The Furniture: Love & Friendship's Country Charm

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Chirp.Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) finds the countryside boring. She’d much rather be in London, safe from her daughter and her other dull relations. Yet she’s broke and bound by obligation to spend time at a large country estate. This is the central problem of Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship, a delightful adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan.

The estate in question is Churchill, the home of her brother-in-law Charles Vernon and his wife, Catherine Vernon (nee DeCourcy). Granted, as the amusingly dim-witted Sir James Martin points out, there appears to be neither church nor hill on the property. Instead there is only period-appropriate finery and some very subtle efforts to manipulate audience loyalty.

Production designer Anna Rackard and art directors Louise Mathews and Bryan Tormey go about this with great care. 

Lady Susan is a selfish, scheming character whose relatives almost certainly deserve more of our sympathy. Yet she’s the protagonist, and also quite funny. We can’t be allowed to tire of her too quickly. And so the production design team emphasizes a point on which many of us can agree with Lady Susan: The countryside is the worst...

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Review: Love & Friendship

Anyone who’s seen a film by Whit Stillman knows him to be an accomplished social satirist, continuing the legacy of authors like Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, and of course Jane Austen. In fact, the English writer is at the center of one the most sardonic exchanges in all of his films, when one of the characters expresses “I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism” when asked if he has read any of Austen’s works. Like the Romantic author, Stillman captures the wants, desires and fears of the haves as they desperately try to grab onto a world the have-nots are trying to infiltrate. In films like Metropolitan, Stillman wonders if the upper classes only let someone from a lower class to share their space as means of experimenting, or amusing them in their endless ennui. In Damsels in Distress he explores the notion of people constructing strict societal divisions in all aspects of their lives, such as in college. More...

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Red Carpet Lineup XXL: Nicole, Jada, Paz and Kate(s)

Jose here. Nicole Kidman won another award! Nathaniel recently praised her work in Photograph 51 in London, and the voters at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards agreed with him, for they gave her a Best Actress award to go with her Oscar, Globes and other statuettes.

Nicole wasn't the only movie-related winner: James McAvoy and Imelda Staunton, also won awards for their work in The Ruling Class and Gypsy, respectively. At the event Nicole was simply majestic in an Alexander McQueen design.

...and before you all whine about how Cate wore it better (she did wear a similar McQueen to the Robin Hood premiere at Cannes in 2010),  be reminded that...

a) McQueen should be worn by all screen queens
b) Nicole is flawless!
c) Cate was in Robin Hood...
d) most importantly, Cate and Nicole love each other as proved by this image to your left.

Before I lose you to fantasizing about Nicole and Cate in Carol Part Deux, let's move on to our other looks of the week...

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Review: "Total Recall"

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

It's hard not to feel sympathy for Colin Farrell. His secret movie star weapon is those long, thick unmistakable eyebrows. When he's in distress his brow lifts and pulls them up into a converging point, creating a perfect triangular frame for big brown orbs of boyish angst. "Help me!" is written all over his eyes. That same furrowed brow expression with just minor flickering shifts can also say "Please love me!" and "Aren't I funny?" and "..." His capacity for impish excitement and moral confusion were a perfect match for his best star turn to date in the hitman seriocomedy In Bruges (2008) and it helps the TOTAL RECALL do-over more than it should.

Farrell plays everyman Doug Quaid who doesn't realize he's actually someone else because his memory has been erased. A trip to the fantasy memory banks of "Total Rekall" (a reversal of Eternal Sunshine's "Lacuna Inc" since the company aims to give you false memories rather than take real ones away) upsets his reprogramming and suddenly he's killing soldiers with the trained might of a futuristic Jason Bourne. Returning home his formerly loving wife (Kate Beckinsale) tries to kill him.

Quaid realizes he's completely lost in a false life with no memory of the real one. Cut to: plentiful moments of Farrell Furrowing!

But you shouldn't have time to think about the magic and mystery of physiognomy while you're watching an action movie. If you do your mind wanders and questions come cascading in like...

"When did Kate Beckinsale's Hair becomes self-aware like SkyNet?" When?!?

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Les Línkables

TMZ life imitating art - Shawarma sales skyrocketing in LA after The Avengers opening.
Coming Soon has a new photo from the set of Les Misérables. I'm choosing to interpret this set as an homage to Moulin Rouge!'s greatness
Acidemic would like you to know that 1933, not 1939 was the greatest year at the movies.
Playlist Maybe Edgar Wright is going to make that Ant-Man movie after all.

Antagony & Ecstacy looks back at Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) in the wake of the new green giant fever sweeping the nation. Really interesting piece.
In Contention Gene Kelly centennial tribute hosted by the Academy next week in LA. Someone go and tell me all about it. We'll celebrate his centennial here in August (the actual month of his birth)
Movie|Line Jessica Chastain finally passes on a movie. Hee!
SuperPunch has photos of Wal-Mart's The Avengers set. I include this only because its rabidly sexist. I believe when the camera spun around the heroes in that highly publicized shot it was The Black Widow and not Loki who was part of the heroic team. (sigh) 
Kenneth in the (212) Fun couples: Woody Allen and... Lindsay Lohan? 

P.S. This is the best thing that Kate Beckinsale has ever done.

Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale

Told ya!

Off Cinema.
It's sometimes worth stepping out of the movie theater. Rarely but still...
The Realist for those of you who've spent too much time on Facebook
Playbill weirdest music news of the week. Twisted Sister's Dee Snider recording an album of showtunes with Broadway friendly guest stars