Portman and Bana to Do Boleyn
By Scott Ferguson
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
The Hollywood Reporter broke the story today that Natalie Portman and Eric Bana were in final negotiations to star in The Other Boleyn Girl, from writer Peter Morgan and director Justin Chadwick. The trade had the plot details - "The story revolves around the ferociously ambitious Boleyn sisters, Mary and Anne (Portman), who are rivals for the bed and heart of 16th century English King Henry VIII (Bana)."
The film will start shooting in Europe in late September. The Hollywood Reporter released a bit more behind-the-scenes information, "BBC Films, which originally acquired book rights and made a 2003 telefilm starring Natascha McElhone, also is a producer on the film. Alison Owen, who partnered with BBC to make a big-screen version of the story, will serve as a producer on the Columbia project alongside BBC's David Thompson. Scott Rudin, who set the film up with Columbia, will executive produce. Focus Features has the option to acquire international rights. Sony's Amy Baer and Rachel O'Connor are overseeing for the studio."
Natalie Portman recently starred in V For Vendetta, Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Closer, and Garden State. Eric Bana came to fame in Black Hawk Down, Troy and The Hulk, and wowed critics last year in Steven Spielberg's Munich. Natalie Portman will star in Goya's Ghosts, from director Milos Forman, at the end of the year, and Eric Bana can be seen in Curtis Hanson's Lucky You with Drew Barrymore this September.
[Additional Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, IMDB]
|  |
Alan Dale
Jere Longman
Book, Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy now from
United 93 recreates the flight of the fourth plane on September 11, 2001, the one on which the passengers got word by cell phone of the attacks on the World Trade Center, figured out the hijackers were on a suicide mission, and attempted to retake control of the plane. The movie was clearly made to dramatize our fascination with the fate of the unsuspecting people on the plane, those resourceful anybodies whose actions, in this version, saved the U.S. Capitol—What would we have done in their place? Would we have had their nerve?
The English writer-director Paul Greengrass allows for this projection, but doesn't hype it. He divides the story into three movements: the air traffic controllers figuring out that something is up, though they don't know what; the jihadists' attack; and the passengers' and crew's counterattack. We always feel we're present because Greengrass and his cinematographer Barry Ackroyd shoot everything with handheld cameras, but at the same time this makes every situation feel roughly equivalent. The camerawork functions like an even coat of opaque paint.
The terrorists aren't fully characterized, but neither is anyone else. (The pilots and stewardesses are played by actual pilots and stewardesses, and among the actors playing passengers I recognized a few names but no faces.) Even the famous line with which the passengers launched their offensive—"Let's roll!"—isn't isolated and framed in the usual movieish way. Our immersion in the situation is total, which also means our perspective is less limited but also less intense than it would have been if we had actually been on board.
Of course we know from the start who the terrorists are and what they're up to, and so they affect us in a more conventionally suspenseful way. (When they delay making their move on the plane, you may find yourself idiotically hoping that they won't.) Even when the terrorists and passengers appear in the same shot, waiting for the flight to be called, for instance, the terrorists seem to be in a different, more focused movie, while the passengers chat on their cell phones or peck at their laptops.
The scenes set among the air traffic controllers are altogether more interesting. The controllers are tool-edge sharp, picking up and deciphering the slightest hints over their headsets, and they're effective to the extent possible against a sneak attack. (The only snafu is the military response, but in the case of flight 93 what could the air force have accomplished that the passengers and crew didn't—downing the plane on uninhabited ground.) But it's a relief that Greengrass avoids turning the controllers' alertness into romance by focusing on heroes battling against the forces of evil and incomprehension. It's nice for a change that a major event is not being processed into the same old crud that our moviemakers have always passed off as historical filmmaking.
