Cotillard

It's a great thing that Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for Brest - sorry - Best Actress. I first saw her in "Love Me if you Dare". My second thought was that she was a great actress and was the emotional soul of the film. (My first thought, naturally, was to find a nice place to violently frisk her.) So I liked the movie even though it was a little sappy at parts, and the characters were basically selfish assholes.

I would want to watch "La Vie en Rose" (incidentally "Love Me if you Dare" featured the song). She is a great actress with good emotional range. Very spontaneous, which is to say, she doesn't even have to act a lot. No longer as pretty as she was in "Love Me If You Dare", doesn't speak English well. My opinion is that all ze French people, if zey sbeak English, should sbeak wis ze French eksaunt like Arsene Venger, and not un Amerikan one. But zat ees a small gripe.

A bigger gripe is that they are making a movie called "Nine", I found this out when reading an interview of Cotillard. While ordinarily having a movie named after your blog is something to rejoice at, it appears to be a remake of "8 ½". THE "8 ½", one of the most amazing films ever made. God knows what they're thinking. I don't give a shit if Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard are going to be in it. This is one of those things that shouldn't ever be touched.

What would Fellini think if he knew his masterpiece was going to be molested? It is not only a great film, it is the index page to all his other works. It is the work of a director, at the height of his powers, who nevertheless knows that it is the end of the first and greatest phase of his film career. Who ever says "Asa Nisi Masa" in this day and age? How are they going to shoot the scene where Claudina tells Fellini "You don't know how to love" three times?

Who's the motherfucker with this amount of hubris? It is none other than Rob Marshall, the guy behind "Chicago" (great visuals, no soul) and "Memoirs of a Geisha" (great visuals, no soul). You can expect "Nine" to be more of the same. I would have wanted a sensible guy to do a remake but then again if you were a sensible guy you would not want to touch this project with a 10 foot pole.

(Edit: I've since learnt that Nine was a broadway show before Rob Marshall touched it. Well and good, but even if Nine was half good, I wouldn't want Rob Marshall to touch it.)