Brit Marling

Brit Marling, between diving dumpster and Hollywood.

I had not heard of her name until one of the editors of MOTB proposed I write about her. The editor, who is also a friend, had said: “she reminds me of you”.

Ok, this girl is tall, blond and has blue eyes… but I believe what she meant had more to do with the kind of girl Brit (named after her Norwegian maternal great-grandmother) is.  So, I started to read about her life, and began to identify a little with the way she tries to get out of her comfort zone in order to search for her real purpose in life. Defining herself as a “tree climber” on her Twitter account, well, that really got my attention.

Brit Marling was born in Chicago (USA) in 1983; she is a writer, producer, director and actress. From what I read she comes across as a sort of anti-ingenue in the Hollywood of today. After attending Georgetown University and securing an internship at Goldman Sachs, she decided to audition for some bad movies, until she realized that to get better roles she would need to write the scripts herself. So she took up this challenge, helped by two of her very best friends; cinema directors Zal Batmanglij and Mike Cahill, she co-wrote and also starred in some very cerebral movies, includingAnother Earth, Sound of My Voice and the recent The East.

In The East, Marling plays Sarah Moss, a private security-firm investigator who infiltrates a group of anarchists. Led by the charismatic Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) and Izzy (Ellen Page), the group carries out attacks on various corrupt corporate entities (big pharma, oil companies and other polluters, etc.), including some of Sarah’s firm’s clients. Once she gets to know the members of the group, she begins to question who’s really right: the anarchy-minded activists or the corporate criminals whom they target.

“The idea of making a thriller that’s about the sort of feelings, energy and questions of this time seemed really appealing to us” Marling explained during one interview. She really hopes her movies get people thinking and talking with others about whatever the films means to them. Apparently all her films aim to mix modern realities in a way that also pushes boundaries, treads on controversial ground. And that’s certainly the case in The East.

In fact, the origin of this movie began years ago when Marling and Batmanglij (director of the film) spent a summer ‘on the road’ together. Travelling without any money, they met up with a group of freegans*, who inspired the anarchist characters in The East. Both friends were really moved by the bravery of these people, who, from the same generation as them yet intentionally dropping out of conventional society, were so open to teaching things (diving dumpsters for example).  ”When you dive a dumpster for the first time, you’re thinking what everybody thinks: this is weird, it’s gross and it doesn’t make sense… Then you realize that there’s a lot of really perfectly good food in there” Marling recalls.
Based on this experience, Marling and Batmanglii felt inspired to write a movie in this same spirit.

These days she thinks it is stupid not to dive a dumpster while there’s a huge percentage of population living below the poverty line, but at the same time acknowledges that dumpster diving isn’t for everyone.

Despite (or perhaps because…) of her unusual path, this tree climber girl is actually in a growing career. Nevertheless she seems to be very careful about success. Commenting that “it can be troubling and dangerous”, Marling prefers not to take to it too seriously because at the end of the day it is just making movies, and what she really loves is living in a real world, not in a pretend one.

–What´s next for Marling: she plays Abraham Lincoln’s mother in “The Green Blade Rises,” one of a group of women left to fend for themselves in the Civil War drama “The Keeping Room,” and stars in sci-fi drama, “I Origins”, directed by “Another Earth” director, Mike Cahill.

*Freegans are people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.

Sources: Time entertainment, Nola.com

Publicado en http://magontheblog.com/

The Oscar and the 9 must see movies of 2013

Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles. Sunday, February 24th.

Red carpet, glamorous people, TV presenters, cameras from all over the world…. It was “D” day, especially for people like me, who year after year, watch the complete ceremony and go to bed wishing to be a “star” like all of them… at least one day.

I imagine, for those fortunate enough, it is a moment of ecstasy, they should seize at maximum the opportunity of being part of Hollywood´s history, the “Mecca” of cinema.

As with other cinema award ceremonies, fashion also has a leading role; in fact transmitted coverage of the  red carpet was extended during the last years, before it was only 30 minutes! Makeup, hair and clothing… what you see will be a  tendency. New designers and recognized fashion firms co-exists on this “unique” night. Viewers from nearly 225 countries want to see their favorite ones – real men and women –  with whom they could feel identified, so as to copy their styles.

This year it was 85th ceremony, despite usual mistranslations, everlasting thankful words and a large list of categories, I watched it from A to Z. Three and a half hours.  Classical but at the same time modern. I recognized it was a bit original, a big tribute to musicals, many actors performed during the celebration, new cinema promises were mixed with legendary names; a new talented comedian, Seth McFarlane, irreverent but at the same time cool, was the master of ceremonies. Adele shined with her song, “Skyfall”, from the most recent James Bond movie, and also won for Best Original Song. And the surprise of the night… Michelle Obama appearance from the White House to present the Academy Award for Best Picture.

