CINEmelma: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Sidney Lumet è uno che alla soglia degli 84 anni è ancora capace di fare film come Onora il Padre e la Madre. E c'è da calarsi il cappello.

Due fratelli con seri problemi di soldi decidono di rapinare la piccola gioelleria dei genitori: un negozietto di provincia, con una anziana donna come commessa; l'assicurazione li avrebbe rifusi e nessuno si sarebbe fatto davvero male.
Sarà invece una tragedia, e tutto il cinismo, la crudeltà e gli antichi dissapori famigliari verranno presto a galla.

Film montato in maniera impeccabile - già a dieci minuti dall'inizio viene già mostrata la conclusione della rapina - con continui salti tra i protagonisti ed i momenti-chiave. Ottima regia, semplice ma solida la sceneggiatura - bei dialoghi.
Tensione ed angoscia, mentre tutti sono indaffarati a scavare per raggiungere nuovi sprofondi di bassezza e malvagità. Nessuno è salvo.

Cast da paura: bravo Ethan Hawke (che in alcune espressioni ricorda molto il buon Kevin Bacon), grande Albert Finney così come Marisa Tomei, 44enne più che tonica.
Caso a parte Philip Seymour Hoffman che alcuni non amano: a me piace parecchio come attore, e qui dà veramente il massimo - spietato e calcolatore, meraviglioso nelle scene di "caos misurato" con cui reagirà al precipitare degli eventi.

Film ottimo; se quello italiano non è male, va ricordato il bel titolo originale: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Voto: 9+. Da vedere.
Tags: thriller, drammatico, crimine, rapina, gioielleria, famiglia, fratelli, moglie, sesso, droga, denaro, tradimento, violenza, sparatoria, pistola, complice, automobile, fuga, truffa, impotenza, disperazione, abbandono, ricettatore, nudo, nudo femminile, nudo maschile, funerale, cuore, ospedale, New York, omicidio.

Tomei, Marisa

Data di nascita: 4 December 1964
Altezza: 5' 6" (1.68 m)

Ultimi lavori:

The Wrestler (2009) .... Cassidy [attrice]
The Night Job (2008) .... [attrice]
War, Inc. (2008) .... Natalie Hegalhuzen [attrice]
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) .... Gina Hanson [attrice]
Grace Is Gone (2007) .... Woman at Pool [attrice]
The Rich Inner Life of Penelope Cloud (2007) (TV) .... Penelope Cloud [attrice]
Wild Hogs (2007) .... Maggie [attrice]
Danika (2006) .... Danika [attrice]
Factotum (2005) .... Laura [attrice]
Loverboy (2005) .... Sybil [attrice]

Biografia:
Marisa Tomei was born on December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York to mother Patricia "Addie" Tomei, an English teacher and father Gary Tomei, a lawyer. Marisa also has a brother, actor Adam Tomei. As a child, Marisa's mother frequently corrected her speech as to eliminate her heavy Brooklyn accent. As a teen, Marisa attended Edward R. Murrow High School and graduated in the class of 1982. She was one year into her college education at Boston University when she dropped out for a co-starring role on the CBS daytime drama "As the World Turns" (1956). Her role on that show paved the way for her entrance into film: in 1984, she made her film debut with a bit part in The Flamingo Kid (1984). Three years later, Marisa became known for her role as Maggie Lawton, Lisa Bonet's college roommate, on the sitcom "A Different World" (1987). Her real breakthrough came in 1992, when she co-starred as Joe Pesci's hilariously foul-mouthed, scene-stealing girlfriend in My Cousin Vinny (1992), a performance that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Later that year, she turned up briefly as a snippy Mabel Normand in director Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin (1992), and was soon given her first starring role in Untamed Heart (1993). A subsequent starring role -- and attempted makeover into Audrey Hepburn -- in the romantic comedy Only You (1994) proved only moderately successful. Marisa's other 1994 role as Michael Keaton's hugely pregnant wife in The Paper (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. Fortunately for Tomei, she was able to rebound the following year with a solid performance as a troubled single mother in Nick Cassavetes Unhook the Stars (1996) which earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She turned in a similarly strong work in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and in 1998 did some of her best work in years as the sexually liberated, unhinged cousin of Natasha Lyonne's Vivian Abramowitz in Tamara Jenkins Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). In recent years, Marisa has co-starred with Mel Gibson in the hugely successful romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) and during the 2002 movie award season, she proved her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar win was no fluke when she received her second nomination in the same category for the critically acclaimed dark drama, In the Bedroom (2001).

