Review 3

Ellie Parker (2005)

Film Review

Movie Info

Taglines: What happens when you become the person you pretend to be?

Genres: Comedy

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language, some sexuality and drug use

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 14 July 2006 (UK) See more »

Also Known As: Elli Parker – Schauspielerin

Director: Scott Coffey

 Writer: Scott Coffey

Produced by      Scott Coffey, Naomi Watts

Stars: Naomi Watts, Jennifer Syme and Greg Freitas

A hilarious comic portrait of a young woman's struggle for integrity, happiness and a Hollywood acting career.

Plot

Ellie Parker is a semi-autobiographical story of an Australian actress struggling to make it in Hollywood. Ellie is young enough to still go to auditions back and forth across L.A., changing wardrobes and slapping on makeup en route, but just old enough that the future feels "more like a threat than a promise". She lives with her vacuous musician boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino), who leaves her just about as dissatisfied as any other part of her life, and has a loose definition of the word "fidelity". Helping make sense of their surreal and humiliating Hollywood existence is her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg), another out-of-work actress trying her hand at design, who attends acting classes with Ellie to stay sharp. When Ellie gets into a fender bender with a guy who claims he's a cinematographer (Scott Coffey), her perspective on her work and the dating world starts to change. Chevy Chase also makes an appearance in this series of Hollywood vignettes, playing Ellie's agent.

Cast

Naomi Watts                     Ellie Parker

                Jennifer Syme Casting Chick

                Greg Freitas                        Rick Saul (as Gregory Frietas)

                Gaye Pope                          Leslie Towne

                Blair Mastbaum                Smash Jackson

                Jessica Vogl                        Trixie

                Box Office

Opening Weekend: $10,299 (USA) (11 November 2005) (6 Screens)

Gross: $34,410 (USA)

Origins

Watts, Coffey, and Pellegrino all worked together on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, where Watts had her breakout performance, and Ellie Parker grew out of the friendship forged between Watts and director/screenwriter Coffey. It was shot on digital video over the course of five years, having begun its life as a series of shorts featuring Watts' character.

Soundtracks

 "Heart of Glass"

 Composed by Deborah Harry and Chris Stein

Performed by Blondie

General impression and conclusion

The hunt for a good job can be tiring, time consuming, and occasionally degrading, which is why Ellie Parker, an actress who wants to make it big in Tinseltown, is a beacon who reflects the hopes and dreams of every person who has the needs to Do Something. When we first see her, she is bright, hopeful, aggressive, albeit a little desperate in her attempts to nab that role, going from audition to audition to audition and nary a successful call-back in sight. Her life seems to be hovering on top of a tightrope where the only way is ahead even when the stakes get higher and her predicaments get worse at every turn.

That is, until one after another, things come unraveled: therapy seems to be leading her no place fast, acting class brings her down, her boyfriend cheats on her with her own casting agent, she loses a part to a younger actress who has a Name instead of a name, and she crashes into a cinematographer who after they finally sleep together decides to give her an unwelcome, demoralizing surprise. Her decision to leave the industry comes not as a shock but as a predictability that is numbing because once a person's spirit has been broken, it's a sign that maybe this is not what they should be doing even though they may have the talent to do so. That is, considering she really wants to leave the industry.

The use of digital media gives ELLIE PARKER a documentary-like feel -- Naomi Watts's performance is too real to be acting, and her Ellie is a woman caught under a grey cloud of bad luck who comes across as fiercely talented, at times mannered, but eager to please to get a part. As a woman she has enormous competition from other women and the one scene where she loses a part to a Name starlet is a harsh punch to the gut. Even more so, when her friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg) gets her own job on a cop show and tells her, on top of that, if it wouldn't kill her to take the trash out as she preens and poses in a policewoman's outfit. It's a devastating blow, and Scott Coffey's camera is unflinching in capturing Ellie's agony.

It's a small film, produced by Watts herself and made by friends Pellegrino and Coffey, meant to be seen by an audience who doesn't want to see a grand film filled with practiced performances. "Ellie Parker" is the sort of movie that you wish you could have made in college. It's funny and somewhat different.

Critical reception BY ROGER EBERT / December 16, 2005

To be a movie star and a good actor and a happy person is so difficult that Meryl Streep may be the only living person who has achieved it. Maybe Paul Newman, later in life. Okay, Tilda Swinton, Catherine Keener and Morgan Freeman. Maybe Frances McDormand.

