Scent of a Woman

Producer Anthony Nelson-Keys had scripter John Elder take a somewhat fanciful (and unbelievable) approach to the subject of Russia’s distressing boys. As a result, the dastardly villain has been premised some attributes that are certainly colorful. Christopher Lee’s Rasputin is completely in peculiar – whopping, earnest-voiced, compelling stare. He’s a proper knave.

Religious aspects of l’affaire Rasputin are skimmed over, the only two dignitaries portrayed as colorless and dull. Of the Russian court, the Czarina (Renee Asherson) and the Czarevitch (Robert Duncan) are the only Romanoffs shown, the plot revolving (after the monk’s entry into court affairs, accredited to his hypnotic influence over a lady-in-waiting) on a revenge plot by the would-be fiance (Nicholas Pennell) of the seduced lady-in-waiting (Barbara Shelley). His principal accomplices are an alcoholic doctor (Richard Pasco), and an Army officer (Francis Matthews), whose sister (Suzan Farmer) has been lined up as Rasputin’s next victim.

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Angel-AStylemeister Luc Besson’s latest proffers a nonconforming silver of tack from the severe exercise of ‘Leon’ and ‘The Fifth Element’. Here he essays a Paris-set ideal comedy which incorporates an idiosyncratic mix of Capra-lite redemptive spirituality, the monochromatic cinematic flourish of ‘Wings of Desire’, alongside as dreamy, picaresque and sentimental a tithe to the See of Lights as ‘Amelie’. Jamel Debbouze (currently France’s biggest TV and integument star) plays André, a elfin, one-armed subsidiary criminal up to his short neck in debt and demise threats, who is contemplating a ‘Boudu’-dig suicide from the Pont Neuf, when he spots micro-skirted Angela (Rie Rasmussen, the leggy beauty from De Palma’s ‘Femme Fatale’) plunge into the Seine. He saves her. André, who’s sulky and ‘moral’, thinks himself ‘stupid, ugly and useless’; Angela, who’s white and sluttish, seems omniscient, beautiful and finds her purpose tiring to redeem and re-invigorate the poor, naive, lovelorn but essentially opportune-hearted chancer. Like a little-life tease of ‘Before Sunset’, Besson follows this gone by the board vital spirit and his fallen angel through both the sleezy and glitzy streets of pre-eminent Paris, as love inevitably dawns.

The thing that first hits you in the eyes is the supernatural cinematography of Thierry Arbogast (the stringer-director’s correct DP, using widescreen and black and white): vertiginous crane shots from settled the Eiffel Citadel, a ‘how’d-he-do-that?’ unbroken glide around both sides of a toilet mirror. But the script is such a showman’s bag of self-mocking clichés, unload tricks and metaphysical baloney, and the goodness is never touched. Crucially, even the performances thwart: Debbouze is initially sympathetic and laughable but tires through repetition; Rasmussen stays merely statuesque.

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The first year of

Dawson's Creek

, Kevin Williamson's groundbreaking teen drama, now seems
positively tame. But at the time, the sexual density of ''Creek'''s story lines — a love triangle between Dawson (James Van Der Beek), Joey (Katie Holmes), and Jen (Michelle Williams), as well as the love affair between Pacey (Joshua Jackson) and his teacher — incited controversy. Viewers may have since OD'd on the many Dawson-Joey-Pacey entanglements — hence the cancellation — so it's refreshing to see the three when they were innocent, albeit confused, friends.

Extras file commentaries that reveal how 400 to 500 people (including a pre-Pacey Jackson) understand for the part of Dawson anterior to they settled on the lunk with the humongous head.
Posted Apr 08, 2003

Charming docu “The Suppleness Lee Project” chronicles the eponymous helmer’s stalk to discover why so many Asian-American women share her eminence — and whether they really embody the boringly “nice” racial stereotype she herself has till the end of time loathed. Trivial-sounding hook manages to consummate a funny but complex meditation on distinctiveness, ethnicity and cultural expectations that should be as accessible to teens as adults. Programmers as regards general as well as Asian-focused fests should take a look; ditto broadcasters and educators.

