Salon.com > The Ghost Writer

Pick of the week: Life lessons from a 75-year-old gay dad

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:21:00 +0000

I totally lost my heart to Mike Mills' "Beginners," and I don't think I want it back. A multi-talented, multimedia dude whose work includes graphic design, music videos, documentaries and now feature films (his first was "Thumbsucker" in 2005), Mills is the kind of person who would be completely irritating if he weren't both so sincere and so authentic, a nearly impossible combination in our calculating age. You might say that the same description applies to "Beginners," which is a sad, sweet, funny and ultimately unforgettable love story about a man and a woman and a father and son, and also ranks among the most affectionate and sensitive portraits of homosexuality ever crafted by a straight person.

9. “The Ghost Writer”

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Roman Polanski is an economical director, and "The Ghost Writer" is one of his most economical films. This story of an unnamed man (Ewan McGregor) hired to ghostwrite the memoirs of a former British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) never makes a move without reason and never holds a shot -- or pauses after a line -- a millisecond longer than it needs to. You can see it in the scene we're examining here: The film's widely celebrated ending, which wraps up two hours' worth of plot in just four shots.

"The Ghost Writer" is an example of a vanishing type of film direction rooted in the values of classical (pre-TV) Hollywood. Although Polanski didn't make his first feature until 1962 ("A Knife in the Water"), he has done most of his work in that tradition. The subject matter of his movies is often disturbing -- jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil -- but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn't cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage to create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn't cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is. Polanski's screenwriting sensibility is just as exact -- a point vividly demonstrated on "The Ghost Writer," which Polanski co-adapted with Robert Harris, from Harris' novel. The filmmaker doles out words the way he doles out shots: sparingly, never giving the viewers more than is necessary to keep them on the hook and waiting for the next revelation. This is a nearly perfect entertainment, never more so than in its final few minutes.

Polanski’s wife says husband’s jailing changed her

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:07:00 +0000

Roman Polanski's wife said her husband's imprisonment in a 32-year-old sexual abuse case has diminished her carefree spirit and terrified and disoriented the couple's two children.

But Emmanuelle Seigner, 43, also said in an interview with the Polish magazine Viva! that she's convinced "the matter will be solved."

The interview appears in the newest edition of the colorful celebrity magazine and includes a photo layout of the actress and singer in high heels and a glittery dress, and other attire.

The director was initially accused of raping a 13-year-old girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a 1977 modeling shoot. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, then fled to France on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

Polanski, 76, is under house arrest in his Swiss chalet in Gstaad as he fights extradition to the United States.

"I am no longer such a carefree person, I am no longer the same Emmanuelle," Seigner said.

Seigner said that she and the children do not live with Polanski in Gstaad but visit as often as they can.

Box office report: Is “Shutter Island” Scorsese’s biggest?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:02:00 +0000

This will be shorter than usual. First of all, there isn't all that much news to report and second of all, I spent the day at Disneyland, which was far more crowded than usual. Curse you, "Captain Eo"! You marred my Sunday in three dimensions! Point being, I'm pooped. So "Shutter Island" pulled a repeat at No. 1 this weekend, dropping just 45 percent for a $22.2 million second weekend and a new total of $75 million.

Despite the mixed reviews and word of mouth, the Scorsese thriller is still the only real event movie out there for people who don't need a return trip to Pandora. While I didn't care for "Shutter Island" one bit, I am heartened that a moody, complicated, two-hour-plus, non-sequel, R-rated thriller from Martin Scorsese is a genuine smash hit. In this day and age, it's always refreshing to see an adult-driven genre picture to reach heights only usually accorded to franchises and animated films. The picture is Scorsese's fifth-biggest domestic grosser, and will reach no. 3 on that list by next weekend. Whether or not it can surpass the $132 million earned by "The Departed" is an open question, but it won't have any demo competition until "The Green Zone." That Bourne-goes-to-Baghdad thriller opens March 12. (I have no idea if that's an accurate summary, by the way, but it's sure how the Paul Greengrass/Matt Damon film is being sold by Universal).

Pierce Brosnan on Polanski, Tony Blair and “The Ghost Writer”

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Pierce Brosnan welcomed me into his hotel suite at the Waldorf-Astoria with lordly courtesy, standing to usher me into the sitting room and looking, in his elegant but understated zippered green cardigan, like an indebted aristocrat who has opened his country manse to tourists. The one-time 007, his debonair good looks still in full effect at age 56, complimented me on my overcoat (a London Fog thrift-store acquisition) and used my Irish sweater as a pretext for some small talk about his homeland, which was also my father's. Gazing out at the mixture of snow and freezing rain descending upon Manhattan, Brosnan murmured, "Ah, it's a fine soft day," in gentle mockery of the Irish tendency to euphemize dreadful weather.

Box office report: “Shutter Island” blows the doors off

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:23:00 +0000

The infamously delayed "Shutter Island" debuted to smashing business over its initial weekend, as the Martin Scorsese thriller debuted to $40.2 million. That's a personal best for both director Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio. Scorsese's previous best opening was the $26.8 million debut of "The Departed" in October 2006 (also starring Leonardo DiCaprio), while this was DiCaprio's second $30 million-plus debut, following the $30 million opening of Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can" back in December 2002. Since both the star and director have rarely opened anything over $10 million based on their respective names alone, credit should go to the marketing and the general concept of the story. As I've often said, adult thrillers are in rare supply these days and the few that make through the pipeline have a pretty decent track record (you think "Vantage Point" or "Law-Abiding Citizen" opened to around $22 million apiece due to critical acclaim?). Mix a genuinely intriguing concept (1950s lawman trapped in a scary mental hospital), factor the pedigree involved, and then add a compelling and pervasive trailer that has been running in every theater nonstop since August, and you had the recipe for a breakout weekend.

Polanski best director at Berlin film festival

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:36:00 +0000

The Turkish film "Bal," or "Honey," won the top Golden Bear award Saturday at the 60th annual Berlin film festival, whose jury also crowned Roman Polanski best director.

Polanski, whose film "The Ghost Writer," debuted at the festival, was unable to attend the ceremony, as he remains under house arrest in his Swiss chalet in Gstaad.

Producer Alain Sarde, who accepted the prize on Polanski's behalf, said the director told him he would not have attended the festival even if he had been free, "because the last time I traveled to accept an award I landed in jail."

Polanski was arrested when he arrived in Zurich on Sept. 26 to receive a lifetime achievement award from a film festival. The Swiss must decide whether to extradite him to the U.S. to face possible further sentencing in a 32-year-old sex case.

A joint Silver Bear for best actor was awarded to the stars of the Russian film, "How I Ended the Summer." Grigory Dobrygin and Sergy Puskpalis played opposite one another as an older and younger researcher who clash at a polar station on an island in the Arctic Circle.

Shinobu Terajima won the best actress for starring as a wife forced to tolerate the tyranny of her husband who returns disabled from the second Chinese-Japanese war in the Japanese film "Caterpillar."

“The Ghost Writer”: Polanski strikes back

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

If there really were no such thing as bad publicity, I suppose we'd see curious crowds lining up around the block for the premiere of "The Ghost Writer." Instead, Roman Polanski's canny and claustrophobic new thriller, which stars Pierce Brosnan as a semi-disgraced former British prime minister and Ewan McGregor as the naive writer hired to ghost his autobiography -- offers a strange combination of marketing disaster and crisis-management test case. The film's American distributor is releasing it cautiously, on a small scale, and Brosnan and McGregor were unleashed on the press this week, in an apparent effort to refocus attention on Polanski's work and career rather than his past misdeeds and current legal predicament.