Happy Birthday Ellen

ellen's oscar win was for her performance in 'alice doesn't live here anymore'

my favorite ellen burstyn film was her oscar nominated 'resurrection'.

Qualities of Mercy and Strength

“THE only thing that matters is the theater!”

That passionate declaration was made not by Katharine Cornell, Ethel Barrymore or some other grande dame of the stage. It was spit out midtantrum with a stomp of her foot by a 5-year-old Lily Rabe during a petulant exchange with her mother, Jill Clayburgh.

“It was one of her favorite stories to embarrass me with,” Ms. Rabe said, explaining that her baby-diva moment came during a vacation after her mother’s peace offerings — a beach walk, sandwiches, swimming, a trip to town — had all been rejected. “She remembered exactly the dress I was wearing and the little brown sandals when she would tell the story.”

Acknowledging that her proclamation was probably something she had heard around the dinner table, Ms. Rabe, now 28, added, “Wherever I picked it up, I must have known it was a powerful statement to make.”

And not a completely surprising one given the environment in which she grew up. Her mother was among the most influential actresses of her generation, and her father, David Rabe, is a playwright whose work brought a distinctive new voice to the American theater. “There was a lot of theater, and a lot of talk about theater,” Ms. Rabe said over lunch at Maialino, in the Gramercy Park Hotel.

The past weeks have been emotionally turbulent for Ms. Rabe. On Nov. 5 her mother died after living, very privately, with chronic leukemia for 21 years. The next day Ms. Rabe bravely resumed preview performances as Portia, with Al Pacino as Shylock, in the Broadway production of “The Merchant of Venice,” the opening of which was delayed a few days to accommodate her brief absence.

“It was very hard to leave her side during those weeks when things were happening so quickly with her health,” she said. “And yet I had to keep going back to the show. I was with her on the Monday, on my day off, and I knew I couldn’t leave her again. On Thursday she wanted to go home from the hospital. We got her home, and she died on Friday morning. I was with her every second.”

Ms. Rabe spoke with moving candor about her family’s loss, pausing often to maintain her composure. While her sorrow was clearly visible, even more touching was the deep gratitude that surfaced whenever the conversation returned to her parents: “I think the experience of those two weeks is something we’re all going to be processing our whole lives. I didn’t know that I could feel closer to my brothers, or to my father, or even to my mother.”

That bond between mother and daughter was known to everyone who encountered them. The two even shared a Manhattan apartment briefly when Ms. Rabe was fresh out of Northwestern University’s theater studies program and first making her mark on New York stages, a period that coincided with a burst of renewed theater activity for Ms. Clayburgh.

“One of my mother’s friends said to me, ‘Your ex-boyfriends didn’t stand a chance with you and your mother,’ ” Ms. Rabe said. “And I think I probably was unfair to them because she was the first person and the last person I called about every single thing. Sorry, ex-boyfriends.”

While it’s a common notion that being immersed in work can provide insulation from grief, Ms. Rabe said returning immediately after her mother’s death to “Merchant” was her only choice.

“She would have wanted me to do it, and she would have done the same thing,” she said. “In a moment of tremendous struggle, making that decision on Saturday morning wasn’t a struggle. I knew it was what I had to do. And it was also a way to feel close to her.”

That Ms. Rabe should be mourning while experiencing professional acclaim in a performance critics have called a breakthrough seems oddly fitting for an actress with an uncommon ability to balance vulnerability and strength.

“She’s a quivering reed, and she can blow the house down,” the playwright Richard Greenberg said. “There’s nothing her technique won’t allow her to do as an actor. It’s boundless.”

Mr. Greenberg worked with Ms. Rabe on the 2009 Broadway staging of “The American Plan,” and with her mother four years earlier on “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way.” The duality he described has been present in every one of Ms. Rabe’s stage appearances since her Broadway debut five years ago.

Whether playing jittery Southern women in “Steel Magnolias” and “Crimes of the Heart,” or porcelain beauties from another era in “Heartbreak House,” “The American Plan” and now “Merchant,” she can combine gossamer fragility with absolute self-possession.

