Thighs Wide Shut

The Eclipse
What Women Haunt
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Ciarán Hinds is a gift to the craft of acting, and we should count ourselves o’ so lucky that he’s finally getting more chances to show this gift, even at the not so ripe age of 57.  Forever in the back of the scene (at least in the eyes of Americans), Hinds has recently made giant leaps forward, effortlessly in a tender nonchalant manner, much like his acting style, in such wonderful fare as HBO’s Rome, Veronica Guerin, Munich and There Will Be Blood. Conor McPherson‘s Eclipse (thankfully this is not a Twilight movie) ups the ante even more as Hinds ascends to leading man status and everyone should take note.  Not juss cause Hinds is brilliant, as usual, but so is the film.  Blending elements of taut drama, quiet romance and an unnerving core of horror, The Eclipse is truly a special film to be marveled by and at.  There’s no doubt that when all is said in done in 2010, this, along with Fish Tank, will grace our top ten bestestest list

Hinds plays Michael Farr, a windowed man looking after many people, but not necessarily himself: his kids, his ailing father in-law and the guest authors in town for the annual literary festival.  He’s good at all these responsibilities, but kids are kids, his in-law draws closer to death each day and literally starts to haunt him (and his deceased wife as well??), and the authors are another story all together.  One of them is Lena Morelle (the lovely Iben Hjejle), fittingly a writer of ghost stories and the supernatural, who not only catches the attention and affection of our dear protagonist, but also of a cocky, aggressive American writer (the always unlikable Aidan Quinn).  The battle of emotions is SO ON, and from here, so is the movie!  So be kind see Hinds!

Cork A Stick In It: The Eclipse‘s setting is a character onto itself.  Itself be the the seaside port town of Cobh, in Cork County Ireland, and we want to get on a plane and go there and get Irish drunk like NOW!  Speaking of Cobh, Cobh is also home to a statue honoring Annie Moore, the very first US immigrant to pass thru Ellis Island

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Eclipse haunts and flaunts today in NY& LA, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Waking Sleeping Beauty
Pix Czars & Lying Kings
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Ever see a Disney movie between the years 1984 and 1994 (or any year for that matter), and possibly even enjoy it?  There’s only one answer to that question (unless you were born after 1994, and if that’s the case, we pity you) and there’s only one thing we have to tell you: do whatever you have to do to see Waking Sleeping Beauty, an incredible new documentary that summarizes the animation division’s almost death, and eventual triumphant resurrection that would even make Jesus envious.  The story is easy meat to digest (watching Disney go from duds like The Black Cauldron to Best Picture Oscar nominee Beauty & The Beast), but what the real sizzle that sizzles more than a steak from Sizzler sizzling in Zzzinzzinnati is that it’s one giant behind the scenes illuminating tell-all, including all of the parties involved in the company’s success and internal power struggle, between heir to the throne Roy Disney (breast in peace!), CEO Michael Eisner and studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg.  With all this juicy finger pointing and mud-slinging strewn about (although there’s plenty of nice things being said as well), it’s truly amazing that the doc was green-lit and given the blessing of the Disney company itself!  While it would have been additionally interesting to chronicle the events that followed 1994 (the rise of Pixar and other rival animation studios), seeing minor glimpses of such alumni as John Lasseter, Tim Burton and Don Bluth walk the same hallowed animation halls speaks plenty unspoken volumes of what happened next outside of the Magic Kingdom.  Then again, give it another decade and maybe there’ll be another killer doc to be made.  We can see it now: The Emperor’s New Old Groove

Crotch Shots: a lot of tibits are awoken in Beauty, but sadly no mention of The Palace with the Phallus from The Little Mermaid.  some might say the bestest Hollywood penis mystery since C-3PO snaps!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Beauty will be beautiful on Friday in NY/LA/SF & Chi-town only, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

We Live In Public
Startup.tragedy
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

Remember the internets prior to the second millennium (that’s 2000 or 2001, depending on your school of dis-thought)? We don’t recall all too much from those dark ages, hispecially since the world wide web landscape has changed so dangs much (for the better) since then. Start-ups came and went and only the strong (or lucky?) survived (watch Startup.com as a good starting point). One story lost in the shuffle is that of web visionary Josh Harris. Harris was an 80s early adapter of the on-line world, and foresaw its limitless possibilities, with plenty o’ money to be made along with it. Eventually he would create Pseudo.com (a place we once hactually interviewed at upon arrival to NY!), a portal of niche video content that was well ahead of its time (youtube what?), and bandwidth. Harris got mad rich, then mad crazy (sometimes dressing as a clown named Luvvy, and sometimes so at ill-advised moments, like meet & greets with investors) and moved on to other interests. What those interests were is where Ondi Timoner(director of the MUSSSSSSSSSSSSS SEEE Dig!)’s doc travels, and soars, and shocks, and is perhaps the best documentary of 2009… that we sadly didn’t see until now

