THE BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEW: ANNA KENDRICK

GET THIS GIRL A BUCKET!
An interview with Anna Kendrick.

If you’re like me, you first fell in love with Anna Kendrick when you caught her Oscar nominated turn in Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR, opposite George Clooney. Over the last year, she has starred in four separate movies, including the cop thriller, END OF WATCH, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, and PARANORMAN, in which case she voices a vapid teenager. Kendrick also shows no signs of stopping either with four more films expected this year, including a small part in Robert Redford’s THE COMPANY YOU KEEP. And the audience shows no signs of getting sick of her either.

Kendrick’s biggest gamble in the last year would have to be PITCH PERFECT. It is her first starring role so not only did she have to prove she could carry a movie but she had to sing her way through it too. “Well, my first lead in a film anyone’s going to fucking see anyway,” Kendrick quips, when we sit down at the Toronto International Film Festival, just weeks before the film’s release. “I’m nervous about it. And I’m singing in it too, which makes it doubly nerve wracking.”

She needn’t have been so frantic about it. PITCH PERFECT became a sleeper hit at the box office, pulling in over $100 million globally. And as for the singing, she was over thinking that too. The soundtrack to PITCH PERFECT has been a permanent fixture in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart ever since the film was released on DVD in December. Still, I understand her apprehension at the time.

“Singing is something I’m comfortable with but it’s like anything. Doing it on screen, the stakes are a little bit higher.”

Kendrick’s role in END OF WATCH is small but pivotal. In the hands of another actress, she may have disappeared into the background, but Kendrick was sure there was something she could do with the part when she read the script. “I wish I could put into words what is great about the screenplay, what’s great about the characters, but I knew reading it, that if you had described it to me, I would have felt like it sounds just like a wife/girlfriend role. It doesn’t sound like something that would be that interesting. When I read it though, even though Janet isn’t in it a lot, it felt like she was incredibly important in rounding out this world, for creating a world in which it really feels like there is something at stake and there is something on the line.”

End of Watch

Kendrick plays Gyllenhaal’s girlfriend in END OF WATCH and one of their most endearing scenes comes when they dance at a wedding. “Wait, what are you talking about? That was not in the script.” This was Kendrick’s first reaction when writer/director, David Ayer, informed her that she and Gyllenhaal would not be just dancing together but dancing a piece of choreography in fact. “It said ‘They do a cheesy dance.’ I don’t know what we thought that was going to be but when we saw what it was, we were confused,” she explains. All the same, Kendrick thinks that, as seemingly simple as this scene is, it was one she really needed her director for. “That was one of those moments. In a movie like this, there are so many big emotional moments where you really feel like you have to trust your director, but doing the wedding dance was the moment that we really needed to trust our director.”

And how did Mr. Gyllenhaal fare at this dance? “Uh, Jake was not great at learning it. Sometimes, he was watching me just to keep up.” (END OF WATCH is now available on DVD and you can read more about it in my interview with Gyllenhaal himself.)

Kendrick’s time on THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, in theatres in April, was even shorter than her time on END OF WATCH, just three days. “I would have delivered his coffee if he had asked me to so I was just really happy to have that opportunity,” Kendrick reveals of her desire to work with Redford. “It was really interesting working with a director who is such a fantastic actor and such an experienced actor. He is a very intimate director. It was a very brief experience for me but a truly fascinating process.”

Pitch Perfect

Kendrick is always learning and growing and, at just 27 years old, this Maine native still has plenty of time to do both of these things. Now, she just has to calm her nerves and enjoy the ride. “It’s going to be awesome but I’m still nervous,” she jokes when asked about the prospect of her future. “I kind of feel like I’m on the verge of throwing up all the time.”

Did I mention that Kendrick is absolutely adorable in person?

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
Written by Lem Dobbs
Directed by Robert Redford
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Robert Redford and Julie Christie

Sharon Solarz: The past 30 years in one sentence. Must be nice to see the world so clearly.

For those who are perhaps not familiar with the Weather Underground, they were an American radical organization that employed violence against their own government in protest of the Vietnam War. In Robert Redford’s latest film, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, Redford imagines what it would be like for some members of the group to still be alive and hiding in America today. They were once ardent protesters, who were branded terrorists, and now, the few that remain, are soccer mom’s or local lawyers in small towns. Their lives have slowed and unfortunately, they brought the pace of the movie with them.

