Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Why do we need a Peter Pan Reboot — What About Wendy Darling?

June 13, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

I despite websites when they function as straight ahead marketing, riding on the back of poster reveals or new trailers fed to them by the studio publicity machines. It means that journalists that rely on the page view spikes become more beholden to the industry they should hold at arm’s length. Which brings me to Pan, which happens to be directed by Joe Wright, who made a movie out of Anna Karenina and arguably the best Pride and Prejudice. But, do we really need another Pan? The trailer, with a glancing look at Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily (that she is not a Native American is a rant for the more literal minded), seems to owe a debt to Terry Gilliam:

What I’d love is a Peter Pan reboot that investigates the enduring power of the Peter Pan complex by focusing on Wendy Darling, maybe with Alicia Vikander in the role (and Mads Mikkelsen as Captain Hook?). In my novel, Playdate, I wrote:

“When had it become so hard just to sit still and play? Men had Peter Pan complexes, but women had the Wendy Darlings. The Wendys wanted to fly a little and be dazzled by pixie dust, but they were consumed with relationships and caretaking and what the neighbors thought. Wendy’s lost boys were content to fly; Wendy had to civilize. She couldn’t abandon herself to wild dancing by firelight with the Indian braves; she had to funnel them all back into London middle-class respectability. Wendy was in such haste to grow up and become the mother, that central domestic figure; to children, their mother’s skirts were the world.”

I feel an essay coming on — do you have any strong feelings about Wendy? Did you pretend to be her in make-believe childhood role-playing games?

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Alicia Vikander Mads Mikkelsen, Captain Hook, Controversy, Hugh Jackman, Joe Wright, Pan, Peter Pan, Playdate, Remakes, Tiger Lily, Wendy Darling

Critic’s Pick: ‘Blackfish’

August 1, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Serial Killer Whale

Serial Killer Whale

This is the golden age of documentaries. Exhibit A: Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s eye-opening, edge-of-your-seat feature. “Blackfish” has it all: an oversized villain, chilling attack footage, corporate malfeasance, and girls in bikinis. Add in a righteous save-the-whales cause, and it becomes the perfect nonfiction movie cocktail.

The doc that SeaWorld would rather you ignore opens today week in Shamu’s home town, San Diego, as it widens out of New York and Los Angeles. It’s the story of the killer whale Tilikum, a thirty-something, six-ton Orca, ripped from his mother’s side, tossed into tanks smaller than Olympic Swimming pools, and bred like livestock.

It gets worse: the massive captive animal has killed multiple humans, at least twice, possibly three times, while in captivity at one of America’s most famous, family friendly theme parks.

[RELATED: ‘Blackfish’: The Stunning New Doc about SeaWorld’s Orcas

Sometimes the violence even occurred with an audience, like that of 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld in Orlando as recently as 2010. “Blackfish,” another name for Orca, rolls the tape. The shocking footage, that’s all the more compelling because it’s not “Sharknado,” derives from an Occupation and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) investigation that found SeaWorld liable for two safety violations directly related to Brancheau’s death.

In a season of cartoon superheroes at the box office, “Blackfish” tells a real-life tale of a complex super-villain. And what makes it all the more horrifying is the degree to which we unwittingly conspired to create the monster. He was a captive animal – and many of us voluntarily became a captive audience to his recurring humiliation. If you’ve ever sat in the audience at SeaWorld’s main attraction and waited for the big splash and the jolly fin wave, with a Shamu plush toy in one hand and your kids’ sticky palm in the other, then you’ll be both appalled and intrigued at how this violence could have happened and, as the film tells it, been hushed up, and how our tourist dollars have underwritten the whole affair.

Bottom Line: A shattering documentary about a serial killer whale.

Watch the video:

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Blackfish, Controversy, Dawn Brancheau, Documentary, Film Review, Magnolia Pictures, Oscars 2014, Shamu, Women Directors, Yahoo! Movies

Copycat Crime: That’s Flattery Not Mockery as Jimmy Kimmel and Paul Reubens Echo Melissa Leo’s Oscar ads

June 5, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Jimmy Kimmel,Melissa Leo,Academy Award,Consideration Ad

Kimmel and Leo do not-so-basic black

Maybe someone should tell Jimmy Kimmel that he shouldn’t lead with his cleavage. But, then, a lot of people told Melissa Leo — after the fact — that she shouldn’t pay for her own “Consider…” ads. And then she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Fighter and it was New Year’s Eve set to the anthem “I Did it My Way.” With both Kimmel and Paul Reubens posting copycat ads, nothing could be truer than the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — er, except, flattery.

