Fur Showing In Sydney., *ADD PHOTOS, REVIEWS from Sydney here* Options

[cinemasaver]

For those in Sydney, FUR is FINALLY being screened, for a limited season only, (like, one week), at The Chauvel in Paddington, starting tomorrow, Thursday 13th September.

This post has been edited by friendlyfox: Sep 15 2007, 11:06 AM

Reason for edit: Edit to alter title.

[friendlyfox]

Thanks for the news cinemasaver. I had given up hope of seeing it on screen and still had not ordered the DVD (region 0).


Hope I can make it. If it shows for a week that should bring it past the 18th when I may be "in town" all going well. No idea where the cinema is yet, but I know Paddington a little bit. ie. I can find it on the map AND I have been there at least 5 times.



PS. I have shifted this to Nicoles Inbox as the film and stage section is usually more archives and people tend not to check it for news.

[katekidman]

Thanks! I'm in Syd and have seen it on DVD finally.. but i love seeing movies on the big screen!

so thanks for the news!

[mss_diane]

Not sure if you know Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from ABC's At the Movies.

Margaret gives 2.5 stars
David gives 3 stars

Here's their review..

http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2005051.htm

Fur

Review by Margaret Pomeranz

FUR opened the inaugural Rome Film Festival last year and because it starred NICOLE KIDMAN as the legendary New York photographer Diane Arbus we’ve been hanging out for it to get a release in this country.

Creeping into cinemas next week it depicts Arbus as a circumscribed upper class New Yorker, married to Allen, (TY BURRELL), whom she assists in his photography business.

But she’s a woman totally under the thumb of her domineering parents. When a mysterious stranger moves in upstairs her life changes. Lionel Sweeney, (ROBERT DOWNEY JR), is a neighbour like no other.

It’s through Lionel that Arbus will be introduced to the world that will make her famous through her photographs.

There’s something very odd about this film. It’s billed as an imaginary portrait of the artist but even fantasy has to have a touch of reality to it.

Robert Downey Jr. looks as if he can barely stifle a laugh let alone get words out from behind all that fur. Lionel’s look was designed by the Stan Winston Studios but I was not convinced.

Such oddity needs some sort of conviction but except for husband Allen, the characters are presented superficially as freaks or as demons.

As for the metaphor of Arbus being seduced away from the rigidity of her life by the charm of otherness, it just doesn’t give enough substance to her extraordinary art. It demeans it somehow.

It’s a bit of a disappointment from the creative team of director Steven Shainburg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson who brought us the delightfully different SECRETARY.

NICOLE KIDMAN is fragile and questing as Arbus but she’s really not given very much to work with here.
Further comments

MARGARET: David?

DAVID: Well, I thought this was really interesting. I mean, I think the first thing to say is that if you're not familiar with the work of Diane Arbus the film will mean nothing to you because...

MARGARET: Yes, most probably if you're not familiar you should look her up on the net and...

DAVID: I think you should, to see the photographs...

MARGARET: Yes.

DAVID: ...that she took, because obviously the film is suggesting that she was influenced by the events or similar, anyway, events in the film in the work she did later. I think Nicole Kidman actually is good in this. I think she gives one of her better performances.

MARGARET: But...

DAVID: I found her very interesting; her journey a very interesting one. It's a sort of beauty and the beast story, isn't it? I mean...

MARGARET: Well, yes, obviously.

DAVID: Obviously. But I mean, Robert Downey Jr, I think looks a bit like the beast in Cocteau's...

MARGARET: Yes, I was going to say that, you know.

DAVID: Yeah. And it is really strange. It's very strange, but I don't know, the basic set up is vaguely similar to that of SECRETARY. I mean, a young woman who is, kind of becomes obsessed, erotically obsessed, with somebody...

MARGARET: Some strange man.

DAVID: Yes. Somebody very different.

MARGARET: Yes.

DAVID: And so there's a - there's a linking theme there and I agree with you, it's so odd it doesn't quite come off but I thought it was a brave try, this.