At the onset of the film, a mother (Susan Sarandon) sends her kids off to school and sets out to turn herself in to the FBI for crimes she committed while she was a member of The Weathermen, as they were also known. This event triggers newfound interest in the case and the few others who remain hidden are suddenly being actively hunted again. The primary target is Jim Grant (Redford), a single father just trying to keep his daughter (Jackie Evancho) happy after the passing of her mother a year prior. He is uncovered by a local journalist (Shia LaBoeuf) and from that moment on, he runs. Subsequently, we follow and wait to find out if the man who has been running for 30 years can continue to do so successfully.

What Redford is hoping for here is that we see all of the ideals that The Weathermen stood for also running and hiding in today’s contemporary setting. Instead, what we get is a thriller where an older, yet surprisingly spry, gentlemen, runs as fast as he can, without realizing that isn’t really that fast at all. Contrasting yesterday’s conviction with today’s lack thereof is nothing revelatory though, which leaves THE COMPANY YOU KEEP feeling a tad gummy when it’s meant to be biting.

The Sting

The Sting, 1973
Directed by George Roy Hill
Nominated for 10 Oscars, Won 7
Up Against: American Graffiti, Cries & Whispers, the Exorcist, A Touch of Class

The Sting is a story about con artists in the 1930's Depression. Johnny Hooker and his partners Luther and Joe con $11,000 off a man on the streets, not thinking they'd get that rich. Luther announces his retirement and suggests and tells Hooker about a friend he has, Henry Gondorff, saying he should go meet him and learn "the big con". However, things don't go according to plan. The man they conned money off was a numbers racket courier for a famous crime boss named Lonnegan. When a corrupt police officer confronts Hooker and demands part of the pay cut (Hooker had already spent it all), pays in counterfeit bills. Meanwhile, Lonnegan's men murder Luther and Hooker must now flee, and heads to Chicago to meet Gondorff. While Gondorff was a once-great, he's now in hiding and is a bit nervous to take on Lonnegan. But he comes around and the two set up the "big con" for Lonnegan.

The film was an immediate success. It gained positive critic reviews, and was a box office smash. It was also the second pairing of George Roy Hill directed Robert Redford and Paul Newman since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was released Christmas Day in 1973, and went on to win a lot of Academy Awards that year, including Picture, Director, Screenplay.

I really enjoyed this film. This is the first Robert Redford film I've seen, and also my first Paul Newman one (what a treat they both were!) and both were so great. They were great at the double acting (con men, pretending to be several different people, all innocent) and were real trouble-makers. But my favourite part of the entire film was the score. Compiled of mostly Scott Joplin's music composed in the early 1900's, and though not historically accurate for the time period (ragtime was no longer popular in the 30's), but was really really great. It fit the time so well, and was just so fun. It gave the film a bit of a lighter feel when darker music could've made the film more dramatic and sullen. It gave the film a spark quality, and really lit it up.

Additionally, the twists and turns the movie took were great. It really was a thinking movie, and it's so sad how little films like this are made any more. It was well thought out, entertaining, and had a few laughs that balanced the film out well.

Overall, the film was really good. It was a great showcase for Paul Newman and Robert Redford (who looks so much like Brad Pitt. Anyone else notice that?). It was a clever, kind of fun Best Picture as opposed to a lot of the more dramatic, serious, depressing ones.

Acting- 7.5/10
Directing- 8/10
Screenplay- 8/10
Music - 9.5/10
"The look"- 7.5/10
Entertaining- 7.5/10
Emotional Connection- 8/10
Rewatchability- 7/10
Did I like It?- 7.5/10
"Total Package"**- 7.5/10 


Total: 78

Out of Africa (1985).

Out of Africa (1985). The story based on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of the author Karen Blixen), which was published in 1937, Dinesen's book Shadows on the Grass. This film received 28 film awards, including seven Academy Awards. The book is from the 1914 to 1931, the story is about the European settlers and the native people of Kenya. The setting spans from Mombasa up to Nairobi and from Mount Kenya to Kilimanjaro.

Directed by Sydney Pollack. Cast: Meryl Streep as the Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke; Robert Redford as Denys Finch Hatton; and Klaus Maria Brandauer(as Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke).

