TORONTO -- The fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri conveys a sense of disorientation and loss, of melancholy guilt mingling with the embrace of freedom. She writes of the immigrant experience in America and the film adaptation of her first novel, "The Namesake", from director Mira Nair honors her themes with a meticulous, understated, empathetic telling of the story of two generations of a Bengali family in America. What no film could probably do is get across Lahiri's rich descriptions of the quotidian that so vividly dramatizes the contrast in cultural ways of thinking and the identity confusions at the heart of her story. Nair's film settles for something closer to the surface that makes its dramatic points well and brings Lahiri's characters to life but misses the emotional intensity.
"The Namesake" is a highly personal film for its three authors -- Nair, Lahiri and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, all women of Indian origin who have lived much of their lives in the West. It is hard to imagine a better cast or production values so the film should find audiences among sophisticated urban adults. Certainly Lahiri's books have created a large fan base around the world for what is a universal story of a family in transition.
The Gangulis from Calcutta settle in New York in the 1970s after a traditional arranged marriage. When the couple has its first child, the task of naming the son falls to the grandmother of Ashima (Tabu). Only her letter never arrives from India and the hospital insists on a name for the birth certificate. So Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) names his son Gogol. This is the name of his favorite Russian author, but reason for that name goes deeper, back to a train wreck he survived as a young man in India.
It is Gogol's story we follow but his story also is that of his family. The first generation assimilates but never quite adjusts to the New World the way Gogol (Kal Penn) and his sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) do. "I feel like I gave birth to strangers!" Ashima declares one day. Not only are accents different but the youngsters' attitudes toward dating and drinking and the American lifestyle must be checked at the front door.
Gogol hates his name. When he enters university, he goes to great bother to legally change his "good name" to Nikhil. This is how everyone he meets from this point on will know him. The name uncertainty and passion to change it, of course, serves as metaphor for greater questions of identity. For Gogol will forever lead a double life: He lives in yet feels estranged from two cultures.
Penn, a fine American Indian actor getting a crack at his first lead in a major film, brings wonderful comic sensibility to the role that makes Gogol a much more companionable and amusing companion than his literary counterpart. But when the moment arrives, where Gogol/Nikhil has to grow up immediately and take over his responsibilities, Penn shows you a man who discovers his Indian-ness. The lightness of his previous scenes gives way to a more somber and perplexed individual. It's a smart performance.
The older actors, Khan and Tabu, who perform mostly in Indian art-house movies, alter their characters too from the novel in subtle ways, suggesting more warmth and love in the parents' lives. Neither actor is Bengali, yet both are more than credible with the accent, language and manner of people from that state.
The movie makes one jolting leap from Gogol as a teen to his job and romance following university graduation with a degree in architecture. It's more than a little bewildering and suggests a drastic postproduction editing decision.
Consequently, Gogol's romances have been reduced to two: with a rich but really nice American named Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a woman who best expresses the social freedoms of the West, and Moushimi (Zuleikha Robinson), a fellow Bengali who demonstrates what can happen when someone living a dual life takes freedoms too far.
Cinematographer Frederick Elmes and production designer Stephanie Carroll don't push the contrasts between New York and Calcutta; letting those locations speak eloquently for themselves. Nitin Sawhney's Indian-spiced music is just right.
THE NAMESAKE
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures/Entertainment Farm/UTV Motion Pictures presents a Mirabai Films & Cine Mosaic production
Credits:
Director: Mira Nair
Screenwriter: Sooni Taraporevala
Based on the novel by: Jhumpa Lahiri
Producers: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Mira Nair
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Ronnie Screwvalal Director of photography: Frederick Elmes
Production designer: Stephanie Carroll
Costume designer: Arjun Bhasin
Co-producers: Lori Keith Douglas, Yukie Kito, Zarina Screwvala
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Editor: Allyson C. Johnson
Cast:
Gogol: Kal Penn
Ashima: Tabu
Ashoke: Irrfan Khan
Maxine: Jacinda Barrett
Moushimi: Zuleikha Robinson
Sonia: Sahira Nair
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
"The Namesake" is a highly personal film for its three authors -- Nair, Lahiri and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, all women of Indian origin who have lived much of their lives in the West. It is hard to imagine a better cast or production values so the film should find audiences among sophisticated urban adults. Certainly Lahiri's books have created a large fan base around the world for what is a universal story of a family in transition.
The Gangulis from Calcutta settle in New York in the 1970s after a traditional arranged marriage. When the couple has its first child, the task of naming the son falls to the grandmother of Ashima (Tabu). Only her letter never arrives from India and the hospital insists on a name for the birth certificate. So Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) names his son Gogol. This is the name of his favorite Russian author, but reason for that name goes deeper, back to a train wreck he survived as a young man in India.
It is Gogol's story we follow but his story also is that of his family. The first generation assimilates but never quite adjusts to the New World the way Gogol (Kal Penn) and his sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) do. "I feel like I gave birth to strangers!" Ashima declares one day. Not only are accents different but the youngsters' attitudes toward dating and drinking and the American lifestyle must be checked at the front door.
Gogol hates his name. When he enters university, he goes to great bother to legally change his "good name" to Nikhil. This is how everyone he meets from this point on will know him. The name uncertainty and passion to change it, of course, serves as metaphor for greater questions of identity. For Gogol will forever lead a double life: He lives in yet feels estranged from two cultures.
Penn, a fine American Indian actor getting a crack at his first lead in a major film, brings wonderful comic sensibility to the role that makes Gogol a much more companionable and amusing companion than his literary counterpart. But when the moment arrives, where Gogol/Nikhil has to grow up immediately and take over his responsibilities, Penn shows you a man who discovers his Indian-ness. The lightness of his previous scenes gives way to a more somber and perplexed individual. It's a smart performance.
The older actors, Khan and Tabu, who perform mostly in Indian art-house movies, alter their characters too from the novel in subtle ways, suggesting more warmth and love in the parents' lives. Neither actor is Bengali, yet both are more than credible with the accent, language and manner of people from that state.
