Another Lady

Probably the most amazing lady within the Other Lady is really a Mann. Leslie Mann, particularly. After swiping moments after scene in movie after movie (both inside and outside of her husband Judd Apatow?s catalogue), the wickedly funny Mann finally gets to be a multi-faceted role that uses all of the wonderful things she usually gives a film. Sadly, Mann?s latest ?breakout? is available inside a schizophrenic film that never matches the informative humor and zany energy she musters throughout.

You wouldn?t realize it through the advertising campaign ? which concentrates on Mann?s bankable (Cameron Diaz) and delightful (Kate Upton) female co-stars ? however the Other Lady centers around Mann?s character, Kate King. Kate lives the preppy catalogue dream. She resides in a Restoration Hardware home, shops one of the other Stepford spouses at Whole-foods Market, and gripes to her chiseled, wealthy husband, Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), that they most likely needs to visit ?brain camp? because she can?t support the trivial particulars of her vapid, empty days. Kate doesn?t realize she?s taking up a social coma until reality appears and shakes her from it.

That happens when Carly Whitten (Diaz) knocks on Kate?s door. The thing is, Carly is sleeping with Mark, and it has been for several weeks. (?Gun to my mind, most likely 50 occasions,? Carly confesses to Kate when requested the number of occasions she and Mark have screwed. Kate?s pricelessly incredulous response? ?Don?t you've got a job?!?) Carly had no clue Mark was married, and also the women gradually bond over the truth that both of them got performed through the same sleazy guy. They realize, in horror, they aren?t the only real ones.

A smart movie might have laser-centered on Kate and addressed how this apparently put-together yuppy handles the decimation of her picture-perfect existence. And director Nick Cassavettes ? that has been truly thinking about tangible human feelings in credible films such as the Notebook, Disconnect the heavens and My Sister?s Keeper (also with Diaz) ? flirts with this path before permitting Another Lady to devolve through silly pratfalls, sexist clich?s and crazy plotting. There?s an earlier scene within the Other Lady -- when Cassavetes and the cast still appeared invested ? where Mann looks around in the well-kept, polished suburban women in her own classy supermarket and realizes she no more suits their clique. Actually, the appearance on her behalf face conveys a surprising realization this world isn?t real ? your life propped up by lies ? and Kate most likely was laying to herself for a long time simply to maintain her membership within this desirable club.

Then Cassavetes slices with the more self examination by together with a scene where Kate?s enormous dog requires a shit on Carly?s apartment floor, and also you question which kind of movie Another Lady really wants to be.

Diaz is requested to help keep it in a single angry gear throughout Another Lady. She?s mad that her relationship with Mark would be a sham because she gets she's wasted time on the guy who can?t deliver her happiness. She?s mad that they now needs to babysit the blubbering mess that's Kate, despite the fact that the faux script turns them into buddies through the film?s midway mark. So when Another Lady introduces sunny, shaped supermodel Upton as Marks other ?other mistress,? Diaz is mad that she?s no more the most popular, youngest blonde within the story. There?s the best reason behind getting Upton?s character, Amber, in to the plot. However, once she?s displayed, the film stops attempting to make sense, and Upton?s acting ability includes searching outstanding inside a bikini.

Melissa K. Stack will get credit for penning Another Lady. She cooks up a good concept, but isn?t sure what to do by using it. Kate?s story, as pointed out, might have brought with a sincere moments of strengthening drama. The pairing from the fooled ladies also might have triggered a tightly-plotted revenge comedy? but when our three women are establishing a more sophisticated sting operation within the Bahamas, you glumly realize Cassavetes no more includes a firm grip around the controls of the disjointed effort. Let alone the sexist, anti-feminist sentiments spread through the Other Lady, that we really didn?t expect. Listen carefully and drop your jaw when co-star Nicki Minaj asks Diaz why quite a lady like her needs to work so difficult? And did Don Manley, playing Diaz?s father, really tell his daughter to use something slutty and go regain her guy with sexual favors? Gross.

Fortunately, there?s Mann, who all things in her energy to help make the Other Lady watchable. She?s a remarkably gifted physical comedian who wrings laughs from such tired exercises as drunkenly climbing right into a limo or coming around a beachside mansion to ?spy? on one?s cheating husband. Mann is really a whirling dervish of laughs, and she or he always takes note of that you will find feelings driving her character?s actions, therefore we purchase her overwhelming obstacles and small achievements. Mann?s film career has faced obstacles. Inside a better world, she?d receive parts reserved for Diaz. Add Some Other Lady towards the comedienne?s extended highlight reel, and picture just how much better the could be if executives could work out how better to use Mann?s multiple talents.

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EXCLUSIVE: Mike Cahill Talks Another Earth Blu-ray

Nov 16, 2011 by B. Alan Orange

Director Mike Cahill talks Another Earth on Blu-rayOne of the most unique films of the year is coming to Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack on November 29th, from 20th Century Fox Home Video. Another Earth stars Brit Marling as Rhoda, a young woman that falls into a deep depression after killing a mother and her son in a tragic accident. She decides to seek out the widowed husband just as the astounding discovery of Earth 2, a planet that mirrors our own, is announced. As this parallel world begins to enter our Earth's atmosphere, Rhoda sets out to change her life, and possibly her own destiny.

