Near the end of “Downton Abbey,” the big screen finale to the widely popular slice of British upper-class life, Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) coos, “I do love our adventures.” I imagine the vast majority of the audience will nod in silent agreement, basking in the reflected glow of highly polished silverware in this very fan friendly film.
The story picks up shortly after the end of the television series. Inside the mammoth country house that gave the show its name Earl Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) sips tea and trades barbs with his acid tongued mother the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), his wife Cora at his side. Daughters Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Mary (Michelle Dockery) are married to the 7th Marquess of Hexham (Harry Hadden-Paton) and Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode) respectively. Son-in-Law Tom Branson (Allen Leech), former chauffeur, Irish socialist and current estate manager for the property, raises his daughter with the help of… well, the help, who live downstairs.
Everyone, upstairs and down, are whipped into a tizzy when it’s announced that Queen Mary (Geraldine James) and King George V (Simon Jones) will be stopping by for a visit.
The news sends the house staff into a frenzy of silverware polishing and menu planning. Retired butler Carson (Jim Carter) is called back into service, while his head housekeeper wife Elsie (Phyllis Logan) gets the staff, including snooty butler Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier), cook Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) and assistant cook Daisy (Sophie McShera), ready for the Royal visit.
Trouble is, Lady Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting is in the Dowager Countess’s bad books. Seems Lord Grantham is her closest relative but she intends to leave her substantial estate to someone else. Prepare for some grade-a Dowager zingers.
Add to that a suspicious character in the village (Stephen Campbell Moore), the pompous royal staff, questions about Tom’s allegiance, stolen knick-knacks, a mild mutiny in defense of Downton’s honour, unlikely love stories and one royal meltdown and you have a story that feels like a high-falutin’ soap opera made by Merchant Ivory on an Earl Grey binge.
“Downton Abbey” is pure fan service. Most of the characters return, although Lily James fans will be disappointed, the house is as grand as ever and James is just as petulant as ever, if perhaps a little less villainous this time around. Revelations are made, storylines from the TV show are closed and, as always, life goes on at Downton. It all feels very familiar but like a comforting cup of tea, very welcome.
The glass slipper fitting on Cinderella’s foot is at the core of the magic of the fairy tale. It is a plot point that cannot be removed. If you do the whole story falls apart.
Real life is different.
Lily James, star of the new Disney live action remake of the Brothers Grimm tale, says the Swarovski slipper she “wears” in the film didn’t fit.
“That is my English humour,” she says. “It didn’t fit anyone. It wasn’t that they just got the size wrong. It’s Swarovski Crystal so it would have broken. They had to CGI it onto my foot, which was a bit of a shame.”
The Downton Abbey star—she plays the rebellious Lady Rose on the hit show—is about to have her name intrinsically connected with the Disney princess, but at the audition she had her eye on another role.
“When you get the casting call for something they pick what part you’re going to go for and they wanted me for [step-sister] Anastasia,” she says. “I remember I wore this pink tie-dyed jumper that the casting director told me to burn. But I had blonde hair because of Downton and they said I should read for Ella.
“I was kind of up for playing the off centre part; the quirkier, funnier part. I paced the corridor for about twenty minutes and the breakdown of the part that Ken [Branagh] had given me kind of struck me. It said she had a generous spirit and a generous nature and an open heart and I think because I didn’t have time to over think I just went in and just read it. I think I was much better for it.”
Her first day on set she shot one of the film’s key scenes, the “love-at-first-sight” meeting between Cinderella and Prince Charming, played by Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden.
“Ken said, ‘How do you feel about shooting that scene first?’ Richard and I didn’t really know each other and Ken caught that nervous energy, that getting-to-know-you, butterflies-in-your-stomach thing. He caught it on camera and I think that was smart. It kind of sets up the whole movie. It feels in that moment that Ella is very strong.”
So how will Downton Abbey fans react to seeing her familiar face as Cinderella?
“I hope lovingly,” she laughs. “I didn’t think there were many similarities but some people have said they think are. I watched the film and in the first scene I thought, ‘Oh no! I’m playing Rose.’ Then thankfully I shed it.”
It sounds like a question from an age-old nursery rhyme, but was actually a real problem for Sandy Powell, the Academy Award-winning costume designer of the new live-action version of Cinderella.
Powell, whose Oscars for Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator and The Young Victoria decorate her mantle, gave me a sneak peek at the unique shoes given to Cinderella (played by Downton Abbey’s Lily James) by her Fairy Godmother months in advance of this weekend’s opening.
“The glass slipper had nothing to do with any shoemakers because it is made of crystal,” Powell explained.
