favorite movie #117 - holiday edition: peter’s friends

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #117 - Peter’s Friends (1992) - This film, about the getting together around the New Year's holiday by a bunch of old college friends, feels mostly improvisational, and probably for good reason — most of the cast are old college friends or frequent collaborators. Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery, and screenwriter Martin Bergman attended Cambridge University together and were members of the Cambridge Footlights. Director Kenneth Branagh was married to Emma Thompson at the time of filming, and Bregman is married to co-writer Rita Rudner. Hugh Laurie was a former comedy partner of Stephen Fry, and Imelda Staunton has appeared in numerous projects with all of the cast. Called a British Big Chill, the film is less about a generation as it is about the nature of friendship. Some of the plotting and situations seem familiar, but the fun comes from watching this talented cast interact with one another. And I am happy for any chance to see one of my favorite British comedians, Tony Slattery, apply his zany energy to anything.

Stephen Fry

Tony Slattery

favorite movie #111 - holiday edition: love actually

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #111 - Love Actually (2003) - This movie is more than a bit of a mess. A strung-together bunch of inter-connected stories, it features a bunch of Londoners as they muddle through the holiday season. What makes it watchable is a wonderful cast and a fantastic performance by Emma Thompson as a wife who discovers that the romantic gift she thought her husband (Alan Rickman) was getting for her was actually intended for the floozy he works with. Also charming are Liam Neeson and Thomas Sangster as a step-father and son mourning the loss of their wife and mother, respectively. Hugh Grant can't help but be charming in the absurd casting of a British PM who has fallen for his adorable staff member, played by Martine McCutcheon. Topping it all off like the naughty angel on top of the tree is Bill Nighy as aging rock star Billy Mack, who is reluctantly coerced by his longtime manager and best friend (Gregor Fisher) into recording a Christmas single to revive his sagging career. Surrender to the movie, don't think too hard about the side plots that don't work, and enjoy yourself.

Billy Mack - Christmas is All Around (Love Actually) from Christmas is All around on Vimeo.

a pixar princess

Much has been made of the fact that Merida, the heroine of the new Pixar film Brave, is a girl, the first female protagonist in Pixar's history of 17 years and 13 animated films. Well, they've come a long way baby — sorta. Merida is a feisty gal, and a great hero for kids, girls and boys alike, to root for. But she is also a princess. In American animated films it appears that the only females worth doing stories about are princesses. The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, The Secret World of Arrietty also featured a feisty girl who can take charge and go on adventures. She was not only not a princess, but she was barely five inches tall.

This is not to say that Brave doesn't have its charms. Merida (Kelly Macdonald) may be a princess, but she isn't into doing all the usual princessy-stuff like learning to speak sweetly and politely, sew and play the harp, etc., etc. She loves to ride her horse Angus and especially to shoot her bow and arrows. But she is no Katniss Everdeen — she doesn't bring game home to her father the king's table, but rather seems to like to shoot her bow for accuracy, hoping for a Highlands archery competition. She gets her chance when her mother (Emma Thompson), fond of saying things like "A lady does not place her weapon on the table," tries to marry her off to the son of one of three local clans, and in the competition for her hand Merida competes herself, and of course wins. All of this is good stuff, and a nice twist on the traditional boy must impress girl, prince must win princess stuff. Brave is a girl power movie, with most of the males (save Angus) extremely unimpressive. Billy Connolly manages to make an impact as the King, but through humor, not prowess.

The real star of Brave is Merida's unruly, yet gorgeous mane of hair, which rivals Rapunzel's in its impressiveness. The film is simply wonderful to look at, especially the background and treatments of surfaces, like the hair on a horse or the weave of a tartan's plaid. The facial features of the characters are a little more doll-like, and they still have that "Pixar style" that will be familiar to anyone who has seen Toy Story, The Incredibles, Ratatouille or Up. It will be a real stride forward when the Pixar animation team feel they can inject as much individuality to their human characters as they lavish on hair, fabric and grass.