I do wish, however, that Greengrass had shaped the story more. The movie has structure only on the outside, not on the inside, which surely is a definition of "hollow." In this partial transcript of an April 2006 interview with Rush Limbaugh, Greengrass suggests an idea: "that group of ordinary men and women actually were the first amongst us to enter the post-9/11 world." But we don't know what these men and women were like before the hijacking so we don't see how they change. He also justifies making the movie so soon after the events by saying, "It's time we went together back to this experience, because we may find that we agree about more than we think at the moment." He's referring to the political divisions that have become so pronounced since September 11th and hoping we can become as "united" in our response as the people on flight 93 (no that we know what differences, if any, they overcame in the desperation of events). But again, nothing in the movie dramatizes this aspiration.
Without an organizing dramatic idea, the episodic back-and-forth between plane and tower helplessly makes United 93 resemble a much more conventional disaster movie, a restrained, less campily characterful version of Airport (1970), one charged with political emotion. For American audiences, however, that political emotion inevitably comes with the subject; it's not an attainment of the movie's. And though the three groups of characters are viewed somewhat differently, they're filmed in a unified style that gets a bit monotonous. Those soap opera dummies in Airport at least add a little variety, even to derision. United 93's version of the doomed flight finally isn't very different from the gray, panic-stricken version that runs in my head.
By comparison, the subject matter of Greengrass's hellaciously swift international spy thriller The Bourne Supremacy (2004) is entirely forgettable. Its generic paranoia about government intelligence ops doesn't relate to life as we know it in any way. Nonetheless, Greengrass presents it as urgent, which is laughabale, but at the same time the crappy plot enforces on him variations in handling and rhythm that he would do well to carry over into his more respectable work. (He also gained from working with skillful high-profile actors, particularly Joan Allen and Julia Stiles.)
Though far more discreetly handled, United 93 gives off the same feeling as a World War II picture involving civilians, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), for instance, in which the non-combatant survivors of a torpedoed ship share a lifeboat with the captain of the U-boat that sank them. At the climax, the democratic civilians finally realize the Nazi is up to no good and do away with him with their bare hands. Lifeboat is cruder than United 93, in no small part because the situation has been faked to provide some low-down high-comic material for Tallulah Bankhead, which turns its ideological demonstration into something resembling entertainment. But the demonstration also makes Lifeboat more sententious, and by that same stroke less visceral, than United 93.
Sidebar: Lifeboat affords the best opportunity on film to see the Bankhead legend, apart from bits and pieces in such pictures as Faithless (1932), which does provide her with a classic exit line. Having been thrown out of a house party by the social climbing Mrs. Blainey, Bankhead's Carol, a fallen heiress, is stopped by the woman's husband, who tells her that his wife isn't "sore" at her, she's just afraid of the "high-class competition." Carol laughs dismissively at this—she can't entirely share the joke because he couldn't possibly know how far she's fallen—and, waving the handbag he's fattened with $1,000, says with self-consciously trampy gallantry as she departs, "Oh! Reassure her, Mr. Blainey, reassure her!"
Greengrass is a refined political artist, but United 93 goes pretty much entirely for gut reactions. He doesn't exploit them; he doesn't need to. I became aware of this when the passengers are planning their counterattack and one of them proposes to break the arm of the terrorist who appears to be holding the detonator of a bomb strapped around his waist. The passenger doesn't say it with relish, and Greengrass doesn't emphasize it particularly, but my response was, Yeah, break his fucking arm!
These throbbings of vengeance strike me as inevitable, even for civilized people. There's a point at which the only possible response to fascistic force is a greater counterforce, and such a counterforce requires an emotional thrust that can't be very fine-grained. I'm okay with the coarse emotion generated here, but I don't need a movie to generate it for me. Greengrass's superior technical skill doesn't add much to the subject matter, as opposed to the experience in the theater, and it's not always that superior. In the one strand of allegory, for instance, a lone European passenger wants to appease the terrorists; when the Americans are about to act he tries to single himself out from them. This is reminiscent of the passenger in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) who hops off the stopped train waving a white flag; the fascists do to him what fascists do to appeasers. I believe the point is valid, in both cases, but nonetheless so crude in the performance as to appear silly.