Trivia random: Before the 1993 Oscar ceremony, she told "Entertainment Tonight" (1981) that her biggest fear was that she would trip on the steps on her way to the stage. She did.
Citazione random: "Singing really oxygenates your blood. You stretch your lungs and take in much more air into them than before. It's really good for your health."

Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.

Lumet, Sidney

Data di nascita: 25 June 1924
Altezza: 5' 5" (1.65 m)
Coniuge: Mary Gimbel::(1980 - present), Gail Lumet Buckley::(23 November 1963 - 1978) (divorced) 2 children, Gloria Vanderbilt::(27 August 1956 - 1963) (divorced), Rita Gam::(1949 - 1954) (divorced)

Ultimi lavori:

Getting Out (2009) .... (writer) [scrittore]
Directed by Sidney Lumet: How the Devil Was Made (2008) (V) .... [regista]
How to Change in 9 Weeks (2008) .... (consultant) [misc]
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) .... [regista]
Find Me Guilty (2006) .... (written by) [scrittore]
The Manchurian Candidate (2004) .... Political Pundit [attore]
Rachel, quand du seigneur (2004) .... [regista]
Strip Search (2004) (TV) .... [regista]
Gloria (1999) .... [regista]
Critical Care (1997) .... (producer) [produttore]

Biografia:
Though not as consistent as Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet is nevertheless a master of cinema. Known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors--and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York--Lumet has made over 40 movies, often emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. He often tells intelligent, complex stories. Although his politics are somewhat left-leaning and he often treats socially relevant themes in his films, he doesn't want to make political movies in the first place, and some of them (Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Prince of the City (1981), Q & A (1990)) are atmospherically comparable to the gritty, intense films of Scorsese. Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s (such as "Dead End"), and his acting debut in films came in One Third of a Nation (1939). In 1947 he started an off-Broadway acting troupe that included such future stars as Yul Brynner and Eli Wallach, and other former members of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio who had become unsatisfied with Strasberg's concepts. Lumet made his stage directing debut in 1955. However, he had been directing television shows since 1950, beginning at CBS, and soon became regarded as an important TV director. He piloted about 150 episodes of the crime series "Danger" (1950) and 26 episodes of "You Are There" (1953) (he was still directing successful TV teleplays as late as 1960, long after he had become an established film director). He made his feature film directing debut with the critical and financial hit 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, and is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history. It takes place almost entirely in a jury room (in several Lumet films you can find the motif of the closed space). His second and third films, Stage Struck (1958) and That Kind of Woman (1959) respectively, are considered less important (I haven't seen them yet). Lumet directed Marlon Brando in the imperfect but very good The Fugitive Kind (1959), an underrated, financially unsuccessful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending". Afterwards he directed the French-Italian Arthur Miller adaptation Vu du pont (1961) ("A View From the Bridge"), which is considered a solid film (I haven't seen it as yet, either). The first half of the 1960s was one of Lumet's most artistically successful periods. Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), a masterful, brilliantly photographed adaptation of the Eugene ONeill play, is one of several Lumet films about families. It earned Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Dean Stockwell and Jason Robards deserved acting awards in Cannes and Hepburn an Oscar nomination. Lumet's next film, Fail-Safe (1964), a tense drama about the Cold War (a bit too America-centered for my taste), suffered a little in comparison to Stanley Kubrick's great, thematically equal satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which was released shortly before. Afterwards Lumet directed the masterful drama The Pawnbroker (1964), about a Holocaust survivor who lives in New York and can't overcome his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. Rod Steiger's unforgettable performance in the title role earned an Academy Award nomination. Lumet's intense character study The Hill (1965), about inhumanity in a military prison camp, was expertly directed and featured superb performances by Sean Connery (with whom Lumet has made five films up to now) and Harry Andrews, among others. Lumet made the soapy, overly talky but watchable drama The Group (1966) about young upper-class women in the 1930s, and the good spy thriller The Deadly Affair (1966) (with a fine cast including James Mason, Maximilian Schell and Simone Signoret). The late 1960s was a rather unsuccessful time in Lumet's career. The comedy Bye Bye Braverman (1968) and the Anton Chekhov adaptation The Sea Gull (1968) got mixed reviews. The Appointment (1969) and Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) were disappointing. Lumet and Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed the Oscar-nominated documentary film King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1970) about Martin Luther King's civil-rights work in the Deep South. Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971) (starring Connery again), an unusual but satisfying caper movie, was a box-office hit. After the flop Child's Play (1972) Lumet directed the British film The Offence (1972), an interesting if somewhat slow-moving character study. Connery delivered a fine performance in this worthwhile but commercially unsuccessful movie. The terrific cop thriller Serpico (1973), the first of his films about police corruption in New York City, featured a fascinating Al Pacino and was the beginning of the most successful phase of Lumet's career. It was also one of his biggest critical and financial successes. Pacino won the Golden Globe, and the picture earned two Oscar nominations. After the less acclaimed Lovin' Molly (1974), Lumet's British adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was another success, a very good, exquisitely photographed murder mystery with an all-star cast (including Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Connery and Ingrid Bergman). It earned six Oscar nominations, and Bergman won her third Academy Award. Then Lumet directed the hit Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a complex masterpiece about a bungled bank robbery in New York City. Pauline Kael called it "one of the best "New York" movies ever made." It starred a wonderful Al Pacino and earned six Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture, Director and Actor) and won the Academy Award for Frank Pierson's Original Screenplay. Lumet's following film is one of his most famous: the media satire Network (1976). It earned ten Academy Award nominations (including Picture and Director) and won in four categories (Best Actor for Peter Finch, Best Actress for Faye Dunaway, Best Original Screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, Best Supporting Actress for Beatrice Straight). Lumet won the Golden Globe for his direction (he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for his direction in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976). Both pictures won LAFCA awards for Best Picture, too). Lumet's Equus (1977), an overly naturalistic adaptation of Peter Shaffer's stage play, earned Oscar nominations for Richard Burton and Peter Firth and for Shaffer's screenplay. The musical The Wiz (1978/I) earned four Oscar nominations, but was a critical and commercial misfire. The strange comedy Just Tell Me What You Want (1980) featured a fine Alan King performance and had funny moments, but was uneven overall. Lumet won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for his terrific direction in Prince of the City (1981), one of his best and most typical films. It's about police corruption, but hardly a remake of Serpico (1973). Starring a powerful Treat Williams, it's an extraordinarily multi-layered film. In his highly informative book "Making Movies" (1995), Lumet describes the film in the following way: "When we try to control everything, everything winds up controlling us. Nothing is what it seems." It's also a movie about values, friendship and drug addiction and, like "Serpico", is based on a true story. It was adapted by Lumet himself and Jay Presson Allen from Robert Daley's book. Their screenplay earned an Academy Award nomination, and the picture, Lumet and Williams earned Golden Globe nominations. After his less important but entertaining thriller Deathtrap (1982) Lumet directed another masterful courtroom drama, The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman, James Mason, Jack Warden and Charlotte Rampling. The picture, Lumet, Newman, Mason and David Mamet's Adapted Screenplay earned well-deserved Academy Award nominations. The next in Lumet's filmography is the controversial drama Daniel (1983) with Timothy Hutton, an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel" about two young people whose parents were executed during the McCarthy Red Scare hysteria in the 1950s for alleged espionage. I haven't seen the film yet, but Lumet writes in "Making Movies": "Despite its critical and financial failure, I think it's one of the best pictures I've ever done." After this film, though, Lumet's reputation fell a bit. The comedy Garbo Talks (1984), which I haven't seen up to now, is considered a watchable film. Power (1986) and The Morning After (1986) (which earned Jane Fonda an Oscar nomination) were too uneven and a little too pretentious to be successful. Then he made another real masterpiece: Running on Empty (1988). Although it is one of his lesser known films, I think it's his best one, and is thematically similar to "Daniel". Its story concerns a family on the run from the FBI, because the parents (played by Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) committed a bomb attack on a napalm laboratory in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam. The son (played by River Phoenix) gets into an inner conflict: he loves a girl (Martha Plimpton) and wishes to stay with her and study music, but that would destroy the family, and he knows that his parents need him. The film features magnificent performances by all the actors. Phoenix earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his extraordinarily moving performance. Lahti won the LAFCA award for her equally excellent interpretation. Naomi Foner's screenplay won the Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination. The film earned four other Golden Globe nominations as well (Picture, Director, Lahti and Phoenix). After the entertaining, well-acted, but still disappointing gangster comedy Family Business (1989) (with Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick) Lumet directed the underrated cop thriller Q & A (1990) with fine performances by Nick Nolte, Timothy Hutton, Armand Assante and others. Though a bit overly constructed at times, it is still a very good and complex film about corruption and racism. In the beginning of the 1990s Lumet directed two unsatisfying films: A Stranger Among Us (1992), which is basically a variation on Peter Weir's Witness (1985) and not a particularly good one, and the rather sterile courtroom thriller Guilty as Sin (1993). However, he staged a comeback of sorts with his imperfect but fascinating crime drama Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), which is thematically similar to "Serpico", "Prince of the City" and "Q". In 1993 Lumet received the D.W. Griffith Award from the Directors Guild of America.

