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Milk Hits, Earns Raves Across the Board
Awards Daily —
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The NY Times AO Scott writes:
“Milk” is a fascinating, multi-layered history lesson. In its scale and visual variety it feels almost like a calmed-down Oliver Stone movie, stripped of hyperbole and Oedipal melodrama. But it is also a film that like Mr. Van Sant’s other recent work — and also, curiously, like David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” another San Francisco-based tale of the 1970s — respects the limits of psychological and sociological explanation.
Dan White, Milk’s erstwhile colleague and eventual assassin, haunts the edges ...
iW ROUND UP | Wednesday, November 26th
indieWIRE Recent —
Considering Raddon "When Art, Sexuality and Religion Collide, What is the Role of a Film Festival?" asks AJ Schnack, noting, "a sense of the inevitable and the regrettable arriving together at once." [ATWT]
Gurus Oscar Picks The annual Guru's o' Gold make Oscar predictions weekly. [MCN]
Two Times Reviews A.O. Scott writes, "Milk" is a marvel. Manohla Dargis calls "Australia," "demented and generally diverting." [NYT]
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Kindness Brought Out
Hollywood Elsewhere —
Kindness Brought Out In the view of N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott , Sean Penn "outdoes himself" in Milk , "playing a character different from any he has portrayed before. [But] this is less a matter of sexuality -- there is no longer much novelty in a straight actor's 'playing gay' -- than of temperament. "Unlike, say, Jimmy Markum , Mr. Penn's brooding ex-convict in Clint Eastwood 's Mystic River , Harvey Milk is an extrovert and an ironist, a man whose expansive, sometimes sloppy self-presentation camouflages an incisive mind and a ferociously stubborn will . ...
Deep but Not Narrow
Carpetbagger —
... genre and into something far more universal, with much of the credit going to Sean Penn, but plenty left over for Gus Van Sant, who remembers that it’s okay for movies about serious matters to be fun to watch as well. Milk is adult and intelligent in ways many films are not, and it’s rousing and enthralling in a way few films are. It’s a minor miracle of sheer film making joy and determination, and one of the best American films of 2008. (A.O. Scott, in last Wednesday’s times, also marveled at the power of Mr. Van Sant’s handiwork, writing that the power of ...
Romance is Dead
Carpetbagger —
... the thick of things during this year’s Oscar race is that the Gus Van Sant biopic is on of the few movies that has nailed an authentic romantic moment. “Australia” was shooting for the kind of romantic fireworks that made Hollywood such a cultural force to begin with, but to the Bagger’s very eye, the opening subway scene was so unexpected and so full of yearning that it served as reminder that the well-done, meet-cute love scene is increasingly rare on the screen. A. O. Scott did a much better job of describing it in his review , one of the reasons the Bagger leaves the ...
Globie Makes Some New Friends
Carpetbagger —
... Bagger, now finally on the East Coast, looking like a burlap bag of rusty tools after a night of modern airline travel, does have a few thoughts, although he clearly is not mission-critical to the proceedings (double sniff). For instance, what happened to “Milk?” The Bagger knows that the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have their proclivities — they like their leading men to be in love with leading ladies — but if they saw fit to nominate Sean Penn, why not the gorgeous, smart movie he is attached to ? One explanation might be Harvey Weinstein. Mr. ...
Milk
The Chutry Experiment —
... by the film’s lack of complexity and, in places, its tendency to sanitize the image of 1970s San Francisco. To some extent, these choices may be motivated by a desire to reach out and to make the bohemian lives of Milk and his friends safe for the movie theaters and living rooms of the widest possible audience, an impulse that generally seems productive to me, even if it results in films that feel watered down. I realize the pedagogical value of such films (A.O. Scott favorably describes Milk as a “fascinating, multi-layered history lesson”), ...
Oh, Yes They Did
Carpetbagger —
... that hit the Bagger’s buttons, but its 13 nominations testify to the ability of the director David Fincher to use cutting edge technology in seamless ways. The narrative has some leaps and gaps that brought to mind “Atonement,” another piece of directorial craft that had a big, sprawling love story that clanked off the rim a few times when it overreached. “Milk” Not even Mr. Denby argued about its inclusion this year. Everyone talks about Sean Penn’s performance, but as A.O. Scott marveled in his rave of a review , this is perhaps Gus Van Sant’s best work yet. The power of ...
All Sewn Up?
Carpetbagger —
... There have been a series of very emotional cover ads in Variety over the last few days, an indication that Fox Searchlight thinks that the remarkable back story of Mr. Rourke could carry the day over Sean Penn’s much-lauded performance as Harvey Milk .
Oscar Predictions!
At The Movies - Film News and Reviews —
... in Love” kind of upset, maybe by “The Reader.” You know, one of those, “Uhhh…what?” winners.
WHAT I THINK SHOULD WIN: Oh, “Slumdog” was my favorite. Though I wouldn’t be unhappy if “Milk” won.
BEST ACTOR
* Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor” (Overture Films)
* Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon” (Universal)
* Sean Penn in “Milk” (Focus Features)
* Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” ...