As a fan of fairy tales I love the many classic stories that have featured princesses, and see nothing wrong if my daughter (or any of her male friends) also familiarize themselves with them as they grow up. But fairy tales were mostly jotted down in a pre-democracy world. The goal of most storybook princesses is to find a prince. Many modern girls and women still equate such an aim with the only truly possible happily ever after. The marketing power and influence of Disney and its princess line is undeniable, but as we construct new stories, do we really need to continue to create new princesses? Merida's refreshing tomboyishness aside, Brave's female characters are mythic stereotypes — maiden (Merida), mother (the Queen) and crone (a witch, voiced by Julie Walters). The only other noticeable female in the movie is a (quite) buxom and rotund servant in the castle, whose main reason to be around is so that her cleavage can be used to comic effect.

The tagline of the movie, spoken by Merida, is "If you had a chance to change your fate, would you?" But does Brave take us beyond those three archetypal women, and does Merida really change her fate? Even after some magical (and quite amusing) transformation involving bears, not really. Merida and her mother, both stubborn types, agree to give each other a little more slack, and Merida can push off her wedding, at least for now. Brave ends up not being about Merida's independence at all, but more a story about a teen and her mom learning to appreciate and understand each other better. That's not a bad thing, but it's hardly the female empowerment story that many might have been expecting and hoping for.

peter's friends 20 years later

Spoilers abound, as I want to discuss some major plot points that have been affected by the passing of the years.

Peter's Friends has been dubbed a "British Big Chill." I have never actually seen that movie, but I guess the ensemble of stars playing friends, the nostalgic soundtrack, and the interpersonal dramas, make them similar. The friends in Peter's Friends are played by real-life friends. The movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who plays Andrew, and was married at the time to Emma Thompson, who plays Maggie. Thompson's old school chums play ... old school chums (they were all once members of the Cambridge Footlights): Stephen Fry (Peter), Hugh Laurie (who American audience know and love as House, M.D., plays Roger), Tony Slattery (Brian). Thompson's mother Phyllida Law plays Peter's housekeeper Vera. The cast is rounded out by Imelda Staunton, a frequent co-star of Thompson's (Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee), Alex Lowe, who plays Vera's son, and Rita Rudner, who co-wrote the script with her husband Matin Bregman, who was also a member of the Cambridge Footlights.

Clockwise from L: Rita Rudner, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Laurie, Phyllida Law, Tony Slattery, Alphonsia Emmanuel, Alex Lowe 

All of the nepotism aside, Peter's Friends desires to be a bit more than it is, which is a bunch of old friends spending a weekend at a fabulous country estate owned by Peter. The friends have lost touch since college, but get together for New Year's, where they will fight, divulge secrets, and have lots of sex. It is hinted throughout the film that Peter is gay — through some comic and unsuccessful attempts at seduction by the extremely single Maggie, and by some sheepish exchanges that Peter has with his housekeeper. But the big reveal comes near the end of the film, when right before the stroke of midnight, Peter, fed up with all of the in-fighting that has come to a head over the weekend, informs his friends that he is HIV positive, banishing all of their bickering and replacing it with a deadly silence.

The reaction of his friends is quite dramatic, and shows how much has changed in twenty years. Not that an HIV diagnosis is not a serious thing for anyone and their loved ones still to deal with, but I was surprised at all of the looks on the actors faces as they took in Peter's news, clearly feeling that he had announced his imminent death. If this movie were to be made today, Peter's news might still come as somewhat of a surprise to his friends, but more because they were all so self-absorbed and had no idea what his life was really about rather than his prognosis, which would be generally more hopeful.

Peter's Friends isn't really a good movie. It wasn't even when it came out in 1992. But it is entertaining, even funny at times. It is interesting to see this group of actors together, and to see how attitudes have changed in two decades.

kinda reminds me of...

In the past I have been told that I have reminded (different) folks of Emma Thompson, Glenne Headly, and even Drew Barrymore.

Any movie stars or public figures that you can call your doppelgänger?

I love these ladies most of the time, too - Emma in anything, Drew was fun in Music and Lyrics and Grey Gardens, and Glenne was in one of my all-time favorites, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.