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Scorsese honors DeNiro at Kennedy Center awards

December 29th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Marty and the gang got together Sunday night at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to pay omaggioto Bobby D. The Prefecture of the Pontifical House on Elizabeth Street offered His benediction before turning the proceedings over to Meryl Streep, Harvey Keitel, Sharon Stone and Edward Norton. What’s the matter? Joe Pesky couldn’t get his runty ass off the golf course long enough to pagare il suo rispetto? Disonorante…

See how Mr. Bobby Big Shot looks perched in the loges with the rest of the sweepstakes winners, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, Grace Bumbry and Dave Brubek, Is it me or is DeNiro looking a little like Robert Young in his Marcus Welby period? All he does is sit and laugh, which is pretty much what he’s been doing on screen (and all the way to the bank) for the past fifteen years.

Excuse me. What’s with those rainbow things they got hanging around their necks? They look like gay suspenders, for Christ’s sake.

And, Bob, tell me why. Why the f@*% do you have to go all the way to Washington for you to sit next to the Opera chick with the dog cone?

I’m sure Keitel first met DeNiro “on a street like this” paper mache tenement mock-up. What’s with the shitty set: a hot dog cart and a garbage can! And Ben Stiller shows up and does shtick. Look how they honor Him. Like a bum. Like a trash man.

Don’t turn it off until you see Norton’s spot on impression of Lord DeNiro.

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Filed Under News

Review: JULIE & JULIA / Nora Ephron (2009)

August 12th, 2009 by Scott Marks

JULIE & JULIA (2009)
Written and Directed by Nora Ephron
Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina
Running Time: 123 min.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

A lot of talented people were involved in the making of “Julie & Julia.” Too bad writer/director Nora Ephron wasn’t one of them.

From the woman who ripped off “Annie Hall” (“When Harry Met Sally”) “An Affair to Remember” (“Sleepless in Seattle”) and “The Shop Around the Corner” (“You’ve Got Mail” comes another wholly unoriginal and uninspired production.

Let’s first dispense with the niceties: Meryl Streep is superb as the flighty Cordon Bleu chef turned PBS superstar. Given Ms. Child’s natural predilection for caricature and self-parody it is amazing to see how many layers Ms. Streep was able to chip through to present a well-rounded character. The same goes for Stanley Tucci. As Paul Child, Julia’s devoted and eternally perplexed husband, Tucci displays a perfect mix of fluster and frolic.

While Julia Child has an enormous body of work preceding her, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) has only a blog and a best seller to draw from. (“Julie & Julia” has the dubious distinction of being the first film ever based on a blog.)  Adams tries hard, but her mousy, underwritten character remains a bit of a cipher.

Technically, the films comes complete with an all-star pedigree. Credit the film’s hard-edged hues to cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (“The Hunger,” “The Cotton Club,” “Closer”). With little apparent transitional guidance coming from Ms. Ephron’s corner, it a wonder that ace editor Richard marks (“The Godfather Part II,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Broadcast News”), manages to hold everything together. The production design (Mark Ricker), art direction (Ben Barraud) and set decoration (Susan Bode) give the film, particularly the flashbacks, an air of authenticity the screenplay can’t touch.

Based on two bestsellers, the film attempts to parallel the stories of world renown chef Julia and Julie, the secretary who, out of sheer boredom, decides to spend a year cooking every recipe in her mentor’s “The Art of French Cooking” and blogging about it.

Apart from the obvious similarities, Ephron never manages to glean much from her two characters. The narrative structure is as perfunctory as it gets. Julia and Paul move to a home in France while Julie and her husband  Eric (Chris Messina) relocate from the Bronx to Queens. No tension is ever established between Julie’s success and the possibility of jealousy on Eric’s part. When the couple do briefly break up, it’s simply because this is the only way in which Ephron could add a little drama to the end of the second act.

For all her attempts at humor, the biggest laugh in Ephron’s film remains the classic SNL bit with Dan Aykroyd as Julia hemorrhaging from a knife wound.

In the end, any film that asks its audience to consider Julia Child’s sex life can’t be all bad. The performances are fine and it sure looks good, but J&J goes down like a cold plate of boiled beef.

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Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical

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