TABLOID

 Directed by Errol Morris

I was but a wee little baby when Joyce McKinney became the queen of the international tabloid cover girls. Depending on which side you choose to believe, McKinney either kidnapped a man she believed to be her fiancé, while he was on a Mormon mission in London, England, and proceeded to rape him several times before he escaped, or she saved her lover from an oppressive cult that was trying to keep the two apart. No matter which side you take, the details that surface while trying to get to the truth in Academy Award winning director, Errol Morris’s latest documentary, TABLOID, are bizarre, fascinating and completely addictive. This is the stuff true tabloid legends are made of.

Morris, the man behind some of the most poignant and insightful war documentaries in film history, is clearly having a lot of fun with himself in TABLOID. McKinney believes she was never really given the chance to tell her full story and Morris gives her free reign to do so here. In fact, most of the film is just talking heads trying to recreate the insanity that ensued from McKinney’s hijinks. McKinney herself is a full on train wreck that always commands attention. It is a constant struggle to figure her out. Is she telling the truth? Or has she just been telling these lies for so long that she actually believes them to be truth? In that regard, she is a victim of the tabloid she herself created in her own head. The world formed their own opinion of McKinney based on what they read in print, while McKinney formed her opinion of herself based on her own warped version of what took place.

TABLOID is an unexpected film experience, one that takes you places you would never expect. It has kinky sex and questionable religious practices; it even has cloning - everything you need for an unforgettable scandal! Subsequently, all that sensationalism also makes for a pretty unforgettable film too.

Black Sheep interviews Antonio Banderas

n 1986, a relatively unknown Spanish director by the name of Pedro Almodóvar, cast a little known young actor named Antonio Banderas, to whom he’d previously given a small part in a previous work, in MATADOR, a controversial indie film about a former bullfighter and a lawyer who got turned on by the act of killing. The successful pairing would repeat itself three more times in three more years but then Banderas would move to Hollywood. It’s been 20 years since this famous twosome last worked together.

Banderas and Almodovar at Cannes 2011

“I was in New York doing a workshop for a musical there and Pedro called me when I was in the car and said, ‘It’s about time.’” Banderas has a smirk on his face as he recalls the story of when he and his old friend decided to make another movie again. “He didn’t even introduce himself. He just called me and the first thing that I heard was ‘It’s about time.’”

Banderas in The Skin I Live In (2011)

This was still a ways back even. Banderas, now 51 years old, was working on a 2003 production of "Nine" on Broadway when he first read, THE SKIN I LIVE IN (LA PIEL QUE HABITO), and even though he knew it would be some time before the two would be able to coordinate their schedules, he was still very careful to give this script its due. “I know that the first time I read a script is the only time that I’m going to be a spectator of my own work,” Banderas says, demonstrating an appreciation for his craft I’m not sure why I wasn’t expecting. “From that moment on, I’m contaminated.”

Banderas in Matador (1986)

Banderas’s choice of words are particularly poignant in this case considering how easily THE SKIN I LIVE IN In gets under your skin. Loosely based on a novel called, "Tarantula", by Thierry Jonquet, Almodovar’s film is as stylish as one would expect but also deeply disturbing, with Banderas anchoring most of that madness as a scientist consumed by a mounting obsession. It plays with time and convention; it has scenes of costumed rape and bloody mutilation; in essence, the film is executed with an eerie and concise control that Banderas finds quite admirable. “In the formal aspects, Pedro has become more minimalist, more austere. He is now more serious, more complex, more profound.”

Banderas watching The Skin I Live In co-star, Elena Ayaya

It isn’t the mainstream he has grown accustomed to in Hollywood but Banderas believes there is a place for all forms of cinema in the world today. “I cannot ask a guy who has been working on the roads under the sun the entire week to go see 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini on the weekend,” he jokes. “What he needs is to take his girlfriend and a big bucket of popcorn to see PUSS IN BOOTS.” As both the aforementioned SHREK spinoff, in which Banderas voices the titular Puss, and the Almodovar picture are playing well to their respective audiences, he has a point.

On the set of The Skin I Live In with Almodovar

“Pedro is a genre unto himself,” Banderas states, after citing Lars Von Trier and Terrence Malick as Almodovar’s most comparable contemporaries. “In one scene, you feel like you are in the altitudes of Shakespeare and three minutes after you are in a soap opera from Mexico and everything in between.” As much of a mind melt that can be at times, especially on set, Banderas would not have it any other way. “Pedro loves to go to different places and explore the more intricate complexities of the human experience. He keeps turning the wheels.”

The Skin I Live In (2011)

Banderas returns to Hollywood next in Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming thriller, HAYWIRE, and comedy in Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s follow-up to LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, entitled HE LOVES ME. His break from the masses to return home to the familiar was a welcome one though. “Going back to Pedro at this particular time in my life is like a Coca-Cola in the desert. It feels good, it feels very good.”

