Archive for April, 2009

The section of the Oak Bar where Cary Grant was drinking with three business colleagues just before being kidnapped in North by Northwest is not where the Revolutionary Road luncheon was held. We were all in the rear room with the tables, banquettes, superb food, white tablecloths, perfect waiters and beautiful old-school wood walls and carvings. Road stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, David Harbour plus Willem Dafoe, Paul Schrader, James Toback, et. al. attended.

I’ll always remember reading a review of Casino where a reviewer said that even a mediocre Martin Scorsese movie is better than the ‘best’ movie made by any other director. That particular piece of wisdom has always stuck with me whenever I was plunking down my hard earned dollars on a Scorsese film that wasn’t necessarily ‘my thing’ — cough, Kundun, cough. So with that in mind, you can be sure that I’ll be there on opening day for his new thriller, Ashecliffe (formerly Shutter Island). The Boston Herald recently scored some pictures of star Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese on the set of the period thriller, with the added bonus of getting to see DiCaprio brandishing some firearms (thankfully, it was for the movie).

The film is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), and centers on two U.S. marshals who are sent to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane. Things start to go downhill when a riot on the island has them trapped, and not to mention some events that are outside of the realm of the everyday. Mark Ruffalo joins the cast as DiCaprio’s partner, and Michelle Williams also stars as DiCaprio’s wife. The film immediately brings Spellbound to mind, and knowing what a Hitchcock fan Scorsese is, I will look forward to seeing Scorsese work in a few of those ‘master of suspense’ touches.

Ashcliffe is scheduled to arrive in theaters on October 2nd, 2009.

Jaeger-LeCoultre and Leonardo DiCaprio have joined forces to confront global environmental issues. In the Fall 2008, the venerable Swiss watch manufacturer will offer two exceptional timepieces for sale via its “Time to Care” initiative; one hundred percent of the proceeds will go to the Leonardo DiCaprio Fund at the California Community Foundation, benefiting the work of this organization with environmental programs around the world. These varied groups include the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Global Green USA, and focus is on a range of topics including the halting of global climate change, the development of alternative energy sources, and preserving Earth’s biodiversity.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre watches which will be offered for sale represent some of the most cutting-edge horological technology ever manufactured. A Master Compressor Extreme LAB watch worn by Leonardo DiCaprio to the premiere showing of his global warming documentary, “The 11th Hour” will be leading the sale. The first Extreme LAB timepiece delivered in the world, this unique model with a tourbillon complication is the world’s first mechanical watch whose movement can operate devoid of lubricant and within a wide temperature range of -40 to +60 degrees Centigrade. It is engraved with the actor’s signature on the caseback, and has an approximate value of $300,000.

Also up for sale is an example of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new Reverso Gyrotourbillon 2, valued at approximately $400,000. This platinum watch with a reversible case showcases a technically elaborate spherical tourbillon with a cylindrical balance spring, and celebrates the 175th anniversary of the founding of Jaeger-LeCoultre. The watches will be presented at the new Jaeger-LeCoultre boutiques in Boca Raton, FL and Beverly Hills, CA, which are scheduled for opening in the summer and fall, respectively.

Leonardo DiCaprio is well known for his passion for Jaeger-LeCoultre watches. At the premiere of 2007′s “Blood Diamond”, DiCaprio wore a platinum Master Minute Repeater, a complicated limited edition timepiece presented in an edition of 200. His collection is also reputed to contain such models as the Reverso Septantieme, the Master Compressor Geographic, and the highly complex Gyrotourbillon I.

Have you read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates? Huh? You have? Then why the hell haven’t you told me about it? What’s your problem, anyway? And where has this book been all my life?

There’s a movie version of Revolutionary Road on the way, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and directed by Sam Mendes. It’s set to be released at Christmastime, and is widely expected to be a major player in the Oscar race. But here I have to betray this column’s reason for being. F*** the movie. Read the book.

Published in 1961, Yates’s first novel was more acclaimed than popular. It is a merciless, intense and pitch-black social satire – funny only in the most uncomfortable way, like being cleverly mocked by someone who sees clean through to your soul. The jacket pitches it as being about “the opulent desolation of the American suburbs,” but Revolutionary Road is not another of those books that merely mocks the empty lives of well-to-do suburbanites. It’s about our attitudes toward life and love and each other. Almost a half-century after it was published, it contains as much devastating insight into human nature as just about anything else I’ve ever read.

