Running With Scissors reviews
If this film continues to get similar reviews then Bening and Clayburgh are out! This might make the race look like this:
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, The Good German
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children
The 6th spot could be a toss-up between the following trio:
Damien's ''who the f**k is'' Sienna Miller (Factory Girl), Dame Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Renee Zellweger (Miss Potter).
Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abaigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration
Frances de la Tour, The History Boys
The 6th spot goes to the following trio:
Diane Lane (Hollywoodland), Emily Watson (Miss Potter) and Carmen Maura (Volver).
What about both Julie Walters and Laura Linney in Driving Lessons?
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, The Good German
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children
The 6th spot could be a toss-up between the following trio:
Damien's ''who the f**k is'' Sienna Miller (Factory Girl), Dame Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Renee Zellweger (Miss Potter).
Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abaigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration
Frances de la Tour, The History Boys
The 6th spot goes to the following trio:
Diane Lane (Hollywoodland), Emily Watson (Miss Potter) and Carmen Maura (Volver).
What about both Julie Walters and Laura Linney in Driving Lessons?
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Big Magilla
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All-star casts aren't having a particularly good year so far, with All the King's Men getting reviews similarly bad.
Maybe The Departed and Bobby will fare better?
Maybe The Departed and Bobby will fare better?
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
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Big Magilla
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- Posts: 19336
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
- Location: Jersey Shore
Judging by this review, it ain't a contender.
Glenn Kenny in the current Premiere Magazine gives it *1/2 as opposed to the **** (highest rating) he gives The Fountain. Even Flicka gets more respect at **1/2.
Here's the review:
There is a thriving market in publishing for the reminiscences of white, middle-class males whose '70s upbringings were marked by colorful family dysfunction and under-the-neat-as-a-pin-facade-of-suburbia eccentricity and pervesrity. Augusten Burroughs' 2002 memoir Running With Scissors - wherein the young Burroughs placed in the casre of most unorthodox psychiatrist Dr. Finch after the breakup of his deluded would-be poet mother and severely disconnected, alcoholic father - was distinguished in this genre by a particualr can-you-top-this quality, which no doubt made it catnip for prospective film adapters. The movie version (in which the above-dscribed characters are played, respectively, by Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin, was written and directed by Ryan Murphy. Mr. Murphy is creator of the televsion series Nip/Tuck and hence a past master of calculated grotesquerie, and he depicts Dr. Finch's house of horrors - a hot-pink manse with newspapered windows, the world's filthiest kitchen, and an extended family that makes the Addamses look like the Osmonds - with something spproaching relish. For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between American Beauty and The Royal Tenenbaums; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors, are in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively. Murphy's idea of what constitutes edgy elan ends up laying bare the creative dessication of the so-called indie mode, most spectacularly in a sequence undercutting various characters' howls of either catharsis or agony to the strains of Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat". This is kind of awful, but not inapt, as it's entirely in keeping with the particular smarminess of this project, which redundantly announces itself at the beginning as being based on "the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs" and finishes up with a shot of Cross and the real-life Burroughs being sorta just-us-messed-up-guy-pals-y, while a subtitle tells us how teen Augusten went to New York City "and wrote a book." Awww. This then, is the transformative power of art as it stands in 2006. Art, or some acceptable facsimilie therof, can transform your personal pain into cash and fame. (After drafting my notes for this review, I did some research on the lawsuit filed agaisnt Burroughs in 2005 by surviving members of the real-life family depicted as the Finches in his book. One passage from the suit, quoted in a news service clip, really stood out: "As a child and adolescent, Mr. Burroghs' greatest fantasy was for enormous wealth and fame. From a young age he constantly devised outlandish scenarios - frequently with himself as the celebrated center of attention." There's nothing in, or about, this movie to contradict that claim.) So although the cast (which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Joseph Fiennes) comports itself with first-rate craftsmanship and enthusiasm, the results of the filmmakers' labours will inevitably prove most entertaining and emotionally resonant for those who, like Burroughs, don't see much point in forming a worldview that extends far beyond the end of one's nose.
Glenn Kenny in the current Premiere Magazine gives it *1/2 as opposed to the **** (highest rating) he gives The Fountain. Even Flicka gets more respect at **1/2.
Here's the review:
There is a thriving market in publishing for the reminiscences of white, middle-class males whose '70s upbringings were marked by colorful family dysfunction and under-the-neat-as-a-pin-facade-of-suburbia eccentricity and pervesrity. Augusten Burroughs' 2002 memoir Running With Scissors - wherein the young Burroughs placed in the casre of most unorthodox psychiatrist Dr. Finch after the breakup of his deluded would-be poet mother and severely disconnected, alcoholic father - was distinguished in this genre by a particualr can-you-top-this quality, which no doubt made it catnip for prospective film adapters. The movie version (in which the above-dscribed characters are played, respectively, by Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin, was written and directed by Ryan Murphy. Mr. Murphy is creator of the televsion series Nip/Tuck and hence a past master of calculated grotesquerie, and he depicts Dr. Finch's house of horrors - a hot-pink manse with newspapered windows, the world's filthiest kitchen, and an extended family that makes the Addamses look like the Osmonds - with something spproaching relish. For the most part, Murphy is pitching somewhere between American Beauty and The Royal Tenenbaums; indeed, the characters Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow play in Scissors, are in a sense, inversions of their roles in Beauty and Tenenbaums, respectively. Murphy's idea of what constitutes edgy elan ends up laying bare the creative dessication of the so-called indie mode, most spectacularly in a sequence undercutting various characters' howls of either catharsis or agony to the strains of Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat". This is kind of awful, but not inapt, as it's entirely in keeping with the particular smarminess of this project, which redundantly announces itself at the beginning as being based on "the personal memoirs of Augusten Burroughs" and finishes up with a shot of Cross and the real-life Burroughs being sorta just-us-messed-up-guy-pals-y, while a subtitle tells us how teen Augusten went to New York City "and wrote a book." Awww. This then, is the transformative power of art as it stands in 2006. Art, or some acceptable facsimilie therof, can transform your personal pain into cash and fame. (After drafting my notes for this review, I did some research on the lawsuit filed agaisnt Burroughs in 2005 by surviving members of the real-life family depicted as the Finches in his book. One passage from the suit, quoted in a news service clip, really stood out: "As a child and adolescent, Mr. Burroghs' greatest fantasy was for enormous wealth and fame. From a young age he constantly devised outlandish scenarios - frequently with himself as the celebrated center of attention." There's nothing in, or about, this movie to contradict that claim.) So although the cast (which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Joseph Fiennes) comports itself with first-rate craftsmanship and enthusiasm, the results of the filmmakers' labours will inevitably prove most entertaining and emotionally resonant for those who, like Burroughs, don't see much point in forming a worldview that extends far beyond the end of one's nose.