Word: hollywoodizations
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Finally, there is Robert Kelly, who plays Victor, the writer caught between the two women. Of course, true to our preconceptions of amoral Hollywood, the actresses are trying their best to use their feminine wiles to make him rewrite the script, so that one or the other will be the main star. Meanwhile, he has to defend the artistic integrity of his screenplay, as the producer is demanding drastic scene cuts...
...Four Dogs" is supposed to be a critique of the film industry, it remains rather thin. So what if these stereotypes are true? Shanley, in spite of his wonderful ear for that which is funny, has unfortunately bought into the Hollywood writing formula--the work produced is pleasurable but ultimately does not tackle any meaty themes. For an evening of merriment, "Four Dogs" is a good bet. But if a Brechtian intellectualized theater is what you're looking for, it won't be found in this dog-eat-dog farce...
...film's secret star is Miep Gies, a Gentile who worked for Otto's company. Today she looks like a stoic maiden aunt; kids at a family dinner would peg her as a stodge. But that is because Hollywood teaches us to look for shining ideals in a pretty face. Gies has the plain face of true-life heroism. Each day for two years she took food, magazines and news of the war to the Franks. She persuaded them to accept Pfeffer as a boarder. When the family was seized, she boldly confronted the Nazis. She also saved Anne...
Though it purports to be fresh and skeptical, the movie is really as old as A Star Is Born, from the early fumbling of the ingenue to her Mrs. Norman Maine speech at the end. It's one more essay on Hollywood's favorite subject: star quality. That's something Redford and Pfeiffer have in their back pockets. They can also act, though they don't have to here--for in this film, as in some TV news, the look is more important than the feeling. "Hair is character," says a woman in the movie, and director Jon Avnet seems...
...reminded of the brandy Alexander that Mary Richards told Lou Grant she'd like during her job interview on the Mary Tyler Moore show, a series that was a lot more acute about the elusive glamour of TV news. But Up Close and Personal is The Way We Were Hollywood version. Long before its ending (or rather, the endings--there must be six or seven of them, all superfluous to the main plot), the film has become a rosy yet pale dreamscape of real workaday life. It's like the Windsong commercial on the nightly news, between the Bosnia coverage...