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An Oscar for Jack Nicholson?
The actor's new film About Schmidt opens to rave reviews at the NY Film Festival
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Arthur J Pais
Warren Schmidt, an insurance executive loses his job, his wife, and his daughter in quick succession. Shocked and shaken by the events, Schmidt embarks on a journey of self-discovery for the first time in his life. Based on an acclaimed novel by Louis Bagley, the movie version of About Schmidt stars one of the most consummate artists of our time, Jack Nicholson, in the title role.
Nicholson, who is returning to the screen after more than year, has already created a lot of Oscar buzz for his performance in About Schmidt that opened the 40th edition of New York Film Festival on September 27. Nicholson's performance and the film, which opens soon through New Line, have drawn wonderful reviews.
Directed by Alexander Payne (Election), the film has a lot of things going for it apart from its electrifying performances from Nicholson and Hope Davis as his daughter. It is an emotionally moving and gripping film with a satirical tone. It could have become a vulgar melodrama in the hands of a lesser director.
Nicholson says he put his heart and soul into the movie. The 65-year-old actor reportedly cut down his fee - about $12 million - so that About Schmidt could be made as a medium budget film. It reportedly cost $40 million. Following the screening the movie in New York, Nicholson said he chose the film because there's such a dearth of rich roles for older actors.
The Nicholson film is among many films about emotional journeys that will be shown at the Festival, considered one of the top festivals in the world. It will show 26 features and 17 shorts from 25 countries In addition, a 14-film retrospective of Shabana Azmi films are also being held under the banner The Actor as Activist: Celebrating Shabana Azmi. Screenings include such films as Ankur and Fire, will run through Oct 10.
All the feature films (excluding the Azmi retrospective) in the festival are U.S. premieres.
"The extraordinary variety of work in this year's NYFF and the presence of artists in all stages of their careers gives the sense that today's cinema is developing both new stories and new ways of telling them," said Richard Pe๑a, program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and chair of the Festival selection committee.
It has always been a boutique film festival since its inception, he added, and since the model has served well there is no plan to make the event " encyclopedic or panoramic."
The movies to be shown at NYFF cover a wide variety of human experiences.
"Witness, for example, Otar Iosseliani's Monday Morning, a remarkable take on contemporary working life, or Jennifer Dworkin's Love and Diane, a probing, insightful, and deeply affecting look at an American family," he said.
The highlight movies include Boogie Nights , director Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love which is perhaps the most challenging film for the well-known comic actor Adam Sandler. He stars as the socially impaired owner of a small business-distributing novelty toilet plungers-in the San Fernando Valley whose efforts at romance are foiled by his dominating sisters. The romantic film, which received raves when it premiered earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival, also stars the acclaimed young British actress Emily Watson in her first mainstream role.
The festival closes with Talk to Her, already a big success in Europe. Pedro Almod๓var's Spanish film focuses on two men in love: Nurse Benigno who is devoted to the care of a beautiful coma victim, and writer Marco who is intrigued by a striking female bullfighter.
Many of the films at the festival have won awards abroad or been acclaimed at the Toronto International Film Festival. The list includes Bloody Sunday, a pulse-quickening retelling of the tragic events that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland, in January 1972, for instance, won the grand prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival. It focuses on a Catholic activist whose attempt to stage a peaceful protest march turns into a massacre at the hands of English paratroopers. The movie is also notable for looking compassionately into the lives of the British soldiers while making allowance for the Irish protestors.
Bertrand Tavernier, one of the best-known artistic film-maker in Europe, presents Safe Conduct, a funny and thought provoking portrait of French filmmakers during the German Occupation.
From the 93-year-old Manoel de Oliveira comes, The Uncertainty Principle, about the nature of friendship, temptation, sin and possibilities of redemption.
Dworkin, whose first documentary Love and Diane follows the story of Diane Hazzard, recovering crack addict, raises interesting observations about parental duties and obligations, welfare system, joblessness, personal responsibility and combating drugs.