9th Annual Screen Actors Guild Award® Nominees  (an excerpt)

Theatrical Motion Pictures

For Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role

Salma Hayek / FRIDA – Frida Kahlo (Miramax Films)
Nicole Kidman / THE HOURS – Virginia Woolf (Paramount Pictures/Miramax Films)
Diane Lane / UNFAITHFUL – Connie Sumner 20th Century Fox
Julianne Moore / FAR FROM HEAVEN – Cathy Whitaker (Focus Features)
Renée Zellweger / CHICAGO – Roxie Hart (Miramax Films)

For Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Chris Cooper / ADAPTATION – Guy LaRoche (Columbia Pictures)
Ed Harris / THE HOURS – Richard Brown (Paramount Pictures)
Alfred Molina / FRIDA – Diego Rivera (Miramax Films)
Dennis Quaid / FAR FROM HEAVEN – Frank Whitaker (Focus Features)
Christopher Walken / CATCH ME IF YOU CAN – Frank Abagnale (Dreamworks SKG)

For Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role

Kathy Bates / ABOUT SCHMIDT – Roberta Hertzel (New Line Cinema)
Julianne Moore / THE HOURS – Laura Brown (Paramount Pictures)
Michelle Pfeiffer / WHITE OLEANDER – Ingrid Magnussen ( Warner Bros.)
Queen Latifah / CHICAGO – Matron Mama Morton (Miramax Fillms)
Catherine Zeta-Jones / CHICAGO – Velma Kelly (Miramax Fillms)

BAFTA Nominations Announced  (an excerpt)

by Tom King

The nominations for the 2003 British Academy Awards were announced this morning by Sir Ian McKellan and, for a resoundingly British event, it was the Yanks that surprisingly came out on top. With Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers bringing up the field in third place with nine nominations, British film The Hours had to be content with second position and eleven nominations to its credit as the American pictures, Chicago and Gangs of New York, held the top spot with twelve nominations each...

Hostilities will officially commence at the BAFTA ceremony on Sunday February 23 at the Odeon Leicester Square...

Best Film:
CHICAGO - Martin Richards
GANGS OF NEW YORK - Alberto Grimaldi/Harvey Weinstein
THE HOURS - Scott Rudin/Robert Fox
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS - Barrie M Osborne/Fran Walsh/Peter Jackson
THE PIANIST - Roman Polanski/Robert Benmussa/Alain Sarde

The Alexander Korda award for the outstanding British Film of the Year:
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM - Deepak Nayar/Gurinder Chadha
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS - Tracey Seaward/Robert Jones/Stephen Frears
THE HOURS - Scott Rudin/Robert Fox/Stephen Daldry
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS - Frances Higson/Peter Mullan
THE WARRIOR - Bertrand Faivre/Asif Kapadia

The David Lean award for achievement in Direction:
CHICAGO - Rob Marshall
GANGS OF NEW YORK - Martin Scorsese
THE HOURS - Stephen Daldry
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS - Peter Jackson
THE PIANIST - Roman Polanski

Screenplay (Adapted):
ABOUT A BOY - Peter Hedges/Chris Weitz/Paul Weitz
ADAPTATION - Charlie Kaufman/Donald Kaufman
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN - Jeff Nathanson
THE HOURS - David Hare
THE PIANIST - Ronald Harwood

Performance by an actress in a leading role:
HALLE BERRY - Monster's Ball
SALMA HAYEK - Frida
NICOLE KIDMAN - The Hours
MERYL STREEP - The Hours
RENÉE ZELLWEGER - Chicago

Performance by an actress in a supporting role:
TONI COLLETTE - About a Boy
QUEEN LATIFAH - Chicago
JULIANNE MOORE - The Hours
MERYL STREEP - Adaptation
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES - Chicago

Performance by an actor in a supporting role:
CHRIS COOPER - Adaptation
ED HARRIS - The Hours
ALFRED MOLINA - Frida
PAUL NEWMAN - Road to Perdition
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN - Catch Me If You Can

The Anthony Asquith award for achievement in Music:
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN - John Williams
CHICAGO - Danny Elfman/John Kander/Fred Ebb
GANGS OF NEW YORK - Howard Shore
THE HOURS - Philip Glass
THE PIANIST - Wojciech Kilar

Editing:
CHICAGO - Martin Walsh
CITY OF GOD (Cidade Deus) - Daniel Rezende
GANGS OF NEW YORK - Thelma Schoonmaker
THE HOURS - Peter Boyle
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS - Michael Horton/Jabez Olssen

Friday January 24, 2003

‘Remember the hours’

Three lives intertwine around Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway’

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Stephen Daldry has made only four films, but with each one he has hit a home run. With Billy Elliot, Daldry told a movingly funny and immensely heart-felt story of a young, provincial British lad who chooses ballet over boxing.

Now, with The Hours, he has crafted a film so sublime that one can’t wait for his next venture and yet, one can’t help but worry as to how he can get even better.

Based on Cincinnati-born Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel of the same name, The Hours is an existential inquiry into the trials and tribulations of ordinary people leading what on the surface seem ordinary lives. In reality, these lives are nothing short of extraordinary.

The Hours masterfully interweaves the lives of three disparate yet similar women living in different time periods, whose lives are inexorably linked to the literary masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway.

One of the women in this richly textured story is the author of Mrs. Dalloway herself, the enigmatic and tempestuous Virginia Woolf, played by Nicole Kidman. She is living in a London suburb in the early 1920s while trying to recover from the deep depression that plagued her entire life. While in this idyllic (yet claustrophobic to her) environment, Woolf is struggling to begin writing Mrs. Dalloway.

Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is the second woman in The Hours, a young wife and mother in post-World War II Los Angeles who is just starting to read Woolf’s novel. Brown is consumed by the book. Struggling with her own mental illness, she is beginning to question the entire storybook existence she has chosen for herself.

The third woman in this tale is Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep). Living in New York in 2001, she seems to have become Mrs. Dalloway herself. She is planning a party for her friend and former lover Richard (Ed Harris), who is in the final stages of AIDS-related mental and physical breakdowns.

Two themes are prominent in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: the idea that all lives are somehow intertwined, literally, cosmically, karmically and in many other ways, and that even the most ordinary lives are truly extraordinary to those living them. These two themes are the theses upon which The Hours builds its existential angst and augury.

Daldry and screenplay writer David Hare have taken Cunningham’s non-linear masterpiece and created a cinematic tapestry that is breathtaking in the subtle ways which it takes disparate threads and stitches them all together.

As the film moves fluidly between the lives of the three main women and their supporting characters, it shows us how they resonate in one another and how gestures, events and even entire lives can echo with bitter pain and with profound joy.

The supporting cast here is supremely matched to the three leads and as such, the entire ensemble is one of the most accomplished and stunning ever assembled in contemporary cinema.

Ed Harris, who plays Richard, Clarissa’s ex-lover, is made to look depressingly frail and sickly. Yet his performance, which is often a bit too theatrical, seems to be the only false note in an otherwise perfect film. He isn’t bad, he’s just not as modulated as the rest.

Allison Janney (The West Wing) plays Clarissa’s lover Sally. Janney never disappoints, and she and Streep together paint a vivid portrait of a contemporary, urban lesbian couple trying to make life seem more meaningful than it often seems.

While the entire supporting cast is stunning, it is Stephen Dillane’s turn as Leonard Woolf, Virginia’s stern yet supportive husband, that is a dazzling piece of acting. Dillane’s subtle displays of love coupled with his outbursts of frustration at his wife’s inability to get better are heartrendingly real. Dillane’s performance here is a real revelation and while Harris is getting all the supporting actor nods thus far, it will be a shame if Dillane is not recognized for his brilliant work here.

And then, there’s the three leads themselves. Each one is supreme in her own right and to have all three in the same film seems like a cinematic guilty-pleasure of hedonistic proportions.

Kidman isn’t afraid to deglamorize herself with a prosthetic nose, wrinkled and freckled hands, and a raspy, base voice. She is simply getting better with each role, and here she brings depth and dignity to one of the most recognizable feminist icons.

Julianne Moore, who has already turned in one of the year’s best performances in Todd Haynes’ dazzling Far From Heaven, gets to play yet another 1950s woman, struggling with repression and the stifling claustrophobia of suburban motherhood and domesticity.