ANONYMOUS

Written by John Orloff

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Starring Rhys Ifans, David Thewlis and Vanessa Redgrave

Roland Emmerich is famous for directing disaster movies, like 2012 and INDEPENDENCE DAY. His latest, ANONYMOUS, is supposed to be a grand departure but it still felt an awful lot like a disaster to me. And what better way to distance yourself from a genre that practically ignores story completely, than to take on a story that attacks the character of one of the most famed storytellers of all time, William Shakespeare. Rhys Ifans stars as Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford and, according to Emmerich, the actual writer of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s an interesting theory but one that Emmerich executes with about as much finesse and subtlety as one would expect from the man who rewrote history in 10,000 B.C. If I were Emmerich, I would have left my name off of this one.

PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES

Written by Kate Nocack and Andrew Rossi

Directed by Andrew Rossi

As you’re reading this review online, you are already hip to the changes in the air. In case you haven't fully noticed, it would appear as though journalism as we’ve known it for all our lives is changing and changing fast. The print newspaper is desperate for advertising to avoid its demise and the definition of journalist itself has been drastically altered in the digital age. Andrew Rossi’s third feature, PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES is a fascinating and engaging look at these issues as dealt with by the world leader in print journalism. Despite its behemoth status, even the NYT is not immune to this decline and Rossi will have you wondering where we all be when, not if, it falls too.

Black Sheep interviews Elizabeth Olsen

What’s in a name? In the festival circuit breakout, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, the heroine has four of them. Meanwhile, the actress who plays her has a name you’ve likely never heard before. With five films being released over the next year and mounting awards season buzz for her first though, you will know the name, Elizabeth Olsen, soon enough and you’ll be hearing it for a long time to follow as well.

“I try not to think about things like momentum and trying to act fast while things are hot,” Olsen tells me, over the phone, after I suggest that things are indeed hot for her right now. “I’m just going to try to continue making choices based on script, character, project, who’s involved, rather than try to jump on some sort of momentum.”

Olsen as Martha, Marcy May or Marlene

Her choices thus far have been pretty sound or at least have the potential to be. Her upcoming projects include working with filmmakers like Bruce Beresford (DRIVING MISS DAISY), Rodrigo Cortes (BURIED) and Josh Radnor (Ted from How I Met your Mother). It is her breakout in MMMM (cool acronym, huh?), with first time feature filmmaker and now good friend, Sean Durkin though, that will serve as her ultimate unveiling.

“Sean wanted to cast an unknown actress for Martha,” Olsen reveals. “He thought it was really important for the audience to see it without any baggage from someone’s prior work because it is such a specific story.” The story in question centers around Martha’s escape from a cult and her difficult integration back into the family she ran from. Her memories and her nightmares become intertwined, making for a unique and haunting film experience. (Read the 5-star Black Sheep review here.)

Olsen with Oscar nominee, John Hawkes

While It is true that people may not know her name, it is a stretch to suggest Olsen comes without baggage. Olsen is the younger sibling of infamous twin sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. And while she may bear a distinct resemblance to them physically, it only takes about five minutes of watching her on screen to realize she is where she is right now based on the sheer magnitude of her talent and not her connections.

This talent is the reason I chose not to discuss her sisters with her during our interview. It is also the reason that the possibility of an Oscar nod is being tossed around for her turn in MMMM. “First off, that’s just like so, it’s so hard for me to wrap my head around it because this is my first movie being released,” Olsen declares, clearly humbled and reluctantly excited by the possibility. “It’s so difficult for me to see that as part of my reality. For me, what I hope comes out of that mere buzz is more people will end up seeing the movie because of that.”

Olsen with co-star, Sarah Paulson

A significant audience would certainly vindicate the five week shoot, in which Olsen only had one day off and two weeks to prepare for, not to mention the dark places she had to visit in her mind to make Martha believable. “I have a pretty active imagination,” Olsen explains when I ask how she was so convincingly able to look like a shell of a human being on screen at times. “I just would put myself in situations, not like Martha’s situation, but more like something I could relate to, that would be more like a parallel. It makes the movie harder to watch because you remember the things that you were trying to figure out for yourself when you played those scenes.”

It may be dark but MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is nothing but a bright beginning for an exciting new actress with great promise. “At the end of the movie, I did feel sad to leave her behind but I also felt relieved,” Olsen confides, showing genuine conflict. Now many months later, there is no question of the pride she derived from the experience. “I truly believe it’s an original and different cinematic experience for modern day film. I don’t think a lot of films are made like this anymore and I hope people just come game to have a whole different type of experience watching a movie.”

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

Written and Directed by Sean Durkin

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy and John Hawkes

Martha: Do you ever have that feeling where you can’t tell if something’s a memory or if it’s something you dreamed?

