Author Topic: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father  (Read 7496 times)

Offline delalluvia

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Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« on: November 27, 2009, 05:42:45 pm »
With Ewan McGregor.  ;D

Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped in on Silver Lake this week.

Traveling far from his starring role in "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," Scottish actor Ewan McGregor has joined Christopher Plummer and "ER" actor Goran Visnjic in a low-budget independent movie called "Beginners" that has begun filming on the streets of L.A.

In the movie, which is set in the Silver Lake area, McGregor portrays a young man whose world is shaken when his father, played by Plummer, reveals a double whammy -- that he has terminal cancer and is gay. In a far cry from his role as the heartthrob doctor in "ER," Visnjic is cast as Plummer's partner.

The -million film, directed and written by Mike Mills, is among about 50 projects that received approval for tax credits under the state's new film incentive program.

The city figures prominently in the film. So far, the production has shot at Griffith Park, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and on Monday will move to Highland Park to film a Halloween party scene. The crew will also spend several days downtown filming at the Biltmore Hotel.

Even the city's Silver Lake dog park will have a bit part in the movie, location manager Chris Miller said.

Despite the movie's small budget, Miller is especially grateful for the local storyline. His last job, working on the remake of the musical "Fame," ended seven months ago.

"There's so little work out there, I'm just fortunate to be working right now," he said.


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/11/silver-lake-serves-as-backdrop-for-new-indie-la-film.html

Offline Kelda

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2009, 08:20:17 am »
interesting!
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Offline delalluvia

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2011, 10:53:11 pm »
Trailer out!  Gods, Ewan is gorgeous.  :-* :-* :-*

See next post...
« Last Edit: June 16, 2011, 11:55:16 pm by delalluvia »

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2011, 09:27:03 pm »




See if this works now.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXUFUp6vsxg[/youtube]



"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2011, 09:35:05 pm »



And, of course, it's--


(It's why we love them.)


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2011, 09:46:20 pm »



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWH7d4A_be4[/youtube]


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #6 on: June 16, 2011, 10:06:38 pm »



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjNWlKQB5W4[/youtube]




[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF40QIy7nwE&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
&feature=relmfu



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUNQ9ff178g&feature=related[/youtube]
&feature=related



"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #7 on: June 16, 2011, 10:11:33 pm »



.


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #8 on: June 16, 2011, 10:29:09 pm »


http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/movies/beginners-with-christopher-plummer-and-ewan-mcgregor-review.html?src=recg



Movie Review
Beginners (2011)

Remembering When Dad Came Out
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: June 2, 2011



Christopher Plummer, left, is a father preoccupying the memories of his son, played by Ewan
McGregor, right, in “Beginners.”




There is all manner of love crisscrossing through “Beginners,” connecting mothers and fathers, parents and children, sons and lovers, men and their dogs. The love feels heartfelt but it’s difficult loving other people (the dog has it easy), a hardship that’s evident in the happy-tearful faces, the tentative touches and searching glances that make this movie, or maybe all its yearning, so appealing. For the writer and director Mike Mills, who based this memory piece about a straight son and his dying gay father on his own life, love is a wonder even if its palpable reality largely remains elusive, a hoped-for gift locked in an adjacent room.

For Oliver (Ewan McGregor), the story’s soft center and a man in deep mourning — for his recently dead father and perhaps for something else — finding someone to love turns out to be the easy part. For starters there’s his adored and adoring father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), who, when the curtain lifts, has already died. Gone but by no means forgotten, Hal doesn’t just live in Oliver’s memory, he also greatly preoccupies it, crowding his son’s thoughts, pushing them around, eclipsing them and, for stretches at a time, dominating this movie. Happily, he’s agreeable, charming company, materializing shortly after the movie opens, summoned like a genie out of a bottle soon after Oliver opens and tosses Hal’s cancer pills.

