Taking the joy out of sex in ‘Shame’
By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - 0 Comments
Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan in 'Shame'
By the end of the Toronto International Film Festival, Shame was no longer just a movie. It was The Most Talked About Movie At TIFF. Its star, Michael Fassbender, had been named best actor at the Venice Film Festival. That buzz, and the film’s stark portrayal of sex addiction, put it on the top of everyone’s must-see list. Not to mention that it’s the second feature from British art-star-turned-auteur Steve McQueen, who made such an incendiary debut in 2008 with Hunger (also starring Fassbender, in a stunt-like tour de force as hunger-striking IRA martyr Bobby Sands).
When I first saw Shame, at TIFF, I found much about it amazing and admirable, but I was left cold. Despite all the carnal eye candy and sleek Manhattan visuals, the film’s descent into a hell of loveless sex seemed desperately bleak. What’s worse, I was disappointed by my disappointment, as if it were a personal failing akin to that of the film’s protagonist. For fans of Shame, that would just be proof that the film was doing its job. Art, after all, is meant to disturb. “You say Fassbender’s character is shallow and soulless? Well, of course he is! Welcome to the real world!” Yet something still felt not right with the film that I couldn’t put my finger on. When I came out of it, my first thought was that I wouldn’t have to see it again, or want to. But as time went on I felt so conflicted about it that eventually, I did. Now I finally have an opinion or two. Continue…
-
The many faces of Michael Fassbender
By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments
Lover, sex addict, shrink, superhero, spy—a new leading man stars in five movies
Xavier Torres-Bacchetta/Corbis Outline
In Hollywood, strong and versatile leading men are almost as scarce as intelligent scripts. It’s a rare breed—the serious actor with defiantly masculine sex appeal who can play a swaggering action hero, melt into a shrewd character role, and charm a woman out of her clothes. Ryan Gosling, Javier Bardem and Daniel Craig are among the few who come to mind. Now Michael Fassbender joins the club. This German-born Irishman is not yet a household name, but at the rate he’s going, it won’t be long.
Fassbender, 34, has starred in no fewer than five movies this year. Last spring, he brought an unnerving erotic menace to the role of Rochester in Jane Eyre. In the summer, he harnessed Magneto’s force field in X-Men: First Class. This fall, he tore up the festival circuit, winning best actor in Venice for his incendiary role as a sex addict in Shame—a pathology he could have diagnosed in his role as Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. Finally, he takes on a female black-ops assassin in Haywire, an upcoming spy thriller from Steven Soderbergh. (Shame opens here next week; A Dangerous Method and Haywire won’t hit Canada until January.)
Cronenberg cast Fassbender after seeing the extraordinary range he displayed in myriad roles—as self-starving IRA martyr Bobby Sands in Hunger (2008), a British army officer in Inglourious Basterds (2009), and a cavalier cad who seduces his girlfriend’s 15-year-old daughter in Fish Tank (2009). In A Dangerous Method, Fassbender’s Jung emerges from the shadow of Freud (a droll Viggo Mortensen) and tumbles into a kinky extra-marital affair with a Russian protege (Keira Knightley), who graduates from wild-eyed patient to amorous colleague. Interviewed by Maclean’s this week, Cronenberg said, “I felt that Michael’s innate sexiness would work with Keira, and his sense of humour and playfulness would work with Viggo on the set.”
-
If you’re rude, she’ll hunt you down
By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 12:50 PM - 4 Comments
An advice columnist vows to ‘beat some manners’ into an increasingly impolite society
Rude children of “the underparented,” cellphone screamers, obnoxious drivers and telemarketers, look out! Amy Alkon, a.k.a. the Advice Goddess, is on the warpath, photographing, blogging and now publishing a book she hopes will stop the growing epidemic of some people’s ignorant rudeness.Alkon is the sharp-tongued syndicated L.A. advice columnist whose online ranting about her stolen car once attracted the attention of Marlon Brando. Alkon managed to find out the car thief’s name and phone number and posted it on her blog.When Brando heard about it in a chat room, he was amused, and emailed her, offering to help. “Tell me what his name is and other ancillary info. And I’ll call him myself.”
In Alkon’s new book, I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society, she tells the Brando story. “Marlon hopped on ‘the blower’ and rang Fred [the car thief]—at 3 a.m., when else? I can’t say exactly what he said to Fred, but I know he took his time and said it Godfather-style, and that it started with something like, ‘She’s a nice girl. Why did you take her car?’ ”