Then there’s Streep, who with this role should become the most Oscar nominated actor (male or female) of all time. Her Clarissa is such a complex muse of a woman who is struggling with the seemingly exorbitant ennui of her everyday existence. Streep is an actor of such subtlety and depth that one expects greatness from her, and yet one is always amazed at simply how much depth and layering she is able to imbue her characters with.

Philip Glass’s score is evocative and moving, though at times it seems just a little bit too over the top, drawing undue attention to itself.

Daldry’s directing is sure-footed, well-paced, and dazzlingly fluid. He is clearly emerging as an important director of contemporary cinema and I for one can’t wait to see what he has to offer next.

The Hours will leave you breathless, not only by the artistry of cast and creative team, but also by the humanity that it explores with such sensitivity, humor and soulful depth. The film’s exploration of life, death and depression is so attentively dealt with that by the end one leaves the cinema completely uplifted. As Woolf herself believed, sometimes someone has to die to remind others how to live.

DGA noms named  (an excerpt)

Guild picks mix in latest twist

by Dave McNary

The Directors Guild of America leaned toward veteran directors and opted for a mix of historical drama and fantasy in the latest twist in the wide-open awards season.

"The Hours" Finds Its Cultural Moment  (an excerpt)

by Valerie Ross

The performances by men in this film are also groundbreaking. Ed Harris and Stephen Dillane both offer new insight into the paradoxical depths of male emotional reality. Their performances shed valuable light onto the dark continent of strength and vulnerability that we all know exists in real men but which is rarely, if ever, shown on the screen. Both of these male actors, like their female co-stars, are given the opportunity to shed the stereotypical gendered armor they wear so often in their other roles.

Ed Harris's Richard, racked with AIDS and filled with poetic visions, drops all semblances of his usual tough heroism and the results are raw and startlingly beautiful. Stephen Dillane, released from the linguistic barrages of Stoppardian intellectual sparring for once, portrays the quiet longing and frustrations of Leonard Woolf with poignancy and eloquent reserve.

Hollywood Journal: Campaign 2003: The Nominations --- How to Get a Post Position In the Oscar Horse Race; Nicole's Walk of Fame  (an excerpt)

by Tom King

Michael Caine and Nicole Kidman are out campaigning as if they're running for president; Tom Hanks isn't. Perhaps most surprisingly, neither are the folks behind "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," the film which should have all the buzz -- but doesn't.

Although the attention this weekend will be on Sunday's Golden Globe awards, the prizes that matter, of course, are the Oscars. Some people are already declaring the winners, but slow down: Last year at this time, Sissy Spacek was picking up every critics group's prize for "In the Bedroom"; few people had yet seen Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball." There are upsets ahead.

With ballots now in the hands of voters, and Feb. 11 looming as nomination day, here's an early look at the races, the buzz behind them and predictions for the 75th-annual Academy Awards:

Best Picture

DreamWorks, maker of "American Beauty," is out. Paramount, which hasn't been in the Oscar game since "Titanic," is back. And Miramax, more than ever, is in the thick of it all.

But the biggest surprise is that New Line Cinema's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" isn't a shoo-in for a nomination. "Two Towers" got better reviews than last year's "Fellowship of the Ring," which had 13 of them. But an inexplicably quiet campaign on the part of New Line for "Rings" -- and a relentless, high-octane one from Miramax, masters of Oscar hype, for the editing hat-trick "Chicago" -- has people buzzing more about the musical than Middle-Earth.

"Rings" "speaks for itself," says New Line's marketing chief, Russell Schwartz. But there may be "resistance" to the film because it "has been received as well as it has," he says. "In this town, that shock always elicits a sort of negative response." Still, both films, plus Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," and Paramount's "The Hours," the best movie of the year, will be nominated in this category.

The competition's feral for the final slot. But "Road to Perdition," perennial Oscar player DreamWorks's big submission this year, is getting little consideration. "Far From Heaven," a darling of the critics, is losing steam. The surprise nod will go to "The Pianist," from controversial director Roman Polanski. The Academy can't resist a Holocaust drama.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep and Ms. Kidman garnered dazzling reviews for their performances in "The Hours," and Ms. Kidman gets extra kudos for donning a fake schnoz to play Virginia Woolf -- and for campaigning like mad. Beyond doing the talk shows, she's been making personal appearances at screenings, and on Monday, after ballots were mailed, the star entertained audience questions at L.A.'s Egyptian Theater. (It's not a coincidence that she got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this week.) Meanwhile, Ms. Streep's current 12 Oscar nominations have her tied with Katharine Hepburn as the actor with the most; she'll end the morning with 14.