MARGARET: You know, it's that hair on Robert Downey Jr.

DAVID: No, I didn't mind that at all. I wanted to stroke it.

MARGARET: No, no, no.

[skankyoldwhore]

At last .

[Grace Margaret M...]

well, that's more than here in germany

[cinemasaver]

I'm looking forward to seeing it on the large screen. At last (after almost a year??). Then I might consider getting a dvd.

Thanks for shifting the post, Foxy. I should have thought of putting it here, first of all.
I do hope you can get to Sydney to see it. The Chauvel cinema is upstairs, behind the Paddington Town Hall, in Oatley Street, which runs off Oxford Street. The final screening is Wednesday19th September, 8.45 pm. There are numerous screenings throughout the day, most days.

Thanks, mss diane. I'm a regular viewer of Margaret and David on At The Movies. They often agree to disagree, but they're a very good combination. Margaret seemed less impressed than David. I generally think he's a more knowledgeable and insightful critic. She's a little 'gut reactionish', sometimes. Although I do think there's an urgent need for more female movie critics around so we could all get a more balanced perspective on films.

Just to add to mssdiane's post above: the rating system for the films on that show is scored out of 5.

So-Margaret gives 2.5 stars.
David gives 3 stars.

This post has been edited by cinemasaver: Sep 13 2007, 06:26 PM

[friendlyfox]

Thanks cinemasaver for the update on the date. There is a strong possiblilty I may get to it if it ends Wed 19.

Thanks mss_diane for David and Margaret's review . I have watching their show but missed this one. It could not have been this week as that was there Venice Film Festival coverage. I am sorry I missed it even if the number of stars could be higher. I laughed when reading Margaret 's "No no no!" as a reaction to David wanting to stroke Downey's fur. I can just imagine her saying it, laughing and looking horried at the same time


Here is a review from the Sydney Morning Herald which gave it 3 and 1/2 stars /2


Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Dianne ArbusSandra Hall, reviewer
September 13, 2007

GenreDramaRun Time122 minutes
RatedR 18+
CountryUnited StatesDirectorSteven ShainbergActorsNicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr, Ty Burrell, Harris Yulin, Jane Alexander, Teddy Tilkin, Genevieve McCarthy.Ratingstars-3half
VIDEO: Trailer - Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Clearly the American director Steven Shainberg enjoys taking risks.

His last film, Secretary, was about the burgeoning of a passionate romance built on sadomasochism. His latest is a wildly speculative take on the life of the photographer Diane Arbus - a film so light on fact that it is billed as an "imaginary portrait".

Since Arbus made a career out of documenting the oddest aspects of being human, it is not as if her life needs extra colour. Her search for the extraordinary was an obsession, taking her from the mildly aberrant environment of a nudist camp to the extremes of existence found in mental hospitals and circus sideshows. Even more contentious was the enigmatic character of her gaze. It was up to the viewer, she implied, to decide if she was being exploratory or just exploitative.

The exploration launched by Shainberg and the screenwriter, Erin Cressida Wilson, takes off on its flight into fantasy from the Arbus biography by Patricia Bosworth - a basically sympathetic account which lays some persuasive clues to the way Arbus may have been looking at those she photographed. As Bosworth interprets her motives, Arbus regarded photography as both sinister and mysterious, convinced that it really did capture the souls of those it scrutinised. It was a belief which owed a lot to the childhood love of myths and fairytales she carried into her adult life. Follow this line - as Shainberg and Wilson do - and every photograph she took was an excursion into the woods.

It's a nice idea which the film fashions into its own kind of fairytale, replete with elements of Cocteau and Lewis Carroll. Symptomatic of Shainberg's ardent embrace of the fanciful is the casting. Arbus was small, dark and sparrow-like, so he's cast tall, swan-like Nicole Kidman. As Arbus, she makes a great Alice in Wonderland.

