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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by BaftaBaby[/i] [br]I'll say it loud, I'll say it proud ... I like John Turturro. I like him as an actor who's always judged each moment of his various performances to extract maximum comedy [think Big Lebowski; O Brother Where Art Thou] and maximum no-nonsense reliability [as per Clockers]. And I like him as the accomplished writer/director of some of the most warm-hearted, honest portraits of the daily grind [e.g. Mac]. His latest, Fading Gigolo continues this portraiture with a premise full of potential that many critics have described as bittersweet. I can see what they mean, because tucked away among the hilarious folds of an unlikely tale, is a nearly-romance. Which is a particularly brave choice, considering studio demands for predictable genre films. OK so here's the starting line: not-quite-failing florist and self-didact Turturro, a good-hearted mensch, reluctantly responds to a proposition by his old friend Woody Allen. Allen, equal on the mensch ladder, has just had to shut down his bankrupt bookstore. Being a philosophical pragmatist he's heard from his sexy dermatologist she'd be interested in a threesome with her bestie, if only they could find the right guy. Woody knows just that guy - but they'll have to pay. Big bucks! They agree. And soon, so does the florist. Pimp and ho sally forth to spread joy among lonely women. So far, so very funny. Turturro has released Woody the actor to the waving wheat-fields of mirth that defined his early career. OK, the persona is familiar - but it's also entirely appropriate. And the script is delightful - often laugh out loud funny. Woody knows Turturro's lacking a zest for life, so when he meets recently widowed Orthodox Vanessa Paradis who's equally missing out on life, he contrives to get them together, even as he's setting up sex-dates for the florist. That's everything you need to know to justify that bittersweet epithet, but you'll probably not 2nd-guess how the story unfolds. It's not just that the film is about the connections between money & sex, love & loneliness - it's more poignantly about how honest are our choices, given the times we live in. Some have said the film "feels" like a Woody Allen film. Which is only partly true. It also echoes Damon Runyon, and John Sayles with its telling conrasts between New York classes and their leisure pursuits. Beyond that, Turturro manages more than Woody, to build the lighter layers of farce on a bedrock of real emotion. As an actor in his own film, he's generous to a fault, never dominating. As a director, he's as honest as they come. [no pun intended!] [:D] [/quote]    -  HTML is OFF | Forum Code is ON   Check here to include your profile signature.