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Pages tagged “jonathan demme”

Rachel Getting Married

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Speed Racer

Release Date: Oct. 3 (New York City and Los Angeles)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writers: Jenny Lumet

Cinematographer: Declan Quinn

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, Tunde Adebimpe

Studio/Run Time: Sony Pictures Classics, 113 mins.


Jonathan Demme's unexpected foray into low-budget filmmaking may have made the case for pure and simple films better than the practitioners of Dogme 95 ever did. Written by Jenny Lumet (daughter of Sidney), the ebullient and turbulent Rachel Getting Married is mostly about Kym (Anne Hathaway). She’s a complicated individual, funny and bitter, a recovering drug addict, and also something of a drama queen and crisis magnet who constantly reminds her friends and relatives of her damage. Most of them wouldn't say that to her face, but when she returns home for her sister’s wedding, things are said, and Demme captures them like a nervous documentarian huddling with a hand-held camera.


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Toronto International Film Festival 2008

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rachelgettingmarried-444.jpg

The Toronto International Film Festival, which wrapped up its 10-day run this past weekend, is arguably the most important film festival in North America. But to the average moviegoer it's not as well known as Sundance, in part because TIFF samples the most promising new film from around the world while Sundance emphasizes home-grown movies, for better or worse. But TIFF showcases its share of English-language films, too -- often with star-studded red-carpet premieres -- and this year some of the festival's best movies were among them:

Rachel Getting Married
I'll have to admit that the new film from Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) wasn't on my must-see list. He's a respected filmmaker, but his latest film, the story of a woman getting married, gathering with her extended family, and clashing with her sister, sounded a little too much like Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding. But I stepped into the screening on a lark and was stunned not only by Demme's patient and unadorned approach but also by Anne Hathaway's razor sharp, painful, quivering performance as the bride's sister. Demme injects melodrama into the story at regular intervals, but he observes the results like a documentarian huddling in the corner with a small, handheld camera. The rehearsal dinner plays out in near real time, complete with speeches from moms, dads, cousins, crazy uncles, and poetic troublemakers, and the gathering feels so honest that I was cringing along with the guests when the sweet, emotional moment threatened to collapse, and I felt their sigh of relief when it mostly didn't. The rehearsal dinner is one set piece; the other is the wedding itself, a jubilant, eclectic affair in which Robyn Hitchcock and Fab 5 Freddy show up to perform. In between those tent poles is a harrowing roller-coaster that may vaguely resemble the films of Noah Baumbach but has significantly more heart and soul.

Festivus

TV on the Radio's Adebimpe starring in Demme film

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screenshots courtesy of IMDb
Three things happen like clockwork every year in the film industry. A juvenile, insert-genre-name-here satire makes a soul-crushing amount of money at the box office, a great comic-book franchise gets revived and retooled, and a limited-release indie film about family dysfunction gets distributed to art-house theaters that smell like old people.

The latter of the three film styles usually has something to do with an artsy (read: chain-smoking) prodigal son or daughter returning home from The Big City for their tamer, more successful sibling's wedding, funeral, bris, etc. After the requisite backhanded compliments and subsequent familial screaming match, everybody has a good cry and learns something about life. The End.

(Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that.)

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Jonathan Demme replaces Scorcese for Marley biopic

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When considering the Bob Marley biopic, it seems a lot more is up in the air than just the title. Now, Jonathan Demme will replace Martin Scorsese in directing the piece. Scorsese cites scheduling conflicts as the cause of his pulling out. This is significant, as the Marley family has hopes of releasing it by what would have been the legend's 65th birthday, February 6, 2010.

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