actor & director roundtables

Check out these are really great, intimate roundtable discussions about acting and directing from those who worked on some of the year's best films. From The Hollywood Reporter & Backstage Casting.

oscar nomination day shoutouts

My favorite film of the year The King's Speech rules with 12 nominations. Complete list here.

Martin Filler tells us what's truth and fiction in The King's Speech in New York Review of Books.

Oscar frontrunner Colin Firth interview on the film.

Annette Bening talks about making The Kids Are All Right.

Natalie Portman talks Black Swan.

Melissa Leo defends the character she portrayed, Alice Ward, in The Fighter. See also The Steely Matriarchs Speak.

Director David O. Russell on The Fighter.

Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld on True Grit.

The excellent John Hawkes from Winter's Bone discusses the film.

the king's speech

Born in Britain and raised in Long Island, 73-year old David Seidler claims his stuttering began around his third birthday. His parents told him about King George VI, whom, according to them, seemed to have overcome his impediment by delivering stirring radio speeches in the midst of war. The King's Speech is a film of many strengths and the personal nature of Seidler's script only adds to its richness.

It follows the little known story of Prince Albert (the future King George VI) who went to Austrailian-born speech therapist Lionel Logue for help after a disastrous appearance at the 1925 closing of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. The movie builds artfully and powerfully from their first meeting to the King's rousing 1939 broadcast from Buckingham Palace.


The dance that emerges out of the performances of Colin Firth (as George VI) and Geoffrey Rush (as Logue) is just plain astonishing (and fun) to watch. Rush, who is usually Shakespearean-showy, is remarkable--tender and authentic. The film closes with his gaze, and in a way, the story, and the audience's sympathies, belong to him. It's one of the finest supporting performances I can think of in recent memory. Firth, always such a serious and brooding presence, gives his best performance (and only a year after his stunning work in the stark A Single Man). Once again he infuses his aloofness with tremendous warmth. His frustration and quiet agonies are made palpable by his physicality, rhythms of speech and those large dark eyes. Unlike many British pics of this type, it isn't stuffy or witty screwball (Seidler's script is never too sparkly)--it has both an Ivory/Merchant polished sheen (love it or hate it--I went ahead and embraced it fully and felt rewarded in the end) and a deeply emotional context. Netty Chapman's art direction and Eve Stewart's production design are impeccable and fascinating to behold; the muddled colors in the peeled wallpaper on the walls of Logue's humble office looks like a painting. The movie is enhanced by the talented Alexandre Desplat's score. Some of Danny Cohen's shots which illuminate in gorgeous widescreen both the opulent visuals and Albert's isolation are almost as good as those found in Kubrick films like Barry Lyndon. And Tom Hooper's handsome direction is often impressive. Not only does he do strong work with his actors (even Guy Pearce and Helena Bonham Carter in small, but important supporting roles have moments to shine) but the Capra-esque old Hollywood influence he wears on his sleeve is well-suited for this affair. He just creates an environment where a story gets told well. Usually a fan of darker, more realistic films, I still found Hooper's film refreshing and apt rather than cloying. The use of Beethoven's "7th Symphony" may be a bit much for some but it's really quite a beautiful moment: the melody of the music itself--halting, passionate, building slowly--is elegantly timed with Firth's delivery.

-Jeffery Berg

Please listen to the great interview with screenwriter David Seidler on StutterTalk.com.

Interview with Geoffrey Rush on Movieline.

cagey george in his glass cage

In adapting a classic novel for a film, it seems to me a filmmaker has the responsibility of at least capturing the spirit of the source, even if the adaptation makes many changes. Tom Ford's A Single Man is certainly a noble attempt for a new filmmaker and it shows a lot of confidence. Yet, by making Isherwood's George suicidal, the film version becomes plodding and morose.

Indeed Ford was probably trying to add some dramatic tension. He has recently shared that an unnamed family member committed suicide in a way similar to what George's character plans: "It was exactly that suicide. Everything planned, everything laid out, suit, cuff links, zipped himself in a sleeping bag so he wouldn't make a mess." By drawing on his personal life, Ford does indeed make the work interesting. Yet the book, so slim and fleeting, with pages of rich dialogue, is a celebratory and somber rush of a single day in the life of a middle-aged gay man in the early 1960s. Isherwood's George, particularly observant of his rapidly gentrifying Los Angeles suburb, offers many crackling insights. Ford infuses the movie with an overwrought, changeable warm and cool tone, exaggerated tick tock clocks, and slow-mo student film-ish shots of people's eyes and lips, to show George's isolation and fragmented world view. It has a healthy love for Bergman, Almodovar, and Kar Wai Wong's In the Mood for Love. And it is certainly a stylish affair (George's get-up is, as you may have guessed, Tom Ford, while Julianne Moore seems to be having fun with her part as a boozy, hopelessly in love fag hag with bouffant hair). But because Ford's George is so morbidly depressed, it's difficult to discern the meaning of whatever substance of Isherwood's is left intact. The entire movie becomes a will he or will he not kill himself kind of game. And that kind of dance can really only be viewed once. Isherwood's novel still feels fresh. Ford's film feels dated.


However there are things to be admired here. And perhaps it's wrong for me to do so much comparing and contrasting; a film is meant to be reviewed on its own merit. The re imagining of George as the sleek professor works largely due to Colin Firth and the brilliant set design. His modern, glass house, open for the world to see, is an ironic womb for such an isolated character stuck in the past. It's also a glimpse of the promise of what George's life used to hold. Colin Firth is a reason to see the picture. He has always been a quiet, very real presence in his best roles as difficult-to-read, aloof Mr. Darcy's. George is another one of those roles and he tackles it with gusto. The other supporting players are electric including the very handsome Matthew Goode as George's old lover and the very handsome Nicholas Hoult as a radiant, curious young student. The scenes involving these two really jolt George (and the film) to life. They connect with insular George in surprising ways. Despite the film's flaws, Ford should be commended for bringing such a strong cast to the screen and for taking on such an ambitious project.

-Jeffery Berg