Imagine a book where you see the characters clearly as weak, insincere, pitiable, sometimes even repulsive – and yet also eerily familiar. Oh, maybe not familiar in the lives they lead or the things they do, but in the way they think, interact, rationalize, compete, calculate. Sometimes you regard these characters and see people you know; other times, you squirm in your chair because you see yourself. This isn’t always pleasant, but it is incredibly engaging: a different kind of page-turner.

It’s the story of Frank and April Wheeler, an intelligent, upper-crust suburban couple who self-consciously yearn to escape what they see as a meaningless, soul-crushing existence. They don’t belong in this boring, provincial, uncultured world of the white picket fence, the mindless 9-5 grunt, the inane weekend barbecues, the incurious louts with no values and no convictions and no idea of what’s really important. So Frank and April impulsively decide to move to Paris, where April can get a job and Frank can “find himself” and finally live up to the potential everyone (including him) insists he has. But of course, Frank and April have problems that extend far beyond their uncultivated surroundings. Far from gallivanting off to France, they begin to chip away at their relationship and to cannibalize their own lives.

Frank is both hideously insecure and convinced of his own brilliance. Everything he says and does is calculated to impress and present him just so. At every moment, with every word and gesture, he’s attuned to how other people see him and how they might respond. Sometimes he daydreams about people’s reactions to a comment or a piece of news, imagining their praise, understanding and respect — and is crushed when their actual response is indifference or disdain. Yates looks inside Frank’s mind with brutal clarity. It’s possible that the fact that I saw a little of myself in Frank says more about me than about the novel, and I hesitated before admitting it here. But it’s the rare book that makes you want to be a better person, and Revolutionary Road did precisely that.

What? Oh, the movie. Yeah, there’s going to be one. Sam Mendes certainly knows a thing or two about “the opulent desolation of the American suburbs,” what with having American Beauty on his resume. The on-screen reunion of doomed Titanic lovers Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet will no doubt be the subject of numerous adoring magazine fluff pieces (though I wonder if DiCaprio will have the guts to make Frank Wheeler as venal, insecure and deluded as he needs to be). Heck, the movie might even be good, especially if it doesn’t pull any punches with the bleak, upsetting ending. If nothing else, I’m looking forward to Kathy Bates’ interpretation of the busybody real estate agent who intrudes on the protagonists’ downward spiral. Oh, and what Mendes does with the book’s wonderful opening: a mortifyingly bad community theater production of The Petrified Forest, starring April Wheeler.

But the genius of the novel lies in Yates’s articulate, sarcastic voice: the way he describes these people he understands so completely, then (figuratively) peels their skins and turns them inside out. A few weeks ago I wrote about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I actually felt might be improved by being stripped of McCarthy’s authorial presence. I think the opposite is true here.

I know – this turned into a shameful starry-eyed rave. But Revolutionary Road was such a rare discovery for me. It’s eye-opening, perspective-changing, extraordinarily powerful, and one of my new favorite books. I’m curious about the adaptation, don’t get me wrong; Sam Mendes has never made an uninteresting film. But the novel is one hell of a tough act to follow.

Realistic spy fiction is hard. On screen, it’s almost never done. The tendency to romanticize espionage is so ingrained in us through decades of James Bond and Bourne and 24 that a warts-and-all depiction of the way intelligence agencies actually operate might not even make sense to much of the moviegoing public. Occasionally, someone will make a minor, based-on-a-true-story attempt – The Good Shepherd with the CIA, for example, or Breach with the FBI – but those are viewed as history lessons, not spy thrillers.

That makes sense. The CIA doesn’t exactly have an open-door policy, so it’s hard to say for sure, but by all accounts the work of a real-life agent isn’t terribly dramatic, or ripe for genre film treatment. Much of it is a bureaucratic nightmare, and the jobs that we view as exotic and exciting – “secret agent,” for example – are usually a tedious slog, consisting of years of building connections and forging allies in the hopes of a payoff in the indefinite future. Yeah: all else equal, I’d rather watch Jason Bourne kick some bad guys in the face while searching for his true identity.

