Milk review

biopic of Harvey Milk, first openly gay man elected to public office in the US. Sean Penn's nominated for best actor for it.

Goes from the point where he meets Scott Smith, his longtime boyfriend, through them moving to San Francisco, him getting politically aware, the long slog of running for Supervisor, then the Prop 6 stuff through to assassination.

This is really, really brilliant. It's gentle. it doesn't preach, it's nonjudgmental (and specifically uses tv clips and archive footage of several of the anti-gay campaigners of the time, rather than try to cast them, which really reinforces the impact as well as the look and feel - it's how the people of the time saw most of these people, through tv screens). It's funny and moving and everyone's so very, very human - faults, tics, irritating stuff, and never tries to explain or apologise - perfect example of 'show not tell', with added bonus of never trying to shock you or belabour a point. All actors great, though special mention to James Franco as Scott Smith for maturing so well with his gentle exasperation with Harvey (and finally becoming fanciable in my eyes) and really, please strip off more often (and even pulls off the facial hair). Your public needs you to.
( ending )

In conclusion : everyone left grinning. It is sweet and adorable and funny and you MUST SEE. And Sean Penn really, really deserves the oscar, dammit, even though he's not going to get it... (time always outs on these - simply a matter of 'okay, who do you remember from that year?')

Also, you know those little 'post-scripts of what happened to everyone' they always do at the end of biopics? In this one, they do a bit of video of the actor, which fades into a pic or video of the person - and it's really impressive how much they got the actors to look like the people they were portraying. Admittedly filmmakers helped in this because all the main lot hung out in a camera shop...

important casting notes for Othello

Looking at the pics of Lenny Henry in Othello.

Eleanor : he's not good-looking enough for the role. Too heavy, for a start.
Me : Do you have to be? :thinks: ...Yeah, actually, you're right. maybe it's different on stage?
Eleanor : maybe. Not quite convinced. Especially in that outfit.
Me : It's a good outfit if they were doing it as Idi Amin. Except that would work better for Macbeth or Richard III.
:both of us do the mutter about the Fishburne/Branagh version not being available on dvd, with my added mutterings about not getting to see Chiwetel Ejiofor:

Seriously. Apparently we're hard-wired to think of Othello as really good-looking.