9 films were competing: dramas of all kind: a musical, an adventure film, an historical thriller and a spaghetti western. The party is over and not all of them were succesful, but at least all of them will be surely the must-see films this year, here the list…

1- Lincoln was the one with most nominations, in fact, there were 12, but it won only two. This drama focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months, where he pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”, this US president had written in a letter dated April 4, 1864. Two-times Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis, who I always remember from “My left foot” (1989), won his third Oscar playing this brave Lincoln, directed by another two- times winner (for Best Director), Steven Spielberg.

2- Argo, Ben Affleck´s thriller was the triumph of the night. Also produced by George Clooney, it won three awards including Best Picture, announced by the very same Michelle Obama, in an act critized by the Iranian Goverment. Tony Mendez, a CIA operative, (played by Affleck) led the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The Academy omitted Affleck from the Best Director nominations, although the actor had won a Golden Globe in this category. He confessed to having felt frustrated for not having been nominated  in that category, and many felt he deserved it.

3- The French-language drama film, Amour, written and directed by the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert, won for Best International Movie. Haneke saids: “At a certain age we are forced to confront the suffering of those we love”. The film focuses on an elderly couple, Anne and Georges, who are retired music teachers with a daughter who lives abroad. Anne suffers a stroke, which paralyses her on one side of her body. The performance of Emmanuelle Riva as Anne, was particularly compelling. The Hiroshima mon amour (1959) actress, had just won a César Award and a BAFTA, but, on the day of her 86 birthday, she couldn’t make it an Oscar as well. The film also won the Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

4- Silver Linings Playbook is the movie that made Robert de Niro break down in tears on Katie Couric´s show while discussing the subject of bipolar disorder. The acting icon began to cry after the hostess asked him, “Did you feel a greater responsibility about doing a film that had so much personally invested in?”. The 69-year-old film legend said, quickly getting teary-eyed. “I don’t like to get emotional, but I know exactly what [David Russell] goes through.” Russell, the director also nominated, has a son with this mood disorder. This American romantic comedy drama narrates the story of Pat (Bradley Cooper) who returns home to her parents (Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver) trying to find the bright side of things. Pat’s world turns around when he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a beautiful widow as strange as him. This was the first nomination for Cooper and the second for Lawrence, who won for Best Actress, and stumbled on the way to collecting her award.

5- Life of Pi, an American 3D adventure drama film directed by Ang Lee, revolves around a 16-year old boy named “Pi” Patel, who survives a shipwreck in which his family dies, and is stranded in thePacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Ang Lee – half Taiwanese, half American- won the Best Director award. This was not, in fact, his first time: he had won for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, being the first person of Asian descent to win in his category.  The film also won in three more technical categories.

6- The film Les Miserables has received mixed, but generally positive reviews. Nominated for eightAcademy Awards, it only won two, including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway. It is a British musical drama film based on the 1862 French novel by Victor Hugo. Directed by Tom Hooper, who won for The King´s Speech in 2011, tells the story of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who becomes mayor of a town in France. He agrees to take care of Cosette, the illegitimate daughter of the dyingFantine, but as a fugitive must also avoid being captured again by police inspector Javert. Many critics praised the cast, especially Hathaway´s performance, for which she lost a substantial amount of weight and cut her hair short into an Audrey Hepburn style. Curiously Hathaway`s mother had played the same role in the first U.S. tour of Les Misérables.

7- Django Unchained, the spaghetti western of the list, a sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of the Italian, Sergio Leone‘s film-making style. This is a story of slavery, racism and love written and directed by Quentin Tarantino with Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz andLeonardo DiCaprio in leading roles. The movie follows a freed slave (Foxx) who treks across the United States with a bounty hunter (Waltz) on a mission to rescue his wife from a cruel and charismatic plantation owner (DiCaprio). Quentin Tarantino won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and also a BAFTA in the same category. Waltz collected the award for Best Supporting Actor.

8- Zero Dark Thirty, a historical drama film directed by the influential and brave Kathryn Bigelow, had a very bad night. Bigelow became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director with The Hurt Locker in 2009. Her movie, “the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man”, is a dramatization of the United States operation that found and killed Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda. This controversial movie – that falsely depicted torture as instrumental in the finding of Osama – received wide critical acclaim and was nominated for fiveAcademy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jessica Chastain) and Best Original Screenplay, however it did not win any.

9- Beasts of the Southern Wild is a fantasy drama film directed by Benh Zeitlin. The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director (Benh Zeitlin) and Best Actress(Quvenzhané Wallis) who, at the age of 9, was the youngest female child nominee of the Academy, and was in fact only six during the filming!  Unfortunately it did not receive any awards but the film deserves to be seen. It is the tale of a six-year-old girl, almost orphan, buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural world is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm challenges her reality…

Publicado en http://magontheblog.com/