The movie makes one jolting leap from Gogol as a teen to his job and romance following university graduation with a degree in architecture. It's more than a little bewildering and suggests a drastic postproduction editing decision.
Consequently, Gogol's romances have been reduced to two: with a rich but really nice American named Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a woman who best expresses the social freedoms of the West, and Moushimi (Zuleikha Robinson), a fellow Bengali who demonstrates what can happen when someone living a dual life takes freedoms too far.
Cinematographer Frederick Elmes and production designer Stephanie Carroll don't push the contrasts between New York and Calcutta; letting those locations speak eloquently for themselves. Nitin Sawhney's Indian-spiced music is just right.
THE NAMESAKE
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures/Entertainment Farm/UTV Motion Pictures presents a Mirabai Films & Cine Mosaic production
Credits:
Director: Mira Nair
Screenwriter: Sooni Taraporevala
Based on the novel by: Jhumpa Lahiri
Producers: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Mira Nair
Executive producers: Yasushi Kotani, Taizo Son, Ronnie Screwvalal Director of photography: Frederick Elmes
Production designer: Stephanie Carroll
Costume designer: Arjun Bhasin
Co-producers: Lori Keith Douglas, Yukie Kito, Zarina Screwvala
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Editor: Allyson C. Johnson
Cast:
Gogol: Kal Penn
Ashima: Tabu
Ashoke: Irrfan Khan
Maxine: Jacinda Barrett
Moushimi: Zuleikha Robinson
Sonia: Sahira Nair
Running time -- 122 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 9/12/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Not an easy thing, making a film version of a classic 900-page novel, but harder still for a director to make that film her own. Mira Nair accomplishes this feat in Vanity Fair, an energetic new take on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, one flavored with Indian spices. Yes, there is too much plot and far too many characters for a comfortable period movie. The story leaps about in a jerky manner, and the movie portrays its personae in broad brushstrokes rather than with meticulous, painterly precision. No matter. The spirit of that most modern of 19th century heroines, Becky Sharp, remains intact, and Nair's Indian touches make for an intriguing, fresh approach.
Traditionalists will no doubt carp about the Bollywood touches, but does anyone really want to see another anemic, literal translation of Thackeray on the screen? Reviews may be vital for the Focus Features release, however, as getting the film out of the art-house ghetto does represent a marketing challenge. The outlook in ancillary markets looks promising.
Thackeray's novel, which takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, concerns the lives of two starkly contrasted women, who first meet at an academy for young ladies. Film versions inevitably focus on Becky, a model of feisty feminism long before such a term existed and by far the tale's most entertaining and engrossing character.
Writers Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes follow the fortunes of both women but zero in on Becky. As played by Reese Witherspoon, this Becky, despite being a social climber and first-class schemer, is completely sympathetic. Women had little means other than guile and marriage to cross forbidden class barriers in English society of that era. Becky knows what she is doing but clings stubbornly to a moral code, albeit one not appreciated by the majority of that era's society matrons.
Certainly the first scheme of Becky and her best friend, Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), fails to pan out. Amelia wants Becky to snare her rich but dim brother Jos (Tony Maudsley) in matrimony while Amelia herself has her heart set on dashing army captain George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Only George, a callow cad, talks Jos out of marrying the virtually penniless orphan.
Becky gains employment at the ramshackle country home of the Crawley family as governess and eventually marries Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), the second son of Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). When Sir Pitt's spinster sister Matilde (Eileen Atkins), formerly Becky's greatest champion, learns of the marriage, Rawdon, a self-indulgent, habitual gambler, is tossed out of the family.
George does marry Amelia, but only to spite his overbearing father (Jim Broadbent), a wealthy member of the emerging merchant class. George perishes in the battle of Waterloo, which Rawdon survives. Both women are by then pregnant. Amelia has her son, but her father-in-law lets her and the boy languish in dire poverty. Becky, too, has a boy, on whom Rawdon dotes. But as his gambling debts mount, Becky allows herself to acquire a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne). Where in Thackeray's version she become his mistress, in Nair's she is seen as compromised but still innocent.
A broken-hearted Rawdon quits the marriage and Becky drifts to the continent, where several years later her encounter with both Amelia and her brother brings the story to a close. Here again, Nair insists on an alteration of Thackeray. Where the novel leaves Becky a widow, who has ultimately realized her dreams, albeit at great cost, Nair's Becky runs off to India with Jos for a wedding in a lavish sequence shot at the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort in Jodphur.
Nair's Indian-ization of Vanity Fair is not without justification. Indeed Thackeray was born in Calcutta, where his father worked for the East Indian Co. The social world that he describes with such a critical eye in Vanity Fair was one of excesses of riches made possible by the British colonialization and the consequent rise of a middle class. Asian, African and Indian influences were creeping into London society as the Empire encountered cultures and people it barely understood.
Nair's cast is splendid. Witherspoon does justice to the juicy role by giving the part more buoyancy than naughtiness. Hoskins makes delightful comedy out of the idiosyncratic Sir Pitt. Byrne has just the right mix of hauteur and disdain for fellow aristocrats.
Rhys Ifans takes the self-pity out of the lovelorn William Dobbin, whose love for Amelia transcends her many brushoffs. Purefoy manages to project a manly exuberance that disguises a weak, hedonistic character. Atkins is great fun as the cheerfully hypocritical Aunt Mathilda, while Broadbent suggests overweening pride in the morally obtuse Mr. Osborne.
No attempt is made to age the actors; they simply appear in different costumes. Those costumes are especially rich, providing a kind of running commentary on the characters. Set design and photography are strong enough for the film to avoid that TV miniseries look from which so many British period pieces suffer.