Greengrass's breakthrough feature Bloody Sunday (2002) uses a similar constant-present-tense technique to recreate another historic convergence of forces, on 30 January 1972 when British troops fired on unarmed Catholic civil-rights protestors in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13 and setting off the bloodiest year of the "Troubles."
Greengrass and his cinematographer Ivan Strasburg shoot as if it were all happening before us, and the confusion of the leaders of the march, including Ivan Cooper, MP (James Nesbitt) and Bernadette Devlin (Mary Moulds), after the troops have replaced rubber bullets with lead and started picking people off is vividly realized. Because the cinematography lacks the usual finish and polish, you may feel an almost unmediated horror, as if the theater had dissolved and you were there, unprotected, in the street.
Perhaps because Bloody Sunday is so rooted in place, it feels even more teeming than United 93, in which all the relationships are transient. Greengrass shows us five elements: Cooper, a grassroots politician, and his organization working to keep the IRA and the unorganized, disgruntled youths from disrupting the peaceful protest; the British military leader who wants a muscular show of force that will function both as payback for past attacks on British soldiers and as a deterrent against future attacks; a local policeman who works with a sympathetic British officer to keep a check on this show of force; edgy, angry British soldiers who are spoiling for blood and who pressure a more restrained comrade to go along with them; and a young Catholic lad with a Protestant girlfriend who joins his rock-throwing mates and draws fire.
All the same, there's more of a point to Bloody Sunday than to United 93, which aims simply to depict for us our own fearful imaginings. And the point is pretty much unifaceted: at a press conference after the massacre, a shaken Cooper tells the British authorities that they have destroyed the non-violent movement and done more effective recruiting for the IRA than the IRA could ever have done on its own. Greengrass goes on to make clear that the British military planned the attack as a demonstration, planted nail bombs on a corpse, and consistently lied about their actions to Lord Widgery's Tribunal, which investigated the incident and published its Report in 1972. But though Greengrass is angry, he's not seething. His live-action visual technique and editing have a paradoxical sense of containment: "anything" could happen, provided it fits the plan.
It should also be said that the points Greengrass makes in Bloody Sunday are not controversial and so his treatment doesn't need to be polemical. (Compare, for instance, David McKittrick and David McVea's chapter "The End of Stormont, 1972-73," from Making Sense of the Troubles (2000): "What happened on that day was to drive even more men and youths into paramilitary groups.") Even though there may be reason to despair of the situation in Northern Ireland, as this 21 August 2005 New Republic article by Ron DePasquale suggests, that's a different question from what happened in Derry three decades ago. (A second commission of inquiry was established in 1998, though it seems not to have published its findings yet.) By temperament Greengrass seeks to form consensus not to rouse the rabble; I don't believe he intended to make an incendiary point, as Gillo Pontecorvo did with The Battle of Algiers (1966), and as he might have done had he made Bloody Sunday 30 years earlier. (Or even 20 years earlier, at the time of the 1981 Hunger Strike in which Bobby Sands and nine other male prisoners died.)
Greengrass's thesis and approach may not be polemical or controversial but they are melodramatic, because he doesn't examine the Irish hooliganism (or the IRA terrorism, which since the 1960s killed about 1,800 people, including 650 civilians) as he does the British military bellicosity. This is so, even though Ivan Cooper is the movie's hero because he espouses the non-violent methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Greengrass, who made a British TV movie about the 15 August 1998 "Real" IRA bombing in Omagh, has never expressed anything but dismay over political violence.
