Word: culkin
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...Judy Davis's lips silicon-injected? If Ted Demme (the director) is related to Jonathan Demme, isn't Jonathan Demme embarrassed? Why wasn't Macaulay Culkin in this movie? These are the questions that gnawed at my brain as the one-liners reached an insipid tedium. Also, I was sure that the town setting was suposed to be a cinematic rendering of Marblehead, Mass (town hall, docks, little white churches, references to Republicans), but then someone in the movie said "our relatives are coming down from Boston for Christmas." I could only conclude that this wasn't Marblehead: the Marblehead...
...fable will reach the big screen. Warner Bros. is releasing a major film of George Balanchine's classic 1954 production, performed entirely by New York City Ballet dancers; children from the company's crack training ground, the School of American Ballet; and starring none other than former student Macaulay Culkin, who settled for $10,000 (he recently made an $8 million deal with MGM) so that he could play the nutcracker prince...
...dream touched off by her naughty kid brother Fritz, who breaks her favorite new toy, a nutcracker. The dream starts as a nightmare: the family's Christmas tree grows to alarming proportions; huge mice scuttle threateningly around her until they are conquered by a newly potent nutcracker (Culkin), who is then transformed into an angelic, pink-suited prince. Thereafter the dream becomes a cotton-candy fantasy as the prince escorts Marie to the Kingdom of the Sweets, where waves of dancers, led by the Sugarplum Fairy (Darci Kistler), perform in the children's honor. In a hilarious mock-grandiose conclusion...
...grown up on. (After a year or two, they become members of the boisterous Nutcracker fraternity who ritually applaud the prince's victories, always at the same plot points.) The movie should have been a triumph, but somehow it falls short. Not because of the performances, which are fine. Culkin appears a little too camera-wise performing among relative amateurs, but he is an effective prince. Kistler dances with the tender grace of a fairy princess. Kyra Nichols leaps through the role of Dewdrop like a cavorting sprite. In the Marzipan Shepherdess's exacting solo -- full of exposed pointe work...
...Director Emile Ardolino's palette is inexplicably dark and shot so dizzily that the dancing is often hard to follow. Much of the party scene is a murky jumble. To help clarify things, the filmmakers added a last-minute narration by Kevin Kline. From a purist's viewpoint, Kit Culkin, Macaulay's demanding father and manager, was correct when he argued noisily that this intrusion into Balanchine's concept should be excised. When he lost out, he retaliated by withdrawing his son's participation in promoting the film. Kit has a right to his opinion; after all, he played...