We recently caught up with director Mike Cahill, who co-wrote the screenplay with Brit Marling, to chat about the endless possibilities of Earth 2. Here is our conversation.

With the concept of Earth 2 comes a thousand different story possibilities. How did you and Brit Marling hit on exactly what type of story you wanted to tell, using Earth 2 as your backdrop?

Mike Cahill: It is in the background. That is true. That is a great question. Because when we came up with the concept, we came up with the other earth first. It was a duplicate earth. All seven billion of us are living there. Really, you could tell seven billion different stories if you want to. People confronting themselves. We were into that first. But then, we thought, "What story is the most important story to tell?" We latched onto this character. A young female protagonist. Because we knew that Brit was going to play the lead. We wanted to tell a story about someone who needed to meet themselves the most. That would be someone having a hard time letting themself off the hook about something. Ultimately, it is a story about forgiveness. She is burdened with guilt. Her antagonist is this guilt, more than anything. As this protagonist, without any self-pity, she has this war like way of tying to get rid of that guilt. To eliminate it. We thought that was an interesting story to tell. The only person that can free you from that, is yourself. In a way, perhaps. At least, we do leave the hope of that at the end.

Did the concept ever become overbearing during the initial phase of story development? Just thinking about Earth 2, in terms of telling this particular story, seems like a slightly daunting task. It opens up a wormhole of conversations, and it hurts the brain...

Mike Cahill: (Laughs) Yeah! You ponder forever. But I love the Hollywood high concept that allows you to speculate and come up with ideas. It lets your imagination run loose. But then, I also like keeping it very restrained. Keeping it as one complex drama. Your brain could run forever about what this means. There is a huge paradigm shift, as you have this other earth in the sky. We were using it as poetry. A metaphor for the changing of perception about one's self. Something we can't really do is get outside of ourselves, and objectively view ourselves. Perhaps we can be forgiving. We can be kind to others. We can be hardest on ourselves. If our self was another person, how would that change things? How would that change one's perception of their selves? Even the story she tells about the Russian Cosmonaut. That is a changing of one's perspective, again, as annoying as that sounds. If you can somehow get outside of that, the first time you see the earth...If you can get outside of that, and change her perspective on it, maybe it can be something beautiful. We try to black out all the other complications that come with Earth 2. Nuclear warfare. Human resources. La, la, la...

Another Earth pushes science fiction in film to a place we haven't quite seen it go yet. We also have the movie Melancholia that came out this past week. It really seems like sci-fi is evolving and being pushed in a new, exciting direction...

Mike Cahill: I like that idea. I'll say this. Originality is a very hard thing to find. I don't think the goal of art is to create something original. It should be to create something that is emotionally moving. But, that being said, originality can't come from just one thing. It's a juxtaposition of two things. So, taking sci-fi...I think people would have expectations considering the history of the genre...You take that expectation for one thing, and you combine it with something totally outside the realm of that. But there is a history of thinking man's sci-fi. Like Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Still, this is more poetic, I guess. I like that mash-up. I think combining two different things came make something original and meaningful.

It is breathing new life into the genre that we haven't seen in a long time. I think that's necessary to keep the genre alive. In truth, we don't even get that many true science fiction films nowadays. Its all goofy superheroes and giant robots.

Mike Cahill: It's become all about the spectacle. Its two or three hours of explosions. Yeah.

Maybe the last really interesting one before Another Earth and Melancholia was where those two guys invented a time machine in their storage shed...

Mike Cahill: Yeah, Primer!

Prime hurts my head. It's too intelligent for me. It's beyond the thinking man's sci-fi...

Mike Cahill: It's hard to follow, that one. I was at a Q&A screening, and I felt bad for the director afterwards. The first person to raise his hand said, "I didn't get that...At all..." I thought it was very clever. And a great use of limited resources.

Having co-written the screenplay of Another Earth alongside you, what do you think Brit Marling, as an actress, was able to bring to this role that another actor may not have achieved?

Mike Cahill: Sure, yeah...Brit Marling is a very unique human being. She is probably the smartest person that I know. She has very high emotional intelligence, along with book smarts. She was Valedictorian of Jonestown. She is also, incredibly emotionally intelligent. The beauty of her writing the screenplay with me...She ended up having a lot of time to do the character exploration that some actors aren't allowed. Some actors have a week before they have to go shoot a project. Here, she had six months of imagining and living this character's life. Which was useful. But I think what makes her such a great actress is her ability to speak through her eyes without using dialogue. There's maybe twenty minutes of the film where she doesn't even say a word. But yet, emotional beat by emotional beat, moving forward, it just plays in her eyes. And we can follow that. It's a huge challenge for an actor. The other thing she does that is extremely sophisticated...Her character? She doesn't even exhibit one act of self-pity. Self-pity is something that is very alienating. If a character has self-pity, it is isolating. It's hard to empathize with them. She carries this burden of what she has done, very much on her own shoulders. She tries to figure out how to make things right. Her choices are questionable. But you get the sense that she is trying to do what is right. That was such a smart play by her as an actor.