Count in, too, Renee Zellweger for "Chicago." She is well-cast in a movie that would have been disastrous had Madonna or Goldie Hawn, the first actresses mentioned to star, been its headliners. Julianne Moore, portraying a homemaker who learns her husband is gay in "Far From Heaven," is a slam-dunk. The last slot will probably go to Diane Lane, the adulteress of "Unfaithful." ...

Best Supporting Actor

Look for Paul Newman, as Irish mob boss John Rooney in "Road to Perdition," to get his first nomination in the supporting-actor category. Yes, he got solid reviews, but more than that, he's 77. Christopher Walken, too, who plays Mr. DiCaprio's con-man pop in "Catch Me," and Chris Cooper, who won raves as the foul-mouthed orchid thief in "Adaptation," are favored by Hollywood. Alfred Molina could snag a nod for his work in "Frida" as painter Diego Rivera.

Conventional wisdom would say Ed Harris gets a nod for his performance as a poet dying of AIDS in "The Hours," but a groundswell is building for Stephen Dillane, the Brit who plays husband to Ms. Kidman's Virginia Woolf.

Best Supporting Actress

Here's a category where studios are playing some campaign tricks. Miramax, in its tree-killing onslaught of "For Your Consideration" ads in the trade papers, is trying to get voters to consider Catherine Zeta-Jones as a supporting actress in "Chicago." She has a leading role, but they're pushing Ms. Zellweger as Best Actress. (The Golden Globes refused, nominating both as lead actresses.) But if Miramax's category-conjuring is more successful with Oscar voters, Ms. Zeta-Jones will be a shoo-in as supporting actress. Actors get credit when they do something we didn't know they could do. By singing and dancing, Michael Douglas's wife did just that.

Friday January 17, 2003

Actresses find great drama in small things  (an excerpt)

Audience might want a valium before seeing The Hours

by Liz Nicholls

... What makes The Hours remarkable is not just the strength of its performances, led by Kidman in her cosmetically elongated nose, riveting in the fierce, abrupt way she conveys the wayward, distracted energy of Woolf, the sense of intellectual activity, of a rioting inner life, with all its compulsions and terrors. Streep and Moore are wonderful, too, as the former sets forth the agitation of a woman discovering her limitations and the latter the desperation of a woman who's drowning in her constraints. The English actor Stephen Dillane is just heartbreakingly good as Leonard Woolf, Virginia's intelligent husband. In fact, director Daldry directs an interlocking set of alert, watchful performances that are emotionally forceful because they're repressed.

Hopeless 'Hours'  (an excerpt)

by Michael Sragow

Kidman's Woolf and Moore's Laura Brown skulk through the film with impeccable impersonations of gnawing dissatisfaction. But the script does nothing to indicate why they feel so unfulfilled and so unhappy. They simply respond to vibrations beyond the understanding of their spouses, whether the hard-working intellectual Leonard Woolf (Stephen Dillane, who gives by far the most dramatically intelligent performance) or the hard-working middle-class businessman Dan Brown (John C. Reilly, who makes little of a nothing part).

This movie is so pleased with its own tenderness that it may bring out the brute in an audience. When Virginia lectures Leonard on how she knows best about her mental illness (a thought her suicide places into question), or Laura looks at Dan's bed as if it's a prison cot, some of us may feel like shaking them.

The Hours goes so far into heroine-worship that it undercuts its own logic. When we hear Virginia declare her love for Leonard in her suicide note, are we supposed to take her seriously? There's no evidence of affectionate attachment in the movie. It makes Leonard look like a paternalistic prig who resents the sacrifices he makes for his wife. Only Dillane's moving suggestion of real yet exhausted emotion salvages the characterization.

For Your Consideration: Theatre Names Being Campaigned for Film Awards  (an excerpt)

by Ernio Hernandez

The barrage of advertisements by movie companies touting their award-worthy artists for various film acknowledgements — especially the Academy Awards — has begun. Among some of the "For Your Consideration" campaigns circulating in industry papers and websites are some of theatre's notables...