David Ignatius, novelist and long-time foreign affairs columnist for the Washington Post, knows this well. With Body of Lies, currently being adapted by Ridley Scott and William Monahan, he tries a compromise: a thriller that keeps a plausibly realistic view of the CIA and looks elsewhere for drama. Specifically, Ignatius sticks with a gritty, convoluted, technical spy plot and supplements it with a treacly, sentimental, sometimes steamy romantic subplot that eventually collides with the A-story, culminating in a conventionally heartwrenching damsel-in-distress climax. The CIA may be boring, but that’ll get their attention.

The novel’s romance between intrepid CIA agent Roger Ferris and saintly humanitarian aid worker Alice Melville is so impossibly earnest, so sappy, that it cannot possibly make it to the screen unaltered – at least not if ultra-smart screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven, The Departed) has anything to say about it. And indeed, it’s not even clear that Alice will be in the film, which is in post-production for an October release: the IMDb doesn’t have an entry for the character, and there’s been no casting news regarding her. By contrast, Roger’s seductive, manipulative wife Gretchen is present and accounted for, to be played by Black Book’s Carice Van Houten despite the role having been tailor-made for Angelina Jolie. Possibly Monahan decided to merge the characters (which would eliminate a nifty mid-novel interlude where Ferris faces a legal investigation thanks to Gretchen’s blackmail), but if Alice has indeed been excised altogether, then the ending will have to be radically reworked.

The main plot concerns an ingenious plan by Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his CIA boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe, rather than a stocky man in his late 50s as Ignatius wrote the character) to stymie a network of al Qaeda car bombers by making it appear as if the CIA has infiltrated it. (Hint: the title is a pun of sorts.) Until all hell breaks loose in the aforementioned climax, there’s precious little in the way of action: the story moves forward via conversations, debates, the leveraging of resources and contacts. It’s fascinating stuff if, like me, you enjoy process, but it’s not terribly cinematic. Monahan showed a flair for this sort of thing with the cat-and-mouse elements of The Departed, but it will take some deft handling, not least because the characters’ shadowy maneuverings get confusing even as they sit on the page, to say nothing of what could happen when they whiz by on the screen.

There’s a twist ending I won’t discuss, except to say that if the film pulls it off, it will earn itself some repeat viewings this fall. Ignatius does a nice job of telegraphing the revelation just enough that while it isn’t quite guessable, it seems perfectly logical when you rewind the plot in your head. It’s a tricky balance.

Politically, in case you’re wondering, the story is pretty neutral, at least as Ignatius has it: terrorists are bad, the people trying to stop the terrorists are good, non-extremist Muslims are decent folk. It doesn’t even glorify the CIA, which at the end of the day winds up looking pretty ineffectual. Ridley Scott was reportedly denied permission to shoot the film in the United Arab Emirates for political reasons (he went to Morocco instead), but there’s nothing searing here.

Body of Lies, the novel, is pitched as a spy thriller informed by the author’s extensive experience in the field and knowledge of the way the CIA really operates. (The back cover offers a fawning quote from former CIA director George Tenet, claiming that the book is “fiction but reads like fact.”) It’s certainly intelligent, plausible, and sometimes exciting. That Ignatius felt the need to pull his punch by throwing in a love story straight out of a Hollywood movie is understandable – as I say, the work of the CIA isn’t always high drama – but regrettable. If Scott and Monahan can tighten Ignatius’ plotting, the movie could become the genre’s high-water mark.

Indochine may as well have been Bungalow 8 Tuesday night, when Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld held an after party for his new Louis Vuitton-sponsored photography exhibit.

A mix of Euro transplants, models and the odd celebrity, including Paris Hilton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Claire Danes, Stavros Niarchos, Tatiana Santo Domingo, Andrea Casiraghi, Natalia Vodianova and Justin Portman formed a raucous dance pit that even had Carine Roitfeld and Charlotte Sarkozy dancing on the restaurant’s banquettes.