The film focuses on the beginnings of Arbus's career, towards the end of the 1950s, as she gains the resolve to start taking photographs of her own after spending years as housewife and helpmate to her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell). The Arbuses produce fashion photography and advertising spreads for the New York glossies as well as arranging fashion parades to show the furs sold by Diane's wealthy father, David Nemerov (Harris Yulin), in his chain of department stores. It is during one of these parades that Diane breaks down. She now hates the work and is even more revolted by her father's customers and their predatory fixation on the pelts of dead animals.

As therapy, she takes her camera and starts roaming the neighbourhood looking for inspiration. At the same time, a new tenant moves into the apartment upstairs. All she sees of him at first is an overcoat and a mask rather like the one David Lynch gave his tormented hero in The Elephant Man. But Lionel is not tormented. He's long since resigned himself to the strangeness of his condition - a disorder that promotes uncontrollable hair growth. When he finally removes the mask, the brown eyes peering out of the leonine face announce the irrepressible presence of Robert Downey jnr.

In her first visit to his apartment, he greets her with a cup of tea and an introduction to his pet white rabbit. And so she enters Wonderland. He earns his living making wigs for circus and sideshow performers and before long Diane has met and been entranced by them all.

Shainberg leaves us to conjure with the question of whether Lionel exists in reality or in Arbus's psyche. What matters is the delicately droll tone the film maintains as Lionel and his seductive freak show make their way into the tidy world she inhabits. Gothic fairytale collides with Vogue Living, with the camera casting an ironic eye from the middle distance as if Shainberg is pre-empting the urge to deride by slyly getting in first.

In Kidman and Downey jnr, he has two gifted accomplices. Kidman negotiates some very tricky scenes by underplaying, and while Downey jnr has long been an expert when it comes to insouciance, the poignancy he manages once Alice in Wonderland starts morphing into Beauty and the Beast is something we haven't had from him before.

The film has had a mixed response in the US. Its cruellest critics see shades of Chewbacca rather than Cocteau in its hairy hero and it is hardly going to satisfy those who want some real insights into Arbus's life, which ended with her suicide at the age of 48. Nonetheless, its unabashed weirdness is perversely beguiling.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/film-reviews/fu...9276850977.html

[emku]

"I'm thinking of a number between one and 10." Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman) and Allan Arbus (Ty Burrell).

Kidman's quandary

Nicole Kidman is in a confiding mood. "It's still a quandary in a way, the relationship between wanting to express yourself artistically and your desire to be devoted to your relationship," she says. "It's really complicated. In some way you feel like it's a betrayal if you go and explore your artistic part. I do, because it requires you to exist in a separate way.

"The person that you are with will never experience that - and finding that balance has always been a big thing for me. When I got divorced I was able to go and explore myself artistically because I didn't feel I was betraying my devotion to the person I was with.

"For anyone with a career you hope to find someone who understands you. You hope they will understand what makes you laugh and what's necessary for you to exist in the world and to have a rich and rewarding life."

Clearly Kidman, whose career flourished after her divorce from Tom Cruise, hopes she has found that with new husband Keith Urban. There are parallels with Kidman's role in Steven Shainberg's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, based on a real story of a woman who abandons an easy, conventional life in the 1950s to photograph people on society's fringes.

The film will finally screen in Sydney after its premiere at last year's RomeFilmFest. Its delay is the result of mixed reviews. Shainberg, who directed Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary, took great licence with the story of Arbus.

Set in the 1950s, the quirky film shows Arbus's disillusionment with her existence as the immaculately groomed wife of a photographer (Ty Burrell) and comes up with a rather strange reason for her artistic inspiration: sexy S&M meetings of mind and body with a fur-covered Lionel Sweeney (Robert Downey jnr).

Yes, shades of Secretary, and it was because of the success of that film that Shainberg got to make this one. A collector of Diane Arbus's photography, he had long nurtured the idea of making a film about her.