"The Hours" is getting some buzz and the complementary push for Best Director for Stephen Daldry (Far Away) and for The Blue Room co-horts David Hare (for Best Adapted Screenplay) and Nicole Kidman (for Best Actress). Stars Meryl Streep (The Seagull) and Julianne Moore (Serious Money) are also mentioned for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress while Stephen Dillane (The Real Thing) is offered for Supporting Actor consideration...

Nicole Kidman wants characters to get under her skin  (an excerpt)

Catch Oscar If You Can  (an excerpt)

After the best crop of holiday movies in recent memory, many of the year’s Academy Award races are wide open. David Ansen offers his early forecast on the likely nominees

Best Supporting Actor

Put your money on Chris Cooper in “Adaptation.” Usually typecast in quiet, stolid parts, he showed everyone how many colors he had in his repertoire. Another Chris—Walken—seems a good bet for his riveting performance as DiCaprio’s dad in “Catch Me If You Can.” For months it’s been predicted that Paul Newman will get a nod for “Road to Perdition.” There’s a lot of competition for the last two slots: Dennis Quaid in “Far from Heaven,” Ed Harris in “The Hours” and the ubiquitous John C. Reilly, who seemed to be in every movie this year but is most likely to be recognized for his song and dance number in “Chicago.” And don’t rule out old pro Alan Arkin in “13 Conversations About One Thing” (if enough actors see the tape) or Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera in “Frida” or, finally, Ray Liotta’s ferocious performance as a cop in “Narc.” It’s a strong category this year, and the final list could surprise. What about Stephen Dillane as Leonard Woolf in “The Hours”?

Friday January 10, 2003

A waste of 'Hours' when subplots appear  (an excerpt)

by Gary Arnold

... The dependency of "The Hours" on Woolf's real life is self- evident: The two fanciful female protagonists Mr. Cunningham has invented go through would-be crises that fail to measure up. On the contrary, these women's stories remain haplessly cliched and shallow.

It seems pretty coldblooded to use a writer's suicide as the jumping-off point for your book. Nevertheless, the suicide prologue is depicted with pastoral-sinister vividness by Mr. Daldry. It provides the movie with a harrowing downbeat but one that is essentially irrelevant to the rest of the story.

Not to worry, though, since Miss Kidman is immediately restored to us as a younger and less desperate Virginia Woolf. Despite a prosthetic nose that makes her somewhat unrecognizable, Miss Kidman is a fascinating bundle of nerves and moods and specific gestures in this role. Her performance is strengthened immeasurably by Mr. Dillane's believability as Leonard, who has legitimate reasons to fear that his wife might snap.

Ladies on the verge of a nervous breakdown  (an excerpt)

Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore ooze well-heeled melancholia in the new film by the director of 'Billy Elliot'

by Sean Macaulay

... It’s a handsome production, with a supernal glow over the period scenes (the 1920s segments are a career best for the Irish cinematographer Seamus McGarvey). The Hours could well go on to become the year’s equivalent of The Piano, a feminist torchsong for vocally mute, emotionally complex wives in long skirts.

But for all the swooning from American critics (“a sumptuous quilt of melancholia”), The Hours boasts half a dozen of the worst-written scenes ever committed to film. It’s as if the playwright David Hare, who wrote the screenplay, didn’t care to make a distinction between stage and screen.

It’s strange because the beginning is very nimble cinema, with fluid matching cuts between all three women, before the first act grinds to a screeching halt with Streep’s visit to her former lover, a poet dying of Aids (one heroically miscast Ed Harris).

The result is that most dreaded of theatrical staples — two unhappy people in a room. The same room. Going over the same problems. Round and round. For an eternity, ie, ten minutes of screen time. Listening to the dialogue is like watching blank tape piling up in a spool.

Hare compensates for the static quality of the scene by having the characters baldly state their feelings. Movies — especially intimate dramas like this, which thrive on telling close-ups — require emotional subtext. Hare’s rhetorical, declamatory style of dialogue works well in the theatre of left-wing protest, but it is simply gauche on film as it robs any scene of its mystery. We know Harris is ill and unhappy and suicidal from the moment we see him. His demise is as predictable as a consumptive ingénue in a Victorian melodrama.

