Heavenly Creatures [Blu-ray]
Heavenly Creatures [Blu-ray]
From acclaimed director Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong) comes a true-life story of the shocking crime that stunned a nation. When circumstances bring together two imaginative teenage schoolgirls, they quickly form an unwavering bond, creating a fantasy world that only they can share. But then their parents become disturbed by the intensity of the friendship, and threaten to keep them apart. In retaliation, the girls vow to stay together, devising a secret plan that leads to shocking consequences. Thrilling and provocative, HEAVENLY CREATURES stars Academy Award® winner Kate Winslet in her screen debut.A starkly original film-going experience based on a true life story, this film from New Zealand director Peter Jackson (Dea
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Sense & Sensibility (Special Edition)
Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant star in this captivating romantic comedy that swept the Ten Best Lists and was named the Best Picture of the Year by the Golden Globes(r). Based on Jane Austen’s classic novel, Sense and Sensibility tells of the Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor (Thompson) and passionate Marianne (Winslet), whose chances at marriage seem doomed by their family’s sudden loss of fortune. Rickman, Grant, and Greg Wise co-star as the well-intentioned suitors who are trapped by the strict rules of society and the conflicting laws of desire.Emma Thompson scores a double bull’s-eye with this marvelous adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel. Not only does Thompson turn in a strong (and gently humorous) performance
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Peter Jackson’s captivating murder story with no villains,
For those who wondered how the director of “Bad Taste” and “Brain Dead” got to direct “The Lord of the Rings,” this 1994 film from director Peter Jackson supplies the answer. In 1954 two teenage girls brutally murdered one of the their mothers in what must be the most sensational murder in New Zealand history. “Heavenly Creatures” tells the strange story of these two girls and their unique relationship. If you think this is just a reality based splatter flick, then you are going to be much more than surprised and impressed by what Jackson has accomplished.
Pauline Rieper (Melanie Lynskey) is a simple and rather dull young girl who is totally dazzled when Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) enters her life. Juliet is impressed as well, because Pauline has a scar on her leg from an operation. Juliet declares that: “All the best people have had chest and bone disease! It’s all frightfully romantic!” Eventually both the romance and the frightfullness of it all reaches a tragic conclusion. In their all consuming friendship Juliet and Pauline create a “Fourth World,” better than heaven (because it has no Christians), inhabited by the clay figures they have fashioned to represents their friends and where the music of Mario Lanza, the greatest tenor on earth, is always in the air.
Jackson brings this fantasy world alive, which allows him to explore the pivotal theme of juxtaposition throughout the film. This comes into play most notably at the beginning and ending of “Heavenly Clouds.” Jackson begins with a 1950s newsreel about Christchurch, New Zealand, which is interrupted by the appearance of the two screaming and bloodied girls, thereby symbolizing the way this sensational case shocked the nation. Even more effective is the film’s conclusion, where the murder is inter-cut with what the girls think will happen if they do not find this way of saving themselves.
With any film based on historical events there are omissions, alterations, substitutions, and the like, and “Heavenly Creatures” is no different. On the plus side of the ledger Jackson attempted an almost morbid verisimilitude. Almost all of the locations used for filming were the real locations where events occurred, including the tea shop where Honora Parker ate her last meal, which was torn down a few days after the shooting ended. However, the cast and crew found the actual murder scene uncomfortable and moved further down the path. All of the journal voice-overs come directly from Pauline’s diary, as are the characters in the girls’ make-believe world. However, since the two filled up fifteen notebooks and hundreds of letters devoted to their fantasies, the movie actually underplays these elements.
However, having familiarized myself somewhat with the actual “facts” of the case, and the recollections of the woman one of the girls grew up to be, the key point of dispute is the motive. But if Jackson is guilty of becoming fixated on the idea that these two young girl committed a murder because they could not bear to be separated and have their fantasy world unravel, then he can be hardly faulted for finding that a fascinating interpretation of the evidence (the girls never testified or were examined in court, but Pauline’s diary was seen as providing all the answers). More importantly, Jackson does not seem guilty of taking liberties, merely with offering a valid interpretation of the evidence. For example, the murder sequence greatly reduces the number of blows, but the effect is still horrific, so it seems trivial to complain about any inaccuracy.
From an artistic standpoint his interpretation is more than justified, especially at the end. In addition to the information we receive between the final scene and the closing credits that tells what happened to Pauline and Juliet, Marzio Lanza sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” which is as perfect a choice of a song to play at the end of a film as you will ever hear, forcefully underscoring the film’s thesis. Jackson says this is “a murder story about love, a murder story with no villains,” and it is hard to argue with this idea after watching his film.
“Heavenly Creatures” received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Jackson and Frances Walsh. The film won every award for which it was nominated in the New Zealand Film and TV Awards, including Best Actress for Lynskey and Best Foreign Performer for Winslet (both of whom were perfectly suited for those roles), and earned film festival awards in Venice and Toronto. This is a striking and unforgettable film, both creative and thoughtful. Those who are drawn to it because it was directed by Peter Jackson might be shocked by the subject matter, but they will not be disappointed with the results.
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|Breathtaking!,
‘Heavenly Creatures’ is the true story of two school girls in Christchurch, New Zealand who murder one of their mothers when the two families plan to separate them.
Juliet Hulme and Pauline Rieper (later revealed in the trial to be Pauline Parker, as her parents never married) quickly become best friends when Juliet’s family moves to Christchurch in 1952. Pauline’s family is working class; Juliet is a high-class girl. They’re both lonely and creative. Their friendship becomes more obsessive and surreal every day, as they mix reality and fantasy: They create a kingdom called Borovnia, where bloodspill is common and Mario Lanza and Orson Welles make appearances. It is to this world they retreat when they wish to forget the upsets and pains of real life. Juliet and Pauline’s parents soon enough become the enemies of the girls, when they plan to separate the girls. Juliet and Pauline will do anything to stay together, Pauline cooks up the idea of getting her own mother out of the way, and you can guess where it goes from there (I won’t give away any more of the plot).
The acting in this film is first-rate and marvelous. Kate Winslet, as always, is elegant and gorgeous. Melanie Lynskey is wonderful as Pauline; her body language and mannerisms add much to the story. In the space of only one and a half hours, you feel as if you know Juliet and Pauline as well as they know each other.
(It should be noted that Juliet is now an author, working under the name of Anne Perry. Pauline is now running a children’s riding school in England and goes by the name of Hilary Nathan. There are many informative sites on the internet about both the film and the real life events. If you are interested in seeing them, drop me an email at emme_kiss@yahoo.com and I’ll gladly send you the URLs.)
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|“Come with me…”,
“How can these heavenly creatures be real?” asks Pauline in one scene of “Heavenly Creatures,” the exquisite and horrifying docudrama of a real-life murder in New Zealand. Peter Jackson uses spectacular special effect, great actors, and outstanding direction to show us how these heavenly creatures became monsters.
In 1952, Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey) is a loner at her proper New Zealand school, until the day Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) arrives — an intelligent, witty, daring girl who appeals to Pauline. They share a love of the arts, writing, sculpting, drawing, fantasy, and tenor Mario Lanza. Soon the two of them are nearly inseparable, spinning their fantastical tales of castles, knights, unicorns and beautiful ladies. (The foremost ladies, Deborah and Gina, are modelled on themselves) Even Juliet’s four month stint in the hospital doesn’t separate the girls through their letters and shared fantasies. But soon Juliet’s father (Clive Merrison) becomes concerned that their close friendship is “unhealthy.” It is, but not just in the way he thinks.
The two girls’ emotional attachment has turned incredibly intense, so that they barely think of anyone but each other, and the fantasy stories begin to seep into reality for them . Pauline drops out of school and stops talking to her parents; Juliet learns that her mother is sleeping with one of her clients, and that her parents are divorcing. Now she’s being sent to South Africa, and there is no telling when she will see Pauline again. Unless they do something about their parents so that they can stay together… such as murder.
