Freedomland

[jimi]

Or he and Edie could have been channelling one another LOL : )

[bjobsessed]

longlashes said:

Oh, I don't know...marches to the beat of his own drummer! After all, it is winter in New York - zip front sweater, long grey wool coat - I kind of like it (I suppose he could have left thesweater collar down - maybe his neck was cold?)

And without the coat, that sweater fits.......quite nicely!

I agree with you too. I dress for the weather in the winter, not for looks. I think it fits his personality and his liking of challenging characters. He never does anything the way you would expect. That's what makes him so much fun.

Does that make sense?

[Duchess of Lashes]

bjobsessed said:

longlashes said:

Oh, I don't know...marches to the beat of his own drummer! After all, it is winter in New York - zip front sweater, long grey wool coat - I kind of like it (I suppose he could have left thesweater collar down - maybe his neck was cold?)

And without the coat, that sweater fits.......quite nicely!

I agree with you too. I dress for the weather in the winter, not for looks. I think it fits his personality and his liking of challenging characters. He never does anything the way you would expect. That's what makes him so much fun.

Does that make sense?

As someone we all know would say, ABSOLUTELY!

Why be run of the mill when you can keep everyone guessing? He is very very much his own person - and you gotta like that!

[jimi]

And Just look how nice that sweater looks - once he took the overcoat off : )

[Katryna]

rducasey said:

housemouse said:

What an odd get-up.

My sentiments exactly Mouse.

Me too, Mouse and Mary

[doobrah]

Hmm... the premiere was the day after NYC got 27 inches of snow.



Seems appropriate to me. And I kinda like the knit snuggled around his neck!!

Now here's a questionable look for Valentine's Day:



He wore that ill-fitting jacket to the press tour last year in Hollywood. I didn't like it then, and I still don't. The "oatmeal and black" comtination just washes him out.

SNARK!!

[inuvik]

Modified to add: SPOILER ALERT!! I just realized this review contains a reference to what I posted about earlier. Don't read unless you don't mind the "whodunit" being revealed!!!!


Here's the review from variety.com. Not very complimentary, but won't stop me seeing it! I hope to go this weekend.




Freedomland


A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Revolution StudiosRevolution Studios presentation of a Scott Rudin production. Produced by Rudin. Executive producer, Charles Newirth. Co-producer, Richard Baratta. Directed by Joe Roth. Screenplay, Richard Price, based on his novel.

Lorenzo Council - Samuel L. Jackson
Brenda Martin - Julianne Moore
Karen Collucci - Edie Falco
Danny Martin - Ron Eldard
Boyle - William Forsythe
Felicia - Aunjanue Ellis
Billy Williams - Anthony Mackie
Marie - LaTanya Richardson Jackson
Reverend Longway - Clarke Peters

By BRIAN LOWRY



Julianne Moore is the mother whose child goes missing under suspicious circumstances and Samuel L. Jackson the detective on the case in Joe Roth's racially charged 'Freedomland.'

Distilling a 500-plus-page book into feature length simply defeats "Freedomland," even though Richard PriceRichard Price adapted his own novel. Brimming with high ambitions but disjointed and ultimately unsatisfying, the film concerns the racially charged firestorm that erupts when a white child goes missing in a black neighborhood. With the exception of Julianne MooreJulianne Moore's hollow-eyed performance as the wounded mother, however, the disparate threads fail to mesh in a meaningful way. Despite a few raw moments, pic feels like a Lifetime movie with a marquee cast, with box office prospects looking equally tepid.
Occupying the same New Jersey towns as Price's earlier novel-turned-film "Clockers," "Freedomland" evokes comparisons to the Susan Smith case but has undergone significant changes in its path to the screen, including the elimination of a reporter who figured prominently in the novel.

In a sense, the movie peaks with its atmospheric opening. In 1999, a bedraggled woman with bloodied palms, Brenda (Moore), stumbles into a hospital and claims to have been carjacked at the nearby housing projects. Yet only under questioning by a local police detective, Lorenzo (Samuel L. JacksonSamuel L. Jackson), does she reveal that her 4-year-old son was in the car.

