Salon.com > Black Swan http://www.salon.com Tue, 21 May 2013 02:42:46 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Want an Oscar? Go to extremes! http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/want_an_oscar_go_to_extremes/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/want_an_oscar_go_to_extremes/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13203178 When the Academy Awards air on Sunday evening, there will surprises and flubs; there will be tears and ridiculous production numbers. And one thing that's all but assured is that Anne Hathaway will walk away carrying a golden statue for her role as the doomed prostitute Fantine in "Les Miserables." As Fantine, Hathaway was beautiful, heartbreaking -- and really, really skinny. Oscar just loves a performance that includes a serious amount of transformation.

If you look at the Oscars before the 1990s, you won't find too many of them handed out for massive physical change. Current nominee Robert DeNiro's 1980 win for his metamorphosis from fighting-weight Jake LaMotta to fat, late-era, has-been Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull" was all but unprecedented in its day. And though the actor trained hard for his boxing scenes, it's the weight gain that's remembered -- and it sounds like the easiest part of the performance. To achieve his gone-to-seed look, he spent four months on "an eating binge in Europe" to gain 66 pounds.

Not all Oscar-baiting work comes that pleasurably though. Herewith are our picks for the Oscar's most dramatic physical evolutions of recent years and their relative degree of difficulty.

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/want_an_oscar_go_to_extremes/feed/ 8 Body doubles: The doppelgangers vs. Natalie Portman http://www.salon.com/2011/04/18/natalie_portman_your_highness_body_double/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/18/natalie_portman_your_highness_body_double/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/04/18/natalie_portman_your_highness_body_double Natalie Portman's look-alikes are out to steal her thunder! No, this isn't some "Black Swan" fever dream, but the reality of Ms. Portman last two films, both of which feature body doubles complaining about their mistreatment.

Several weeks ago, dancer Sarah Lane told several media outlets how she performed many of the difficult moves in "Black Swan," when the studios had hyped the film as featuring 85 percent Portman's own dancing. It was a back and forth between Fox Searchlight and Lane over percentage points, but the real story was how Lane was basically uncredited in the film and taken out of behind-the-scenes reels in order to play up Portman's abilities.

Now an Irish student, Caroline Davis, has told the Sun that in Portman's most recent movie, "Your Highness," Davis was hired to jump naked into an icy lake in lieu of the pregnant actress. She was only paid roughly $500 to do so. Both the film and its trailer use Davis' backside as a gratuitous body shot, although the college student doesn't seem to be complaining, telling the paper, "I'm a film studies student so I jumped at the chance to be on set."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/18/natalie_portman_your_highness_body_double/feed/ 23 Is “Your Highness” the worst film ever made? http://www.salon.com/2011/04/07/your_highness/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/07/your_highness/#comments Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/04/06/your_highness "Your Highness" must have seemed like a great idea at the outset -- and by "the outset," I mean the six baked minutes it took co-writer and star Danny McBride to scribble the basic concept on the back of an unpaid invoice from the swimming-pool guy. That basic concept appears to be "Cheech & Chong make 'The Princess Bride,'" or perhaps "Beavis and Butt-head meet 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.'" Except, two things: Both of those concepts sound way funnier than this movie is in practice and, no, it shouldn't take six minutes to write that. I'm thinking there was a lot of giggling and high-fiving and talking in junior-high Shakespeare accents involved.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/07/your_highness/feed/ 74 Natalie Portman vs Sarah Lane: Why “Black Swan” performance wasn’t about dancing http://www.salon.com/2011/03/28/natalie_portman_sarah_lane_black_swan/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/28/natalie_portman_sarah_lane_black_swan/#comments Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/03/28/natalie_portman_sarah_lane_black_swan In a controversy that reads like a real-life version of a movie plot, "Black Swan" dancer Sarah Lane has caused a stir with claims that lead actress Natalie Portman wasn't the ballet expert that the film's publicity team claimed she was. According to the ballerina -- who performed the film's more complicated dance sequences and on whose body Natalie's face was grafted for those scenes – Portman's talent was vastly overstated in the press during Fox Searchlight Films' bid to win the best actress Oscar for their movie.

That's not to say that Lane doesn't admire Natalie's performance:

"I do give her a lot of credit because in a year and a half she lost a lot of weight and she really tried to go method and get into a dancers head and really feel like a ballet dancer."

What's funny about this whole "scandal" is that both sides of the argument only care about Natalie's performance leading up to the film's taping: something that really isn't taken into consideration while audiences are watching the film. We're not even sure we understand what Lane's motivation is with coming out with this news: If she feels like she wasn't given the proper credit, why go to the press now? Did she think, as Mila Kunis' character in "Black Swan" did, that by undermining the lead she would be given the starring credit in the production?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/28/natalie_portman_sarah_lane_black_swan/feed/ 54 The Oscars’ black hole of boredom http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/oscars_ohehir/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/oscars_ohehir/#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/02/28/oscars_ohehir Oscar has fallen, and he can't get up. Now, if you get that reference, you're probably: A) too old to belong to the demographic that was supposedly being hunted by the producers of Sunday night's dreary and confused telecast, and B) too young to have written most of the shtick. Presented with one of the most varied and interesting lists of nominated films in recent memory -- many of which had actually been seen by large numbers of paying humans -- the academy managed to screw up its messaging totally and create a soul-sucking black hole of boredom.

One way of explaining what happened last night is that the Oscar producers tried to tack young and hip, just as academy voters tried to tack mass and mainstream, correcting for several years of more audacious indie-style winners like "The Hurt Locker," "Slumdog Millionaire" and "No Country for Old Men." The result was a great big middle-of-the-road splat, presided over by a monumentally uncomfortable pair of stars, the miffed-looking James Franco and the perky-like-a-little-coffeepot Anne Hathaway.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/28/oscars_ohehir/feed/ 64 Your Oscar night primer http://www.salon.com/2011/02/27/oscar_setup/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/27/oscar_setup/#comments Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/02/27/oscar_setup Anne Hathaway and James Franco's purported musical numbers: Bust or must?

I will admit to being totally suckered by the snippet from a "Grease" number that will apparently be performed by Oscar co-hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway on Sunday night. Sneaking that out the way they did -- via Franco's Twitter feed -- is a nifty use of social media and sends a signal that the Oscars are hipper and savvier under the new regime. Or simultaneously hipper and suffused with nostalgia, which is even better. Now, I'd be delighted if they decide to do the whole damn show as selections from classic musicals: "West Side Story," anyone? "Oklahoma"? "The Band Wagon"? But any tiny flub by either of the stars -- a missed dance step or a mistimed lip-sync -- will launch a tide of snarky Tweets to rival the parting of the Red Sea.

The "updated" set design: Virtual reality or lame-ass PowerPoint?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/27/oscar_setup/feed/ 13 Great Oscar debate: Is Natalie Portman overrated? http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/best_actress_2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/best_actress_2011/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/02/23/best_actress_2011 Matt Zoller Seitz: First things first: This has been an absolutely tremendous year for performances by young female actress in complex leading roles. You've got Michelle Williams in two notable movies, and Jennifer Lawrence in "Winter's Bone," and Mary Tsoni in "Dogtooth," and Kate Jarvis in Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," which you liked, too. And Hailee Steinfield, who's nominated as best supporting actress for the Coen brothers' "True Grit" remake but should be in this category, because as Mattie Ross, she carries the movie. It's totally her movie. Every minute is about the young adolescent heroine, Mattie Ross, and what this adventure meant to her, and took from her. Yet she's in the supporting category, and Jeff Bridges, whose Rooster Cogburn is clearly a supporting character, is in the lead category! It's maybe the most absurd example of tactical nomination displacement since Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People," who was nominated for supporting actor (and won) even though that movie is almost entirely about his character.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/best_actress_2011/feed/ 33 “The Other Woman”: Natalie Portman’s other, other starring role http://www.salon.com/2011/02/03/the_other_woman/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/03/the_other_woman/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/02/03/the_other_woman An angsty, doleful Manhattan-stepmom dramedy, "The Other Woman" might also be described as "The Other Natalie Portman Movie," or perhaps "The Other Other Natalie Portman Movie" (depending on your willingness to face the fact that Portman recently made a sex-friends comedy with Ashton Kutcher). It starts out way behind the 8-ball, beginning with the fact that writer-director Don Roos' adaptation of an Ayelet Waldman novel seems like a weirdly plausible sequel to "Black Swan," one in which Portman's crazed ballerina grows up a little, quits dancing, and starts a new life as trophy wife to a hotshot New York attorney.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/03/the_other_woman/feed/ 15 Winners and losers of today’s Oscar noms http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/oscar_noms_2/ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/oscar_noms_2/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/01/25/oscar_noms If the Kabuki theater of the 2011 Oscar race is to yield any major surprises -- let alone any of the half-baked sociological talking points so beloved by the media -- that wasn't evident in Tuesday morning's nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards. In fact, if there's anything strange about this year's Oscars, it's how predictable they appear.

Conventional wisdom has held for months that "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network," a pair of handsome and talky comedy-drama blends with biographical and historical roots, were the best-picture front-runners, and so it appears. (Furthermore, the latter will win, and I don't care how much tea-leaf reading to the contrary you hear in coming weeks.) Best actress is perceived as a race between Annette Bening's lesbian mom in "The Kids Are All Right" and Natalie Portman's demented ballerina in "Black Swan," and best actor as a race between Colin Firth, for his richly sympathetic portrayal of the stuttering King George VI in "The King's Speech," and, well, nobody in particular. Done and done.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/oscar_noms_2/feed/ 34 Natalie Portman to wed “Black Swan” choreographer http://www.salon.com/2010/12/28/us_people_natalie_portman/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/28/us_people_natalie_portman/#comments Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:13:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2010/12/27/us_people_natalie_portman Natalie Portman is pregnant with her first child and is engaged to Benjamin Millepied, the choreographer of "Black Swan." A publicist for Portman confirmed Monday that the couple are engaged and expecting, but declined to give any further details. People magazine first reported the news.

The 29-year-old actress and Millepied, a well-regarded ballet dancer and choreographer, met during the making of "Black Swan," Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller that stars Portman as a ballet dancer. She's been nominated for best actress by the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild.

Millepied played a small on-screen role in the film as a dancer.

Portman also stars in Ivan Reitman's upcoming romantic comedy, "No Strings Attached."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/28/us_people_natalie_portman/feed/ 6 “The Fighter”: From small-town palooka to champion http://www.salon.com/2010/12/10/fighter/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/10/fighter/#comments Fri, 10 Dec 2010 01:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/12/09/fighter Originality is overrated; when it comes to storytelling, it may not even exist. The entire audience knew that Oedipus the king was going to kill his father and screw his mother, despite all his efforts to outrun that prophecy, and the entire audience for David O. Russell's film "The Fighter" will know that "Irish" Micky Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg), lovable palooka of Lowell, Mass., is going to get that title shot and reunite his brawling, hopeless family. The magic of "The Fighter" is all in the telling, in the fact that Russell has taken a tale of mythic American redemption and one of those Hollywood screenplays with four credited writers and somehow made a movie so rousing, so real and so full of complicated emotions that it all feels brand-new.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/10/fighter/feed/ 21 “Black Swan”: Even better than you’ve heard http://www.salon.com/2010/12/03/black_swan_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/03/black_swan_2/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 02:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/12/02/black_swan Having seen Darren Aronofsky's dazzling and disorienting ballet thriller "Black Swan" a second time, I'll stick to my original position that it's one of the best movies of the year. Synthesizing Aronofsky's previous work and foregrounding a breakthrough star performance from Natalie Portman as its tormented protagonist, this is a marvelous construction that's in line for multiple Oscar nominations: Portman, Vincent Cassel and Barbara Hershey for acting awards, Matthew Libatique for his amazing hand-held cinematography, Thérèse DePrez for production design, Andrew Weisblum for editing and Clint Mansell for a mesmerizing score that blends techno and Tchaikovsky.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/03/black_swan_2/feed/ 38 Spirit Awards nominees announced http://www.salon.com/2010/11/30/us_film_spirit_awards/ http://www.salon.com/2010/11/30/us_film_spirit_awards/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:55:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/11/30/us_film_spirit_awards James Franco's survival story "127 Hours," Natalie Portman's ballet drama "Black Swan" and Ben Stiller's dark romance "Greenberg" are among best-picture nominees for the Spirit Awards honoring independent film.

Also competing for the top honor at the Spirit Awards are Annette Bening's lesbian family drama "The Kids Are All Right" and the rural crime thriller "Winter's Bone."

Bening, Franco, Portman and Stiller also are among lead-acting nominees.

Presented by the cinema group Film Independent, the Spirit Awards will be handed out at a ceremony Feb. 26, the day before the Academy Awards. Joel McHale, star of the TV comedy "Community," will host the show, which airs on IFC.

------

Online:

http://www.spiritawards.com

 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/11/30/us_film_spirit_awards/feed/ 0 Early Oscar odds: “Inception” vs. “Social Network” http://www.salon.com/2010/10/21/oscar_preview/ http://www.salon.com/2010/10/21/oscar_preview/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/10/21/oscar_preview Question: Is it too unbearably early to begin thinking about the annual winter circus that is Oscar season? Answer: Never! Or at least not after the Gotham Independent Film Awards nominations, the unofficial starting gun of award-mania, have gotten us started.

Let me save your comment-typin' fingers a workout and stipulate the following: No, the Oscars are no indication of quality, historically speaking; yes, the best films of the year (whether by my standards or yours) are often overlooked; and yes, covering movies by focusing overmuch on the Oscar race resembles the horse-race coverage of American politics and signifies the downfall of journalism in particular and civilization in general. But you want to know about it anyway, so let's move on. (Check out my Movie List for an utterly subjective and totally non-market-driven ranking of the year's best and worst movies.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/10/21/oscar_preview/feed/ 15 “Black Swan”: Aronofsky’s spectacular dance thriller http://www.salon.com/2010/09/10/black_swan/ http://www.salon.com/2010/09/10/black_swan/#comments Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/09/10/black_swan Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller "Black Swan," which screened for the press on Friday morning at the Toronto International Film Festival, is one of those movies that demand big adjectives. It's outlandish and melodramatic and spectacular. It aspires to be a 1970s-style event movie, of the kind nobody makes anymore -- a movie that will be chattered about at upscale cocktail parties (the kinds of parties nobody has anymore) and also draw large audiences who just want to be terrified and aroused and told a fantastic story. Set entirely within the cloistered, sadomasochistic world of ballet, it definitely won't be everybody's cup of tea, and those who don't like it can make a great show of being populists bored to tears by the tedious self-involvement of high culture.

But that will not be me. I'm here to tell you that I found "Black Swan's" tale of madness, music and sexual repression utterly overpowering from the first few frames of the film. I forgot about the notebook in my lap and totally abandoned that sense I sometimes get that I'm trying to write the review in my head before the movie's over. I was completely swept up and just wanted to ride along on Aronofsky's hallucinatory journey with Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a rising young ballerina who emerges as the star of a leading New York ballet company just as she may also be undergoing a mental breakdown.

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