Word: films
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...crime involves a member of the House of Lords, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, his hair shaped in a shiny black cap that makes him look like one of the Fisher Price little people), with a penchant for the perverse and the supernatural. He's caught by Holmes in the film's opening scenes in the middle of some Satanic ritual and condemned to death by hanging, but threatens to return from the grave. Holmes' favorite dangerous lady, "the woman," Irene Adler is also on hand. She's played by Rachel McAdams, who is saucy and fetching...
...Daniel Day-Lewis) are a famous director scheduled to make your next film. Your producer is throwing money at you; a hundred skilled technicians are ready to turn your whims into cinema reality; and everywhere, beautiful women (Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Sophia Loren) throw themselves at you, begging you to use them. So of course you/re miserable - because, at the moment, as a creative filmmaker...
Nine, the perplexing new film based on the 1982 Broadway musical, is inspired by Federico Fellini's landmark 1963 comedy-fantasy 8-1/2. After achieving a worldwide smash with La Dolce Vita, Fellini was besieged with questions about his next film. What would it be about? How will you top yourself, maestro? He had the bold brainstorm to make a movie about a man who can't make a movie. And since the notion was just slightly autobiographical, the movie would be made, in a way, by the man the movie is about. The premise contained its own absurdity...
That was a very distant time. Today, film directors prefer to make movies based on old movies, not plumb the pools of their own artistry. Hollywood looks back, not inward. Nine, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago) and scripted by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) and Michael Tolkin (The Player), wants to do both: engage in a little navel-gazing while summoning the glories of Italian cinema in the Cinecitta era of the 1960s. Find a role for Sophia Loren! Cast Kidman as an amalgam of Claudia Cardinale and Anita Ekberg! And, just as anachronistic, have people sing their troubles...
Moreover, Jake, who seems like such a cheery rogue in all the film's trailers, is so odious that the affair makes little sense. It's not Baldwin's fault; he's good at being bad, and Jake's awfulness does lend itself to comedy of the oh-no-he-didn't variety. "Home!" Jake proclaims, as he lies in bed with Jane after their first sexual encounter in a decade. This would be sweet, if he weren't saying it as he's clapping his hand over her groin with all the subtlety of a baseball player adjusting...