From an impartial overview, however, the Northern Irish boys throwing brickbats and rocks at the British soldiers must bear some of the responsibility for the outcome that Cooper, because of the unjustified and unprincipled use of lethal force by the British, places squarely on the British. And the British are the only ones who lie about the events. In United 93 Greengrass doesn't suggest that the Islamofascist terrorists have a "side" in the conflict; he comes close to suggesting as much with respect to the IRA (though not nearly as much as Steven Spielberg does with the Palestinian terrorists in the mindless Munich). But having a valid grievance does not justify all responses, even if it explains them.
In addition, Greengrass's handling is melodramatic because we're privy to all the relevant information beforehand. Part of "being there" is not hearing or seeing everything squarely, but Greengrass keeps us informed of everything we need to know—even if only with glimpses of action and snatches of conversation—to be able to agree with him, but no more.
Yet oddly Greengrass doesn't focus his melodrama emotionally. In this interview with IndieLondon, Greengrass says that his early background was with the Granada Television news program World in Action and that seems to be his grounding in filmmaking. But I've seen greater characterization in documentaries; in Bloody Sunday (as in United 93) everyone remains equally removed from us, so that although we recognize conceptually that bad acts have occurred they don't have the kind of wallop you'd expect from a movie.
Bloody Sunday demonstrates an historical thesis formulated in retrospect, which fits oddly with Greengrass's continuous-present technique. It would thus be a mistake not to separate Greengrass's naturalistic technique from his content. The technique is supposed to be immediate, as if the crew weren't there. My boyfriend and I experienced a moment of confusion that I thought was telling: in one long shot he pointed out that people had come out to watch from the balconies of an apartment building in the background. I thought he meant that they were extras directed to watch the "violence"; he actually meant they were locals who lived in the building and who had come out to watch the filming. Greengrass works in such a way that this ambiguity helps him, if anything. If you can't distinguish his players from "real" people, then he's succeeded. But for all that, Bloody Sunday is blandly tendentious in a way United 93 is not.
I believe Greengrass is thoroughly acquainted with the facts in Bloody Sunday but I still felt starved if not for information then for an analytical model. On the other hand, this puts Bloody Sunday in the league of Costa-Gavras's Z (1969), another streamlined jolt of then-recent political history. Z has a more varied style than Bloody Sunday, but there's nothing casual about it. Its view of history is locked and loaded and aimed point blank at your face. By contrast, Bloody Sunday includes one brief sequence of impressive offhand mastery, in which Ivan Cooper and his girlfriend try to carry on a tense personal discussion at headquarters while constantly getting interrupted by other people and phone calls. (And remember, Costa-Gavras had no qualms about making one of his villains a psychotic homo.)
Greengrass finds his groove in the middle of turbulence, but he needs to hop out before his groove becomes a rut. His work in Bloody Sunday and United 93 is impressive but finally too flashy and pointed, and yet unstructured, to have the tragic dimension they sorely need. In the scenes dealing with the air traffic controllers in United 93 you become aware of how large the skies are when the terrorists turn off the airplanes' transponders and the big birds disappear from the radar. (It takes the controllers a while to realize that the missing American Airlines flight 11 must have gone into the smoking hole in the World Trade Center's north tower.) In United 93 the action takes place in the skies, but that's all the action going on in them. There's certainly no mystery on the other side of them. The events are no more freed from the flow of historic time for contemplation, or sorrow, or consolation than in an action movie. There's just shock, relived, like a nightmare duped onto a replayable cartridge.
Email this • Subscribe to this feed
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||
| |
Copyright © 2001-Present SpielbergFilms.com
-- All Rights Reserved --
With 1.2 million inhabitants, Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg. The capital of Bavaria is located halfway between the Danube River and the Alps. A city of history and architecture, Munich serves as headquarters to major corporations such as EADS, Siemens and BMW. Munich is hosting two matches in the biggest sports event of 2006, the World Cup of soccer. Fans are flocking to the city where the local team, FC Bayern Munich, has been the champion of the German League 18 times. A fine pretext for traveling to Munich, "the beer capital of the world," and much more! With a long history behind it, the city is proud of its museums and monuments, and the many picturesque neighborhoods. It is a lovely place to discover on foot.