Instantly uncomfortable, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, is unlike any experience I’ve had at the movies. It is at times both eerily quiet and dishearteningly noisy; it is painfully present but yet also lost in a haze of what is real and what is imagined. It inspires great sympathy and even greater anxiety. Its tension is palpable and its style is distinct and effective. MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a truly accomplished piece of filmmaking from writer-director, Sean Durkin, a first time feature filmmaker. With that in mind, it is just plain shocking across the board.

As skillful as Durkin proves to be, he has help, led by a star-making turn from lead actress, Elizabeth Olsen. Olsen, who incidentally is the younger sibling of Mary-Kate and Ashley (and I’m sure never tires of seeing that repeated in print), is incredible as Martha. We meet her when she is Marcy May, her name changed when she entered a seemingly loving commune. Her new family turns out to be an abusive cult, led by recent Oscar nominee, John Hawkes (WINTER’S BONE), but the warmth they show her is still enough for her to leave behind the family she had always known. Olsen carries so much depth in her composure, her face and general demeanor are cold and lifeless. Still, there is fight inside her that breaks through the surface from time to time, hoping to make its presence more permanent. Olsen makes Martha’s struggle so grave, you feel as though she could slip away from everything at any moment, never to return. She is simply captivating and I could barely breathe as I watched her push back from hell.

Durkin takes this towering performance and drops it in the middle of a world of bewilderment, bouncing back and forth in time and place between Marcy May’s time with her adopted “family” and Martha’s attempt to reintegrate into society with her sister (Sarah Paulson) and her husband (Hugh Dancy). At times, many of them in fact, she cannot distinguish between the two experiences and subsequently, neither can we. Her transition is never simple and both situations place rules on her that she struggles against, leaving it open for debate as to which scenario provides her with real love, if any. MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is as disturbing as you would expect from what I’ve described but it is also just as revelatory.

Black Sheep interviews MICHAEL SHANNON

When I sat down to speak with Michael Shannon about his mesmerizing performance in Jeff Nichols’ equally transfixing film, TAKE SHELTER, Hurricane Irene had just paid a visit to his hometown, Manhattan. The media had made out the event to be potentially catastrophic but the weather came and went without much damage to mention. The media may have had egg on their faces but what if they were right? One day, they very well might be.

In TAKE SHELTER, Shannon plays Curtis, a husband, a father, a construction foreman and a good man. Curtis has a secret though; Curtis is having visions that a storm that could end all storms is coming and he isn’t quite sure how to deal with that. “I don’t think he’s a prophet,” Shannon begins to explain of Curtis. “I don’t think Curtis has necessarily even thought it out to the extent that he thinks the end of the world is coming. I think it’s much more poetic than that.”

That it certainly is. When Curtis dreams, he sees rain of a different colour than we are accustomed to, falling from the sky. Whatever it is that is falling from the sky, it is potent and powerful and it will be the game changer humanity has managed to avoid for centuries now. Rather than presume too specifically what that would will be like though, Nichols chooses to keep things ambiguous, which is what Shannon loves about the film. “The sky is such a beautiful poetic image. People ask why can’t he just run but you can’t run from the sky.”

The supernatural elements of TAKE SHELTER are counterbalanced with Curtis’ family life, which is tested greatly by his mounting paranoia. In yet another stellar supporting turn, Jessica Chastain plays opposite Shannon as his wife. Their marriage is already braving its own storm of sorts, with their daughter facing the possibility of permanent and total hearing loss. It was the scenes with Curtis’ daughter (played by Tova Stewart) that Shannon found most disturbing and difficult. “I have a 3-year old daughter. The thought of some disaster happening to her, it’s not something I can digest. I think that’s what is so terrifying about what’s happening to Curtis is that he’s lost the ability to block it out.”

That’s an understatement. Faced with a potentially apocalyptic storm, Curtis begins expanding an underground shelter in his backyard. Naturally, this tips off his friends and family to his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Complicating matters further, Curtis’ mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was roughly Curtis’ current age. This begs the question, is this madness or is this divine intervention?

“I think what Curtis is experiencing beyond schizophrenia is just feeling unsafe because he doesn’t know who’s running the show,” Shannon clarifies. Curiously enough, Curtis is not a churchgoer, unlike the rest of his family, and yet God has chosen him to warn of what’s coming. Or, he’s totally losing it. It could go either way. “For me, one of the reasons I was interested in doing the film, is that more metaphysical, spiritual component,” says Shannon, a non-churchgoer himself.

It is these kinds of delicate layers that inform both Shannon’s performance, one that will certainly come up come awards season, and the effectiveness of TAKE SHELTER itself. “To me, the inherent question is, if you don’t believe in God or if you’re not religious, then isn’t the world a terrifying place?” Shannon asks, of both his audience and himself. “Because everything is arbitrary and nature is very arbitrary. Nature is not malicious; it’s not like it wants to destroy your house but its there and its undeniable. It’s been that way for centuries. Just ask the dinosaurs.”

Would that I could but we all know how that turned out. If only the dinosaur having premonitions had spoken up.