VANITY FAIR
Focus Features
A Tempesta Films/Granada Film production
Credits:
Director: Mira Nair
Screenwriters: Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, Julian Fellowes
Based on the novel by: William Makepeace Thackeray
Producers: Janette Day, Donna Gigliotti, Lydia Dean Pilcher
Executive producers: Jonathan Lynn, Howard Cohen, Pippa Cross
Director of photography: Declan Quinn
Production designer: Maria Djurkovic
Music: Mychael Danna
Co-producer: Jane Frazer
Costume designer: Beatrix Aruna Paztor
Editor: Allyson C. Johnson
Cast:
Becky Sharp: Reese Witherspoon
Matilda Crawley: Eileen Atkins
Mr. Osborne: Jim Broadbent
Marquess: Gabriel Byrne
Amelia Sedley: Romola Garai
Sir Pitt Crawley: Bob Hoskins
William Dobbin: Rhys Ifans
Lady Southdown: Geraldine McEwan
Rawdon Crawley: James Purefoy
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time -- 140 minutes...
Traditionalists will no doubt carp about the Bollywood touches, but does anyone really want to see another anemic, literal translation of Thackeray on the screen? Reviews may be vital for the Focus Features release, however, as getting the film out of the art-house ghetto does represent a marketing challenge. The outlook in ancillary markets looks promising.
Thackeray's novel, which takes place during the Napoleonic Wars, concerns the lives of two starkly contrasted women, who first meet at an academy for young ladies. Film versions inevitably focus on Becky, a model of feisty feminism long before such a term existed and by far the tale's most entertaining and engrossing character.
Writers Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes follow the fortunes of both women but zero in on Becky. As played by Reese Witherspoon, this Becky, despite being a social climber and first-class schemer, is completely sympathetic. Women had little means other than guile and marriage to cross forbidden class barriers in English society of that era. Becky knows what she is doing but clings stubbornly to a moral code, albeit one not appreciated by the majority of that era's society matrons.
Certainly the first scheme of Becky and her best friend, Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), fails to pan out. Amelia wants Becky to snare her rich but dim brother Jos (Tony Maudsley) in matrimony while Amelia herself has her heart set on dashing army captain George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Only George, a callow cad, talks Jos out of marrying the virtually penniless orphan.
Becky gains employment at the ramshackle country home of the Crawley family as governess and eventually marries Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), the second son of Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). When Sir Pitt's spinster sister Matilde (Eileen Atkins), formerly Becky's greatest champion, learns of the marriage, Rawdon, a self-indulgent, habitual gambler, is tossed out of the family.
George does marry Amelia, but only to spite his overbearing father (Jim Broadbent), a wealthy member of the emerging merchant class. George perishes in the battle of Waterloo, which Rawdon survives. Both women are by then pregnant. Amelia has her son, but her father-in-law lets her and the boy languish in dire poverty. Becky, too, has a boy, on whom Rawdon dotes. But as his gambling debts mount, Becky allows herself to acquire a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne). Where in Thackeray's version she become his mistress, in Nair's she is seen as compromised but still innocent.
A broken-hearted Rawdon quits the marriage and Becky drifts to the continent, where several years later her encounter with both Amelia and her brother brings the story to a close. Here again, Nair insists on an alteration of Thackeray. Where the novel leaves Becky a widow, who has ultimately realized her dreams, albeit at great cost, Nair's Becky runs off to India with Jos for a wedding in a lavish sequence shot at the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort in Jodphur.
Nair's Indian-ization of Vanity Fair is not without justification. Indeed Thackeray was born in Calcutta, where his father worked for the East Indian Co. The social world that he describes with such a critical eye in Vanity Fair was one of excesses of riches made possible by the British colonialization and the consequent rise of a middle class. Asian, African and Indian influences were creeping into London society as the Empire encountered cultures and people it barely understood.
Nair's cast is splendid. Witherspoon does justice to the juicy role by giving the part more buoyancy than naughtiness. Hoskins makes delightful comedy out of the idiosyncratic Sir Pitt. Byrne has just the right mix of hauteur and disdain for fellow aristocrats.
Rhys Ifans takes the self-pity out of the lovelorn William Dobbin, whose love for Amelia transcends her many brushoffs. Purefoy manages to project a manly exuberance that disguises a weak, hedonistic character. Atkins is great fun as the cheerfully hypocritical Aunt Mathilda, while Broadbent suggests overweening pride in the morally obtuse Mr. Osborne.
No attempt is made to age the actors; they simply appear in different costumes. Those costumes are especially rich, providing a kind of running commentary on the characters. Set design and photography are strong enough for the film to avoid that TV miniseries look from which so many British period pieces suffer.
VANITY FAIR
Focus Features
A Tempesta Films/Granada Film production
Credits:
Director: Mira Nair
Screenwriters: Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, Julian Fellowes
Based on the novel by: William Makepeace Thackeray
Producers: Janette Day, Donna Gigliotti, Lydia Dean Pilcher
Executive producers: Jonathan Lynn, Howard Cohen, Pippa Cross
Director of photography: Declan Quinn
Production designer: Maria Djurkovic
Music: Mychael Danna
Co-producer: Jane Frazer
Costume designer: Beatrix Aruna Paztor
Editor: Allyson C. Johnson
Cast:
Becky Sharp: Reese Witherspoon
Matilda Crawley: Eileen Atkins
Mr. Osborne: Jim Broadbent
Marquess: Gabriel Byrne
Amelia Sedley: Romola Garai
Sir Pitt Crawley: Bob Hoskins
William Dobbin: Rhys Ifans
Lady Southdown: Geraldine McEwan
Rawdon Crawley: James Purefoy
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time -- 140 minutes...
- 9/29/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- In "Iron Jawed Angels", Katja von Garnier, who in 1997 directed one of Germany's biggest hits, "Bandits", brings her dynamic, rock 'n' roll style to a subject that is not only American but historical to boot. The story ranges from 1912 to 1920 when a group of fiercely dedicated young suffragettes band together to cajole and embarrass a supposedly democratic country into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. It is bracing to see a period drama told with such a contemporary style that includes a highly mobile camera, vivid colors and techniques such as a "speed ramp," where the camera speed changes during the same shot.
