Simon Curtis
8 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
After The Prince and the Showgirl Monroe went on to deliver her finest comedic performance in Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Some Like It Hot (1959) and her finest dramatic performance in John Huston’s The Misfits (1961) before dying in 1962 at the age of 36.
A Dog's Purpose (2017)
Directed by Lasse Hallström
influenced The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)
Themes Plot
A race car flavored companion to the reincarnating puppies of A Dog’s Purpose (2017) and A Dog’s Journey (2019), if you will.
Director Simon Curtis’ decade-in-the-making “The Art of Racing in the Rain” is a simple-minded yet skillfully manipulative answer to that question — featuring the bare-feet-in-loose-gravel voice of Kevin Costner as Enzo, the canine companion to Seattle-based race car driver Denny Swift (Milo Ventimiglia) — that’s not as peppy as “A Dog’s Purpose” nor as droll as “Isle of Dogs,” and nowhere near as inane as “Look Who’s Talking Now” but still effective on its own dog-forsaken terms.
Advertised as being “from the studio that brought you Marley & Me,” The Art of Racing in the Rain is such a story told from the perspective of a wizened old pooch, but this one originates from a bestselling novel by Garth Stein, not one written by W. Bruce Cameron, the mastermind behind the recent slate of dreadfully insulting “inspirational doggo” pictures A Dog’s Purpose, A Dog’s Way Home, and A Dog’s Journey, all of which are reprehensible, and two of which came out this year alone.
Mark Bomback’s script, based on the novel by Garth Stein, takes the structure of Marley and Me, which follows the life of a family during the lifetime of their dog, and infuses it with the voice-over that’s supposed to represent the pooch’s inner monologue, à la recent sleeper hits like A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey.
Screenwriter Mark Bomback, like W. Bruce Cameron (whose books and movies include A Dog's Purpose ), tells the story from Enzo's point of view, which should not be a bad thing.
And yet, The Art of Racing in the Rain is the third in a recent string of films (alongside A Dog’s Purpose , its sequel A Dog’s Journey , and the unrelated A Dog’s Way Home ) to grace the canine kind with a little more scholarly insight.
Watch Some Like It Hot (the actress's very next movie after The Prince and the Showgirl) and listen for the acid in the back of her voice as she says "I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop".
Or as an exasperated Billy Wilder said after “Some Like It Hot,” “Marilyn Monroe was never on time, never knew her lines.
After The Prince and the Showgirl Monroe went on to deliver her finest comedic performance in Billy Wilder’s masterpiece Some Like It Hot (1959) and her finest dramatic performance in John Huston’s The Misfits (1961) before dying in 1962 at the age of 36.
Going off the rails in its very first scene, showing its protagonist, Colin Clark (also the author of the memoirs on which the script is based), going to the pictures to see the iconic Marilyn Monroe, My Week with Marilyn's shotgun blast of first impressions includes a toothy, vaguely unpleasant spokesperson with a smile that looks like it hurts, a halfway decent impersonation of the Some Like It Hot legend, and a sense of what 1950s movies looked like that is so disastrously wrong, it adds a dimension of unintentional comedy all its own.
It's been a long time since I first saw Some Like It Hot, and this movie reminded me why audiences all over the world couldn't get enough of her.
Back in 2011 Michelle Williams played Monroe at odds with Laurence Olivier on the set of “The Prince and the Showgirl” (1957) in Simon Curtis’ “My Week with Marilyn.”
The life and troubled times of Marilyn Monroe have been the fodder for multiple films, from Goodbye, Norma Jean , to Norma Jean & Marilyn , to My Week with Marilyn .
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
Directed by Chris Columbus
influenced My Week with Marilyn (2011)
The savvy supporting cast, each making impressionable marks, include Judi Dench (2011's " J. Edgar ") as the dignified Dame Sybil Thorndike; Emma Watson (2011's " Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ") as fetching wardrobe girl Lucy, whom Colin takes a shine to; Zoe Wanamaker (2001's " Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ") as Marilyn's method acting coach Paula Strasberg, and Julia Ormond (2008's " The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ") as Olivier's wife Vivien Leigh, who has had to stand by and watch her intended part go to the still-youthful, more popular Marilyn Monroe.
Olivier is no fan of the method and annoyed when Marilyn's acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone") overrides his direction.
But Monroe can’t remember her lines and leans heavily on acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wannamaker, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”), who constantly encourages her and smooths Monroe’s ruffled feathers.
Oddly enough, Christopher Robin is ultimately outshined by a 2017 movie with similar subject matter, Fox’s Goodbye Christopher Robin .
Written for the screen by Mark Bomback (The Wolverine, War for the Planet of the Apes), The Art of Racing in the Rain carries over the broader narrative strokes of Stein's source material - though, thankfully, it abandons the novel's most problematic subplot (one that involves a teenaged girl named Annika) in favor of a melodramatic, but otherwise fitting substitute.
From the opening scene Curtis (My Week with Marilyn, Goodbye Christopher Robin) and Bomback (Unstoppable, The Wolverine, War for the Planet of the Apes) make it known that the dog will eventually die years down the road in this story, instead of always toying with the audience’s emotions and repeatedly killing and abusing animals just to wring a few extra tears from viewers’ eyes.
Screenwriter Mark Bomback, who has a resume peppered with action film credits — “The Wolverine,” Unstoppable,” “Total Recall” — was an odd choice to adapt Garth Stein’s best seller.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Directed by Justin Lin
influenced The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019)
Plot
Later recognizing that Denny turns into skids before the skid can take control of the car proves no more illuminating than "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift."