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NewspapersReview: 'Doubt'
Adaptation of prize-winning play serves up searing performances from Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Published: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:00:00 GMT - Source: Csmonitor.Com - Read the articleEuropeGolden Globe hopes for Winslet and Mendes
Working with one's spouse can so often be a shortcut to acrimony, but not for Kate Winslet and her husband, Sam Mendes. Yesterday, their first joint project, Revolutionary Road - directed by him and starring her - received a slew of nominations at the Golden Globes, honoured alongside an unusually large array of British talent.If all goes well on January 11, he could win best director, it could win best film, she could scoop best actress and her co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, could take best actor.Winslet has another chance to win the Golden Globe that has eluded her on five occasions: she is also nominated for best supporting actress for The Reader, in which she plays a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenage boy.The Winslet-Mendeses are not the only couple up for awards. Brad Pitt is nominated for best actor for his role as the eponymous hero in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, who is born aged 80 and grows younger by the day, and his partner, Angelina Jolie, has a chance at best actress for The Changeling.In the coveted best drama category, Revolutionary Road is competing against Stephen Daldry's The Reader and another British-directed film, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. But the big competition looks to come from Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which both won five nominations. Doubt, which stars Meryl Streep as a nun who confronts a priest she suspects of abusing a black student, is also competing in five categories.British talent was nominated in at least 20 of the 25 categories.British actress Kristin Scott Thomas was nominated in the best dramatic actress category for her role in the French film I've Loved You So Long. It is her first Golden Globe nomination since 1997, when she was up for best actress for her performance in The English Patient.Other British women in contention include Emma Thompson for Last Chance Harvey, Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky and Rebecca Hall for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The last two are up for best comedy or musical, alongside Burn After Reading, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges and Mamma Mia!Ralph Fiennes has been given a best TV actor nod for Bernard and Doris, an HBO film in which he stars alongside Susan Sarandon. He is also a contender in the best supporting actor category for The Duchess, against the late Heath Ledger, who is favourite to win for his role as the Joker in the Batman film The Dark Knight.Frost/Nixon is a big-screen version of Peter Morgan's West End hit, which recreates the 1977 standoff between presenter David Frost and the disgraced former president Richard Nixon. Morgan has been nominated for best screenplay, pitting him against fellow Britons Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire and David Hare for The Reader.The Globes are typically seen as a crucial pointer towards the Academy Awards that follow in February, though they are not foolproof. Last year's best drama award went to Atonement, while Sweeney Todd was named best comedy or musical. A month later, the best film Oscar went to No Country for Old Men. Sweeney Todd failed to even secure a nomination.Kate WinsletBrad PittAngelina JolieGolden GlobesMeryl StreepDanny Boyleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:17:38 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the articleEuropeBarack won in Washington, but Hillary is the victor in Hollywood
There are many disconcerting moments in the new Keanu Reeves sci-fi action thriller The Day the Earth Stood Still; in fact, the film is almost entirely composed of such moments. But its most discomfiting aspect is the fact that the US government is represented by a badass secretary of defence, played by Kathy Bates, who does not believe in making nice with the incoming aliens, but rather kicking their little green butts. Very clearly, Bates's character is influenced by Hillary Clinton's tough act - the act she displayed in her notorious 3am Phonecall TV campaign and the interview in which she made a point of declaring that if the Iranians launched a nuclear attack on Israel, a Hillary-led government "would obliterate them".Kathy Bates's character in the film was conceived at a time when it was pretty likely Hillary would win the Democratic nomination, and therefore very possibly the presidency, but the fact that the president is not shown in the movie - he is spoken to on the phone, but his voice is not heard - itself acknowledges the possibility that Barack Obama would win. Because Hollywood has always been very reluctant to imagine an African-American in the White House. As Mark Ravenhill notes in a recent column, the black presidents in the movies are either in sci-fi or comedy, such as Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact or Chris Rock in Head of State, which suggests the idea is only appropriate for something far-fetched or absurd. (On TV, however, Dennis Haysbert was a dignified African-American president in 24.)The Hillary-a-like defence secretary in The Day the Earth Stood Still is a queasy throwback to the 90s, when we saw loads of Bill Clinton facsimiles on the big screen: attractive-ish, middle-aged white commanders-in-chief who were very much in the Bill mould, and flatteringly cast in romantic action-hero roles. There was Michael Douglas in The American President, Harrison Ford in Air Force One, Bill Pullman in Independence Day, John Travolta in Primary Colors and Jeff Bridges in The Contender. There was no Dubya figure that I can recall in the noughties, though there was of course a real, and rather underpowered Dubya in Oliver Stone's respectful film of the same name. So will there be a surge of Obamas in the cinema? Maybe. But I suspect that there are plenty of people in Hollywood who will think that whatever's happened in the real world, in commercial and entertainment terms, a black president is still too "urban" an idea. (Notoriously, the relative commercial failure of HBO's magnificent TV show The Wire is attributed to its predominantly African-American cast - despite the endorsement of Barack Obama, who gave a newspaper interview saying that it was the best show on American television.)I think there will be a new indirectness, even coyness, and the "president" will, just as in The Day the Earth Stood Still, be imagined offscreen but with an onscreen representative, a representative more amenable to conventional Hollywood drama, and this representative will be a Hillary-a-like. It will be this subordinate Hillary-a-like who will stride into top-level meetings with the military top brass, and who will be ushered into sleek black limos, surrounded by security guards in black suits. It will be the Hillary-a-like who will tell her colleagues and us, the audience, what the president is thinking. She will be a government figure whose existence is an acknowledgment of the progressive times: a tough, capable, hawkish woman with a tender, even vulnerable side. We have already had one of these, in fact, in the form of Meryl Streep's dragon-lady CIA leader in the war-on-terror drama Rendition.Barack Obama might have won in Washington, but I have a sinking feeling Hillary is going to win big in Hollywood ...Science fiction and fantasyHillary Clintonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Published: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:32:00 GMT - Source: Guardian.Co.Uk - Read the article
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