While it's disappointing that, as the suffrage struggle grows more protracted, the film gradually becomes more conventional, that initial charge will undoubtedly pull younger viewers into the HBO film, which premiered here at Sundance. Certainly the film could not be timelier as it deals with the problem of politically confronting a wartime president, who is not above playing the "traitor" card and more than willing to incarcerate American citizens on dubious charges, then deny them access to legal counsel.
At the film's focal point are two real-life women. Hilary Swank plays the cerebral and charismatic Alice Paul while Frances O'Connor is the fashionable, good-natured Lucy Burns. They team up to head the Washington D.C. committee for the old-line National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). However, their inflammatory methods not only rub the new president, Woodrow Wilson (Ben Gunton), the wrong way, this confrontational approach ruffles the feathers of staid and conservative NAWSA leaders Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston in a performance rich in appalling stiffness) and Anna Howard Shaw (Lois Smith).
Nevertheless, the energetic pair attracts many to their cause including labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond), who literally dies of exhaustion campaigning for the amendment, and Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey), a political cartoonist smitten by Paul's fiery temperament but unable to carve out a role for himself in a life so consumed with a single political issue.
Perhaps the most intriguing and revealing characters are a Senator (Joseph Adams) and his immaculate wife (Molly Parker), who fall out over her suffrage activities. That a man once could easily and so completely control the life, finances, children and well being of a woman he claims to love will no doubt be an eye-opener to those who take women's rights for granted today.
With so many characters and issues to detail, the movie does take convenient shortcuts. President Wilson, a complicated and crucial figure in American history, gets reduced to a cartoon here. Nor is anyone who opposes our plucky heroines given any chance to rise above the two-dimensional. But this is no great loss since their cause was an ignoble one.
Working with a script credited to several writers, von Garnier has created about as lively a rendering of the period and issues as possible. It is extremely well acted, features terrific production design, costumes and cinematography and contains a directorial control over theme and style that could, if the German filmmaker so chooses, lead to an interesting career in the U.S
IRON JAWED ANGELS
HBO Films
Spring Creek Productions
Credits: Director: Katja von Garnier; Writers: Sally Robinson, Eugenia Bostwick Singer, Raymond Singer, Jennifer Friedes; Story by: Jennifer Friedes; Producers: Laura McCorkindale, Dennis Pinckley, Jim Bigwood; Executive producers: Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, Robin Forman, Lydia Dean Pilcher; Director of photography: Robbie Greenberg; Production designer: Norris Spencer; Music: Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil; Costume designer: Caroline Harris; Editor: Hans Funck.
Cast: Alice Paul: Hilary Swank; Lucy Burns: Frances O'Connor; Inez Mullholland: Julia Ormond; Carrie Chapman Catt: Anjelica Huston; Ben Weissman: Patrick Dempsey.
No MPAA rating, running time 123 minutes.
PARK CITY -- In "Iron Jawed Angels", Katja von Garnier, who in 1997 directed one of Germany's biggest hits, "Bandits", brings her dynamic, rock 'n' roll style to a subject that is not only American but historical to boot. The story ranges from 1912 to 1920 when a group of fiercely dedicated young suffragettes band together to cajole and embarrass a supposedly democratic country into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. It is bracing to see a period drama told with such a contemporary style that includes a highly mobile camera, vivid colors and techniques such as a "speed ramp," where the camera speed changes during the same shot.
While it's disappointing that, as the suffrage struggle grows more protracted, the film gradually becomes more conventional, that initial charge will undoubtedly pull younger viewers into the HBO film, which premiered here at Sundance. Certainly the film could not be timelier as it deals with the problem of politically confronting a wartime president, who is not above playing the "traitor" card and more than willing to incarcerate American citizens on dubious charges, then deny them access to legal counsel.
At the film's focal point are two real-life women. Hilary Swank plays the cerebral and charismatic Alice Paul while Frances O'Connor is the fashionable, good-natured Lucy Burns. They team up to head the Washington D.C. committee for the old-line National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). However, their inflammatory methods not only rub the new president, Woodrow Wilson (Ben Gunton), the wrong way, this confrontational approach ruffles the feathers of staid and conservative NAWSA leaders Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston in a performance rich in appalling stiffness) and Anna Howard Shaw (Lois Smith).
Nevertheless, the energetic pair attracts many to their cause including labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond), who literally dies of exhaustion campaigning for the amendment, and Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey), a political cartoonist smitten by Paul's fiery temperament but unable to carve out a role for himself in a life so consumed with a single political issue.
Perhaps the most intriguing and revealing characters are a Senator (Joseph Adams) and his immaculate wife (Molly Parker), who fall out over her suffrage activities. That a man once could easily and so completely control the life, finances, children and well being of a woman he claims to love will no doubt be an eye-opener to those who take women's rights for granted today.
With so many characters and issues to detail, the movie does take convenient shortcuts. President Wilson, a complicated and crucial figure in American history, gets reduced to a cartoon here. Nor is anyone who opposes our plucky heroines given any chance to rise above the two-dimensional. But this is no great loss since their cause was an ignoble one.
Working with a script credited to several writers, von Garnier has created about as lively a rendering of the period and issues as possible. It is extremely well acted, features terrific production design, costumes and cinematography and contains a directorial control over theme and style that could, if the German filmmaker so chooses, lead to an interesting career in the U.S
IRON JAWED ANGELS
HBO Films
Spring Creek Productions
Credits: Director: Katja von Garnier; Writers: Sally Robinson, Eugenia Bostwick Singer, Raymond Singer, Jennifer Friedes; Story by: Jennifer Friedes; Producers: Laura McCorkindale, Dennis Pinckley, Jim Bigwood; Executive producers: Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, Robin Forman, Lydia Dean Pilcher; Director of photography: Robbie Greenberg; Production designer: Norris Spencer; Music: Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil; Costume designer: Caroline Harris; Editor: Hans Funck.
Cast: Alice Paul: Hilary Swank; Lucy Burns: Frances O'Connor; Inez Mullholland: Julia Ormond; Carrie Chapman Catt: Anjelica Huston; Ben Weissman: Patrick Dempsey.
No MPAA rating, running time 123 minutes.
NEW YORK -- Veteran producer David Picker has been elected to chair the Producers Guild of America East, with Lydia Dean Pilcher and Harvey Wilson named as the organization's vice chairs. Picker replaces Nancy Goldman, who will continue to serve on the guild's board of governors. Robin Berla and Steven Rosenbaum have been named to represent the organization's "members-at-large." Under Goldman's leadership, PGAE membership tripled and now includes 300 active members. Goldman also developed various programs and benefits to complement those offered by the Los Angeles-based PGA office.
- 6/15/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- In "Iron Jawed Angels", Katja von Garnier, who in 1997 directed one of Germany's biggest hits, "Bandits", brings her dynamic, rock 'n' roll style to a subject that is not only American but historical to boot. The story ranges from 1912 to 1920 when a group of fiercely dedicated young suffragettes band together to cajole and embarrass a supposedly democratic country into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. It is bracing to see a period drama told with such a contemporary style that includes a highly mobile camera, vivid colors and techniques such as a "speed ramp," where the camera speed changes during the same shot.
While it's disappointing that, as the suffrage struggle grows more protracted, the film gradually becomes more conventional, that initial charge will undoubtedly pull younger viewers into the HBO film, which premiered here at Sundance. Certainly the film could not be timelier as it deals with the problem of politically confronting a wartime president, who is not above playing the "traitor" card and more than willing to incarcerate American citizens on dubious charges, then deny them access to legal counsel.
At the film's focal point are two real-life women. Hilary Swank plays the cerebral and charismatic Alice Paul while Frances O'Connor is the fashionable, good-natured Lucy Burns. They team up to head the Washington D.C. committee for the old-line National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). However, their inflammatory methods not only rub the new president, Woodrow Wilson (Ben Gunton), the wrong way, this confrontational approach ruffles the feathers of staid and conservative NAWSA leaders Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston in a performance rich in appalling stiffness) and Anna Howard Shaw (Lois Smith).
Nevertheless, the energetic pair attracts many to their cause including labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond), who literally dies of exhaustion campaigning for the amendment, and Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey), a political cartoonist smitten by Paul's fiery temperament but unable to carve out a role for himself in a life so consumed with a single political issue.
Perhaps the most intriguing and revealing characters are a Senator (Joseph Adams) and his immaculate wife (Molly Parker), who fall out over her suffrage activities. That a man once could easily and so completely control the life, finances, children and well being of a woman he claims to love will no doubt be an eye-opener to those who take women's rights for granted today.
With so many characters and issues to detail, the movie does take convenient shortcuts. President Wilson, a complicated and crucial figure in American history, gets reduced to a cartoon here. Nor is anyone who opposes our plucky heroines given any chance to rise above the two-dimensional. But this is no great loss since their cause was an ignoble one.
Working with a script credited to several writers, von Garnier has created about as lively a rendering of the period and issues as possible. It is extremely well acted, features terrific production design, costumes and cinematography and contains a directorial control over theme and style that could, if the German filmmaker so chooses, lead to an interesting career in the U.S
IRON JAWED ANGELS
HBO Films
Spring Creek Productions
Credits: Director: Katja von Garnier; Writers: Sally Robinson, Eugenia Bostwick Singer, Raymond Singer, Jennifer Friedes; Story by: Jennifer Friedes; Producers: Laura McCorkindale, Dennis Pinckley, Jim Bigwood; Executive producers: Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, Robin Forman, Lydia Dean Pilcher; Director of photography: Robbie Greenberg; Production designer: Norris Spencer; Music: Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil; Costume designer: Caroline Harris; Editor: Hans Funck.
Cast: Alice Paul: Hilary Swank; Lucy Burns: Frances O'Connor; Inez Mullholland: Julia Ormond; Carrie Chapman Catt: Anjelica Huston; Ben Weissman: Patrick Dempsey.
No MPAA rating, running time 123 minutes.
PARK CITY -- In "Iron Jawed Angels", Katja von Garnier, who in 1997 directed one of Germany's biggest hits, "Bandits", brings her dynamic, rock 'n' roll style to a subject that is not only American but historical to boot. The story ranges from 1912 to 1920 when a group of fiercely dedicated young suffragettes band together to cajole and embarrass a supposedly democratic country into adapting a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. It is bracing to see a period drama told with such a contemporary style that includes a highly mobile camera, vivid colors and techniques such as a "speed ramp," where the camera speed changes during the same shot.
While it's disappointing that, as the suffrage struggle grows more protracted, the film gradually becomes more conventional, that initial charge will undoubtedly pull younger viewers into the HBO film, which premiered here at Sundance. Certainly the film could not be timelier as it deals with the problem of politically confronting a wartime president, who is not above playing the "traitor" card and more than willing to incarcerate American citizens on dubious charges, then deny them access to legal counsel.
At the film's focal point are two real-life women. Hilary Swank plays the cerebral and charismatic Alice Paul while Frances O'Connor is the fashionable, good-natured Lucy Burns. They team up to head the Washington D.C. committee for the old-line National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). However, their inflammatory methods not only rub the new president, Woodrow Wilson (Ben Gunton), the wrong way, this confrontational approach ruffles the feathers of staid and conservative NAWSA leaders Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston in a performance rich in appalling stiffness) and Anna Howard Shaw (Lois Smith).
Nevertheless, the energetic pair attracts many to their cause including labor lawyer Inez Mulholland (Julia Ormond), who literally dies of exhaustion campaigning for the amendment, and Ben Weissman (Patrick Dempsey), a political cartoonist smitten by Paul's fiery temperament but unable to carve out a role for himself in a life so consumed with a single political issue.
Perhaps the most intriguing and revealing characters are a Senator (Joseph Adams) and his immaculate wife (Molly Parker), who fall out over her suffrage activities. That a man once could easily and so completely control the life, finances, children and well being of a woman he claims to love will no doubt be an eye-opener to those who take women's rights for granted today.
With so many characters and issues to detail, the movie does take convenient shortcuts. President Wilson, a complicated and crucial figure in American history, gets reduced to a cartoon here. Nor is anyone who opposes our plucky heroines given any chance to rise above the two-dimensional. But this is no great loss since their cause was an ignoble one.
Working with a script credited to several writers, von Garnier has created about as lively a rendering of the period and issues as possible. It is extremely well acted, features terrific production design, costumes and cinematography and contains a directorial control over theme and style that could, if the German filmmaker so chooses, lead to an interesting career in the U.S
IRON JAWED ANGELS
HBO Films
Spring Creek Productions
Credits: Director: Katja von Garnier; Writers: Sally Robinson, Eugenia Bostwick Singer, Raymond Singer, Jennifer Friedes; Story by: Jennifer Friedes; Producers: Laura McCorkindale, Dennis Pinckley, Jim Bigwood; Executive producers: Paula Weinstein, Len Amato, Robin Forman, Lydia Dean Pilcher; Director of photography: Robbie Greenberg; Production designer: Norris Spencer; Music: Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil; Costume designer: Caroline Harris; Editor: Hans Funck.
Cast: Alice Paul: Hilary Swank; Lucy Burns: Frances O'Connor; Inez Mullholland: Julia Ormond; Carrie Chapman Catt: Anjelica Huston; Ben Weissman: Patrick Dempsey.
No MPAA rating, running time 123 minutes.
- 1/19/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Billy Crudup gives a career performance as a young man who disdains convention in "Jesus' Son", the first feature in seven years by gifted young filmmaker Alison Maclean ("Crush").
Melancholy and serene, funny and heartbreaking, this is a tough, deadly accurate portrait of the hedonism and freedom experienced by a young kid avidly searching out his own thrills and excitement during the last burst of the counterculture in the early 1970s.
There isn't much of a story, but the New Zealand-born Maclean deftly captures a specific place and time. There is a clear passion and intelligence and a strong directing presence at work. This Lions Gate production, in collaboration with Alliance Atlantis, has sparked widespread critical support and strong word-of-mouth at the Venice and Telluride film festivals.
With its strong cast and favorable reviews, "Jesus' Son" should stand out among specialized works, even in the crowded late-fall release schedule. Though much of the film is downbeat, the feeling of optimism and renewal offered by its conclusion should resonate with its audience.
Adapted from the highly regarded short story collection of Denis Johnson, "Jesus' Son" draws on the same hip, off-color humor and powerful visual strategies of Gus Van Sant's 1989 "Drugstore Cowboy". It offers the same edgy allure of the excitement and depravity of the outsider drug culture to the alienated outsiders growing up between the disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate. Crudup plays a quietly desperate loser known by his associates by a word that can't be printed here, though is shortened to FH.
Maclean plays around with the form, breaking the narrative, using intertitles to create an eerie sense of anticipation and tension. She skips around like a needle on a vinyl record, creating a mood and feeling of surprise throughout. The first half unfolds in the Iowa cornfields, most of the action set in a farmhouse where FH and his derelict friends get stoned and hang out.
But there is also the possibility of unexpected, random violence -- a gunshot, a appallingly funny knife wound to the eye -- that continually throws off expectations. FH captures the fancy of a beautiful, rebellious free spirit named Michelle (excellent young actress Samantha Morton). Their scenes have a poignancy and depth in the playful physical interaction and their growing dependency on each other. Their quest is an extended adventure -- living in hotels, getting hooked on heroin -- until tragedy ensues.
Morton, the best thing in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown", is going to be around for a long time. She has a face that registers a range of emotions. Her work is quiet though bold and daring without calling undue attention. Crudup also delivers on the promise and the high expectations that have surrounded him. His performance is concentrated and intense, with an alert, sharp feeling for FH's emotional conflict.
The last part takes place in Phoenix, where the brighter, sun-drenched atmosphere leads to FH's slow realization of responsibility and concern for others, which Maclean conveys through his growing obsession with a beautiful young Amish woman that has a stunning, poetic resolution.
"Jesus' Son" deals with serious themes: addiction, death, resurrection. Maclean demonstrates a fluid and graceful visual style, drawing on the brooding landscapes, that mirrors the interior lives of the primary characters. The film also boasts a wonderful secondary cast, headed by Holly Hunter as a hard-luck woman whose husbands and lovers have all met horrible fates and Denis Leary as a sad, desperate, easygoing criminal whose life of diminished expectations reaches an appropriately sad conclusion.
JESUS' SON
Lions Gate
Alliance Atlantis presents
an Alison Maclean film
Credits: Producer: Lydia Dean Pilcher; Producer-screenwriters: Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia; Director: Alison Maclean; Screenwriter: Oren Moverman; Director of photography: Adam Kimmel; Editor: Stuart Levy; Production designer: David Doernberg; Music: Randall Poster. Cast: FH: Billy Crudup; Michelle: Samantha Morton. With: Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Will Patton, Greg Germann. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 111 minutes.
Melancholy and serene, funny and heartbreaking, this is a tough, deadly accurate portrait of the hedonism and freedom experienced by a young kid avidly searching out his own thrills and excitement during the last burst of the counterculture in the early 1970s.
There isn't much of a story, but the New Zealand-born Maclean deftly captures a specific place and time. There is a clear passion and intelligence and a strong directing presence at work. This Lions Gate production, in collaboration with Alliance Atlantis, has sparked widespread critical support and strong word-of-mouth at the Venice and Telluride film festivals.
With its strong cast and favorable reviews, "Jesus' Son" should stand out among specialized works, even in the crowded late-fall release schedule. Though much of the film is downbeat, the feeling of optimism and renewal offered by its conclusion should resonate with its audience.
Adapted from the highly regarded short story collection of Denis Johnson, "Jesus' Son" draws on the same hip, off-color humor and powerful visual strategies of Gus Van Sant's 1989 "Drugstore Cowboy". It offers the same edgy allure of the excitement and depravity of the outsider drug culture to the alienated outsiders growing up between the disillusionment of Vietnam and Watergate. Crudup plays a quietly desperate loser known by his associates by a word that can't be printed here, though is shortened to FH.
Maclean plays around with the form, breaking the narrative, using intertitles to create an eerie sense of anticipation and tension. She skips around like a needle on a vinyl record, creating a mood and feeling of surprise throughout. The first half unfolds in the Iowa cornfields, most of the action set in a farmhouse where FH and his derelict friends get stoned and hang out.
But there is also the possibility of unexpected, random violence -- a gunshot, a appallingly funny knife wound to the eye -- that continually throws off expectations. FH captures the fancy of a beautiful, rebellious free spirit named Michelle (excellent young actress Samantha Morton). Their scenes have a poignancy and depth in the playful physical interaction and their growing dependency on each other. Their quest is an extended adventure -- living in hotels, getting hooked on heroin -- until tragedy ensues.
Morton, the best thing in Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown", is going to be around for a long time. She has a face that registers a range of emotions. Her work is quiet though bold and daring without calling undue attention. Crudup also delivers on the promise and the high expectations that have surrounded him. His performance is concentrated and intense, with an alert, sharp feeling for FH's emotional conflict.
The last part takes place in Phoenix, where the brighter, sun-drenched atmosphere leads to FH's slow realization of responsibility and concern for others, which Maclean conveys through his growing obsession with a beautiful young Amish woman that has a stunning, poetic resolution.
"Jesus' Son" deals with serious themes: addiction, death, resurrection. Maclean demonstrates a fluid and graceful visual style, drawing on the brooding landscapes, that mirrors the interior lives of the primary characters. The film also boasts a wonderful secondary cast, headed by Holly Hunter as a hard-luck woman whose husbands and lovers have all met horrible fates and Denis Leary as a sad, desperate, easygoing criminal whose life of diminished expectations reaches an appropriately sad conclusion.
JESUS' SON
Lions Gate
Alliance Atlantis presents
an Alison Maclean film
Credits: Producer: Lydia Dean Pilcher; Producer-screenwriters: Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia; Director: Alison Maclean; Screenwriter: Oren Moverman; Director of photography: Adam Kimmel; Editor: Stuart Levy; Production designer: David Doernberg; Music: Randall Poster. Cast: FH: Billy Crudup; Michelle: Samantha Morton. With: Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Will Patton, Greg Germann. No MPAA rating. Color/stereo. Running time -- 111 minutes.
- 9/14/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
After the bold and successful death-row drama "Dead Man Walking", writer-director Tim Robbins goes back to his provocative theatrical roots and commands a star-studded "actors gang" in a provocative, searingly intelligent and uniquely entertaining film. A strong buzz for the main competition entry started with pre-festival screenings and "Cradle Will Rock" might just come up a winner when "the final wind blows" here on Sunday.
Loosely based on real events and containing only bits and pieces of Orson Welles' final screenplay published in 1994, "Cradle" is one of the most radical movies ever to be released under the Disney banner (with Spike Lee's latest still to come in the Director's Fortnight) and presents a marketing challenge if it's going to achieve more than just modest success at the box office when it's released later this year.
Extremely democratic in its allotment of screen time, "Cradle" has 13 major characters, about half of which are based on real people. The title refers to Marxist composer Marc Blitzstein's 1936 Workers Progress Administration-sponsored, Federal Theatre Project musical that became a victim of early anti-Communism crackdowns by reactionary politicians in Washington. Several of the songs and some of the scenes are performed in the course of the movie proving this now obscure work still has an infectiously subversive but not doggedly revolutionary spirit.
In Robbins' lively take on the times and characters, Blitzstein (Hank Azaria) is haunted by the specter of Bertolt Brecht as he creates his anthemic but gritty fable of workers and ordinary people joining together to get the attention of the ruling class. Eventually brought together with 22-year-old Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) and John Houseman (Cary Elwes), Blitzstein is the passionate author of what amounts to a job to the likes of anti-fascist Italian actor Aldo Silvano (John Turturro) and vagabond Olive Stanton (Emily Watson).
But the film is much more than a recounting of the famous first performance in June 1937 of Blitzstein's "Cradle" that involved changing theaters at the last minute, with actors and crew walking 20 blocks without the many props and some of the cast, who by the actors' union rules were forbidden to perform the play at the new location. Suffice to say, that in the climax the magic of this moment is relived but Robbins achieves an even more compelling result by including a wide range of subplots.
The disastrous collision of art and politics, of truth and ideology, infuses much of the film, but there's a zany spin on just about everything and everyone. Indeed, within this film is a personal competition by the superb cast that is arguably won by Bill Murray playing a fading vaudeville ventriloquist, who falls in love with an anti-Communist Federal Theater employee (Joan Cusack) with an amazing scene where, through his dummy, he sings a surprising tune.
Pressing the argument that the Federal Theater Project is a landmark era in making new and inventive stage works more accessible, overworked Hallie Flanagan (Cherry Jones) has to fight to keep it alive against a firing squad of smug senators. Another kind of advocate and purveyor of priceless masterpieces is a one-time Mussolini mistress (Susan Sarandon) who tries to raise funds for Italy's war preparations from a wealthy industrialist Philip Baker Hall). She also introduces Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) to another of her old comrades Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades).
Robbins goes all the way with the Rockefeller-Rivera conflict, which centers on a mural the Mexican artist creates for the tycoon's office building lobby. The pair embark on a spirited debate about the visionary work, which is reproduced from the photographs taken of the original, and then smashed to bits as it was in real life.
This direct example of conservative capitalists sharing the same intolerant attitudes as the book-burning dictators soon to threaten the world is repetitive given the saga of Blitzstein's creation. But for those who recall the mid-1980s productions of the Robbins-co-founded Actors Gang, this is a widescreen, $35 million-version of those freewheeling, usually wickedly funny stage works in which one was enchantingly unsure what would happen next.
And in his bid to make every scene a "wonderland tour," Robbins succeeds triumphantly with just a few minor quibbles. Macfadyen overdoes the wild mannerisms of a Welles already intoxicated frequently with more than his dawning sense of personal destiny. Plus, the actor's just too small to carry off the illusion. The pacing is also sometimes problematic, with scenes fragmented and sequences interwoven throughout the film. Occasionally one expects a point has been made or it's time to move on only to have the movie seemingly backtrack.
CRADLE WILL ROCK
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Touchstone Pictures
A Havoc production
Writer-director:Tim Robbins
Producers:Jon Kilik, Lydia Dean Pilcher
Director of photography:Jean Yves Escoffier
Production designer:Richard Hoover
Music:David Robbins
Costume designer:Ruth Myers
Color/stereo
Cast:
Marc Blitzstein:Hank Azaria
Olive Stanton:Emily Watson
Hazel Huffman:Joan Cusack
Margherita Sarfatti:Susan Sarandon
Aldo Silvano:John Turturro
Orson Welles:Angus Macfadyen
Tommy Crickshaw:Bill Murray
Diego Rivera:Ruben Blades
Hallie Flanagan:Cherry Jones
Nelson Rockefeller:John Cusack
John Houseman:Cary Elwes
Gray Mathers:Philip Baker Hall
Countess LaGrange:Vanessa Redgrave
Running time -- 133 minutes...
Loosely based on real events and containing only bits and pieces of Orson Welles' final screenplay published in 1994, "Cradle" is one of the most radical movies ever to be released under the Disney banner (with Spike Lee's latest still to come in the Director's Fortnight) and presents a marketing challenge if it's going to achieve more than just modest success at the box office when it's released later this year.
Extremely democratic in its allotment of screen time, "Cradle" has 13 major characters, about half of which are based on real people. The title refers to Marxist composer Marc Blitzstein's 1936 Workers Progress Administration-sponsored, Federal Theatre Project musical that became a victim of early anti-Communism crackdowns by reactionary politicians in Washington. Several of the songs and some of the scenes are performed in the course of the movie proving this now obscure work still has an infectiously subversive but not doggedly revolutionary spirit.
In Robbins' lively take on the times and characters, Blitzstein (Hank Azaria) is haunted by the specter of Bertolt Brecht as he creates his anthemic but gritty fable of workers and ordinary people joining together to get the attention of the ruling class. Eventually brought together with 22-year-old Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) and John Houseman (Cary Elwes), Blitzstein is the passionate author of what amounts to a job to the likes of anti-fascist Italian actor Aldo Silvano (John Turturro) and vagabond Olive Stanton (Emily Watson).
But the film is much more than a recounting of the famous first performance in June 1937 of Blitzstein's "Cradle" that involved changing theaters at the last minute, with actors and crew walking 20 blocks without the many props and some of the cast, who by the actors' union rules were forbidden to perform the play at the new location. Suffice to say, that in the climax the magic of this moment is relived but Robbins achieves an even more compelling result by including a wide range of subplots.
The disastrous collision of art and politics, of truth and ideology, infuses much of the film, but there's a zany spin on just about everything and everyone. Indeed, within this film is a personal competition by the superb cast that is arguably won by Bill Murray playing a fading vaudeville ventriloquist, who falls in love with an anti-Communist Federal Theater employee (Joan Cusack) with an amazing scene where, through his dummy, he sings a surprising tune.
Pressing the argument that the Federal Theater Project is a landmark era in making new and inventive stage works more accessible, overworked Hallie Flanagan (Cherry Jones) has to fight to keep it alive against a firing squad of smug senators. Another kind of advocate and purveyor of priceless masterpieces is a one-time Mussolini mistress (Susan Sarandon) who tries to raise funds for Italy's war preparations from a wealthy industrialist Philip Baker Hall). She also introduces Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) to another of her old comrades Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades).
Robbins goes all the way with the Rockefeller-Rivera conflict, which centers on a mural the Mexican artist creates for the tycoon's office building lobby. The pair embark on a spirited debate about the visionary work, which is reproduced from the photographs taken of the original, and then smashed to bits as it was in real life.
This direct example of conservative capitalists sharing the same intolerant attitudes as the book-burning dictators soon to threaten the world is repetitive given the saga of Blitzstein's creation. But for those who recall the mid-1980s productions of the Robbins-co-founded Actors Gang, this is a widescreen, $35 million-version of those freewheeling, usually wickedly funny stage works in which one was enchantingly unsure what would happen next.
And in his bid to make every scene a "wonderland tour," Robbins succeeds triumphantly with just a few minor quibbles. Macfadyen overdoes the wild mannerisms of a Welles already intoxicated frequently with more than his dawning sense of personal destiny. Plus, the actor's just too small to carry off the illusion. The pacing is also sometimes problematic, with scenes fragmented and sequences interwoven throughout the film. Occasionally one expects a point has been made or it's time to move on only to have the movie seemingly backtrack.
CRADLE WILL ROCK
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Touchstone Pictures
A Havoc production
Writer-director:Tim Robbins
Producers:Jon Kilik, Lydia Dean Pilcher
Director of photography:Jean Yves Escoffier
Production designer:Richard Hoover
Music:David Robbins
Costume designer:Ruth Myers
Color/stereo
Cast:
Marc Blitzstein:Hank Azaria
Olive Stanton:Emily Watson
Hazel Huffman:Joan Cusack
Margherita Sarfatti:Susan Sarandon
Aldo Silvano:John Turturro
Orson Welles:Angus Macfadyen
Tommy Crickshaw:Bill Murray
Diego Rivera:Ruben Blades
Hallie Flanagan:Cherry Jones
Nelson Rockefeller:John Cusack
John Houseman:Cary Elwes
Gray Mathers:Philip Baker Hall
Countess LaGrange:Vanessa Redgrave
Running time -- 133 minutes...
- 5/19/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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