Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Time is of the Essence for George Clooney in ‘Tomorrowland’

May 24, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Serious (formerly Curious) George

Serious (formerly Curious) George

Tomorrowland, named after Disneyland’s future-themed neighborhood, is Spy Kids in space. Which turns out not be a bad thing although it may come as a surprise to those who have watched George Clooney do the endless P.R. rounds, hefting his epic charm as if it were Thor’s hammer.

On screen, the crinkly-eyed mega-star and activist — who plays spunky boy inventor turned fifty-something paranoid crank Frank Walker — disappears from the movie for nearly an hour in a very awkward and not particularly magical script bubble.

Precocious prepubescent Walker escapes to the future with his home-made jet-pack created from an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, landing in a silver-and-light Oz of the future that would have suited The Jetsons. (Interesting side note: at the theme park, Tomorrowland was intended to be 1986. So, if you’re relatively into Einstein, the future is technically the past).

Walker the boy makes this time leap from the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park with the help of a magic pin handed to him by a girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy). If you know your mythology, Athena cracked out of Zeus’s head with an unmatched warrior spirit, which is what the Greek Gods had instead of spunk.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Brad Bird, Disneyland, Dystopia, George Clooney, Monsanto, Tomorrowland, Walt Disney

‘Gravity’ Review by Vassar’s Daniel Bogran

October 20, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Bullock: Ground Control Where the Hell is Major Tom? “Gravity,” the sci-fi survival epic from writer/director Alfonso Cuaron, has been widely touted as a masterpiece and game-changer in the world of cinema. It is, in truth, neither of those things. Though it is certainly quite an experience. The cinematography, direction, special-effects, and acting are all immensely impressive. Yet, “Gravity” isn’t exactly a fun movie to watch; the amount of tension Cuaron is able to create in several scenes, though laudable, is equally exhausting. The film also suffers from bum dialogue and conventionality disguised as innovation. Audiences might be so jazzed up by the movie’s fascinating aesthetic and the way it is making them feel that they might overlook the fact that the movie has just offered them the safest ending possible. Yet, quibbles aside, “Gravity” is still worth watching; its simply too well-executed a film to miss.

Daniel Bogran is a Vassar College student and currently an intern on this site.

Watch the “Gravity” trailer here:

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: George Clooney, Gravity, Oscars, Sandra Bullock, Space

“Gravity” Lost in Hollywood Space

September 15, 2013 By Thelma 237 Comments

Bullock: Ground Control Where the Hell is Major Tom?

Bullock: Ground Control Where the Hell is Major Tom?


Hope for the best, don’t expect the worst. It’s my movie criticism mantra, but as the lights darkened at the Princess of Wales Theater for “Gravity’s” Canadian gala, already hailed as a masterpiece following a Venice Film Festival Premiere, it wasn’t just the fact that I was way up in the rafters wearing 3-D glasses over my already thick specs that was making me queasy. Early on, watching the oh, wow, visuals and the echoey emptiness of what it must be like to be doing routine maintenance in space (I so wanted “Pink Floyd”), I became bothered by narrative claustrophobia. Can one smell bullshit in space?

Despite all the gravity of Alfonso Cuaron’s 3-D space chamber opera, the story, co-written with his son, Jonas, reveals holes as gaping as those on any space station station ripped by the debris of an accidental explosion beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

In brief: Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a testy medical engineer pursuing research in space. George Clooney is Matt Kowalksy, the cheery professional astronaut on, yes, his last run. When space junk from a Russian mishap destroys their mission, their Harvard-educated brown-skinned colleague, their satellite, their station, and that of the Russians and, possibly, the Chinese, the pair struggle for survival, often tethered by a white umbilical cord.

The problem begins, but doesn’t entirely end, with Bullock’s character. She is nervous and brittle: but who isn’t? Okay, Clooney’s Galahad in a spacesuit isn’t. He wisecracks and story-tells and Cloonies to give “Gravity” its much-needed warmth and comic relief.

Dr. Stone (sinking like a ….) is just not a woman (or even a man) that could have passed the rigorous training process that NASA inflicts on its candidates. I don’t know the statistics, but even among the thousands or tens of thousands that want to become an astronaut (include me not!), less than one hundred achieve that vaunted status. Life is hard, becoming an astronaut nearly impossible.