Daniel Sullivan, who directed “Merchant,” said, “That seeming contradiction is what makes her performances so hypnotic — that those two things exist at the same time.”


In her few short years on New York stages Ms. Rabe has specialized in playing young women who are cloistered, whether by wealth, privilege, over-protective families or by their own dreamy detachment from the real world. Yet they all assert themselves in unexpected ways.
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Slide Show
Stage Scenes: Lily Rabe
This is especially true of her subtly nuanced take on Portia. The Public Theater production was first seen in Central Park this summer before transferring to Broadway to become one of the few undisputed high points of the fall season.

“Ms. Rabe locates a troubled intensity and impetuosity in Portia,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The New York Times. “And the tragedy of Shylock’s ultimate humiliation, which she brings about, is echoed by her own dismayed discovery of the world that she must now live in.”

Ms. Rabe said her parents were in the audience night after night during early previews of “Merchant” in Central Park: “I remember, after the first one — and I had never had this experience before — they both just sort of looked at me and had nothing to say. They were really blissed out by the production.”

She described doing the “quality of mercy” speech on one of those nights, with arms outstretched under a mist of gentle rain, as a magical moment that she was happy her mother got to witness.

“I’d never seen Lily do Shakespeare and certainly nobody at the Public had ever seen her do Shakespeare, but she was the only person that I ever even thought of for the role,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It just seemed uniquely hers.”

There’s a poetic sense of continuity between Ms. Rabe’s characterization as Portia and the emotional empowerment of her mother’s most emblematic role.

Just as Ms. Clayburgh’s suddenly single Erica in “An Unmarried Woman” gradually learns that she doesn’t have to define herself through her relationship with a man, so does the orphaned heiress Portia become her own person in spite of her marriage. The difference is that her self-knowledge carries the sting of solitude more than emancipation.

Ms. Rabe’s film career is just beginning, but playing almost the opposite of the resilient women she has inhabited onstage, she gives an assured performance in the current release “All Good Things.” In a handful of incisive scenes she charts the steep downward trajectory of a smart-set party girl whose life unravels thanks to drugs, money problems and shady connections.

While she was at college, Ms. Rabe appeared alongside her mother in summer productions of plays by Israel Horovitz and Frank Pugliese at the Gloucester Stage Company. She has not yet worked with her father, though they hope to do so soon, possibly on an early play with which Mr. Rabe is tinkering.

“And I’ve always wanted to do ‘In the Boom Boom Room,’ but I don’t know if he’ll let me,” Ms. Rabe said with a laugh, about her father’s 1972 drama about a Philadelphia go-go dancer. “It’s a rough play.”

“For a long time I was cautious of working with my parents because I wanted to feel separate from them in the community,” she added. “Now there’s no more wasting time.”

*reprinted from the nytimes

The D.C. Critics Have Their Say

Best Film
“Black Swan”
“Inception”
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“Toy Story 3″


Best Director
Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan”
Christopher Nolan, “Inception”
Danny Boyle, “127 Hours”
David Fincher, “The Social Network”
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “True Grit”

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, “True Grit”
Robert Duvall, “Get Low”
Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network”
Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
James Franco, “127 Hours”

Best Actress
Annette Bening, “The Kids Are All Right”
Anne Hathaway, “Love & Other Drugs”
Nicole Kidman, “Rabbit Hole”
Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
Andrew Garfield, “The Social Network”
John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”
Sam Rockwell, “Conviction”
Geoffrey Rush, “The King’s Speech”

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, “The Fighter”
Helena Bonham Carter, “The King’s Speech”
Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”
Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
Jacki Weaver, “Animal Kingdom”

Best Adapted Screenplay
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“Toy Story 3″
“True Grit”
“Winter’s Bone”

Best Original Screenplay
“Another Year”
“Black Swan”
“Inception”
“The Kids Are All Right”
“The King’s Speech”

