Cineplex has just announced something new. When the TED conference comes back to town Feb. 15, they’ll beam the opening session into some of their theatres. They’ve previously shown operas, stage plays and gallery tours but not, as far as I know, an academic talk fest like this.
The opening session is about the importance of dreaming big. The speakers include a scientist, a choreographer, TV writer and producer Shonda Rhimes (creator of Grey’s Anatomy) and AR Rahman, the celebrated composer for Indian films who also won two Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire.
The conference goes on for a week. Al Gore speaks Wednesday. But that Cineplex session is a bit pricey, about the same cost as one of their operas. Hint: check the TED websites for past talks and possible live streaming.
Meanwhile, here what’s new in theatres …
Hail Caesar! 3 stars
The Lady in the Van 3 ½
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: 2
The Choice: 2
HAIL, CAESAR!: Do you enjoy watching those film essays on TV that give you lots and lots of clips from old movies? The Coen Brothers’ new film is a bit like that, the main difference being that as fun as the elements are in themselves, they don’t add up to a unified whole. At best they’re a scattergun tour of Hollywood of old, somewhere about the mid-1940s to early 1950s. The tour is great fun for movie buffs but for everybody else not quite up there with the Coens’ best.
Expectations are high because there are familiar elements and people here. Josh Brolin is tough as a studio boss. George Clooney is dim-witted as a matinee idol who gets kidnapped (a favorite Coen plot device). Finding him in time to finish an expensive Biblical epic is the central core of the plot but there are distractions everywhere.
Scarlett Johansson in an Esther Williams-like water ballet. Channing Tatum singing and dancing a slightly homo-erotic production number with sailors. Ralph Fiennes trying to get a good line reading of “Would that it twere so simple” out of a singing cowboy the studio is giving an image change into a drawing room sophisticate. Every segment like it is done in an elaborate set perfectly matching old movies. There are in jokes and echoes of real Hollywood scandals, including a pregnant star urged to adopt her own child and a starlet rescued from “a French postcard situation.” The Hollywood Communists get a sympathetic hearing, though with that Coen Brothers slant and now and then the film muses on art versus commerce. It’s all very entertaining, in an episodic way. (5th Avenue, International Village and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
THE LADY IN THE VAN: Another glowing Maggie Smith performance this time many levels of status below Downton Abbey’s Countess of Grantham. She’s homeless, smelly and bearing early signs of dementia. She’s still proud and feisty though, insisting she’s a teacher (“The pavement is my blackboard”) and self-employed (“I also sell pencils.”) Her van is her house which she has parked on a gentrifying street in North London. The residents are annoyed. So is Alan Bennett who can’t do his writing when it gets noisy out front so for one time he invites her to park in his driveway. She stayed there for 15 years. True story.
After she died, Bennett wrote about her in a newspaper diary, a book and a play (in which Maggie Smith also starred, both on stage and radio). She’s completely at ease with the character and holds her ground in a series of encounters with Bennett. As played by Alex Jennings, he’s too wimpy to push her away but slowly learns her story (she was a nun and a concert pianist) and abides her eccentricities. Can he write about her, though? The film gives us that internal dialogue as two Alan Bennett’s (both played by Alex Jennings) debate the ethics. Good thing the writer won out because he’s drawn a sympathetic character without sentimentality or pity but with humor and a genuine human connection. (International Village) 3 ½ out of 5
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: It seems that these people could do a perfectly good Jane Austen adaptation. They get the look and the tone right. They energetically set out the romantic and temperament tensions among Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy and the rest, all within a richly-imagined Regency-era England. But then there’s the horror side. Though it is restrained and melds into a playful mash-up, it is basically ridiculous.
I can imagine a sketch in a comedy show, even just a TV promo in an SCTV episode. But here’s an entire movie, drawn from a cheeky novel that was a big hit seven years ago. The undead roam the countryside; the gentry go about doing their usual thing and every once in a while the two sides collide. The Bennett sisters fight with knives hidden in their stockings. They’re trained in Chinese martial arts and Elizabeth, played by Lily James, recently of Cinderella, Downton Abbey and the current War & Peace, is a proto-feminist with lines like “I shall never relinquish my sword for a ring.” Mr. Darcy is a soldier and a zombie hunter. Sam Riley looks a lot like Colin Firth, a favorite Darcy from years ago. Sally Phillips is Mrs. Bennet and Lena Headey is Lady Catherine de Bourgh. They all play it straight with never a smirk or giggle. But Matt Smith, the former Dr. Who, has the most fun. He exaggerates and improvises and creates a very funny Mr. Collins. The film is short of laughs, frights and sense. (Scotiabank and suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
THE CHOICE: About two-thirds of the way through, I had this thought. Here finally is a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel that simply develops a love story without his usual cataclysmic events. You know the fireworks or the boat house burning or the angry ex-husband with a gun. It’s just a sweet love affair that grows despite some familiar impediments that get in the way.
Teresa Palmer and Benjamin Walker play the couple. They live side by side in Wilmington, North Carolina (Sparks’s literary territory) and irritate each other. He’s smug. “Could you be anymore obnoxious?” she says to him. He listens to loud rock and roll. She looks at the moon and stars and claims a higher purpose, to be “part of something bigger.” Of, course, in sappy love stories, couples like this are made for each other. It just takes a while for them to know it. They get together while her boyfriend is away. Love story done, right? Well, not quite. There’s still a car crash, a hurricane and a huge medical issue to come. And playing out what is identified early on as “the secret to life.” Sparks has written almost 20 books like this. Eleven have been made into films … so far. This is one of the weaker and most manipulative ones. (International Village and many suburban theatres) 2 out of 5