If he was telling Streep how he intended to come to her soirée in his honour, it would be a rich scene. But the point of the scene is his admission that he doesn’t want to live. Not only does it take forever to reach this point — one can spot the false starts by the way Streep grabs each new prop for support — but once Harris makes his confession, Hare still has the scene drag on.

It is not a question of pace. A movie can be slow yet boast narrative economy. It is distinguishing between grace notes and novelistic circumlocution. Still, there is something wantonly fun about watching gifted actors hurl their talent on to the rocks of moment after pointless moment.

The Streep-Harris scenes are particularly bloated and repetitive because Kidman’s terse sequences with her husband (excellently played by Stephen Dillane) are so successfully charged with simmering unspoken feelings.

Film Studies: How a small river in Sussex got the better of Nicole Kidman...  (an excerpt)

by David Thomson

... The film is directed by Stephen Daldry; it has a script adapted by David Hare from Michael Cunningham's novel – and I think it is worth saying (and Hare is himself a very good film director) that the script is more taut, more barely emotional and more trusting of the audience than the novel managed to be. This is not to diminish the remarkable novel, or its great debt to Virginia Woolf. But Hare's touch has made the film bolder, more eternal and, I think, more painful.

The cast also includes Stephen Dillane (as Leonard Woolf), Miranda Richardson (as Virginia's sister, Vanessa), Claire Danes (as Clarissa's daughter), Jeff Daniels (as one of Richard's lovers) and even Eileen Atkins – this is a fond touch, for a few years ago Ms Atkins did the screenplay for a fine film of Mrs Dalloway (with Vanessa Redgrave as the London hostess).

You may see from this list that it is as if our best actors have turned out for an all-star game. There isn't a flaw. There isn't one simple story to follow so much as our helpless instinct for seeing connections. This is a great, heartbreaking film.

They're the tops! -- Grove's 10 best of '02  (an excerpt)

by Martin A. Grove

Top Ten: Looking back at 2002, it was a year that brought boxoffice riches to Hollywood and also gave moviegoers their money's worth. Beyond the blockbuster franchises that kept rewriting boxoffice history, Hollywood delivered a bumper crop of awards-worthy movies.

10. "Insomnia" 

9. "The Quiet American" 

8. "Adaptation" 

7. "About Schmidt" 

6. "The Emperor's Club" 

5. "The Kid Stays In the Picture" 

4. "The Hours" (Paramount/Miramax): Almost any film Scott Rudin produces stands a good chance of winding up on my Top Ten list whatever year it may be. Rudin has amazingly good taste in material and has benefited for years from being based in New York where he's a lot closer to the literary world than his competitors are in their L.A. offices.

As I'm also a fan of director Stephen Daldry, whose "Billy Elliot" made my Top Ten list for 2000, I had high hopes for "Hours." I wasn't disappointed when I had an early look at the picture. In casting Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, Rudin and Daldry achieved absolute perfection. The only problem is that the three of them could wind up running into each other in terms of Oscar nominations. Two of them (Kidman and Streep) are already up against each other in the Globes race for actress in a motion picture drama.

Happily, "Hours" is also a Globe nominee for motion picture drama, supporting actor (Ed Harris), director, screenplay (David hare) and score (Philip Glass).

Like many of Rudin's films, "Hours" began life as a book, but not one that Rudin snapped up in galleys or as a manuscript. "I read the book," he told me. "It was already published (having come out in 1998 when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction among many other awards). I bought a copy of it in a bookstore. I went and read it cover to cover in about an hour and a half. I went upstairs and called (literary agent) Michael Siegel (at Michael Siegel & Associates) and said, 'I want to buy this.' And I did. We very quickly made a deal and my original instinct was that if I could get David Hare to write this, he'd find the movie in it. I worked with him on the script for about six months. And then we brought Stephen Daldry in. And then we went and cast it. It wasn't that hard. It was hard work all along, but no lifting of bricks involved."

Hare is best known as a playwright whose work has been produced on Broadway and in London's West End over the past 20 years. Of his 20 plays, nine have been presented on Broadway, including "Plenty," "The Secret Rapture" and the wildly successful late 1998 production "The Blue Room," which Rudin was a producer of and in which Kidman starred. Her brief nude scene in the play was the talk of the town at the time. Hare's screenplay for "Hours" should also put him in the best adapted screenplay Oscar and Writers Guild of America races.