News of the missing boy ignites an enormous furor in Gannon, a blue-collar, mostly white suburb adjacent to the projects. So the authorities descend on the projects, leaving Lorenzo caught between community leaders such as Reverend Longway ("The Wire's" Clarke Peters), outraged by the sudden attention to this carjacking case when crimes against black youths go unnoticed; and the police, whose confrontational members include Brenda's brother, Danny (Ron Eldard).

Lorenzo initially believes Brenda, telling his partner, "If this woman is faking it, she's in the wrong line of work." But he does a quick about-face, enlisting aid from a missing-child group, headed by a local activist (Edie Falco), to prove that Brenda isn't telling the truth.

In his latest foray as a director, Revolution principal Joe RothJoe Roth has trouble juggling the elements of racial discord with the underlying mystery. This results in a chaotic, uneven pace, with the narrative beats difficult to connect.

Price, too, appears to have struggled to bring his book to cinematic life, indulging in lengthy speeches that, as inertly presented, feel better suited to a stage play.

The lone exception is a riveting monologue by Moore, who -- having waged a very different search for a lost kid not long ago in "The Forgotten" -- forgoes any hint of glamour to paint Brenda as a damaged wreck, teetering on the brink of collapse. Jackson, by contrast, is left with a role that doesn't rank among his top 10, and it's to his credit the thinly developed character is as watchable as he is.

Almost all of "Freedomland," in fact, operates in a kind of shorthand, devoting scant time to the barely capped rage seething in the projects or the dynamics between Brenda and her brother, who seems primed to explode. And while the media's preoccupation with white victims and black perps is obviously a part of this volatile mix, that fertile ground goes largely untilled.

James Newton Howard delivers an intense score, but pic is otherwise as drab in both look and tone as its environs, which, coupled with Falco's minor supporting role, remind us that "The Sopranos""The Sopranos" was truly the best thing that ever happened to New Jersey.

Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen), Anastas Michos; editor, Nick Moore; music, James Newton Howard; production designer, David Wasco; art director, Patricia Woodbridge; set decorators, Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, Carolyn Cartwright; costume designers, Ann Roth Michelle Matland; sound (Dolby Digital-SDDS-DTS), Tom Fleischman, Myron Nettinga; supervising sound editor, George Simpson; special effects supervisor, J.C. Brotherhood; assistant director, H.H. Cooper; second unit director, Charles Newirth; casting, Margery Simkin. Reviewed at the Sony Pictures screening room, Culver City, Feb. 8, 2006. MPAAMPAA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.

[jimi]

Thanks for the review!!

I'm still going to see it as well - On the up side - it sounds as if the reviewer wanted to have more scenes with Danny ( Ron ) in the movie. So our guy must certainly made the most of what he was givein!

[jimi]

Nice typos in that last post there jimi LOL!!

For those of you that know me - not at all suprising : )

[egw]

jimi said:

Thanks for the review!!

I'm still going to see it as well - On the up side - it sounds as if the reviewer wanted to have more scenes with Danny ( Ron ) in the movie. So our guy must certainly made the most of what he was givein!

They just advertised 'Behind the scenes of "Freedomland," on "Hollywood Heat" on Court TV next at 10:00PM, central time.
EGW

[anna]

egw said:

They just advertised 'Behind the scenes of "Freedomland," on "Hollywood Heat" on Court TV next at 10:00PM, central time.
EGW

Jackson, Moore, and Falco are interviewed. The interviews are on-line:

www.courttv.com/onair/shows/hollywood_heat/

[inuvik]

I have now read about 4 different reviews, none complimentary. Most say it is too melodramatic. Also that the scenes seem thrown together in an order that doesn't make sense.

Sigh.

