Actors Against Gravity: Costner and Russo Laugh To Hide The Tears

Golf Pro. Love Amateur. Gravity Sufferer.

Another high profile Hollywood name to fall victim to the Earth's most powerful force became apparent this week. The poster for 1996's Tin Cup, praised by the Los Angeles Times as "dispiritingly conventional and obvious", shows the two leads sharing a moment of light-hearted warmth. Perhaps Rene Russo told her co-star that joke that she knows. However, no amount of smiling can gloss over the worrying position of Kevin Costner. He has found himself at a quite unfeasible angle as he tries to enjoy life at a permanent 45 degree slant.

Russo seems to serves two purposes in this poster. The first is to act as a guide of as near to an upright angle as is possible in a romcom poster. This highlights the ludicrous nature of Costner's stance. The second seems to be physically pulling Costner away from an even more absurd angle. It is unclear how strong Rene Russo actually is but she appears to be pulling her co-star up to a workable angle by only using a three finger grip on his right forearm.

Sources close to Costner indicate that his move away from the limelight in recent years may be down to his struggle with gravity. One source goes further and claims that the Dances With Wolves star spends up to 8 hours a night lying at an entirely horizontal angle.

A disheartening development as the fight to find a cure continues!

Together we can defeat gravity!

Confessions

Confessions (告白 Kokuhaku) is another example to the world that the Far East has taken revenge cinema to a whole new level over the past decade. Following in the elaborate vengeful footsteps of Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy, Confessions sees a teacher exact her punishment on the two pupils responsible for the death of her daughter. A syringe filled with AIDS infected blood is the unusual weapon of choice used to taint the milk of the guilty. With everyone having received their daily dose of calcium she calmly breaks the news to the unknowing class. However, the sweeping of four awards at the 34^th Japanese Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director) as well as making the nine film shortlist for the ever competitive Best Foreign Film category at this year’s Oscars suggests there is more than purely dodgy dairy products and classroom disharmony on display.

Writer and director Tetsuya Nakashima has had little success with previous films Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko in his attempts to breach the Western market. Both only managed a handful of screenings in festivals and independent cinemas across Europe and North America before promptly making their way via DVD release to the dimly lit World Cinema aisle. Confessions though, having been released on DVD at the end of April, has received a limited release in cinemas nationwide thanks to leading distributors of East Asian cinema, Third Window Films.

The reason for the wider release than his previous films seems to lie in the greater appeal to a Western audience which is most clearly evident in the film’s soundtrack. Nakashima, who also takes on the role of Music Supervisor, rejects a purely instrumental score and instead opts for a mixture of tracks specifically composed for the film and others that were not. The result is an intoxicating cocktail of one part bizarre odes about milk, a few hefty measures of heavy ambient rock, a tinge of Radiohead’s recent back catalogue with ‘Last Flowers’ then finished with a decorative umbrella composed of KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘That’s the Way (I Like It)’. Whilst the mix may seem overly eclectic and at times downright peculiar on paper, it works perfectly when blended with Nakashima’s creative vision. The final sequence in particular highlights the brilliance of Nakashima’s choice and execution in using previously released material to complement his story. ‘Farewell’, a track released in 2005 by Japanese experimental rock band Boris, with its ominous wave of distorted guitars crashing into Nakashima’s imagery on screen leaves a brutally cathartic aftertaste as the credits begin to roll.

Confessions was released on DVD on April 25^th. Visit www.thirdwindowfilms.com for news and details of cinema screenings nationwide.

Film Poster of the Week: The Thing With Two Heads

In some rooms men meet together to change in the world. In others, they meet to produce some of the most gloriously awful B-Movies ideas of all time. With a concept to rival that of Surf Nazis Must Die! comes The Thing With Two Heads.

The film is a relatively simple idea that is easily summarised by the tagline:

They transplanted a white bigot’s head onto a soul brother’s body!

It stars Rosey Grier, a former American football star, as a death row inmate who takes up an offer to participate in a secret medical experiment to avoid the electric chair. It has everything that can be expected from a B-Movie horror with a blaxploitation twist. There is no end to the jive, choppers, guns and puns!

“More power to you, brother!” says a black prison guard, as he is about to flick the switch on the electric chair, being one of the finer moments. Though whilst other moments of racial banters may seem ill judged, particularly when the bigoted head cries “What are you gonna have for dessert? Watermelon?!”. It is hard not to say that this film is incredibly entertaining (and disturbingly surreal for a Wednesday morning). It is worth a watch alone for the seamless switches between the prosthetic heads and the actors squeezing alongside each other in their costume.

Actors Against Gravity: Condition of Sandra Bullock Improves

Sandra Bullock – one of the biggest names to suffer at the hands of Newton’s discovery – has seen a marked improvement in her condition.

Having previously been seen at a near 45 degree angle in the poster for Forces of Nature, Bullock is now close to an upright angle. Something that still remains elusive for many of her colleagues.

However, the news is tainted with sorrow. Hugh Grant, a man who had seemingly avoided the disease intrinsic to romantic comedies despite making a career out of them, has finally succumbed to gravity. Possibly in an attempt to add some artistic value to Two Weeks Notice, praised by critics as “something of a disaster”, Grant and Bullock try too hard to add weight to their performances.

The resulting imbalance in acting gravity has caused them to resemble the top of a house of cards.

Scientists at NASA have been asked to look into the problem after concerns were raised that unnecessary leaning and excess gravity could spread to the general public.

Have you seen actors struggling with their deadliest foe? Spread awareness by emailing actorsagainstgravity@gmail.com so we can highlight their plight.

Together we can overcome gravity.

Actors Against Gravity: No Reservations

Full marks to Catherine Zeta Jones for overcoming the stigma that surrounds mental illness and announcing that she had been receiving treatment for bi-polar disorder.

Sadly her one time co-star Aaron Eckhart chooses to suffer in silence.

The list of actors suffering from the Earth's gravity continues to grow. The condition first diagnosed in Matthew McConaughey is becoming endemic to weak Hollywood romantic comedies. Steve Carell, Ben Affleck, Sandra Bullock, Richard Gere have now all joined McConaughey in his semi-horizontal life.

Eckhart's problem may go unnoticed at first in the poster for 2007's No Reservations - a film lauded by The Independent as "fantastically smug and boring". However, if you crack out a ruler, draw a completely vertical line through the centre of his legs to the top of his head and then use a protractor to measure the disturbing angle at which he was standing.

By my own calculation, he is about 8 degrees from standing vertically.

An insignificant amount that many will sneer at but that kind of ignorance will mean that actors in romcom posters are eternally destined to struggle at the hands of gravity.

Have you seen an actor suffering from gravity? Perhaps they have too much or too little - either way it is a serious problem. If you do then email us at actorsagainstgravity@gmail.com

Together we can overcome gravity.