Peter Jackson kicks off “Heavenly Creatures” by emphasizing what a beautiful, in most ways peaceful country (via a cheesy 1950s documentary). But he rapidly shows that beauty is not everything — the complex and beautiful fantasy land of Borovnia has a sort of amorality in its stories, that reflects the girls’ own minds. Their mothers are problematic — one is selfish, the other is controlling — but the girls begin to see them as mere obstacles to be dealt with. Jackson doesn’t just show what the two did, but showed why they did it. But even then, he doesn’t sugarcoat anything.
Melanie Lynskey is excellent as Pauline; she has something of the look of both a child and a woman, switching between smiles and sullenness, depending on who she’s speaking to. And the luminous Kate Winslet plays the somewhat devil-may-care Juliet, whose vivacity and charm overrule any of Pauline’s reservations. “It’s everyone else who’s bonkers!” she says gleefully when Pauline casts doubt on her own sanity. The supporting actors are also good, especially Clive Merrison and Honora Peirse as Juliet’s dad and Pauline’s mom, who are both concerned about their children.
The dialogue is outstanding, both chilling and simple (“Our main idea for the day was to murder Mother”; “we decided to use a rock in a stocking, rather than a sandbag…”). And Richard Taylor’s handling of the CGI and prosthetics is oustanding. One particularly vivid scene has a hillside transforming into an exquisite garden. And nobody except Peter Jackson could have pulled off the idea of including living clay figurines or four-foot-wide butterflies, but somehow it not only works, but adds to the surreality of the story. Jackson’s unique camerawork is here as well; if you enjoy his swooping shots and close-ups, then this will be a treat to watch.
The DVD is pretty bare-bones, unfortunately, without a “making of” or director’s commentary — or much of a look at the real-life events of this film. There are some trailers for other movies, and the trailer for this one as well. (Which is not so amazing because it wobbles a little as it played)
While Juliet went on to become bestselling murder mystery writer Anne Perry, no one is entirely certain what happened to Pauline. This movie is frighteningly vivid, beautifully made, and exquisitely directed, destined to be a modern classic.
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|“Is Love a Fancy or a Feeling?”,
When Emma Thompson was approached with the suggestion to write a screenplay based on Jane Austen’s first novel “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), she was somewhat doubtful because, as she explains on the DVD’s commentary track, she felt that other Austen works, like the more expressive “Emma” and “Persuasion” or the sardonic “Pride and Prejudice” (already the subject of several adaptations) would have been more suitable. Four years and 14 screenplay drafts later (the first, a 300-page handwritten dramatization of the novel’s every scene), “Sense and Sensibility” made its grand entrance into theaters worldwide and mesmerized audiences and critics alike, resulting in an Oscar for Thompson’s screenplay and six further nominations (Best Picture, Leading Actress – Thompson -, Supporting Actress – Kate Winslet -, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Score – for 20 minutes’ worth of composition – and Costume Design); and double honors as Best Picture and for Thompson’s screenplay at the Golden Globes.
More than simple romances, Jane Austen’s novels are delicately constructed pieces of social commentary, written from her rural Hampshire’s perspective. Mostly confined to life in her father’s parish, she was nevertheless well aware of early 19th century England’s society at large, and fiercely critical of the loss of morals and decorum she saw in its pre-industrial emergent city life. Moreover, experience and observation had made her acutely aware of the corsets forced onto women in fashion terms as much as by social norms, confining them to inactivity and complete dependency on their families’ and their (future) husbands’ money. And among this movie’s greatest strengths is the manner in which it maintains that underlying theme of Austen’s writing and brings it to a contemporary audience’s attention. “You talk about feeling idle and useless: imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever,” Elinor Dashwood (Thompson) tells her almost-suitor Edward Ferrars, and when he replies that “our circumstances are therefore precisely the same,” she corrects him: “Except that you will inherit your fortune – we cannot even earn ours.”
Rescuing much from the first draft dramatization of Austen’s novel and amplifying where necessary, Emma Thompson and director Ang Lee (“who most unexplainably seems to understand me better than I understand myself,” Thompson said in her mock-Austen Golden Globe speech) produced a movie scrupulously faithful to what is known about Austen’s world and at the same time incredibly modern, thus emphasizing the novel’s timeless quality. Paintings were consulted for the movie’s production design, and indeed, almost every camera frame – both landscapes and interiors – has the feeling of a picture by a period painter. Thompson cleverly uses poetry where the novel does not contain dialogue; and again, she does so in a manner entirely faithful to Austen’s subtleties – most prominently in the joint recital of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 by Marianne Dashwood (Kate Winslet) and John Willoughby (Greg Wise), where an ever so slight inaccuracy in his rendition of a sonnet he claims to love foreshadows his lacking sincerity.