Set mainly in 2003 and shortly before, the movie is divided into two love stories — one past, one present — a bifurcation that gradually fuses into a single life. In voiceover, Oliver narrates one story, which begins once upon a time in 1955 when his parents wed. There were decades of marriage, remembered by Oliver as a series of shadowy, perfunctory kisses, but then his mother, Georgia (Mary Page Keller), dies, and six months later Hal, now 75, announces that he’s gay. Like a man who’s hit the jackpot, Hal embraces his identity with a passion and before long has tied on a rainbow scarf, gathered new friends and found a young lover, Andy (Goran Visnjic), as Oliver stands by, playing the role of the witness and supportive, confused son.

Oliver plays a leading role in the second love story, which commences at a costume party — a scene that, in the narrative, takes place after Hal’s exuberant coming out — with Oliver dressed (more like disguised) in a Freudian beard and tweed, and armed with his father’s dog, Arthur (Cosmo, a scene-chewing, gnawing Jack Russell terrier). Doctor, heal thyself! That’s hard advice to follow for Oliver, who, at the party, meets Anna (Mélanie Laurent), a French actress who’s damaged but by no means broken. Handholding and roller-skating, kisses and tears follow in a love story that Mr. Mills gracefully weaves together with Oliver’s memories of Hal’s later life and illness. One chapter comes to an end as another hopefully takes flight.

Mr. Mills, a graphic designer turned filmmaker (his fine feature debut was “Thumbsucker”), has a seductive visual style. With the cinematographer Kasper Tuxen and shooting with a Red digital camera, he creates a beautiful soft palette that seems to caress the characters, occasionally interrupting the moving images with illustrations and still photographs that jump off the screen like pop-ups. In wistful tone and mood, “Beginners” at times hazily evokes the films of Wong Kar-wai, including “Chungking Express,” a different kind of memory piece. Like Mr. Wong, Mr. Mills uses space to visually convey his characters’ loneliness — isolating them in the center of the frame, crowding them into doorways or using a shallow depth of field that turns backgrounds into blurs.

There’s a carefully tended fuzziness to the movie itself, like a memento mori  sketched in pastel. Part of that has to do with the nature of memory, or rather those shards of Oliver’s recollections that are continually bumping up against one another as the near-past triggers remembrances of things further past, sometimes with the neatness that distinguishes a meticulously constructed screenplay rather than messy life. In one scene plucked from Oliver’s childhood, his mother, a Jewish woman who gave up that identity when she married, makes a comment about Jews and suffering. Skip forward to 2003 and Oliver meets Anna, another Jew, who says her mother told her Jewish girls couldn’t be beautiful.

So much of “Beginners” seems, looks, sounds, feels so hermetically perfect you may long for some air to blow, stir and even mess up its bright Los Angeles homes, the swanky old hotel where Anna stays and all these precious moments. Even so, the movie’s attractions are undeniable, including its narrative design, which seems more complex than it is, but is engaging to piece together. And the performers are charming, particularly Ms. Laurent and Mr. Plummer, with his killer eyes (still seducing after all these years) and a voice that echoes in your ears. Mr. McGregor, a consistently likable screen actor, pulls at your heart but didn’t win mine, partly because Mr. Mills has him tug too hard. Cosmo the dog tugged, too, and won it.

“Beginners” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Grown-up language and feelings.

BEGINNERS

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Mike Mills; director of photography, Kasper Tuxen; edited by Olivier Bugge Coutté; music by Roger Neill, David Palmer and Brian Reitzell; production design by Shane Valentino; costumes by Jennifer Johnson; produced by Leslie Urdang, Dean Vanech, Miranda de Pencier, Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen; released by Focus Features. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes.

WITH: Ewan McGregor (Oliver), Christopher Plummer (Hal), Mélanie Laurent (Anna), Goran Visnjic (Andy), Kai Lennox (Elliot) and Mary Page Keller (Georgia).
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Beginners - a son finding out about his gay father
« Reply #9 on: June 16, 2011, 11:47:05 pm »
I'm hoping to catch this this weekend.