Without revealing much of her own history, Lee makes it clear she’s always been annoyed/intimidated by the existence of so many other G.L.’s. (Prenom is particularly popular in Chinese and Korean-American communities for its associations with both Christianity and all-time WASP goddess Grace Kelly.)

Interviewing various strangers who once knew a Grace Lee, she finds their recollections all too often fit a pattern: The generic Grace is gentle, sweet, a study freak, quiet, liked by all — and then forgotten by all. In short, a walking cliche of model minority politeness and passivity. Helmer has always felt the pressure to be like these “Super-Asian perfect people.” Setting up a Web site to access other G.L.’s, she’s deluged by name-alikes worldwide, but particularly in California (there are 314 in Los Angeles alone). Those she tracks down include several of the dreaded all-around good girls, leaving her thrilled to discover one who nearly burned down her high school. (This reformed bad girl, however, declines to be interviewed.)

But other exceptions to the stereotype soon turn up. There’s a Los Angeles car dealer with her own TV commercial and a TV news reporter in Hawaii, both likeable extroverts. A 14-year-old Silicon Valley girl is a multi-talented overachiever, but also a baby Goth who hand-crafts voodoo dolls of people who irk her.

Most impressive of all is an 88-year-old Detroit woman who dared an interracial marriage decades ago, becoming a major (and still-active) activist figure in the local African-American community despite her own different ethnicity.

Very cleverly packaged docu utilizes animation, wry graphics and other unexpected diversions to keep things hopping.

There’s just one problem with “Betsy’s Wedding.” It’s Alan Alda. But since he’s the litterateur, the director and the founder of the bride in the movie, that’s a big problem.

In this Touchstone Pictures ceremony, Alda casts himself as a regular guy, a custom-home builder living in Long Island, who loves daughters Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy, wants to make love with wife Madeleine Kahn all the time and has a positive outlook that ignores all hardships. He’s a Jimmy Stewart naif, as played by Hawkeye, the kind of wimpy, eager beaver you want to slap around and force to watch Home Team Sports.

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Alda-the-creator (I use the term loosely) strains for the “artistic” heights of the later Woody Allen pictures, such as “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” in which Alda appeared. But Alda’s sitcom sensibility, which makes of everyone an open book of good, trivial intentions, undoes any such ambition. Alda wouldn’t know deep if he drowned in it; he even falls short of Touchstone’s lite-motif: generating riskless, middle-ground entertainment the way Nissan turns out little cars. When pale ‘n’ puffy Ringwald and boyfriend Dylan Walsh suddenly announce wedding plans, it catches Alda unawares, because he has just overextended himself financially to build a house. He vows to give his daughter a big reception anyway, with a marquee, a band and hundreds of guests. The announcement also sets up the prime-time-TV opportunity for a tired clash between cultures and generations: Ringwald’s family is all-purpose ethnic (Alda’s Italian, Kahn’s Jewish); the groom’s parents are rich, passionless WASPs. Ringwald and Walsh want a simple, intimate nonreligious ceremony in the living room. The WASPs and Ethnics want church, pomp and circumstance.

“My mother Rose,” says Alda, introducing his Italian mama to Nancy, the groom’s WASPish mother.

Nancy: “May we call you Rose?”

Alda’s ma: “What else you gonna call me?”

How we laughed. How we cried.

That risky house venture, by the way, leads to further one-dimensional ethnicity when Alda asks sleazy brother-in-law Joe Pesci for a loan. Suddenly a mobster relative of Pesci’s (hairy, mumbling Burt Young) is interested in the house, and dispatches wet-behind-the-ears nephew Anthony LaPaglia to oversee the project.

None of the performers (including Catherine O’Hara and, in the limpest of Allen-borrowings, Joey Bishop as the advice-giving ghost of Alda’s dead father), can do much with the dross given them. Even Pesci, who injected engaging comic relief into “Raging Bull” and “Lethal Weapon II,” is just an exasperating cliche.

Only LaPaglia comes close to pushing his character into something amusing, a sort of geeky Robert DeNiro. But in this movie, he’s just another wedding guest.