......and thought it was pretty good.
Spoilers ahead!!!!
The Link
Director Woody Allen is nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Cate Blanchette and Sally Hawkins are female nominees for Best Actress and Supporting Actress respectively.
It has Woody's usual intelligent dialog, some insightful human behavioral analysis and Allen's trademark location worship.
In this film, the Woodman's excellent screenplay happens mostly in San Francisco, where Blanchette's once high flying Jasmine loquaciously arrives having been reduced down to about the level of Tennessee William's Blanche DuBose, a well-known "victim of circumstance" who lived off the kindness of others (mainly her sister Stella, who resided in New Orleans in that similar story).
An outcome with Blanchette channeling and somewhat recreating the forever needy and dependent, yet always domineering, Blanche couldn't turn out too well for anybody.
In the Blue Jasmine story, her Stella-like benefactor is played by British actress Hawkins as Jasmine's sister Ginger and the Brando character is split between Ginger's former husband (played by Andrew Dice Clay), her current boyfriend (a bossy, complaining, then whiny Bobby Cannavale) and finally and Ginger's new, first ever "nice guy" suitor (played by Louis C. K.), who turns out to be already married.
They aren't overly Brandoish, merely Brandoesque, but Jasmine, in the end, dislikes and scr*ws over all of them.
In flashbacks, Alec Baldwin plays Jasmine's husband, who's moved out of the picture just as the motion picture starts moving, leaving Jasmine blue and again dependent on the kindness of others............can you picture yet how this movie moves?
Anyway, after Allen screen wrote about the interactions between all these characters, his chosen group of thespians portrayed what Woody gave to and directed for them and I thought this all made for a entertaining, interesting flick.
I enjoy Woody Allen's movies and Blanchette and Hawkins and others were very good in their roles.
Cate is provided a wide range of situations in which to define, vary and nuance her performance.
It's a meaty role like those Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney do so well and Cate Blanchette nails it, IMHO
I enjoyed how the musical soundtrack reprises and comments about what's going on.
In a few days, we'll see what the Academy thinks of those two nominated actresses' performances and also about Woody's original screenplay, which I found loosely reminiscent of some circumstances, characters and events previously used in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
JMO.
Recommended for any moviegoer who thinks they'd enjoy this flick, as my wife and I did at home via NETFLIX.
New Orleans and San Francisco are two of my very favorite cities.
I was born in 'Frisco by the bay quite near to the seminal corner of Haight and Ashbury.
If I'd stayed there to grow up, I believe I could have had a choice of being the bassist for either The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane.
I really dug those bands and I know I had the chops.
I first visited the big, easy Crescent City during college and I made sure to experience that wonderful Preservation Hall Jazz Band (featuring Sweet Emma the Bell Gal on piano), drank one single Hurricane and a big bunch of beer, paused to sit in famed Congo Square and sadly learned that the Desire streetcar route was by then only serviced by a bus.
Anybody seen "Blue Jasmine?"
Spoilers ahead!!!!
The Link
Director Woody Allen is nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Cate Blanchette and Sally Hawkins are female nominees for Best Actress and Supporting Actress respectively.
It has Woody's usual intelligent dialog, some insightful human behavioral analysis and Allen's trademark location worship.
In this film, the Woodman's excellent screenplay happens mostly in San Francisco, where Blanchette's once high flying Jasmine loquaciously arrives having been reduced down to about the level of Tennessee William's Blanche DuBose, a well-known "victim of circumstance" who lived off the kindness of others (mainly her sister Stella, who resided in New Orleans in that similar story).
An outcome with Blanchette channeling and somewhat recreating the forever needy and dependent, yet always domineering, Blanche couldn't turn out too well for anybody.
In the Blue Jasmine story, her Stella-like benefactor is played by British actress Hawkins as Jasmine's sister Ginger and the Brando character is split between Ginger's former husband (played by Andrew Dice Clay), her current boyfriend (a bossy, complaining, then whiny Bobby Cannavale) and finally and Ginger's new, first ever "nice guy" suitor (played by Louis C. K.), who turns out to be already married.
They aren't overly Brandoish, merely Brandoesque, but Jasmine, in the end, dislikes and scr*ws over all of them.
In flashbacks, Alec Baldwin plays Jasmine's husband, who's moved out of the picture just as the motion picture starts moving, leaving Jasmine blue and again dependent on the kindness of others............can you picture yet how this movie moves?
Anyway, after Allen screen wrote about the interactions between all these characters, his chosen group of thespians portrayed what Woody gave to and directed for them and I thought this all made for a entertaining, interesting flick.
I enjoy Woody Allen's movies and Blanchette and Hawkins and others were very good in their roles.
Cate is provided a wide range of situations in which to define, vary and nuance her performance.
It's a meaty role like those Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney do so well and Cate Blanchette nails it, IMHO
I enjoyed how the musical soundtrack reprises and comments about what's going on.
In a few days, we'll see what the Academy thinks of those two nominated actresses' performances and also about Woody's original screenplay, which I found loosely reminiscent of some circumstances, characters and events previously used in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
JMO.
Recommended for any moviegoer who thinks they'd enjoy this flick, as my wife and I did at home via NETFLIX.
New Orleans and San Francisco are two of my very favorite cities.
I was born in 'Frisco by the bay quite near to the seminal corner of Haight and Ashbury.
If I'd stayed there to grow up, I believe I could have had a choice of being the bassist for either The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane.
I really dug those bands and I know I had the chops.
I first visited the big, easy Crescent City during college and I made sure to experience that wonderful Preservation Hall Jazz Band (featuring Sweet Emma the Bell Gal on piano), drank one single Hurricane and a big bunch of beer, paused to sit in famed Congo Square and sadly learned that the Desire streetcar route was by then only serviced by a bus.
Anybody seen "Blue Jasmine?"