The film opens as an older Karen Blixen is remembering back to a hunting expedition in Denmark, when she lived in Africa. Denys Finch Hatton, a big-game hunter whom she met when she first arrived in Africa. She was looking forward to helping her new husband Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, start a dairy farm. Things do not go as she planned, Baron used her money to buy a coffee plantation. She struggles to maintain a coffee farm on her own, through all her struggles and many disasters, she wants to improve relations with the natives. Karen does fall in love with the the Baron over time and is heartbroken when she learns of his extramarital affairs. Karen contracts syphilis from her husband, which at the time was a very dangerous disease. She returned to Denmark for a cure using experimental medicine Salvarsan. This was before the discovery of penicillin. After she recovers she returns to Africa, a relationship between her and Denys begins to develop. She soon realizes that Denys can not settle down. She decides to open a school to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and also some European customs to the natives.

What a very emotional movie. With the breathtaking cinematography and the beautiful musical score, makes the movie worth viewing, especially, when Denys Finch Hatton, gives Karen Blixen her first airplane ride.



FUN FACTS:

Audrey Hepburn was originally offered the role of Karen.

The film was shot on location in Africa, but local laws prohibited the use of wild animals in film. Trained lions were imported from California.

The story was originally planned as a project for Greta Garbo. At various times, Orson Welles, David Lean and Nicolas Roeg had tried to make a film about Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen).

Meryl Streep developed her accent by listening to actual recordings of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) reading her works.

The pilot in the scene where the flamingos take flight was Sir Henry Dalrymple-White, a British Baronet and former WW2 pilot who moved in Kenya in the 1940s. He flew until he was 80.

During filming In one scene, Karen Blixen, travels across dangerous terrain to bring supply wagons to her husband's regiment. During the night, a lion attacks one of the oxen and Karen tries to fight it off with a whip. Streep was assured that the lion would be tethered by one of its back legs so he couldn't get too close. When the scene was shot, the lion had no restraint. The lion got closer than Streep anticipated; the fear on her face is real.

Isak Dinesen and Karen Blixen, lived in East Africa for twenty years making a living on their coffee plantation. Out of Africa, is a memoir of her life on the plantation and the people. The way Blixen writes you become swept up in the words and imagery. It is obvilious that Blixen loved Africa.

Lions for Lambs

“Lions for Lambs” is a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed film. It’s by no means a bad film, but its one of the most uncinematic films I’ve seen in a long time. Often times it reminded me of a filmed stage play.

The latest directorial effort from Robert Redford, “Lions for Lambs” juggles three distinct storylines. In one, liberal college professor Robert Redford tries to talk a gifted but apathetic student (Andrew Garfield) out of wasting his time in college.

Redford points to two students (Derek Luke and Michael Pena) in his political science class who overcame poor backgrounds to make successes for themselves in college. They are inspired by Redford to do something with their lives, so they join the army to fight the War on Terror overseas. Redford is horrified that his classes may have influenced these two to enlist.

The second story shows these two as soldiers, stranded on a mountaintop after a disastrous mission in Afghanistan. They are surrounded by the enemy as the Army attempts to mount a rescue operation.

The third has Republican Senator Tom Cruise giving an interview to journalist Meryl Streep about why fighting the War on Terror overseas is so essential to this country’s survival.

(An observational note here. I saw this the other night at the great Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove, which still has a marquee. I was amused to see Redford’s and Streep’s name on the marquee, but not Cruise’s. Is he that much of a turnoff to people? Who could have foreseen this even two years ago?)

Here goes my Tom Cruise defense. This segment of the film was my favorite because Cruise gives the best performance. And why not? He’s a fine actor, always has been. I don’t care about his personal life or his religious beliefs. When I go to the movies, I want him to give the best performance he is capable of giving and that’s all. Here he delivers one of his very best here. Often charmingly contemptuous towards Streep, his arguments are well-reasoned.

So more than one side of the argument is presented, which I thought was the right approach. Redford is good too. He has that quiet authority he has gained after more than 40 years in movies and can hold a scene like few can.

Like I said it’s not a bad movie. It’s just there. The writing is smart, but I can’t see it changing the opinions of anyone. It does have the good grace to be over and done with in 90 minutes, which is always admirable.

Special mention must be made of red-haired Christopher Carley, who takes a lead role during a classroom debate with the two soldiers. He is the cousin of my co-worker Van Giles and does a fine job. I look forward to seeing more of him in the future.

Rating for "Lions for Lambs": Two and a half stars.