[Duchess of Lashes]

I have read about the same number of reviews - and while the movie does not get rave reviews, the acting does. Unfortunately the reviewers are talking about Moore and Jackson. As to Ron Eldard's DannyMartin:

The film is filled with fine performances, though most of them are frittered away by director Joe Roth, who can never find a focus for the story. Jackson seems content to settle into a groove he has honed in other pictures, but Moore is uncommonly fine as Brenda, her speeches moving from self-pitying to urgent expressions of rage. Explaining to Lorenzo how having a baby rescued her from always being considered a loser by her family, she says of her missing son, ``He gave birth to me. He made me.''

The movie keeps trying to create false suspects in the boy's disappearance, among them Danny, who turns every scene he enters into a pitched battle. But he's a dramatic cul-de-sac: His character never goes anywhere but up in flames.

But, I am planning on making a jaunt to the local theatre this weekend to make up my own mind! Just like I did with Doubt!

[bjobsessed]

Here's a couple more less than favourable reviews. They came with my google alert for Ron. Like LL, I'm going to see it and make up my own mind. Unfortunately, I can't go this weekend. I think the previews look good and I'm looking forward to it.

Review: Freedomland

Dave McGinn
Dose




KINDA LIKE: The Forgotten as remembered by Mississippi Burning

CAST: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, Ron Eldard

THE DEAL: When Brenda Martin (Moore) walks into a hospital with her hands cut up and says she was car-jacked by a young black man from the Armstrong projects while her 4-year-old Cody son was still in the car, police from the blue collar (read: white) neighbourhood of Gannon take the legally dubious but dramatically convenient step of locking down the projects until somebody talks. Tensions rise, but luckily Detective Lornenzo Council (Jackson) promises he won’t quit “until I get to the bottom of this.” To do so, he’ll have to get past crusading Gannon cop Danny Martin (Eldard), who actually once exclaims, “There is no God! I’m God,” when he’s told to cool down.

Moore does an excellent job playing the traumatized, hysterical mom searching for her missing son, since she played the same role in The Forgotten. And Jackson can pretty much phone in self-righteous fervor whenever he pleases.

But director Joe Roth (Christmas with the Kranks) can’t find a way to make the secret at the heart of the film from being obvious from the start. By the time we get to "Freedomland," the abandoned orphanage where Brenda thinks Cody’s body will be found, the melodrama is too thick to care about what happens next.
Richard Price’s script refuses to cut any of the sprawling elements of his eponymous best-selling novel, so Freedomland spins sanctimonious threads about race relations, missing children, poverty and parenting without focusing enough on any of these to be dramatically engaging.

Great performances, especially from Edie Falco as the mother of a missing child, can’t help save this preachy, over-reaching flick from inevitably entering Forgettableland.


Fast-Paised review: ‘Freedomland'
It's like a section of Disney World you'd never want to visit

By Matt Pais


Big question: A former drug addict (Julianne Moore) enlists the help of a cop (Samuel L. Jackson) when her son disappears. Has Moore forgotten "The Forgotten"?

Skip it: The actors in "Freedomland" don't play characters; they represent static states of mind, starring Jackson as patience, Ron Eldard (here, the child's uncle) as pissed off, and Moore--who spends the entire film freaking out--as panic.

Catch it if: You want to see moms take over the police force. Edie Falco leads a vigilante crew that schools the cops.

Bottom line: "Freedomland" underplays an already muddled race card, using parental pain as the sole emotion capable of crossing the divide between blacks and whites. The film turns its criminals into victims and makes no solid statement about crime or racial strife in America.

Bonus: Not sticking to your New Year's weight-loss resolution? Jackson delivers a solid defense: "There's just more of me to love."

[Duchess of Lashes]

For anyone interested, whether you want to make up your own mind or not, someone who saw Freedomland last night advised me not to waste my money, but to wait for the movie to come out on DVD.

Apparently Ron's role in Freedomland is smaller than his role as Michael Durant in Blackhawk Down, he has, at best, a dozen lines - just another example of an opportunity wasted!

When is someone going to give this man the type of big screen role he deserves, something that will finally showcase his talent?