When we first encounter Stone and Kowalsky while she repairs some failure like a nearly hired tech from the Geek Squad and he marks time, their dialog speaks of people who hardly know each other, not members of a small elite team that have trained, lived, flown and, likely, vomited together. They could be on a bus, polite strangers, two people at a wedding, one on the bride’s side, one on the groom’s.

Disaster, inevitably, strikes. Dr. Stone freaks out, spinning, spinning, spinning, hyperventilating and banging against satellite and space station and colleague corpse. Like a tumbled stone, she gradually reveals the tragic nugget of her neurosis. All anybody who knows NASA can say is “next candidate, please!” She would never have made the cut. So her arc from a professional woman emotionally untethered from her own life, that ultimately fights to survive and get her feet back on the ground, is baloney. Or space baloney, on sale at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in shiny packages.

The set-up resembles “Open Water” in space. The nifty little seventy-nine-minute 2004 thriller written and directed by Chris Kentis about a cute scuba-diving couple accidentally left behind by the tour boat in shark-infested waters. Adrift, the pair go from hoping for rescue, to fending off sharks, hypothermia and exhaustion, all the while treading spiritual and emotional water.

Yes, it’s a trick, a movie incredibly intense because we are in the water with this man and woman as they struggle to survive, and every strength and weakness of their romantic bond, and personal character, reveals itself as they swim in the ocean’s fatal flush. They should be back at the harbor drinking Mojitos. They’re not. They never will be.

At the Princess of Wales screening, Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield attended and tweeted the next day: “Good morning! Gravity was fun last night. Fantastic visuals, relentless, Sandra Bullock was great. I’d fly with her.” Well, who wouldn’t fly with Bullock? She’s such a good sport. But, really, never in a million missions would Commander Hadfield place his life, or that of his crew, in her incapable hands.

I respect Hadfield’s gallantry, and “fantastic visuals” rings true. The visuals are fantastic. It’s also a safe reaction to another Hollywood fairy tale that fails to understand the incredible craft and skill of having “The Right Stuff.” However finely wrought, however mind-blowing the seventeen-minute takes, the revolution in 3-D technology, the movie misunderstands the incredible craft, physical stamina and mental acuity of those who go into space.

That’s not to say astronaut’s can’t and don’t crack. But when they do, they break in a control-freak, OCD way. Take the astronaut-turned-stalker Naval Captain Lisa Nowak. She flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2006. The following year, she was arrested in Orlando for attempted kidnapping after pursuing a romantic rival from Texas to Florida, allegedly wearing disposable diapers so that she would not have to stop during the 900-mile car trip. Maybe you’ve seen the “Rocket Man” episode of TV’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”

Nowak might have been a crazy stalker, but she had wanted to become an astronaut since she was six. And she massively trained for her opportunity to leave earth’s gravity in a souped-up tin can, logging 1,500-plus hours on thirty different aircraft, and multiple spacewalks during her 13 days on the shuttle. But the brittle but buff Dr. Ryan, with her panicky refrain that she repeatedly crashed her simulated escape pod during training, would never have made it out of the parking lot and onto the flight deck.

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Adams on Reel Women, Alfonso Cuaron, best actress, best picture, George Clooney, Lisa Nowak, Open Water, Oscars2014, Sandra Bullock

The TIFF13 Countdown Continues – 3 Days – Trailer for “Gravity”

September 2, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

George Clooney and Sandra Bullock space out as two American astronauts adrift in Alfonso Cuaron’s (“Children of Men”) sci-fi thriller

Every time I hear about this movie, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” starts playing in my head:

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: David Bowie, George Clooney, Oscars14, Sandra Bullock, sci fi, Space Oddity, TIFF13

Yahoo!: Who will be the Oscar contenders of 2012-13? Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio? Viola Davis or Keira Knightley? Steven Spielberg or Kathryn Bigelow?

March 8, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Brad Pitt

A slick Pitt returns for another date with Oscar in "Cogan's Trade"

 

Scan the upcoming 2012 movies and check out the gang’s-all-here vibe: Kathryn Bigelow, Viola Davis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Peter Jackson, Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg, Christoph Waltz — and even last year’s go-to girl, Jessica Chastain — all have projects in the pipeline. What should you be looking forward to amid the March box-office doldrums?