Having worked in documentaries before directing Another Earth, did you approach the material from the viewpoint of a documentarian?

Mike Cahill: Yeah, absolutely. There was a certain amount of confidence in capturing the fly on the wall, in the scene, without having to storyboard. It was a 'capture the moment' feeling. I operated the camera, which gave me a great deal of comfortability, to keep it fresh, while we were shooting it. It also influenced the aesthetic choices. For example, I had 35 mm prime lens at my disposal. It gives a very cinematic, beautiful field...I tried not to use it. I used a stock lens, to give it more realism...If you have a more documentary, hand-held camera aesthetic, and you lift up and see this other earth in the sky, something about that makes it feel more real. I wanted it to feel as though it were real. I wanted audiences to leave the theater and look up, "There's the moon...Where's the other earth?" I try to make it poetic realism. I want it to be real, but I want it to be a certain moment of poetry. These wide, landscaping shots that emphasize her loneliness. But still, keep it in the realm of realism.

The movie is beautiful in terms of that. The way Earth 2 is shot, it's so quaint, but amazing to look at...How did you use the special features on the Blu-ray to expand this particular universe that you are presenting?

Mike Cahill: One of the cool things is that we have Dr. Richard Branson on there. I loved listening to his books on tape. Like a nerd, instead of bumping music, I would drive around, listening to him talk about the stars, and the creation of the universe. At the beginning of this project, I wrote him a passionate letter, saying, "I know you don't know me. I am making this film. Can we meet and talk about it." He was so gracious. He added such a beautiful element...He can talk about space and the cosmos. He can talk about it in an emotional narrative that the layperson can connect to. So he lent his voice to several things for the film. He is on the DVD extras. I could listen to him for hours. He brings a cool angle to the multi-verse. These questions of science that we deal with.

Another Earth arrives on Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack November 29th, from 20th Century Fox Home Video.

Another Earth was released July 22nd, 2011 and stars Brit Marling, Matthew-Lee Erlbach, DJ Flava, William Mapother, Meggan Lennon, AJ Diana, Bruce Colbert, Paul S. Mezey. The film is directed by Mike Cahill.

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Another Happy Day (2011)

Happy? Bah. Not likely, everyone in this Sundance-approved, dysfunctional-family drama is as miserable as it gets, from the harangued, protagonist mom, Lynn (Ellen Barkin), to her quiet, formerly-abusive ex-husband, Paul (Thomas Haden Church), and especially Lynn's smarmy, druggie teenage son (Ezra Miller). The movie, accordingly, is fairly miserable as well, although it's nearly rescued from the bottom of the art-house barrel by the brazen performances of its actors.  Barkin, Church, Miller and a whole family's worth of misfits, bottom-feeders, and head-cases are brought together, throughout the course of the movie, for the marriage of Lynn and Paul's son (Michael Nardelli), but matrimony is the last thing on this film's mind when putting such a bickersome crew together in the same room. What Another Happy Family does try to do, with varying degrees of success, is explore the inner workings of a sprawling, dysfunctional family, but it tries to do way too much in a short time span, and as we're bombarded with one horrifying family tale after another, after a while we just start to feel bad. The film feels simultaneously like a more abrasive version of Parenthood, and a less funny version of Modern Family, two network television shows that, it must be said, handle the ins and outs of a crazy family with much more skill and compassion for their characters than is displayed here. Writer/director Sam Levinson isn't so much making a movie as organizing a circus, and he does an admirable job of conveying the family's mutinous, self-destructive nature and the role each member plays in the creation of the whole. is on his deathbed. What he doesn't really do is try to garner sympathy for anyone, except potentially for Alice (Kate Bosworth), Lynn's self-abusing daughter who is more conspicuous by her absence than anything else, until the final act when she makes her entrance. A wisp of a thing with sunken cheeks, scraggly hair and the look of someone who's trying to fold in on herself and poof out of existence, Bosworth gives, far and away, the strongest performance of the movie (a close second, by the way, is Demi Moore, who goes full ham as the garish hoochie-mama that Paul has remarried).Levinson's script won the Waldo Wight Screenwriting Award at Sundance, and it's easy to see why: this is a movie that glorifies strong acting and an overarching message, but for all the working parts in it, Another Happy Day just doesn't operate well as a whole. Instead of plot movement, Levinson opts to repeat increasingly uncomfortable versions of the same set pieces: kid does drugs; grandpa looks like he's dead; aunts gossip over drinks; the granddaughter is nuts, and all of it framed by round after round of five-star waterworks by Barkin. The movie tries to say an awful lot in abstracts, so what we're left with is a kind of vaguely antagonistic notion of everyone involved, including and especially the beaten-down heroine we're supposed to be sympathizing with.None of this is on Barkin, who gives an awfully strong performance, but by the time Ellen Burstyn, who plays Lynn's mother, snaps at her to suck it up and keep her problems to herself, you kind of want to agree despite everything. There's something to be said for shades of grey, but does any of this sound happy to you? Yeesh.

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