Author: JaniaJania

Queen of the Desert at AFI Fest, Los Angeles

imageedit_37_8702110920On the occasion of a screening of Queen of the Desert at AFI Fest in Los Angeles on November 8, my post this week will be a mash-up of what I’ve written about the film so far.

Truth be told, Queen of the Desert has had, at best, mixed reviews everywhere it’s been screened. All signs point to the film being a rather conventionally shot story of West meets East. The muted palette with which it’s filmed lends it the feeling of a world seen through a thin layer of dust. Yet while we feel the heat rise off the sand, it seems we’re also at a cold remove from the characters. Perhaps this is one of the biggest critiques of the film: that the layers of dust don’t really let us into the character’s hearts. For his part, Damian Lewis in the part of Charles Doughty-Wylie (Richard) certainly does try to convey the contents of his heart in his scenes with Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell.

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JaniaJania takes on Keane

Took a while to get up the gumption to watch Keane. I knew enough about it to know it would be dark and harrowing and intense. One must block off some uninterrupted time and be in the right mindset to watch something like that.

I knew that Damian’s performance in Keane is what sold the Showtime brass on giving him the role of Nicholas Brody without an audition. The film is indeed intense watching. It’s a one man show really with the camera following Keane closely as he wanders the streets of New York, mostly silent and hopelessly disturbed. In Keane, Damian captures perfectly the confusion of mental illness, the murky stare of loss and despair and incapacity to communicate effectively. I found the film was more about the performances than it was about the writing. Amy Ryan as the harried single mother, and Abigail Breslin, in that child-wise-beyond-her-years way she has, were great too, both cast perfectly, in an ultimately heartbreaking and raw story.

keane1

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Billions: First Takes, Fresh Takes

Now, dear readers, what kind of forensic fan would I be if I didn’t do a pixel by pixel analysis of the latest trailer for Billions? What latest trailer for Billions, you ask? Why this one, called First Takes, with some fun behind the scenes bits interspersed with more juicy bits of the story revealed. I’ll tell you one thing from the get-go: I see a different Bobby Axelrod in this preview than has been revealed in previous trailers.

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JaniaJania: A Weekend with Damian Lewis, continued

Where do I even start with a retelling of the events of October 3, 2015, my first time seeing Damian Lewis in person? Seems like my experience was clouded by a fangirl fugue state that started when he first walked into the theater for his interview with Lauren Collins, reached a new crescendo with the Cleo reading, and didn’t let up until days later, when I could sit and recall it all in a moment of tranquility. As we were wrapping up our immersion into The Weekend with Damian Lewis provided by the New Yorker Festival, Damianista wanted to talk about how we would write about the events, who would write what, and when. Truthfully, I said, I could take that 90 minute interview and churn out a post about every 15 minute chunk of it. And that’s not even including the Green Room time, which in my fugue state felt like 5 minutes, but, in reality, I’m assured, was much longer. Such was the richness of the experience.

Granted, for the hard core Damian fans, there were several things we’d already read or heard him say before. But even those topics that had been touched upon over the years in one forum or another (eg Damian being told he got the Dick Winters role when he was still drunk from a night carousing in Santa Monica and his visit with President Obama) were retold under a fresh light. And how fresher a light can there be than when the subject of the interview is sitting less than five feet in front of you. Blazing light, to be perfectly honest.

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Cleo at New Yorker Festival 2015

After the interview with Lauren Collins on Saturday, the second event for Damian Lewis at this weekend’s New Yorker Festival was a play reading of Lawrence Wright’s Cleo, with Damian Lewis playing the part of Richard Burton to Lily Rabe’s Elizabeth Taylor.

We’re all pretty familiar with “le scandale” that brewed behind the set of the filming of the most expensive production of its time, right? Lawrence Wright’s script gives us a story built around the events of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s combustible love affair during the filming of Hollywood blockbuster Cleopatra.

Damian Lewis, Lily Rabe
source: Hollywood Reporter

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