Best Animated Feature
“Despicable Me”
“How to Train Your Dragon”
“Megamind”
“Tangled”
“Toy Story 3″

Best Documentary
“Exit Through the Gift Shop”
“Inside Job”
“Restrepo”
“The Tillman Story”
“Waiting for Superman”

Best Foreign Language Film
“Biutiful”
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
“I Am Love”
“Mother”
“White Material”

Best Art Direction
“Alice in Wonderland”
“Black Swan”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I”
“Inception”
“True Grit”

Best Cinematography
“Black Swan”
“Inception”
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“True Grit”

Best Score
“Black Swan”
“Inception”
“127 Hours”
“The Social Network”
“True Grit”

Best Acting Ensemble
“The Fighter”
“Inception”
“The Kids Are All Right”
“The Social Network”
“The Town”

Coming to Blu Ray February 1

two classics will get their blu ray release. they both happen to be on my favorite films of all time list.

Happy Sunday

Song of the Day: 'Tell Him'

I'm in Love with the Boy

darren criss has been the most welcome addition to 'glee' in this totally disjointed second season. he's a breath of fresh air and ain't to bad to look at either.

but it's the voice...the talent...yet again he ain't to bad to look at either.

Happy Birthday Holly Marie

Happy Birthday Amanda

'gimme gimme a man after midnight'

'honey honey'

'The Social Network' Sweeps National Board of Review

for the record: last year the board was 0 for 5 when the oscars were announced so i don't think they are much of a barometer

Best Film: The Social Network
Best Director: David Fincher, The Social Network
Best Actor: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Best Actress: Lesley Manville, Another Year
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
Best Foreign Language Film: Of Gods and Men
Best Documentary: Waiting for “Superman”
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Ensemble Cast: The Town

Ten Best Films
(in alphabetical order)
Another Year
The Fighter
Hereafter
Inception
The King’s Speech
Shutter Island
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

'127 Hours': ***1/2 stars

james franco gives the performance of his career and possibly one of the best performance by an actor this year. it certainly is one of the best performances of all time.

danny boyle (slumdog millionaire) directs a minor masterpiece. the grand canyon costars with mr. franco as the alps did with julie andrews in 'the sound of music'. the terrain sets the man vs nature scenario. james franco shows the passage of these 127 hours all over his face. he is really quite remarkable.

if you don't know the story here it is in a nutshell: adrenalin junkie aaron ralston literally gets stuck between a rock and a hard place. to survive he must amputate his arm. he does. and he survives to live another day.

there is an amazing scene of a storm as the hero is caught in the canyon. it is beautifully directed and photographed. it sent shivers thru me.

this is not an easy film to watch in it's second half. however, you should not miss it. and to miss james franco's performance would be criminal for any film lover.

 james franco and director danny boyle

Today Is World Aids Day

i lost too many friends...i remember them today. i remember your friends today. we must remember!

Happy Birthday Bette

'you don't own me'

 

'is that all there is?'

'fat as i am'

'i will survive'

'i look good'

Bette: 'I'll Never Forget It You Know'

'Winter's Bone': *star

'winter's bone' is this year's darling of the critics. infact it is as dull as dish water. i love independent films. each year a number of those released are better than 'mainstream' studio films. this is not one of them.

jennifer lawrence in the lead role is being lauded all over the place especially at film festivals. she is being hailed by many critics and bloggers alike as the 'best' of the year. better than whom? everyone else? she is merely fine in a boring role in a boring film. 

it is not the worst movie of the year. that slot is still reserved for 'alice in wonderland'. 

in two words: don't bother!

Franco and Hathaway to Host Oscars

well perhaps they got it half right. perhaps.
franco is that half. hathaway oy vay!

Song of the Day: 'Ode to Billy Joe'

For Mom

my mom's name was caroline but was called dolly since she was a kid. so this one's for you mom.

(thanks pet)

I'll Be Back Soon

my mom passed over this weekend past. I plan on resuming postings on monday