The Old Town
Your tour starts from Marienplatz. On the square, you will see Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall) and Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall). The Old Town Hall now houses a toy museum in the tower. For a great view of the city, enter the courtyard of the New Town Hall and go to the tower using a spiral staircase--but take the elevator to the top! Back on Marienplatz, admire the Column of the Virgin Mary in the center. This statue was erected in honor of Bavaria's patron saint in 1638 by the Prince-Elector Maximilien.Frauenkirche is a red brick, late Gothic church built between 1468 and 1488. Its two towers are the symbol of Munich. Cathedral of Our Lady: Frauenplatz 1, D-80331 Munich, (49) 89-2900-820.
Nearby
West of Munich, Schloss Nymphenburg was the summer residence of the Wittelsbach dynasty, prince-electors and kings of Bavaria. The central pavilion, inspired by Italian architecture, is remarkable. Don't miss: the Gallery of Beauties, commissioned by King Ludwig I to immortalize the most beautiful women of the epoch; the room where Ludwig II of Bavaria was born; or the collection of Chinese lacquer in the south wing.
Palace and gardens: Eingang 19, 80638 Munich, (49) 89-1790-80, sgvnymphenburg@bsv.bayern.de. Open April 1-Oct.15, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; Oct. 16-March 31, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission 3.50 euro (510 yen).
The three Pinakotheks
Covering more than 12,000 square meters, Pinakothek der Moderne (The Modern Art Museum) has collections of paintings, graphic art, architecture and design. You will find masterpieces by 20th-century artists such as Kandinsky, Picasso and Warhol. Barer Strasse 40-D-80333 Munich, (49) 89-2380-5360, www.pinakothek-der-moderne.de. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Closed Mondays, Dec. 24 and 31, Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and May 1. Admission 9 euro (1,310 yen). It is free on Sundays.
Alte Pinakothek (The Old Gallery) has a fine collection of European painting from 14th to 18th centuries. More than 800 masterpieces trace the evolution of painting, beginning in the Middle Ages. Barerstrasse 27-D-80799 Munich, (49) 89-2380-5215. Open Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday-Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Shrove Tuesday, May 1, 24 and 25, and Dec. 31. Admission 5 euro (730 yen). It is free on Sundays.
Neue Pinakothek (The New Gallery) exhibits masterpieces of European painting and sculpture from the late 18th century to early 20th century. Barerstrasse 29-D-80799 Munich, (49) 89-2380-5195. Open daily except Tuesdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Wednesday and Thursday until 8 p.m.). Closed Shrove Tuesday, May 1, 24 and 25, and Dec. 31. Admission 5 euro (730 yen). It is free on Sundays.
In summer months, you will find many Munich residents relaxing and enjoying themselves in Englischer Garten (The English Garden), near Chinesischer Turm (The Chinese Tower). Prinzregentenstrasse-D-80538 Munich, (49) 89-2112-7137.
Olympiapark
Recently featured in the Steven Spielberg film Munich, Olympiapark offers a wonderful view of the city and surroundings from its highest point, and was the site of the 1972 Olympic Games. During the Games, Israeli athletes were taken hostage by members of the Black September terrorist organization. Eleven Israelis, five of the eight terrorists and one German policeman lost their lives. Guided tours are offered on the themes of soccer, events and the Olympics. Dachauerstrasse-D-80335 Munich, (49) 89-3067-2414, guided tour April to early October at 11 a.m. (soccer tour) and 2 p.m. (events tour). Olympic tour: 9 a.m. to midnight. No charge to enter the park. Tour fee for adults: 5 euro (730 yen) for soccer, 7 euro (1,020 yen) for events, and 3 euro (440 yen) for Olympic tour.