Right around the countdown to Y2K, Harris took his cash and bank rolled an Orwellian social experiment/art project called the Quiet, which put 100 people in a self-contained bunker for a month of non-stop partying, orgies, and… mental torture. All of which was filmed 24-7, with the participants able to monitor each other any time they like, and as privacy and decency dissipated, all hell broke loose (take note Chatroulette!). Watching a rewind of Harris playing Gawd with these peoples literally upset our stomachs and fear for the future, and you truly have to see this to believe it. When that party ended (prematurely), Harris moved onto his next venture, which was an extension of Quiet: We Live In Public. This time he turned the always watching cameras on himself and his then girlfriend, in their own living space. You can probably guess how successful his latest experiment goes, but where does Harris himself go from there? More stuff you gotta see to believe, but lettuce juss say that he’s not really living in or for the public any more

DVD bonus content includes some interesting additional info on the Quiet’s bunker + a nice lil piece on Timoner herself

Living Will’s Lasting Testament: Deadspin/NY Mag/Ebert lover Will Leitch briefly lived in the We Live In Public apartment, while Harris was on vacation/end of his wits. read all about it

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Public is now available on DVD

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Ghost Writer
Write-Wing Politics
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

We’ll throw a nit pick picnic any chance we get, but Roman Polanski/Robert Harris‘ terse pot-boiling political thriller Ghost Writer was flawless (sadly, w/o any bra-less-nessness), that is unless of course you are incapable of forgiving Kim Cattrall for abandoning her British accent after her first spoken sentence (and for not abandoning her clothes). Yeppers, you can do no wrong with his no man is an island off the coast of Boston creeper, which cannot be said of the much wider released and sloppy Stutter Island. Marty had all the Massachusetts settings he’d ever want at his disposal, but since Roman can’t set foot in America, he made seaside Germany work rather well as a New England stand-in. Also, he didn’t have Leo or Ruffs or Gandhi to work with, but he made Pierce Brosnan work, which really isn’t that hard, as long as he isn’t within 20 feet of an ABBA song [d]. Bronsie plays an ex-British Prime Minister fading out of his prime, and in the process of having his memoirs ghost written, but when his writer mysteriously dies Ewan McGregor steps in… to a web of intrigue and trouble! That’s all we’ll say, cept Olivia Williams is tres besty and any movie where James Belushi (appearing briefly, with shaved head!) isn’t an embarrassment is something to be taken seriously, and enjoyed to the fullest!

Noble Romans: looking for another write-ly spirited flick? look no further than Claude Lelouch’s twisty Roman De Gare

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Ghost is currently playing in LA/NY and st elsewhere st elsesoon!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Fish Tank
Hope Sinks
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

It’s not often that a movie comes along that wows the pants off of us, and Andrea Arnold‘s second feature, Fish Tank, not only did juss that, but has continued to do so, even mo so, days after our initial, and what will probably be multiple viewings of this brilliant brilliant film (guess we gotta see her first flick, Red Road, STAT). Arnold’s hand-held, freewheeling look at a raw nerved teen stuck in nowheresville England, looking for any kind of connection, is a pure revelation, and most of its success can be credited to the novice actress at the center of it all, Katie Jarvis

A star has instantly been born, kinda like with Carey Mulligan in the similarly themed An Education, cept Mulls is a trained actor and been rising thru the ranks for years. As for the untrained Jarvis, she was famously discovered by Tank‘s casting agent when she overheard yelling at her boyfriend on a train platform. The rest is not herstory, as it will be interesting to see where this diamond in the rough goes from here. Even if she doesn’t reach any higher than this (we’re hoping that that’s not the case), this would still be considered quite the one-hit wonder

Jarvis mind-blowingly plays the temper-a-mental Mia, a 15 year old struggling to fit in at home and in the gruff world outside of it. Her whorish mother (Kierston Wareing) and annoying sister (Rebecca Griffiths) are no help, but when a man (Michael Fassbender, a fass rising star in his own right) enters the picture and her mum’s vag, everything changes, and not necessarily for the better. He seems to be the only one to get a positive rise out of Mia, and the more he sticks around, the mo their own relationship deepens, pushing things toward a messy-ickyville territory, and then things go in a whole different direction and then it all ends with Mia graduating with her own ‘an education’. You knows we love Mulligan, but gotta say that Jarvis is more deserving of being the prized pupil and head of the class, even if that class is a lower one, one that’s like school on Saturday, no class at all

Tank Girl: JARVIS! JARVIS!!!! we hearts you like mad, even if yer teeths be crooked, and yous may not be as cutie pie mcgeed as Mulligan (here’s a pic of the two together!), but who cares cause Sean Connery totes wanted to touch yer fingers and he’s lord, and Marcus Brody once got lost in his own museum and then ZARDOZ!!

fo further reading, further read this int with KJ

Verdictgo: Breast In Show!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tank is currently bubbling up in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…