Working with Swarovski, she designed the shoe, complete with a six-inch heel and 221 facets with their light-reflecting Crystal Blue Aurora Borealis coating, out of solid crystal.
“No one can actually put their foot in that,” she says.
“It’s a prop. In effect I was designing a prop that gets held and gets tried on but for her (to walk in) we made another shoe that was the same shape, in leather, that she could wear and then the visual effects (transformed it to) the glass on her foot.
“The glass shoe was the biggest challenge to do.
“How do you do a glass shoe that doesn’t look ugly and huge?
“Hopefully I have done it. It had to sparkle. And rather than it be made up of lots of little crystals, I thought it would be brilliant if we could make it out of one piece of crystal. We didn’t know if that would be possible.
“We spoke to Swarovski very early on and I thought it should be like a faceted, cut piece of crystal and that’s what we worked on, which took several months.
“They didn’t even know if they could do it.
“We didn’t know if it was going to be possible until the first one came hot off the press.”
Eight crystal shoes were made, but in order to save time and money, there was no left or right foot, just neutral, according to Powell.
“No one is going to notice,” she says. “Doing a pair would have taken twice as long and we never see two at the same time.”
Working with Disney to bring Cinderella to life brings Powell full circle back to the movie that set her on her career path.
She cites the Mouse House’s Mary Poppins as an early influence, adding,
“I’ve always been inspired by clothes and I have always loved films.”
These days, 40 movies and three Oscars later, Powell is still finding plenty of passion in her work.
The names Cinderella and Disney go together like bread and butter, peanut butter and jam, or I guess, in this case, Fairy Godmothers and Wannabe Princesses.
Kenneth Branagh and Disney have teamed to breathe new life into an old story but instead of giving it an edgy twenty-first century sheen—no step-sisters toes are amputated in this version—the new “Cinderella” is coated in shimmering fairy dust.
Young Ella (Eloise Webb) has the perfect life. Her loving parents (Hayley Atwell and Ben Chaplin) treat her like a princess, the farm animals talk to her—and she can talk back to them—and all is sunshine and light. Darkness comes as Ella’s mother falls ill, leaving her with the words, “Always have courage and be kind.”
Ella (played as a teenager by “Downton Abbey’s” Lily James) tries to keep those virtues top of mind, but her resilience is severely tested when her father marries Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) and she suddenly finds herself with two self-centered and mean stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera). After the death of her father Ella’s new family see her as less a sister and more a servant, even dubbing her Cinderella because her house chores leave her covered in soot.
A chance meeting with Kit (Richard Madden)—known to everyone except Ella in the village as the Prince—leads her and a magical pair of glass slippers to the palace of the king and possibly into the arms of the prince.
The newest “Cinderella” takes some liberties with the 1950 animated Disney film, the most famous version of the story. In Branagh’s world Cinderella and the Prince meet before the ball, his royal highness is nicknamed Kit and the Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) has an expanded role.
What Branagh hasn’t changed is the idea that physical beauty and marriage are the keys to having a happy and fulfilled life. It’s the kind of retrograde thinking Disney has been moving away from in their recent movies, and yet, here it is at the heart and soul of “Cinderella.” It doesn’t feel particularly progressive, but I’m not sure you can change the story and still honestly call it “Cinderella.”
On the upside, there is strong messaging regarding being comfortable in one’s skin—“The greatest risk anyone can take is to be seen as they really are.”—and the merits of courage and kindness. “They treat me as well as they are able,” Cinderella charitably says about her step-family.
Sexual and familial politics aside, “Cinderella” is a classic and beautiful movie that feels like old-fashioned Disney. There’s an emphasis on the storytelling and fantasy, on good and evil—Blanchett scales new heights in wickedness and looks remarkable while doing so—all supported by sumptuous costumes and set decoration.
When someone says, “I haven’t been completely honest with you,” it’s usually followed by something like, “I’m not really 39 years old,” or “Red is not my natural colour.” When David (“Downton Abbey’s” Dan Stevens), a mysterious soldier who shows up on the Peterson family’s doorstep claiming to be a friend of their late son, says it, it means all hell is about to break loose.
When the Peterson’s first meet David he seems like a good guy. He calls Spencer (Leland Orser) and Laura (Sheila Kelley) Peterson sir and ma’am, and is very protective of sister Anna (Maika Monroe) and troubled son Luke (Brendan Meyer). Perhaps too protective. When people in town start dying Anna becomes suspicious and starts asking questions whose answers come with a heavy price.
