Archive | Film Matters

Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Brave New World

February 20, 2016 in Book Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Film Matters

Earlier this month, Jennifer Jason Leigh turned fifty-four. That’s middle-aged by any standards, not just at-thirty-she’s-over-the-hill Hollywood’s. Yet she’s knee-deep in a renaissance that may transform into a bona-fide career high, if it hasn’t already. On the heels of her much-touted voice work in “Anomalisa,” Charlie Kaufman’s animated feature, she’s received her first-ever Oscar nod for playing fugitive Daisy in Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” What’s even more noteworthy: It’s her first major role since 2007’s “Margot at the Wedding.”

“I feel like the door was closed, and I had made my peace with it,” the actress told The Guardian last month, crediting Tarantino for her return to the limelight. Though that comment is gracious – and though the writer/director does have a knack for resuscitating actors’ careers (see: John Travolta and Pam Grier) – Leigh’s current success may have more to do with a tenacity that’s enabled her to survive in the film industry since she was a tween. It’s a tenacity that often takes the form of a ragged self-possession, and it’s arguably the only good thing about “Eight,” in which her black-eyed gang leader Daisy reads as a silent film actress amid a babbling brook of men. (She’s the only female lead in the film.) Watchful, wrathful, and impossibly comic, Daisy’s like a grown-up Katzenjammer Kid – if those cartoon characters were out for genuine blood. Continue Reading →

2015 Movies That Also Should Be Books

February 10, 2016 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Listing

Although cinema has always mined literature to happy effect, 2015 was an unusually good year for adaptations; “The Revenant,” “The Big Short,” “Room,” “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Beasts of No Nation,” “The Martian,” “Chi-Raq,” “Far From the Madding Crowd,” and “Carol” are just a few examples. But what’s really striking is how many 2015 films crafted from original screenplays would make great books. It may sound nutty, but only a few decades ago there was a bona-fide industry based on the “novelization” of movies. Remember? That was Diane Keaton’s money gig when she played the Van Gogh-mispronouncing critic in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979).

Here are four recent films that deserve a novelization.

“Grandma” (2015)
Writer/director Paul Weitz’s dry-eyed indie starring Lily Tomlin as a cantankerous lesbian feminist trying to hunt down the cash to pay for her granddaughter’s abortion garnered a lot of buzz on the festival circuit but never got its props in general distribution – maybe because nobody knew what to do with a grumpy old lady rather than a grumpy old man, or maybe because it lacked a soft and gooey center, which moviegoers seem to expect of stories about elders. Both alleged failings would make this a coolly clever novella about women’s liberation and family ties. Although she’s been dormant for decades, Bastard Out of Carolina author Dorothy Allison could do wonders with this material; she’s always been great at examining the intersection of socioeconomics and queerness. Or why not bring in poet/novelist Eileen Myles? Through her collaboration off and on camera with “Transparent” show runner Jill Soloway, the searingly understated Chelsea Girls author is already enjoying a renaissance. Continue Reading →