Shopping in Munich
The 22,000-square-meter Viktualienmarket boasts 140 stalls, making it the largest fruit and vegetable market in the city. Since 1807, shoppers have come here to find local and imported produce. The market is the site of traditional and folkloric events, including Carnival festivities (Fasching) and the "merchants' dance" on Shrove Tuesday. Am Viktualienmarkt 6, 80331 Munich. Open Monday to Saturday, until 8 p.m.
Dallmayr is to Munich what Fauchon is to Paris. This lovely store offers a wide range of specialty goods, including white sausage and Salzstangen (salty treats made from bread dough). Dienerstrasse 14-15, D-80331 Munich, (49) 89-2135-0, www.dallmayr.de.
Eating out, having a drink
"Eating and drinking are good for the body and the soul." Test the veracity of this old Bavarian saying and enjoy local specialities. Many restaurants offer the typical meat dish Fleischgerichte, followed by the delicious sweet dish Mehlspeisen. You might also like to try Tellerfleisch (pot roast and vegetables) with grated horseradish, or perhaps Munchner Sauerbraten (marinated beef with condiments and spices). And don't forget the Oktoberfest beer festival, held from the end of September to the beginning of October.
Practical information
--Tourist Office (Tourismusamt Munchen): Sendlinger Str. 1, D-80331 Munich, (49) 89-2339-6500 or (49) 89-2333-0233, tourismus@muenchen.de. Open Monday to Thursday, 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Friday, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
--Public transport in Munich (MVV) includes the S-Bahn (rail), the U-Bahn (underground) and the bus and tramway network.
--The Munchen Welcome Card 2006 allows you to ride all public transport in the urban zone and offers a reduction of up to 50 percent for many monuments, restaurants and bicycle rentals. (The card costs 7.50 euro [1,090 yen] for one day and 17.50 euro [2,550 yen] for three days.) Cards can be purchased at Tourist Offices and at the airport.
Where to stay
--Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski Munchen
The very luxurious "Grand Hotel" has an ideal location in the heart of town. This is the perfect starting point for discovering the beauties of Munich. Maximilianstrasse 17-D-80539 Munich, (49) 89-2125-0. Internet; TV, rooms from 195 euro (28,400 yen).
--Platzl Hotel (Superior)
Typically Bavarian and very comfortable, the Platzl is located in the heart of the Old Town of Munich, between Marienplatz, the Hofbrauhaus, Maximilianstrasse and the Viktualienmarkt. All rooms are nonsmoking. Sparkassenstr. 10-D-80331 Munich, (49) 89-2370-30, handicapped access; 166 rooms from 97 euro [14,120 yen].
--Hotel Wallis
A quality hotel, well-run, in the center of Munich: basic and practical. Schwanthalerstrasse 8-D-80336 Munich, (4) 89-5916-64, Internet; pets accepted; satellite TV, rooms from 65 euro (9,465 yen).
Where to eat
--Durnbrau
In the picturesque restaurant, always crowded, expect to share a table with other diners. The cuisine is traditional. The cream of spinach soup and the boiled beef are delicious! Dutnbraugasse 2, Innenstadt, Munich, (49) 89-2221-95, about 25 euro (3,640 yen).
--Dukatz
This restaurant is a favorite with the literary and intellectual crowd. You can pick up something to read while you're waiting (books and newspapers in English, in particular). The food is German, with some traditional Bavarian dishes. Salvatorpl. 1, D-80333 Munich, (49) 89-9196-00, between 38 euro and 51 euro (5,330 yen-7,425 yen).
--Tantris
Chef Hans Haas has kept this restaurant listed among the city's top five. You will be impressed by the exotic contemporary cuisine. Reservations a must. Johann-Fichter-Str. 7, D-80805 Munich, 49-89-3619-590, 55 euro (8,000 yen) minimum, closed Sundays, Mondays and public holidays.
* * *
This material is provided to The Daily Yomiuri by the Michelin group.