“Sense and Sensibility” revolves around Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, their quest for a suitable husband, and the sisters’ relationship with each other. Emma Thompson maintains that she did not write the screenplay with herself as Elinor in mind and would not have been accepted for that role but for the success of her previous films (“Howards End,” “The Remains of the Day”); yet, it is hard to imagine who could have better played sensible Elinor: “effectual, … [possessing] a coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen [and thus considerably younger than Thompson], to be the counselor of her mother.” And real-life 19-year-old Kate Winslet embodies sensitive, artistic Marianne: “eager in everything; [without] moderation … generous, amiable, interesting: … everything but prudent.” (As an older actress was sought for that part, her agent presented her as 25.) An early scene in which Marianne recites Hartley Coleridge’s Sonnet VII (“Is love a fancy or a feeling? No. It is immortal as immaculate truth”) symbolizes the sisters’ relationship and their personalities, as Marianne mocks Elinor’s seemingly cool response to Edward’s budding affection. (Mostly taken from the novel, the scene is embellished by the screenplay’s sole inexactitude: Coleridge’s sonnets were only published 22 years later). Yet, when all her hope seems shattered, Elinor, in a rare outburst of emotion, rebukes her sister: “What do you know of my heart?” – only to comfort her again when she sees that Marianne is equally distraught.
Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman similarly perfectly portray the sisters’ suitors Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, both embodying the qualities Austen considered essential: simplicity,…
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|Rich, nuanced, witty – a true gem!,
Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel and Ang Lee’s direction of it prove to be a stunning and talented combination. This story about the complexities of love, society, and family won my heart in the first few minutes with its excellent acting, smart dialogue, and lush period setting.
The movie focuses primarily on the two oldest sisters of the Dashwood family – Elinor (Emma Thompson) and her younger sister Marianne (Kate Winslet.) Elinor is practical and independent-minded, caught between her societal position as a woman and what she wants for herself. In contrast, Marianne is impetuous, artistic, passionate; she pursues her emotions as though nothing else matters. When both sisters fall in love with different men, they react very differently to the awakening of their affections.
The acting in this film could not have been any better. Although critics have complained that Emma Thompson is too old for the part of Elinor, she at once dispels all doubts with her expert performance. She becomes Elinor so thoroughly that it’s difficult to imagine another actress tackling this role. As the romantic Marianne, Kate Winslet is charmingly breathless; she captures the essence of her character with seemingly no effort. Hugh Grant is awkwardly sincere as Edward, and the normally sinister Alan Rickman portrays with heartbreaking honesty the love-struck Colonel. To bring all this talent together, Ang Lee provides nuanced direction that captures both the beauty and the humanity of Austen’s novel.
On the surface, this is a quiet movie, but underneath the turmoil of life – whether in Austen’s time or ours – simmers. Viewers who enjoy character-driven films should love it.
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|Beautifully Done,
This recent movie adaptation of Jane Austin’s “Sense and Sensibility” is just marvelous. Emma Thompson’s enchanting screenplay is so close to the novel, and that’s such a rare treat in a movie version. Yes, Emma Thompson is a bit old for the part of older sister Elinor but, she’s so endearing, I’m willing to let it go. The supporting cast is very powerful, with performances by Kate Winslet, Greg Wise, Imogen Stubbs, Alan Rickman, and Hugh Grant toping off a fabulous ensemble. Winslet is especially wonderful as the younger Dashwood sister. She’s completely sweet, young and innocent. Her heartbreak at the hands of handsome and dashing Willoughby is extremely powerful and emotional. It’s an all around well acted movie. Lots of wondeful performances. This is acutally a very funny movie and so beautifully shot by Director Ang Lee. Every aspect of the movie is wonderful. It’s treat for all Austin fans and an all around wonderful film.
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