The gap between the genteel environs of “Downton Abbey” to the dusty underbelly of the heartland of America is a wide one but Stevens makes the leap. As David he is completely at ease with the unease of his character. His wicked smile (which usually precedes a flurry of fists or bullets) and his unfailing good manners make him the most unsettling of villains, the guy who smiles while people die around him.
He’s the beating heart of the story. If the character of David didn’t work, then neither would the movie. There are some cool set pieces—the climax takes place in a homemade fun house maze, complete with dry ice, mirrors and mazes—and enough action to keep things rocketing along, but it is the character and his complex relationship with the world that makes “The Guest” compelling.
I am not a cold-hearted man. I like love stories as much as anyone and, as a fan of Say Anything, almost well up whenever I hear Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” but the sledgehammer romance of “Winter’s Tale” left me feeling bruised rather than buoyed. What is meant to be an uplifting experience about the power of love and the triumph of good over evil felt more like being strapped to a chair and force-fed all nine seasons of “Touched by an Angel.”
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Mark Helprin and brought to the screen by Oscar winning writer-turned-director Akiva Goldsman the story begins when Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a turn-of-the-last century burglar, comes across the love of his life while robbing a mansion he thought was empty.
Beverly Penn (Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay) the beautiful-but-doomed daughter of a wealthy newspaper tycoon, is a precocious and philosophical young woman with just months to live. He wants to save her, but first he must save himself from demonic crime lord Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), a brutal man who wants Lake dead. Then, in a twist suggested by the Brothers Grimm, he finds himself thrust one hundred years into the future with only the faded memory of Beverly and a white guardian angel horse as company.
The opening narration let’s us know that “magic is everywhere around us.” I just wish that some of that magic had spilled into the screenplay. The movie’s mix of metaphysical romance, magic realism and demonic revenge is a strange stew that worked well in the novel but seems to have lost something in the translation to the screen. In other words, perhaps the sight of Colin Farrell flying above New York on a winged Pegasus is best left in the mind’s eye.
As silly as the movie is, and make no mistake, this is what I like to call an S.D.M.—Silly Damn Movie—Farrell and Findlay manage to bring the romantic side of the tale alive. Their first meeting, over a cup of tea, is simple, effective and bristles with sexual tension. The love story, although a bit starry-eyed, works until the magic realism takes over and the story becomes loopier and loopier. By the time the words, “Is it possible to love someone so much they can’t die?” spill from Farrell’s lips all is lost, and that’s not even an hour into the story.
Putting aside the enchanted horses and dime store spirituality for a moment, the story often requires leaps of faith that would have even terrified Evel Knievel. This is the kind of movie where mothers willingly hand over their sick children to scruffy looking strangers on the promise of a miracle. It’s the kind of movie where people accept outlandish events with a tossed off phrase like, “How’s that even possible?” It’s the kind of sloppily plotted movie that involves a level of suspension of disbelieve so off-the-charts it’s almost in outer space.
“Winter’s Tale” is a frustrating movie. It overly complicates a boy-from-the-wrong- side-of-the-tracks-meets-rich-girl story with a bunch of hocus pocus that wastes some good work from Farrell, Findlay and Russell Crowe.
1. Controversial Twerking! In April no one knew what “twerking” was. Unfortunately now we all do.
2. Amanda Bynes threw a bong out the window of her 36th floor apartment. It was “just a vase,” she said.
3. After calling Bruce Willis “greedy and lazy” Sylvester Stallone charged $395 per autograph at NY Comic-Con
4. Tom Cruise said Katie Holmes filed divorced because of Scientology
6. Michael Douglas admitted he didn’t get that he got throat cancer after engaging in oral sex.
7. Kat Von D not so cleverly named her new lipstick “Celebutard.” Sephora pulled the plug amid complaints from Down Syndrome Uprising, Family Member, Inclusion BC and All About Developmental Disabilities.
8. Ke$ha says she drank her urine and, “It tasted kind of like candy.”
9. Banksy stall sells art works worth up to $30,000 for $60 each in New York’s Central Park.
10. Justin Bieber’s pet Capuchin monkey, Mally, was confiscated at a German airport after the singer tried to smuggle it into the country.
Top TV moments
1. Two words: Tentacle porn. – Anthony Bourdain’s Tokyo Parts Unknown episode.
2. Zombies falling through the ceiling of a department store in The Walking Dead
3. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really… I was alive.” – Walt (Bryan Cranston) on the Breaking Bad finale
4. Orphan Black Clones!
5. Cooking lessons from Hannibal Lector on Hannibal.
6. The bisected cow on Under the Dome.
7. Nick and Jess’ first kiss on The New Girl. So passionate, Jess says the kiss made her see “through space and time for a minute.”
8. Orange is the New Black’s duct-tape sandals.
9. The “Red Wedding” massacre on Games Of Thrones. “My King has married and I owe my new Queen a wedding gift.” ― Lord Walder (David Bradley)
10. The car crash death of Downton Abbey’s Matthew in the final minute of the period drama’s 3rd season.
Top General Entertainment Stories
1. Lou Reed Dead at 71
2. James Gandolfini Dead at 51
3. Angelina Jolie announced double mastectomy
4. Paula Deen gets fired for using the N word
5. Kanye West declared himself the “number one rock star on the planet” in a BBC interview.
6. The last movie ever rented at a Blockbuster? This is the End.
7. Sinead O’Connor accused Miley Cyrus of “behaving like a prostitute and calling it feminism.”
8. Born! The Royal Baby, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge.
9. Cory Monteith R.I.P.
10. Star Wars: Episode VII release date announced. The Force will return to theatres on December 18, 2015.
Top Online Moments
1. The prank video showing the baffled and terrified reactions of customers in a NYC coffee shop reacting to a woman with telekinesis tearing up the place.
2. Grumpy Cat vs Tommy Lee Jones meme. A side-by-side comparison of Jones at the Golden Globes and Grumpy Cat reveals that they might be long lost relatives.
3. Wisest tweet of the year: Always remember! Many of the people on the Internet telling you what’s what are not old enough to rent a car. – @KenJennings
4. M.I.A.’s Psychedelic Dance Party at the YouTube Music Awards
5. Raven-Symone came out on Twitter after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn The Defense of Marriage Act. “I can finally get married! Yay government! So proud of you.”
6. Andrew Huang’s video of his rap song without using the letter “E” and it’s about NOT using the letter “E”!
7. Swedish Chef Ramsay meme. “Why did the bork bork? Because you borked the bork!”
8. “I want Drake to murder my vagina.” – Amanda Bynes on Twitter
9. Best web series: The Booth at the End starring Xander Berkelely as a mysterious man who grants wishes… for a price.
10. Homeless Army Veteran Turns Life Around in Amazing Time Lapse Video
Opening in 1938 Germany, “The Book Thief” begins with a child’s journey.
Liesel Meminger (French-Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse) is sent to live with foster parents, the kind-hearted World War I veteran who has refused to join the Nazi Party Hans Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush) and his stern wife Rosa (Emily Watson). The little girl can’t read or write, but carries with her The Gravedigger’s Handbook, a book she “borrowed” after finding it on the ground at her brother’s funeral.
The unintelligible words in that book set Liesel on her path. Hans, who calls the girl “Your Majesty,” teaches her to read, igniting a love of words and storytelling that ultimately changes the life of a young Jewish man named Max and helps Liesel make sense of life in Nazi Germany.
Closer in tone to “A Beautiful Life” than “Schindler’s List,” “The Book Thief” is a touching, if somewhat melodramatic look at Liesel’s life. Jam-packed full of big moments, with kids forced to grow up too fast and confront the harsh realities of life, it’s a tearjerker that earns most of its schmaltzy, salty drops, but not all.
Based on the international best-selling novel by Markus Zusak and directed by Brian Percival of “Downton Abbey,” the film finds its main strength in the web of relationships that intertwine around Liesel. From tow headed neighbor Rudy (Nico Liersch), who loves Liesel at first sight, to the instant connection between Hans and his new daughter, to the bond that forms between Max and the girl as she reads to him, these links (and performances) bring humanity to the story, preventing it from being overwhelmed by the film’s dramatic tendencies. I’m mean, the movie is narrated by Death (Roger Allam) and set, primarily on a street called Heaven. You just know this isn’t going to be subtle.
Some moments work very well.
Kristallnacht, set to a soundtrack of young, angelic voices singing anti-Semitic Hitler Youth songs while the soldiers attack Jewish citizens and destroy their homes and shops, is chilling.
Others feel over-the-top, no matter how deeply the camera focuses on Nélisse’s soulful blue saucer eyes. (MAJOR SPOILER!!!!!!!!) Rudy’s final moments almost play like a “Monty Python” sketch, regardless of how attached you have become to the character.
Luckily Rush is a lovely and touching presence. He’s terrific as Hans, a compassionate, light-hearted man who understands the gravity of the situation. Watson, as his wife, is a tough nut, but compassionate one, but it is Nélisse who is at the core of the film.
She hands in a delicate, natural performance that rarely succumbs to the film’s melodrama.
“The Book Thief” doesn’t always trust the story to work on its own, so it wedges in a few too many big moments—and one egregious bit of product placement—but when it relies on the performances, it works.