“Cogan’s Trade”
Consider 2011-12 Brad Pitt’s warm-up year. Pitt reteams with writer-director Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford“) to play a mob enforcer dispatched to clean up after a heist at a high-stakes poker game. And Pitt might be competing against himself, as the star of Marc Forster’s zombie thriller “World War Z.”

“The Surrogate”
Man in an iron lung wants to lose his virginity. It was hard to tell whether the plot was a spoof or a tragedy, but at Sundance I discovered that this movie is all about John Hawkes (“Winter’s Bone“) lying around, being wry, amusing, horny, and handicapped. Oscar contender? Slam dunk. And an education in physically challenged erotica!

[Related: Conspiracy Theories and Meryl Streep’s Best-Actress Upset]

“Brave”
Pixar blew a tire with “Cars 2” and was never in the Oscar running. But the perennial animation favorite will be back with the story of a girl-powered archer-princess (voice of “Boardwalk Empire’s” Kelly McDonald) struggling to rid her kingdom of a horrible curse. This is the one to beat in the category.

“Untitled International Thriller,” aka “Kill Bin Laden”
Kathryn Bigelow’s first project since she won the historic best-director award for “The Hurt Locker” has Oscar written all over it. Set for a prime awards season December 19 release date, it’s about the hunt for and capture of the al-Qaida leader, with a great cast bound for acting noms, including Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Chris Platt, and Chastain.

“Anna Karenina”
For those who thought Keira Knightley was robbed when she wasn’t nominated for her central turn in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” it’s payback time. She’s the title character in this oft-adapted Leo Tolstoy classic (Greta Garbo nailed the role in 1935), opposite Jude Law as her inattentive husband and Aaron Johnson as the love of her life, Count Vronsky. Expect a gallery of tortured, passionate looks and longing sighs. Toss in “Atonement” director Joe Wright and a script from the great playwright Tom Stoppard, and we have ourselves an Oscar party.

[Related: ‘The Hunger Games’ Exclusive Clip Gives First Look at Lenny Kravitz’s Role]

“The Great Gatsby”
The critics emitted a nearly universal groan at the thought of yet another “Gatsby” adaptation — enough already! But it seems that every generation wants its own GG, and this one is irresistible Oscar bait, with Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan and Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. With Australian Baz Luhrmann (“Moulin Rouge“) directing, expect this to be one passionate hothouse flower of a production — and a best-picture contender if he pulls it off.

“Lincoln”
So Steven Spielberg was snubbed this year, but wait until he pulls out this presidential biopic starring Daniel-Day Lewis as the lanky politician called the Great Emancipator. Oscar-winner Sally Field plays Mary Todd Lincoln and — spoiler alert — the North beat the South in the Civil War. Winning!

“Django Unchained”
Quentin Tarantino cooks up a spaghetti western with a Christmas 2012 release date that screams Oscar. Jamie Foxx plays a former slave turned bounty hunter who’s willing to break a few rules to reclaim his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Leonardo DiCaprio twirls his mustache as a villainous plantation owner, with Tarantino fave Christoph Waltz in a leading role as an established bounty hunter. Expect “Inglourious Basterds” on horseback with tumbleweeds and chains.

“Argo”
Ben Affleck (“The Town,” “Gone Baby Gone“) is back directing and co-starring with “Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston in this espionage thriller hooked on the Iranian hostage crisis (when 52 Americans were held in Tehran for 444 days from 1979 to 1981). As U.S.-Iranian diplomatic tensions intensify — again — this movie could not be timelier.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
Director Peter Jackson is always good for a best-picture nomination when putting J.R.R. Tolkien’s little men with hairy feet on camera. It’s been long enough since the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (which took home 17 statuettes out of 30 Oscar nominations) that I’m actually hungering for a little Middle-earth magic. I doubt I’m alone.

Also potentially under consideration: David Cronenberg’s Robert Pattinson-starrer “Cosmopolis”; Viola Davis in “Won’t Back Down”; the George Clooney-Sandra Bullock thriller “Gravity”; “The Gangster Squad”; “Smashed”; “Les Miserables”; Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines”; and the Portuguese charmer, “Tabu.” Please chime in with movies that you think might join the list — and, remember, the 85th Academy Awards will be held in — eek! — early 2013.

 

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Brad Pitt, Brave, David Cronenberg, George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Oscars 2013, Pixar

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