Full disclosure: I was at the Rhinebeck Mansion the night the Jason Downs produced the infamous photo shoot. I wasn’t sold on the idea. It was risky. In my heart, and as a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, I believed that Leo was at long last in her career the frontrunner. My daughter and I watched from the wings — Lizzie elated and me nervous — as they took the pictures of Melissa in a faux fur by the swimming pool, and later in glittery, glamorous dresses as an indie movie shoot threading it’s way through the location.

I am happy to say that I was dead wrong about the outcome of that night in upstate NY.

No doubt: Melissa looked gorgeous, and nothing like her tough-talking mama’s in The Fighter and Frozen River. She had the full “What Becomes a Legend Most” treatment. Sure, Paramount should have been paying for the campaign but they had two other “horses” in the race at the time: Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit and Amy Adams, also in The Fighter. But would the ads help or hurt?

There was a firestorm when the restrained ads came out in the trades, polarizing the pro-Leo camp that believed she was proactively seizing the day, and those critical of her brazen behavior. Deadline Hollywood took the middle ground, pointing out historical winners who did personal campaigns: American Graffiti’s Candy Clark winner; losers included Diana Ross, Chill Wills And Margaret Avery.

I talked to Melissa about the campaign last February for MarieClaire.com, and she laughed as she said: “In the true story, when we’re 90, we’ll giggle and write about the negativity. As we have witnessed before, it’s only the generator of the discussion. If there’s no negativity, there’s no discussion.”

And, now, in something we never would have anticipated — or at least I didn’t — those ads have been woven into the pop culture. They have not disappeared like “Kleenex,” to quote Melissa. Here we have that crazed weaver of Pop Culture, Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman putting on the fur — in photo shop — and getting into the Leo act.

To quote our mutual friend Nina Shengold, who along with Melissa is a member of Ulster County’s Actors & Writers theatre collective: “Melissa & Pee Wee, ahead of the curve as usual!”

 

Paul Reubens,Pee Wee Herman,Tony Awards,Advertising,Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Pee-Wee's Poolhouse

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Academy Awards, best actress, Controversy, Deadline Hollywood, Jason Downs, Jimmy Kimmel, Marie Claire, Melissa Leo, Nina Shengold, Paul Reubens, Ulster County Actors & Writers Theater Collective, Upstate NY

Peter Travers interviews Oscar-winner Melissa Leo re Red State

March 10, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtZd3SUw8OM

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: Best supporting actress, Controversy, Extremism, Fundamentalism, Kevin Smith, Melissa Leo, Oscar winner, Peter Travers, Red State, The Fighter

Melissa Leo: the marieclaire.com interview

February 11, 2011 By Thelma 2 Comments

Melissa Leo, Marie Claire, marieclaire.com, Consideration ads,Amy Adams

Leo on Her Unconventional Oscar Ads

February 10, 2011 10:00 AM by Thelma Adams
Actress Melissa Leo inevitably surprises. Usually, it’s because she dives so deep into her characters. Whether she’s jabbing her forefinger at the camera as The Fighter‘s peroxide-blonde matriarch Alice Ward, or driving a clunker across a Frozen River, her unsinkable spirit and enormous heart shine through. She conveys an honesty stripped of vanity unlike other actresses of her generation. But, now, she’s surprised the Hollywood community, and her die-hard fans, with a self-funded ad campaign. Above magazine-cover-ready photos of a glammed-up Leo is the single, simple word, Consider. Even more surprised at the sudden uproar in the press following the ads’ publication is Leo. Back in December when she hatched the plan to run ads in the trades, she hadn’t realized she was the Oscar frontrunner. She’s an actress, not an advertising maven.

Marie Claire: You’ve already won a Golden Globe, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, a Critics Choice award, and a SAG award, which seems to put you in a good spot to get an Oscar. So, why do this?

Melissa Leo: You have to understand what I needed to understand two years ago when I did Frozen River: You don’t go to Vogue in June for July’s cover. Around the middle of December I had finally gotten the info that I was not going to get a national cover.

MC: Obviously, that was frustrating. What do you attribute that to?

ML: It seemed to come down to issues between box office and age. It’s a selling-magazines issue. I get it. So, fine, why even bother?

MC: Full disclosure: We did put Amy Adams on our cover in January. But we adore you, too! Has it been interesting sharing the nomination with Amy?

ML: That’s not hard to do. The spread that you did on Amy… The cover was spectacular and said so much about Amy. I can’t think about her without going back to the shoot itself and the friendship we made then. It gets stronger and stronger — the way she taught me and helped me as an actor both on and off the set in Lowell. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Academy Awards, Amy Adams, Best supporting actress, Controversy, Marie Claire, Melissa Leo, Oscars, The Fighter

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