Last night’s premiere and post-soiree for He’s Just Not That Into You brought out the party animal in several of its famous faces.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who turned out to support starring pal Kevin Connolly, took the party to West Hollywood celeb haunt Villa, where a Celebuzz spy saw him cutting loose on the dance floor with Office actress Rashida Jones.

“They were dancing and having a great time,” the onlooker said of the Leo, normally a reserved presence when he does surface in his basebal cap and anonymous blazers.

A few feet away, DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond costar Jennifer Connelly did her share of damage, “hanging near Leo but engaged with her own group all night.”

While her husband Paul Bettany wasn’t anywhere to be found, we’re told Connelly closed down the bar, another departure as Connelly is rarely a fixture on the nightlife scene.

DiCaprio enjoyed a boys’ night out prior to his cutting a rug with Rashida (daughter of Quincy Jones), having toasted Entourage star Connolly earlier at venue Social with their mutual pals Lukas Haas and Tobey Maguire.

Also absent—DiCaprio’s on-and-off girlfriend Bar Refaeli.

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO could feel the tension as he prepared for a sex scene with KATE WINSLET on new movie Revolutionary Road.
For many actors, stripping off in front of a leading lady is embarrassing enough.

But imagine doing it with her husband just feet away.

Revolutionary Road director SAM MENDES is Kate’s other half and was looking on intently as the couple got ready for the cameras.

“Kate seemed very nervous,” recalls Leo with a smile. “She kept on saying, ‘This feels so weird.’ I just told her, ‘It doesn’t feel weird to me — it’s only acting.’

“Then Sam broke the tension by telling me how and where to hold Kate’s bottom. He said, ‘Put your hand here,’ showing me the position.

“After that, Kate just went for it, like the great actress she is. I can’t think of anyone in the world of her generation who is better.”

Leo says his special relationship with Kate goes back to the days of filming their 1997 blockbuster Titanic, when the young stars would both cry with the stress.

“The director, JIM CAMERON, had his own way of doing things and that was tough for us to get our heads around,” he recalls.

“That film had been his vision for years and he had to be in charge. We were young, inexperienced and were exhausted from filming.

Naked

“We only had each other and confided our feelings. It was never more than a close friendship — and that has lasted right up to today.

“Kate became one of my best friends and we’ve always been in touch. If we’ve not had a chance to meet, then we email each other.

“When I had the chance to work with her again on Revolutionary Road, I didn’t have to think twice.

“I knew the script and I knew the scenes we were going to do in front of Sam. I just didn’t think it was going to be a problem.”

The film, based on Richard Yates’s 1961 novel, is a hard-hitting emotional story from Fifties suburban America.

But it takes Leo, 34, and 33-year-old Kate’s on-screen relationship one step further than Titanic, as here they are cast as husband and wife.

Leo’s character enjoys being on the career ladder of a major New York insurance company.

But Kate wants him to ditch the security of a mundane life and live his dreams with her in Paris.

Their marriage, which starts with so much hope, begins to crumble as they fight over their future direction.

“I can’t imagine anyone I would sooner act with, pretending to have a marriage which is going nowhere,” Leo continues.

“The great thing about Kate is she can act a scene with such strength and conviction and you think, ‘My God, she is really mad at me.’ Then, the moment the scene is over, she goes back to being Kate. That takes a special talent and it’s why she is so much in demand.”

Leo also knows Kate is a favourite for Oscar success for both Revolutionary Road and her current film, The Reader.

She has also been nominated for Golden Globes for both roles.

Her shapely figure is once again the subject of much debate in The Reader, since she plays a woman in her mid-30s who seduces a 15-year-old boy in Berlin in 1958.

In a succession of frank sex scenes, her naked body is seen from every angle.

Her German co-star, DAVID KROSS, had only just celebrated his 18th birthday before filming.

Leo appeared in what is still probably Kate’s most famous sex scene — in the steamed-up car being transported in the hold of the Titanic.

So what does he think of sex on screen?

“There’s a place for it if the story is right,” he says. “In Revolutionary Road, it’s to show the couple’s intense relationship.

“But what you see on screen has nothing to do with how it is filmed. You are surrounded by cameras and a film crew. There is nothing in the slightest bit sexy about being filmed that way. They are scenes of movement and dialogue, like any others.”

