Re-Casting American Beauty
Cover of American Beauty (Widescreen Edition)
I know Bryan Cranston’s cooler and that I’m ruining a Drive reunion – that movie still sucks, by the way! – but head over to Entertainment Maven to see my picks to cast if I was doing a table read or remake of American Beauty.
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Late Thoughts on Contagion’s Trailer
Minutes before watching Crazy, Stupid, Love, I saw the trailer for Contagion, a trailer that, at first viewing, was for your typical Oscar season blockbuster. But I guess seeing it on the big screen made me see stuff more like oh hai, Bryan Cranston, playing Haggerty, a suave man in uniform again beside Dr. Cheever (Laurence Fishburne). Other actors appearing in this film are John Hawkes and Enrico Colantoni, an uncredited Soderbergh alum who’s known here in Canada for being the lead in the cop show “Flashpoint.”
I also really like this shot well, because of the flowers. Seeing the daisies I assumed that it was a child bringing it to someone’s grave, but then it’s obviously someone working on the mass burial grounds. It’s a mix of the personal and professional an adult, possibly jaded because of the recent events, trying to bring an innocent time back. Over-read!
Now, the stars! It sounds sadistic but I’m relieved Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) dies early instead of the disease being the wedge between her and her healthy husband Thomas’ (Matt Damon) marriage. But Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) will analyze Beth throughout the movie, being the first to fall to the disease. How is there even an HD camera surveying her before her death, anyway? Here’s Jude Law, meh. There’s also Dr. Erin Mears’ (Kate Winslet) voice dominating the trailer, but why is her nose red? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seminal Television: SNL
ph. NBC
It really disturbs me that I think Bryan Cranston is hotter than Kanye West.
Saving Private Ryan
(ph Paramount)
While everyone else was watching “Glee” (seriously, fuck that show), I was masochistic and I watched “Saving Private Ryan.”
(Dammit, Spielberg, I wanted to eat dinner tonight!)
I have trouble writing about this since this is turn of the twenty-first century cinema and those have different expectations than I do now. And it’s a bit of a pejorative but it’s still true that Spielberg has that mainstream feel to all his movies, even the most depressing ones like this. The movie does start with irritating hope music that would eventually be done away with years later.
But the movie quickly earns the right to use that music when it switches to a grueling 30 minute slaughter scene of American soldiers. Spielberg spoon-feeds but his in context to his more recent work, we get a little surprised by what’s…in his stew. The movie shows a man getting killed seconds after seeing someone else getting shot. In moments of relative peace, we forget the sadism that is unfortunately necessary in times of war.
(Bryan Cranston!)
This movie reverses the world view of “The Thin Red Line.” Unlike the Malick film, deaths in “Saving Private Ryan” less elegiac and more guts-y and faceless. Also, the leaders responsible for the myriad of slaughtered young men is faceless. We see generals ordering rescue missions instead of ambitious military attacks, although the movie shows both. The brutality is then seen in the lower level, making ‘the American people’ just as cruel as the enemy.
I don’t know why there are so many women in my pictures. They only show up for five minutes, but they that effect on me. Home front, I guess.
The scene with the mother also starts off how Boschian Spielberg could be. Comes with the territory and subject matter, I guess. I could notice the little details from the TV, it would have been fun watching this in the theatre. But then it wouldn’t have been fun since I was ten at the time.
(War makes women have tea by themselves.)
Anyway, enough of me now, enjoy the rest of the screen caps, if you can even call this enjoying.
(a la The Searchers)
(Boschian)
Okinawa Assault 