By Ray Pride

What was the name of the movie again? “Badlands”? “Days of Heaven”? “The New World”? They equally suit the newest Terrence Malick movie. “The Tree of Life” is an unheard prayer, one we, or, no one hears: to a dead brother, from one voice; to a silent god, from another; hopeful, uplifted whispers by several others toward the grace of the universe and the most everyday of everyday events. Malick, in his fifth feature, atomizes his narrative. There are footfalls and footholds, but you’re on your own, with your sense of experience and memory and your own set of cultural references to apply to the pointillist-like approach to amassing shots and sequences as largely discrete fragments of narrative. Part of the running time uses special effects to recreate the birth of the universe, a sustained shebang of a Big Bang, but the largest chunk of memory is given over to family life in a small Texas town in the 1950s, where father Brad Pitt and mother Jessica Chastain raise three small boys.

In 138 minutes, scenes shot over the course of years—mostly a couple of years ago, but which he began almost four decades ago—have been woven together in different lengths for the past two years. Brad Pitt described its elasticity this way: “I’ve seen the film in its four-hour incarnation, then three-and-a-half, two-forty-five, back to three-thirty, and now at two-and-a-quarter. In essence, it’s the same.” But it’s not, that’s hardly possible with the vast amounts of footage Malick shoots. Three versions of “The New World” have been released, and each is substantially different from the others. And if you work with a camera that is autonomous and distracted, as Malick does, with promiscuous principal photography that works from inspiration and not text, and the meaning gets layered in selection, the decisive moment is then in the edit, or more correctly, the multiple edits in the edit bay, not in shooting. Plus, not only has Malick agonized for years, this is he and his family’s fall from the Edenic into the worldly, as captured in natural light by camera great Emmanuel Lubezki and Steadicam dance captain Jorg Widmer. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2005, Doug Liman directed “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” a comic action-thriller about spouses who kept secret from one another their employment as assassins by two secret agencies. Now Liman directs and shoots “Fair Game,” about another suburban couple who are really players in a geopolitical game. Valerie Plame Wilson (Naomi Watts) and her husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) have their own secrets to keep, but no kills to tally. Their real-life counterparts penned books—hers was “Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent Was Betrayed by Her Own Government” (2008) and his was “The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity” (2004)—that inform a topical screenplay by John-Henry and Jez Butterworth. Read the rest of this entry »

By Laura Hawbaker

With ten dollars in my pocket, I recently stared up at the AMC River East marquee. I was torn; two films were on my to-see list: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Milk.” “I’m a bad sister,” I told my movie buddy. “My big sister worked on both, and I haven’t seen either.”

My sister is J.R. Hawbaker, a costume assistant in Los Angeles. In 2007, she worked with Jaqueline West, the costume designer of “Button,” and she was a key costumer beneath “Milk”’s Danny Glicker. Both are nominated for Oscars in Costume Design.

“They deserve to be nominated for their different visions,” she says. “Danny did gritty, lived-in costumes. You couldn’t tell what was a costume and what was 1974 footage. As a designer, that’s the biggest compliment you can get.

“Meanwhile, Jackie did an epic for the ages. There are so few perfect storms that take the risk to be grand. She gave over a year and a half of her life to that film, and she made it stunning.”

J.R. may call these two Oscar-nominated designers “Danny” and “Jackie,” but it has been a long road to get to this point.

In 1999, J.R. embarked on a six-year-long academic identity crisis. First it was a Floriculture major, then Journalism, then English, then (at Mom’s suggestion) Communications. No course of study seemed to fit, and every quarter or so, we were not surprised to learn that the eldest Hawbaker girl had switched her major yet again.

At long last she settled on a major, her fifth and final, a peculiar choice with an uncertain career path: Costume Design. “I didn’t know there was a job out there that would pay you to put clothes on people!”

Mom and Dad had mini-heart attacks. What followed was four years at the DePaul Theater School’s rigorous conservatory program. Taught by some of Chicago’s best theater professionals, the School was like boot camp for young theater adepts. I often came home to a hurricane, our shared Lincoln Park apartment in a state of pandemonium: fabric draped over couches, renderings strewn about the floor and my sister in the midst of it all.

“At DePaul, I learned to make anything in five minutes, and in this industry, it’s a skill you need. They will always ask you for the impossible, and they will always want it yesterday.

“I also learned to deal with the crazy personalities that pop up in this industry. In theater, film and television, it’s like moths to a flame for crazies.”

Upon graduating (at long last!) from DePaul in 2005, J.R. moved to Los Angeles for an internship with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She built up an impressive resume on “24,” “That 70s Show,” “Seraphim Falls,” “Reign Over Me” and “Mad Men.” Eventually, she landed at a costume rental house, United American Costume (UAC).

Eventually, a client arrived at UAC, a smiley blonde woman in the midst of researching her latest project. That woman was Jaqueline West; the project was “Benjamin Button.”

“Jackie was so down to earth and approachable. She was scouting, getting her head together for prep work, and she needed help with her initial research. I was bored stiff that week, so I was happy to help out.”

For twenty minutes, West sat down and like a storyteller told the plot of “Button.” With a timeline spanning nearly a century, costuming the film was a massive undertaking. J.R. helped as a research assistant, unearthing information on 1930s prostitutes from the New Orleans French Quarter, 1950s Americana designer Claire McCardell, forgotten 1960s Audrey Hepburn publicity stills and more.

“It was amazing and rare, having that one-on-one time with Jackie early on, when those tiny baby kernels of ideas were just starting to formulate,” she says. “Afterward, ‘Button’ became HUGE, and they shot for a year and a half. But I will always cherish that movie. I was there for a really small, tiny part of the costume design’s gestation.”

After ‘Button,’ J.R. worked on “this weird little vampire pilot.” The pilot was HBO’s “True Blood,” costume-designed by Danny Glicker.

“Then the writer’s strike happened in October of 2007, and it shut down everything in town except for a couple of features that had already been green-lit.” Like every other television show in Los Angeles, “True Blood” was put on hiatus, and my sister, along with thousands of other below-the-line industry workers, faced a bleak stretch of unemployment—until Danny Glicker came to her rescue.

“Danny said, ‘Oh, I have this Gus Van Sant movie with Sean Penn about Harvey Milk lined up. Come and prep with me.’ So I was one of a very lucky few who actually worked during the writer’s strike.”

As the film’s key costumer, J.R. pulled background numbers and clothed extras while Glicker busied himself dressing the principal actors.

“Danny is very talented and so hilarious! He’s like an alchemist. There was an opera scene that called for some old batty opera ladies, and I would ask Danny for his direction on the look. He’d say, ‘I want them to be encrusted like a ship, like a floating barge.’ So I would bring him barnacle-like rhinestone glam dresses and he’d love it!”

Now that the writers’ strike is at an end, J.R. is back on “True Blood,” this time as the show’s assistant costume designer, and her resume now includes two Oscar-nominated films.

“I feel lucky because I have a quiet family connection to both of those movies,” she says. “It’s weird because when I was working on them I never thought, ‘I’m working on a possible Oscar movie!’ I was just trying to get the clothes on the people.” 

Top 5 Domestic Films

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Che,” Steven Soderbergh

“Paranoid Park,” Gus Van Sant

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Films

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Reprise,” Joachim Trier

“Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“A Christmas Tale,” Arnaud Desplechin

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films

“Slumdog Millionaire,” Danny Boyle

“Ballast,” Lance Hammer

“Hunger,” Steve McQueen

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“In The City of Sylvia,” Jose Luis Guerin

—Bill Stamets

Top 5 Films

“Milk,” Gus Vant Sant

“The Dark Knight,” Christopher Nolan

“Man on Wire,” James Marsh

“Let the Right One In,” Tomas Alfredson

“Rachel Getting Married,” Jonathan Demme

—Tom Lynch

Top 5 Performances – Female

Sally Hawkins, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”

Kristin Scott Thomas, “I’ve Loved You So Long”

Kate Winslet, “Revolutionary Road”

Kat Dennings, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Performances – Male

Benicio Del Toro, “Che”

Sean Penn, “Milk”

Mathieu Amalric, “A Christmas Tale”

Michel Blanc, “The Witnesses”

Ben Kingsley, “Elegy”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Female

Ann Savage, “My Winnipeg”

Nurgul Yesilcay, “The Edge of Heaven”

Viola Davis, “Doubt”

Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”

Zoe Kazan, “Revolutionary Road”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Supporting Performances – Male

Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road,” “Shotgun Stories”

Danny McBride, “Pineapple Express”

Richard Dreyfuss, “W.”

Toby Jones, “W.”

Anil Kapoor, “Slumdog Millionaire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Directors

Mike Leigh, “Happy-Go-Lucky”

Joachim Trier, “Reprise”

Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Tomas Alfredson, “Let the Right One In”

James Marsh, “Man on Wire”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Screenplays

Fatih Akin, “The Edge Of Heaven”

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, “Reprise”

Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”

Charlie Kaufman, “Synecdoche, New York”

Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges”

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Domestic Documentaries

“Encounters at the End of the World,” Werner Herzog

“The Order of Myths,” Margaret Brown

“At The Death House Door,” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

“The Unforeseen,” Laura Dunn

“Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father,” Kurt Kuenne

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Foreign Documentaries

“Man On Wire,” James Marsh

“Of Time and the City,” Terence Davies

“Waltz With Bashir,” Ari Folman

“Up the Yangtze,” Yung Chang

“Young@Heart,” Stephen Walker

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Follies

“Speed Racer,” The Wachowski brothers

“The Fall,” Tarsem

“Adam Resurrected,” Paul Schrader

“Australia,” Baz Luhrmann

“My Blueberry Nights,” Wong Kar-wai

—Ray Pride

Top 5 Films You Can’t See Yet

“24 City,” Jia Zhang-Ke

“35 Shots Of Rum,” Claire Denis

“The English Surgeon,” Geoffrey Smith

“Liverpool,” Lisandro Alonso

“Voy a Explotar (I’m Going to Explode),” Gerardo Naranjo

—Ray Pride

RECOMMENDED

Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the U.S., was named to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 1977 and assassinated one year later along with the city’s mayor. “Milk,” Gus Van Sant’s powerful and moving account of his career, marks a return to more conventional storytelling after his “Death” trilogy (“Gerry,” “Elephant” and “Last Days”) and last year’s impressive “Paranoid Park.” It begins with Milk (Sean Penn) still in New York, turning 40, sick with the regret of not having done much with his life. He meets Scott Smith (James Franco) in a subway; in bed he promises the much younger man he won’t make it to 50, but they inspire one another still, head west, start a movement. Penn’s monumental, passionate performance anchors Van Sant’s biopic—it’s been some time since the actor, often called the finest of his generation, has played a wholly likeable character—and he’s surrounded by a focused and truly supporting ensemble, with Franco, who is, in ways, the film’s emotional center, and also Emile Hirsch, Joseph Cross, Alison Pill and Diego Luna. James Brolin’s troubled and distressed Supervisor Dan White marks another memorable character and performance in the actor’s resurgence; he’s much more worrisome here than he ever could be as a chuckling George W. Bush. Elliot Graham’s phenomenal editing blends real-life footage and Van Sant’s interpretation with seamless splendor; screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s structure maximizes Milk’s message. The recent Prop 8 atrocity will be on your mind. “You gotta give them hope,” Milk says. He did. 128m. (Tom Lynch)

RECOMMENDED

Producer Art Linson has the power to produce a film dedicated to the proposition that producers are powerless. Pushed by Robert De Niro, Linson adapted his 2002 memoir “What Just Happened: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line” into a screenplay that’s more blithe than bitter. It’s all it-takes-one-to-know-one tattling that stars De Niro (“Wag the Dog”) as a Linson-like producer named Ben who endures the same emasculating indignities Linson recounts in his book, a follow-up to his 1995 “A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood.” Linson’s producer credits include “Car Wash,” “This Boy’s Life,” “Heat,” “Fight Club” and “Into The Wild.” “What Just Happened?” opens with a test screening of Ben’s latest production, an arty, bloody film titled “Fiercely” starring Sean Penn. The red carpet at Cannes beckons, once that business about the dog dying in the last reel is fixed. Ben’s next project will star Bruce Willis, unwilling to shed flab or shave his bushy beard before shooting starts in five days. Ben also deals with two ex-wives and a teen daughter, the debris of his so-called family life. Barry Levinson (“Wag the Dog,” “Jimmy Hollywood”) directs with wit, extracting ripe turns from an in-the-know cast. Willis and Penn are regulars as self-spoofers, and Catherine Keener (“Simone,” “Full Frontal”) kills as Ben’s studio overseer. “I hope to get rid of the clichés of producers as big fat cigar chompers,” said the 66-year-old Linson, who copped to 175 pounds in a phone interview. “When Barry Levinson first read the script, he called me and said there’s nothing in this I haven’t experienced.” Linson insists his film, unlike his film-inside-his-film, tested well with audiences. He said he pre-screened it in “odd cities” such as Baltimore and Dallas. “It’s only people in Hollywood who think it’s too insider,” he notices. As a foray in occupational ethnography, it’s a boffo crowd-pleaser. Except for dog lovers. With Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn, Kristen Stewart and Michael Wincott. 118m. (Bill Stamets)