But Leo — last seen in RIDLEY SCOTT’s thriller Body Of Lies — knows that Revolutionary Road could bring Oscar gold for them both. Kate has been nominated five times before without success and is hotly tipped for another nomination this year.

Leo, meanwhile, has been put forward three times, for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), The Aviator (2004) and Blood Diamond (2006).

When the five nominations for best actor are announced on January 22 — one month ahead of the ceremony — he is expected to be one of the favourites.

“If I say it would be an honour just to be nominated, that sounds false — even though it’s true,” he says, cautiously.

“But I feel some people are Oscar-hungry and I would not say that I am hungry for one. It’s not something I have to have in my life.”

This is a very different Leonardo DiCaprio to the one we saw 12 years ago, before the release of Titanic. Back then he was nervous, edgy and wondering what was about to hit him. Now, in the comfort of London’s Dorchester hotel, he is clearly at ease with himself.

Leo says: “Fame comes at a terrible price. After Titanic, I got stressed. I was suddenly being chased by paparazzi and my life was being turned over, on public display, without me having any control.

“If I did not talk, then people seemed to make up stuff anyway. One guy who I thought was a close friend started talking. It was a horrible experience.

Nervous

“I can’t say that I am in full control of it now, but I have accepted the price and have learned more how to deal with things.”

The star reveals he considered starring in Boogie Nights at around the same time as Titanic — a role which eventually went to MARK WAHLBERG.

“I did wonder whether I made the right decision,” he says.

“I was 22 and the attention was just intense. I went into my shell for a while, didn’t do any more films and tried to wait for it to go away. But it’s also important I don’t come across as if I am complaining in any way. I remember being told, ‘Don’t worry, it will calm down.’

“It has and now I can live my life very happily. I am enjoying my acting and enjoy being so busy. I have no complaints about anything.”

Leo also knows how to deal with questions on his personal life. “I prefer to avoid them,” he says.

So is there a chance that his three-year relationship with girlfriend BAR RAFAELI, a 23-year-old Israeli model, will end in marriage?

“It is always very hard to fit in my personal life with work during busy times,” he answers. “This has been a busy time.

“I find it is best to just get on with my life and let things like that take care of themselves.

“I made a decision early on in my career to retain my private life and not divulge too much about myself.”

So does Kate know more about him than most?

“Of course she does,” he says. “But she would never tell.”

Revolutionary Road (15) is out on January 30.

It may be more than a decade since they starred in Titanic but the years have been kind to Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.
As they posed for photographers at the Los Angeles premiere of Revolutionary Road yesterday the actors looked barely a day older than they did in the 1997 film.
Despite now being a mother-of-two 33-year-old Kate showed off her slim and toned body in an asymmetrical black dress, with a bejeweled strap over one shoulder.

Over the last ten years Kate has certainly become more polished in appearance, with her once long brunette hair now blonde and perfectly coiffed.

The actress now appears slimmer than she did in her 20s, with shots from the Titanic movie showing her noticeably fuller figured.
Kate was bullied throughout her youth for being overweight and in her early career was outspoken about her refusal to conform to the Hollywood ideal.

At the time she starred in Titanic she was seen as the champion of fuller figured women.
But it appears that since moving to America, where she lives with her family in New York, Kate has worked hard on cultivating a more glamorous image.

The actress was recently the centre of controversy over a photoshoot for Vanity Fair - which showed her looking line-free and incredibly slim.

But she showed she had no need of digital enhancement on the red carpet last night.
The premiere was also a chance for Kate and Leonardo to walk down the red carpet together, after Kate missed the world premiere of Titanic to attend a close friend’s funeral.

Revolutionary Road, directed by Kate’s husband Sam Mendes, has received four Oscar nominations - Best Actress for Kate, Best Actor for DiCaprio, Best Director for Mendes and Best Picture.
Kate, unlike DiCaprio, also received an Oscar nomination for her role in Titanic, but despite receiving a total of seven nominations she has yet to take an Oscar home.

The film, based on Richard Yates’ first novel, tells the story of an unfulfilled American couple who decide to move to France with their two young children.

They hope they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America - but all does not go to plan.