Trivia random: Studied acting with Sanford Meisner.
Citazione random: [on Tab Hunter] Also talented, but primarily a character actor, yet always used as a leading man because he's so pretty. I've seen him do character parts in which he's really great. But as a leading man he tightens up. Mostly he turned to character work in American television when his Hollywood career started going sour. Then he played the roles of psychotic killers and so forth, and his talent became clear.

Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.

Hoffman, Philip Seymour

Data di nascita: 23 July 1967
Altezza: 5' 9½" (1.77 m)

Ultimi lavori:

The Boat That Rocked (2009) .... The Count [attore]
Durham Grill (2009) .... Gus Leroy (rumored) [attore]
Doubt (2008) .... Father Flynn [attore]
Synecdoche, New York (2008) .... Caden [attore]
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2008) .... William Kunstler [attore]
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) .... Andrew 'Andy' Hanson [attore]
Charlie Wilson's War (2007) .... Gust Avrakotos [attore]
The Savages (2007) .... Jon Savage [attore]
Mission: Impossible III (2006) .... Owen Davian [attore]
Capote (2005) .... (executive producer) [produttore]

Biografia:
Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport on July 23, 1967. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989. He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992). While he had supporting roles in some other major productions, his breakthrough role came in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997). He quickly became an icon of indie cinema, establishing a reputation as one of the screen's finest actors, in a variety of supporting and second leads in indie and major features, including Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998), Flawless (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Almost Famous (2000) and State and Main (2000). He also appeared in supporting roles in such mainstream, big-budget features as Red Dragon (2002), Cold Mountain (2003) and the upcoming Mission: Impossible III (2006). Hoffman is also quite active on the stage. On Broadway, he has earned two Tony nominations, as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a revival of Sam Shepard's "True West" and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill (I)'s "Long Day's Journey into Night". His other acting credits in the New York theater include "The Seagull" (directed by Mike Nichols for The New York Shakespeare Festival), "Defying Gravity", "The Merchant of Venice" (directed by Peter Sellars), "Shopping and F*@%ing" and "The Author's Voice" (Drama Desk nomination). He is the Co-Artistic Director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, for which he directed "Our Lady of 121st Street" by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He also has directed "In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings" and "Jesus Hopped the A Train" by Guirgis for LAByrinth, and "The Glory of Living" by Rebecca Gilman at the Manhattan Class Company. Hoffman consolidated his reputation as one of the finest actors under the age of 40 with his turn in the title role of Capote (2005), for which he won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award as Best Actor. In 2006, he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for the same role.

Trivia random: As of 2008, he and Dustin Hoffman are the only two winners of best actor in a leading role at the Oscars to share a last name. Philip won for 'Capote' and Dustin won for 'Kramer vs. Kramer' and 'Rain Man'.
Citazione random: "Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy."

Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.

sabato 22 marzo 2008

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Tomei, Marisa

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Finney, Albert

Lumet, Sidney

Hawke, Ethan

Bacon, Kevin

Hoffman, Philip Seymour

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