 I know such speculation is goofy, but it's how I feel after seeing "Ellie Parker," a daring and truthful film by Scott Coffey, starring Naomi Watts as an actress who is trying to get a start in Los Angeles. It is one of the ironies of this film about a failing actress that it only got made because a successful actress (the star of "King Kong" no less) agreed to appear in it. You'd think they could have given the job to someone who needed the job, but then they couldn't have lined up the financing, modest as it is.

This is the movie they should show in college acting classes, instead of tapes of "Inside the Actors' Studio." It is about auditioning for an idiotic Southern Gothic soap opera and then changing your makeup and accent in the car on your way to audition as a hooker in a soft-core sex film. About trying to impress a group of "producers" who are so stoned they don't have a sober brain cell to pass from hand to hand around the room. About suspecting that the only thing worse than not getting the job would be to get it. About being broke. About depending on your friends, who are your friends because they depend on you. About lying to the folks back home. About going to clubs to be "seen" and getting so wasted you hope no one saw you, and about suspecting that while you were in a blackout your genitals may have been leading a life of their own. And it is about having to be smart, talented, beautiful, determined and, yes, lucky, just to get to this  point in your career.

 "Ellie Parker" follows its heroine through about 24 hours of her life. Maybe more. I'm not sure and neither is she. The character is played by Watts with courage, fearless observation, and a gift for timing that is so uncanny it can make points all by itself. Watts, as Parker, is so familiar with her look, her face, her hair, her style, her makeup that she can transform herself from a belle to a slut in the rear-view mirror while driving from one audition to another, and convince us that she really could do that, and has.

 She deceives herself that she might meet a nice guy who would -- what? Does she have time for a relationship if she's really serious about her career? Would a guy that nice settle for the life she has to lead? If he shared it, wouldn't that mean he was as desperate as she was? There's a scene here where a guy has sex with her and then confesses he fantasized that she was Johnny Depp. He should have told her this before they started, so that she could have fantasized that she was Johnny Depp, too, and then both people in bed could have felt successful.

 In between these harrowing adventures, she engages in acting exercises where she dredges up sense memories that are worn out from overuse, and goes to see her therapist, whose occupation, she realizes, can also be spelled "the rapist." She doesn't know where to go with this, and neither does her therapist. We understand why Hollywood is such a hotbed of self-improvement beliefs, disciplines, formulas and cults. I walked into the Bodhi Tree psychic bookstore one day, and saw a big star rummaging through the shelves. What was she looking for? Didn't she know those books were written to help people get to the point she was already at? Maybe the star was trying to reverse the process. Maybe self-help bookstores should have a section named "Uninstall."

 "Ellie Parker" is a good movie, fearless and true, observant and merciless. Naomi Watts was brave to make it and gifted to make it so well. Scott Coffey shot it off and on, as he was able to raise funds. The truth in this movie has been earned and paid for. Young people considering acting as a career should study it carefully. If Ellie Parker's ordeal looks like it might be fun, you may have the right stuff.

Rendering 12

The article published on the website of the newspaper "The Guardian" on April 28, 2013 is headlined "Up the Junction's Tony Garnett reveals mother's backstreet abortion death" by Jason Deans and Maggie Brown. The article reports at Producer who edited Ken Loach's 1965 TV drama about illegal abortion reveals own mother died two days after operation.
Speaking of this situation it is necessary to note that the story editor of Up the Junction, the groundbreaking 1960s BBC drama dealing with backstreet abortion, has talked publicly for the first time of the personal tragedy that motivated him to get this and other politically challenging work on screen.
It’s important to note that Tony Garnett, 77, the veteran TV and film producer with credits ranging from Kes and Cathy Come Home to This Life, revealed to the Guardian that his mother died of septicaemia, two days after a backstreet abortion during the German bombing of British cities in the second world war.
It is necessary to point out that Garnett, then a child of five, was in bed with his mother the night she died. His father, who worked as a munitions worker, committed suicide less than a month later.
It is important to emphasize that he said in a MediaGuardian interview that  there was he and his little brother and their parents thought another baby in those circumstances too much. A day or two later she died of galloping septicaemia, and 19 days after that his father, who couldn't bear it, committed suicide.
The authors write that nearly 25 years later he produced Up the Junction, a BBC Wednesday Play directed by Ken Loach that prompted a then record 400 complaints for its unvarnished portrayal of the lives of three young working-class women in south London, including bad language, sexual promiscuity – and abortion.
It is interesting to note that the drama featured documentary elements including an interview with a doctor talking about the need to change the law on abortion, over shots of one of the actors visiting an abortionist.
It is necessary to emphasize that Garnett described Up the Junction as very, very personal. Somebody very close to him died from an abortion, he never ever talked about this to anyone.
The article draws a conclusion that he was speaking to the Guardian ahead of the first comprehensive retrospective of his more than 50-year body of TV and drama work at the BFI in London, Tony Garnett: Seeing Red, in May and June.
As for me, I would like to add that as the BFI celebrates his 50 years' work, the man behind Cathy Come Home reveals the tragedy that changed his world.

Summary 10

The Moon and Sixpence

(by W Somerset Maugham)

Strickland invites Crabbe up to his apartment, to see his paintings. Crabbe looks forward to it, since Strickland never lets anyone else see his work. Strickland tells him where to stand and to be quiet and then sets painting after painting on the easel. He leaves each one on the easel for a few minutes, and Crabbe can see that in six years, Strickland has made about thirty paintings. Crabbe is disappointed, because he has been expecting something really special. Instead, he finds Strickland's style clumsy and awkward, and he does not like the paintings. He does, however, sense something powerful struggling to come out. Crabbe suggests that perhaps painting is not the way to express the ideas and feelings that Strickland is trying to convey. Crabbe does not even once consider buying one of the paintings.

Summary 9

The Moon and Sixpence

(by W Somerset Maugham)

Dirk visits the hospital multiple times per day, but Blanche will never see him. He learns, eventually, from the doctors, that the poison has done internal damage, and she is going to die very soon. When she has slipped into unconsciousness, Dirk is finally allowed to go in and sit with her. He is saddened by the burns on her face and neck from the poison. Blanche quietly dies, leaving Dirk crushed. Crabbe goes with him to her funeral, and then Dirk says that he wants to go by his apartment. Later, Dirk comes to see Crabbe and tells him that he found a picture in the apartment that Strickland left behind. It is a nude portrait of Blanche, and when Dirk first sees it he is enraged and almost destroys it. Then he is overcome by the beauty of the painting.

Rendering 11

The article published on the website of the newspaper "The Guardian" on April 23, 2013 is headlined "Barbra Streisand wins film award" by Associated Press in New York.  The article reports at Barbra Streisand wins film award.
Speaking of this situation it is necessary to note that The crowd, which included Bill and Hillary Clinton, cheered for pretty much anything connected to Streisand all evening as the star of song and screen was honoured for her film career with the 40th annual Chaplin award from the Film Society of Lincoln Centre.
It’s important to note that there was Yentl, the first Hollywood movie directed, produced and written by and starring a woman, as the crowd was reminded.
It is necessary to point out that Streisand spoke of how hard it was to get funding to make the film. 
It is important to emphasize that Streisand, who turns 71 this week, has won Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony awards.
The author writes that Streisand was serenaded by Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, by Liza Minnelli, and by Tony Bennett, who closed the show with Smile, a Charlie Chaplin song.
It is interesting to note that Also appearing on stage were Michael Douglas, Catherine Deneuve, Blythe Danner and Kris Kristofferson.
It is necessary to emphasize that In video clips, Robert Redford spoke of how he had been warned before making The Way We Were that Streisand was a pain to work with, but had discovered that she was "totally engaging to act with, beautiful, thorough and skilled".
The article draws a conclusion that Bill Clintonhad had the last word before Streisand.  
As for me, I would like to say that every great person is driven. But if that person has massive talent, big brains and a bigger heart, you want to go along for the ride.

Summary 8

The Moon and Sixpence

(by W Somerset Maugham)

Crabbe runs into Rose Waterford, who excitedly tells him that Charles Strickland has left his wife. She is happy to be presenting the newest and most exciting gossip, and hints that Strickland has run off with a young woman. Crabbe, feeling bad for his friend, goes over to her house, and finds her wiping away tears, talking with her brother-in-law, Colonel MacAndrew. Mrs. Strickland does some semblance of hospitality, then asks Crabbe what he has heard. He tells her that he knows that people say silly things, and that all he knows is that Rose told him that her husband has left her. MacAndrew angrily suggests that Mrs. Strickland should divorce her husband as soon as possible, and she says that she will never divorce him, no matter what. She is convinced that he has run off suddenly with another woman.

Rendering №10

The article published on the website of the newspaper "The Guardian" on April 14, 2013 is headlined "Falklands on film: how broadcasters have handled Margaret Thatcher's war" by Mark Lawson. The article reports at BBC and ITV enraged the government with early portrayals of the conflict but it is being supplanted by recent conflicts. 
The author writes that British TV deployed rapidly – and with frequent controversy – to attack the Falklands war as a subject.
Speaking of this situation it is necessary to note that The BBC screened five plays within five years of the events, which may surprise those who now associate the corporation with editorial caution and at the time clearly astonished the Ministry of Defence, which made numerous objections and obstructed access to actual locations and equipment.
It’s important to point out that the earliest pieces were oblique, with Don Shaw's The Falklands Factor dramatising an 18th-century dispute over the islands, and Maggie Wadey's The Waiting War focusing on military and naval families.
In spite of this fact,  it is necessary to note that around the time of the fifth anniversary, television fiction became the major battleground over how Thatcher's crusade should be recorded by broadcasters.
It’s important to point out that some journalists were privately briefed that the play was of inferior quality, Curteis believes that executives were unhappy with his sympathetic portrayal of Margaret Thatcher; and certainly his script is alone among the Falklands dramas in not presenting the conflict as a savage and pointless colonial overhang.
The author writes that however the most powerful representation of the human consequences of the conflict on the British side remains Tumbledown (1988, BBC1), written by Charles Wood and directed by Richard Eyre, based on the experiences during and after the conflict of the seriously injured Scots Guards officer Robert Lawrence. 

It is necessary to emphasize that Tumbledown, in common with Paul Greengrass's cinema film Resurrected (1989), raised the figure of the Falklands veteran who feels ignored by postwar society as a conscious parallel to US movies about Vietnam vets. 

It’s important to note that McGovern, in his last two series, The Street and Accused, has used vets from the Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, while Ian Rankin's DI John Rebus, played on TV by John Hannah and Ken Stott, also saw military service in Belfast.
The article draws a conclusion that Thatcher's war now mainly gets a show in epic dramas following characters through recent British decades, such as Peter Flannery's Our Friends in the North (1996, BBC1) and Paula Milne's White Heat (2012, BBC2), both of which have an episode that reflects the influence on British politics of the response to Argentina.
As for me, I would like to say that The Falklands has, though, largely disappeared as a back-story in drama – mainly because the UK has been involved in many other, more lengthily resonant conflicts.

Rendering №9

The article published on the website of the newspaper "The Guardian" on April 10, 2013 is headlined "Bollywood's 100th birthday celebrated at Bradford international film festival" by Irna Qureshi. The article reports at thursday marks the start of the 19th Bradford international film festival (Biff), which this year, in recognition of 100 years of Bollywood, includes a strand devoted to Indian film.

Speaking of this situation it is necessary to note that Happy Birthday Indian Cinema features a range of classics, such as the 12 surviving minutes of India's very first feature film, Raja Harishchandra, and the most expensive film ever made up to 1960, Mughal-e-Azam.

It’s important to note that there's also a rare opportunity to watch some of the greatest Indian films of all time on this festival.

The author writes that Silsila (The Affair) was made by the late Yash Chopra, known as the godfather of romance. The 1981 film famously popularised the tulip fields of Holland and featured a love triangle with a twist. 

It is necessary to point out that when Yash Chopra's son Aditya made his directorial debut in 1995, he paid an affectionate tribute to his father by borrowing some of his visual vocabulary.

It is important to emphasize that when Mughal-e-Azam (The Greatest of the Mughals) was released in 1960, it was the most expensive film ever made.

The author writes that the director, K Asif, was such a perfectionist that it took him 10 years to complete the black and white film, at which point he approached the funders about shooting the entire thing again in Technicolor. 

It is interesting to note that Mughal-e-Azam went on to become the highest-grossing film of its day thanks to its sweeping love story, epic battle scenes, legendary cast, unforgettable performances, memorable dialogue and one of the best soundtracks in the history of Indian cinema.

It is necessary to emphasize that Bollywood fans love reading elements of the stars' real lives into their films. They love watching Mother India knowing that the luminous actress Nargis fell in love with Sunil Dutt during filming, allegedly after he saved her from a fire on the set.

The article draws a conclusion that Happy Birthday Indian Cinema is part of Biff, which runs until 21 April 2013.

As for me, I would like to say some words about Mother India. I think that It  is perhaps the quintessential Indian film, thanks to its powerful portrayal of womanhood and community in traditional Indian society.

Summary 7

The Moon and Sixpence

 (by W Somerset Maugham)

The narrator recollects the circumstances in which he first met Charles Strickland, who is now famous. He begins by pointing out that there seems to be nothing special about Charles Strickland. Then he says that the man is a genius. The narrator talks about how Strickland is relatively obscure in life, and that his emotional style of art is misunderstood. He then lauds the legends which have risen up about Strickland. He says that such legends are the key to immortality.The narrator says that, although he knew Strickland in early life, he would not be writing about his friend if he had not gone to Tahiti. Apparently, the most obscure parts of Strickland's life took place in Tahiti. So, now the narrator has a chance to interview those who knew Strickland during this time in his life.