Today in History: Page's Second Globe, Larry & Viv's Affair, Etc...

Looking for something to celebrate today? On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1874 Oscar nominee Henry Travers (Mrs Miniver) was born in England
1908 Future Oscar winner, "Henry Higgins" and "Dr Dolittle" himself Sir Rex Harrison is born 
1922 FW Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu premieres in its home country of Germany. On the same day in Italy the future super controversial auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini (120 Days of Sodom, The Gospel According to St Matthew) is born
1936 Dean Stockwell is born in California. He will go on to have an epically lengthy career starting as a child star in the 40s and still working occasionally today. On the same day the '35 Oscars were held with Mutiny on the Bounty taking Best Picture and Bette Davis winning her first Oscar for Dangerous. Oscar was already doing "sorry about last time" awards as that one was obviously for her far superior work in Of Human Bondage.  

Geraldine Page, Larry & Viv, and Harrison Ford after the jump...

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NYFF: Everything Else

Manuel reporting from NYFF on an Adriana Barraza star vehicle.

Everything Else
Natalia Almada's Everything Else (Todo lo demás) is a portrait of a woman in the most literal sense. The movie, which runs 98 minutes, has very little plot and is focused instead on observing (keenly, empathetically, near-obsessively) the life of Doña Flor. A no nonsense government worker by day with very little life outside the desk she occupies daily and the apartment she shares with her cat, Doña Flor (played by Babel's Oscar nominated Adriana Barraza) is not lonely, per se. But she does seem disconnected from the life around her; in Barraza's face you can see the weariness of her life without the contempt stories about childless spinsters usually inspire. Almada gives Barraza no more than 50 lines in the entire film, plunging us for stretches at a time in a silence that rattles for the very comfort it depends on. She's interested in watching Doña Flor and, in doing so, sketches out a woman perhaps like many others and yet entirely herself.

That the quiet peeks at her life are punctuated by news reports (often out of frame and unintelligible) about violence against women and close ups of the women she encounters on the train, across her desk, and at the public pool she visits, make clear that Almada's near dialogue-free project wants to think about the state of Mexican women today without doing anything more than showing (there is so little telling).

The effect is hypnotizing though whether you follow along for the ride depends on your patience for such a small scale story with such a self-consciously deployed structure. And yet, every time Barraza is on screen, you're reminded why she remains such an underutilized actress; she doesn't carry the film as much as she inhabits it, losing herself in the mundane life depicted, another face in the crowd.