"What is so compelling about Diane Arbus is that she was a personality that exploded at the age of 35," he says. "Until then this unbelievably poetic, complicated and mysterious intelligence was encased in a kind of steel box inside herself. She reached a point where she either could have retreated, as many people do, or struck out on her own, which the film portrays.

"From my point of view, one of the beauties of the film and one of the beauties of Nicole's performance, is you really feel that deep necessity to open the door and go out into the world. Once that happened she developed this profound intelligence in all sorts of areas, including as a writer, but from my point of view she had an incredible intelligence for life, for knowing how to go out and live the way she wanted."

Kidman came to the film as a last-minute replacement for Samantha Morton, who more closely resembles Arbus. Even if the Australian actress is too beautiful in the role - she looks fabulous in those '50s frocks - she is keen about her subject as she has long been a collector of black and white photography.

"I didn't know the intricacies of Diane Arbus's life so I went and saw the exhibition at the Met [in New York] and spent couple of hours absorbing her that way," Kidman says. "Patricia Bosworth's biography was my main access to her, but at the same time the film is not a biopic. It's based [on] a small, small portion of her life.

"What's interesting about playing somebody who really existed is that you begin to interpret them through yourself. Something happens where you're discovering things about them that you can recognise and you feel that's why you choose to play them.

"It's an incredibly deep spiritual connection and the same thing happened to me when I played Virginia Woolf [her Oscar-winning role in The Hours] - and both of the women ultimately commit suicide. It's hard to talk about it because it's quite mysterious and quite beautiful as an actor. It's an incredible thing to be able to do and I'm drawn to doing it."

FUR: AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS
Director Steven Shainberg Stars Nicole?Kidman, Ty Burrell, Robert Downey jnr
Rated MA Opens Thursday at Paddington's Chauvel.

Source

Hopefully this is a new one!!! Lately everyone has just been re-using old interviews

Enjoy!!

This post has been edited by emku: Sep 14 2007, 12:43 AM

[happygolucky]

Wow, that reviewer shows great insite and knowlege of the actors work. I love the well chosen words.

[skankyoldwhore]

Thanks Foxy .

[skankyoldwhore]

Thanks emku . It may be new but I get the feeling it is from the RomeFilmFest last year especially her quote in the first paragraph and Shainberg's quote as well but nice to read it again .

[kylie]

Thanks a lot for the article , emku ! It's very nice !

[Ronnoco]

Here's another article about Fur being shown in Sydney. Don't know if it's been posted already?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/kidmans-qu...9276867315.html

[cinemasaver]

Thanks emku . It may be new but I get the feeling it is from the RomeFilmFest last year especially her quote in the first paragraph and Shainberg's quote as well but nice to read it again .

I think a lot of it is not new. There are just a few updates to go with the current screening.

[cinemasaver]

I've been to see 'Fur', at long last. It was worth the wait. Although I know it's not possible for many to see it on the large screen, given the limited screenings globally, I'm glad I hung out to see it there, first of all. It is a very artistic, very poetic, very visual film. And a very beautiful one. Nicole is superb, sensitive, intuitive. And she looks beautiful. Robert Downey Jr brings tenderness to his role. I'm not going to say too much more now, as I'm going to see it again. While I have the chance-on the big screen It's that kind of film. You want to see it again.

[Samantha Stevens]

Thanks for the article.
ciao

[nic&keith]

Thanks emku for the article

[Meisha]

Thanks emku! I agree with you, Skanky and cinemasaver, that a lot of the article is not new material.

[skankyoldwhore]

I've been to see 'Fur', at long last. It was worth the wait. Although I know it's not possible for many to see it on the large screen, given the limited screenings globally, I'm glad I hung out to see it there, first of all. It is a very artistic, very poetic, very visual film. And a very beautiful one. Nicole is superb, sensitive, intuitive. And she looks beautiful. Robert Downey Jr brings tenderness to his role. I'm not going to say too much more now, as I'm going to see it again. While I have the chance-on the big screen It's that kind of film. You want to see it again.

I got the DVD and watched it four times in a week, couldn't take it out of the player, .