3. "Catch Me If You Can" 

2. "Far From Heaven" 

1. "Chicago" 

'Chicago' Leads Golden Globe Nominees  (an excerpt)

by Anthony Breznican

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - The movie musical "Chicago" received a leading eight Golden Globe nominations Thursday, while the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Hours" got seven and the comedy "Adaptation" had six.

Besides "The Hours" — a story about three women whose lives are linked to Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway" — the contenders for best film drama were the Jack Nicholson road-trip saga "About Schmidt," director Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," the fantasy sequel "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and Roman Polanski's "The Pianist."

Meryl Streep received two film nominations, competing with "The Hours" co-star Nicole Kidman for best dramatic actress, and in the supporting actress category for "Adaptation."

Other dramatic actress nominees were Salma Hayek for "Frida," Diane Lane for "Unfaithful" and Julianne Moore for "Far From Heaven."

Directing nominees were Scorsese for "Gangs of New York," Peter Jackson for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," Stephen Daldry for "The Hours," Spike Jonze for "Adaptation," Rob Marshall for "Chicago" and Alexander Payne for "About Schmidt."

In a blur between reality and fiction, Kaufman was credited along with his fictional twin brother "Donald" in the screenplay category for "Adaptation." Also nominated: Bill Condon for adapting the stage musical "Chicago," David Hare for "The Hours," Todd Haynes for "Far From Heaven," and Payne and Jim Taylor for "About Schmidt."

Supporting actor nominees were Chris Cooper for "Adaptation," Ed Harris for "The Hours," Paul Newman for "Road to Perdition," Dennis Quaid for "Far From Heaven" and John C. Reilly for "Chicago."

Golden Globe nominees are chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's roughly 90 members, who cover Hollywood for overseas publications. The awards are in 13 movie and 11 television categories, and will be awarded Jan. 19 during a live telecast on NBC.

They are regarded by some as indicators of front-runners for the Academy Award nominations in February.

A career of one's own  (an excerpt)

Breaking down fences, Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf in 'The Hours'

by Graham Fuller

"My experience of her was that she was generous," says Dillane. "It was very easy to act with her. I was truly astonished at her self-confidence and buoyancy, not just because of the domestic turmoil she was suffering at the time, but also because she was in makeup for hours every day."

The Hours Is From Venus...  (an excerpt)

by David Poland

I first saw The Hours more than a month ago.  I had some strong feelings about what the movie was and what the movie was not.  But I knew that I had to see the movie at least one more time before I would be ready to write about it.  I saw it again yesterday.  And it was a very different experience. 

For a month, I’ve simplified the experience of this film… story structure was off… there wasn’t enough for Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore to do… the supporting characters were more interesting than the leads… etc. etc. etc.

But somehow, after taking so long to see the film again, I really relaxed into the experience the second time around.  Part of it was the lack of pressure, now that I have seen all the films there are to see and a quiet week is just around the corner.  But a bigger part of the change, I think, was that I knew what was coming.  And in The Hours, that makes a huge difference.  There is a third act twist that, for me, is key to the entire experience of this film.  And it changed how I viewed the first 90 minutes or so… a lot.

While I was relaxing, I lingered more freely in the performances of Streep and Ed Harris and Julianne Moore.  Kidman’s turn as Virginia Woolf is perhaps the most underappreciated great turn this year, with far too many critics and civilians leading with comments about her putty nose.  This performance is much, much more than that...

Meryl Streep is breathtaking.  Seeing this again, reflected in the glory of Adaptation, reminded me of what a treasure this actress is to the dramatic form.  Her skin breathes truth.  Her hair caresses the air.  Her eyes speak louder than any screenplay’s words. 

Julianne Moore also walks this dramatic tightrope with seeming effortlessness.  But there is an odd reflection of Far From Heaven in this role.  She is so reactive here.  Her best scene comes when she is given a great acting backboard… a remarkable turn by Toni Collette.  It is odd, as Collette seems to be channeling a variation on Moore’s Far From Heaven character, but one who is, when she wants to be, wide awake.