists on being admitted to a home for Alzheimer's patients, presumably because she read a book explaining how difficult Alzheimer's patients can be when living with their spouses. The drama picks up once Fiona goes to live at the home, however, so read more

At the home Fiona becomes attached to a wheelchair-bound man named Aubrey (Michael Murphy) whom she adores because he doesn't expect her to remember things, and because he needs her. When her husband comes to visit, she is polite but vaguely annoyed that he is taking time away from her new relationship. As time goes by, Fiona forgets more and more of her life with her husband, and builds a new life with Aubrey. Grant befriends Aubrey's wife Marion (Olympia Dukakis), and during his painful visits to the home he finds support in a kindhearted attendant Kristy (Kristen Thomas), who provides a basis of logic about what is happening to Grant's wife.

The wintry Canadian landscape provides incredible beauty (pink sunsets, snow-covered cottages, etc.) and a chilling quietude, at once familiar and coldly ominous. In addition to directing the film, Polley wrote the screenplay based on a short story she read while visiting Iceland. The writing is superb not only in character development and story arc, but in its poetic dialogue. Lines like these leap from the screen as perhaps the short story leapt out at Polley: "Sometimes there's something delicious in oblivion," and "People want to be in love every single day - what a liability!"

Away From Her is largely a showcase for the female characters, and it is this that makes the movie so compelling and so complex. Grant is a central character but essentially fades away amidst so many intriguing women. Whenever people lament the lack of "meaty" women's roles in film today I will be thrilled to suggest this movie.

Photos courtesy of Lionsgate

Movie Preview: Away From Her

BuzzSugar — Tue, 08 May 2007 03:58:07 -0700

Already playing in select theaters, Away From Her has been slowly gaining buzz from its screenings at various film festivals for its flawless performances and beautiful direction. Directed by first-timer Sarah Polley, the movie tells a poignant tale of a long-term marriage being tested by Alzheimer's. This movie has been repeatedly popping up in my day-to-day conversations and I keep seeing rave reviews for it, so I've taken the hint: it's time to see this film. Stay tuned for my review, and in the meantime you can watch the trailer if you read more

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate