Tag: Richard Curtis

  • Our favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman performances

    Our favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman performances

    Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'Almost Famous'
    Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘Almost Famous’

    In the wake of the untimely passing of the incredibly talented Philip Seymour Hoffman, TailSlate has taken a look at his filmography and chosen five of his film performances that are our favorites.  The criteria we used was to ignore films for which he won or was nominated for an Oscar, or a BAFTA.  They are presented in chronological order, as we didn’t want to pick any one of these as a favorite.   Please note that we limited the number to five to prevent simply reviewing his entire filmography and extoling his virtues in every film he was ever in.

    Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia were the big name stars in 1994’s When a Man Loves a Woman.  They portrayed an unhappily married couple whose relationship is worsening due to the wife’s alcoholism. Philip Seymour Hoffman had a small role as “Gary”, one of the other people in treatment at the rehab center Ryan’s “Alice” goes to.  They become friends and spend time together after their stays in rehab end.  Obviously his own addictions from earlier in his life gave him a special insight into the part.  It was the an excellent performance.

    Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'Flawless'
    Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘Flawless’

    In 1999 he and two-time Oscar winner Robert DeNiro starred in Flawless.  Hoffman portrays a transgendered male using the moniker of “Rusty” who is trying to save up the money to have sexual reassignment surgery.  DeNiro is “Walter”, a much-celebrated police officer who lives in the building and doesn’t think much of Rusty or the other “tranny” neighbors.  Walter suffers a stroke and hires Rusty to help him recover his speech through music lessons.  Another performance by Hoffman where he brings a character to life from the pages of a script.

    Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'State and Main'
    Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘State and Main’

    Lester Bangs was a real rock and roll music journalist and Hoffman portrayed him in 2000’s Almost Famous.  Only knowing of the real man through reading words written by and about him it’s still quite clear that Hoffman nailed this role.  It’s interesting that Hoffman portrayed a man who wrote this about the tragic drug overdose of Janis Joplin, “It’s not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it’s been accepted as a given so quickly.”  Words that could have easily been intended for Hoffman himself.

    2000 was also the year that State and Main, written and directed by David Mamet, was released.  It starred Hoffman, William H. Macy, Rebecca Pidgeon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alec Baldwin, David Paymer and Julia Stiles.  It’s the story of trying to make a film titled “The Old Mill” that’s been forced to relocate filming to a village whose mill burned down years ago.  Rookie screenwriter “Joseph Turner White” is the role Hoffman played and he put on an amazing display of the blocked writer.

    Philip Seymour Hoffman in 'Pirate Radio'
    Philip Seymour Hoffman in ‘Pirate Radio’

    Known as Pirate Radio in the U.S., the film was titled The Boat That Rocked in Great Britain and it is a British film/story.  Starring Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Hoffman and it is a historical comedy (fictional) about how broadcasters set up shop on ships outside the territorial waters of Great Britain and competed with the BBC’s radio programming.  Writer/director Richard Curtis says that the character of American DJ “The Count” that Hoffman played was loosely based on a real BBC1 DJ of the era.  Hoffman steals nearly every moment of every scene of this film that he appears in.

    What are your favorite performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman?

  • The best time to see ‘About Time’ is now!

    The best time to see ‘About Time’ is now!

    Rachel McAdams and Dohmnall Gleeson in 'About Time'
    Rachel McAdams and Dohmnall Gleeson in ‘About Time’

    “Our lives are the sum total of the choices we have made” – Dr. Wayne Dyer

    The ability of Richard Curtis to write brilliant romantic comedy films is well known.  Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and the adaptation of the novel Bridget Jones’s Diary show off his chops in the genre.  His directorial debut Love Actually was an amazing debut film.  Now he once again intertwines love and tough choices in About Time.  “Tim” (Gleeson) has just turned 21 and suffered through another disappointing New Year’s Eve party at the home where he lives with his father “Dad” (Nighy), “Mum” (Duncan) and his beloved sister “Kit Kat” (Wilson).

    Then his father drops a bombshell on him.  The men in their family have a limited ability to move backward through time.  They can’t go into the future and they can only go back as far as the beginning of their own lives.  Also, there are risks and consequences, although these aren’t laid out in their entirety.  Tim thinks his father is joking until he tries to move through time himself and gets a do-over of an awkward moment at midnight during the party.  Now he faces a life where he isn’t permanently tied to his choices.  He can go back and make different choices.

    Dohmnall Gleeson and Bill Nighy in 'About Time'
    Dohmnall Gleeson and Bill Nighy in ‘About Time’

    Resolving not to use his gift for avarice, he decides to focus on finding a girlfriend.  Having moved from the family home in Cornwall to London, where he is working as a lawyer, he chances to meet a woman named “Mary” (McAdams).  Thanks to his ability to go back and improve his interactions with her things are going well until something else he must go back and fix to help a friend change things so that he and Mary had never met.  This can be remedied and soon Tim and Mary are happily ensconced in love and deciding to get married.

    Mary gets pregnant and a lovely daughter named Posy becomes the center of his universe.  However, a family crisis forces him to travel back in time to save a loved one and when he returns he discovers that his daughter is now a son.  This is when he learns that a choice that leads to even a miniscule change can have major consequence.  He is able to put things right to bring Posy back into his life, but at the cost of being unable to prevent that loved one from suffering.

    Tim eventually learns the last fact about his gift and that being once his own son is born, he will no longer be able to travel back to any point prior to that son’s birth. It means that his ability to continue to see his father in the past will be gone.  Will he therefore refuse to have another child, to prevent a son?

    Dohmnall Gleeson's "Tim" finds himself having to meet Rachel McAdams' "Mary" in 'About Time'
    Dohmnall Gleeson’s “Tim” finds himself having to meet Rachel McAdams’ “Mary” in ‘About Time’

    The cast is terrific.  McAdams plays this role as an American Anglophile living her dream in London with an understated sense of wonder and joy.  She’s a strong character who knows what she wants and how to get it.  But it is Domhnall Gleeson who shines like a shooting star throughout this excellent film.  I will admit to liking the work of Bill Nighy in every film I’ve seen him in and this is no exception.

    Curtis’ effective use of words and imagery to evoke feelings and then matching the sequence on screen to just the right background music is one of the reasons he makes really good films.  A very talented writer/director told me once that music shouldn’t be used to create the emotions, or inject them into a shot where they wouldn’t otherwise exist.  They should enhance how the writer, director, and actor combine to create those feelings among the audience.  This is a very, very solid rom-com, well worth a full-price admission.  I plan to see it again.