Eloise Ross
As with many fine Australian films, Looking For Grace opens with arid, spectacular landscape. Aerial shots of remote two-lane highways highlight expanses of blonde dirt, granite, and shrubbery across the Western Australian wheat belt, where the film was shot on location. These colours are ...
... (read more)Eloise Ross reviews 'Women He's Undressed' directed by Gillian Armstrong
The first time that I really took notice of Orry-Kelly’s name was when I began researching the 1933 pre-code film Baby Face a number of years ago. I became obsessed with Barbara Stanwyck’s sharp Manhattan business attire, her intricate gloves, and the fur-draped costumes she later wore as a kept woman. That the costumes were, at heart, Australian m ...
Eloise Ross reviews 'Scandals of Classic Hollywood' by Anne Helen Petersen
Bette Davis once described Hollywood actors as American royalty, a cohort that answered the core human desire to look up to something. Those Hollywood actors who became stars (so named because of the stars in Paramount Pictures’ logo), thus served a purpose not only by acting, but also by representing societal and cultural ideals; not an easy demand, as such ideal ...
Leading arts critics and professionals nominate some of their favourite performances for 2014.
... (read more)From first-time director and screenwriter duo Charlie McDowell and Justin Lader, The One I Love is a film that confronts just how hard it can be to love someone. Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) and Ethan (Mark Duplass) are married and in counselling when their therapist (Ted Danson) suggests that they go on a weekend retreat together, just the two of them. He sends ...
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–93), a screenwriter, producer, and director of films in Hollywood for over forty years, is the latest to receive repertory profile treatment at the 52nd New York Film Festival. Entire-career retrospectives are always interesting events; they are at once a celebration of auteuri ...
Eloise Ross reviews 'The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan' edited by Albert J. Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin
‘I get awful intense about these movies I do. I become, in fact, obsessed with them.’ So Elia Kazan (1909–2003) wrote to his daughter in 1957. A workaholic, Kazan was both extremely self-assured and plagued by self-doubt, terrified he would produce mediocrity. He rarely did. As a stage and screen director he achieved remarkable success. Kazan was an egotist, and the confidence he exhibited publicly, and in these letters, is at once impressive and repugnant.
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