Catch up

Many apologies for last week's last of posticity, everyone! The blog was forced to take an unintended vacation due to blogger time issues. A couple of important events took place in the meantime.

On Monday evening (Nov 10), Jennifer Ehle was one of the presenters at the 24th Annual Artios Awards, a ceremony which honors excellence in casting. She can be seen (looking lovely in red) at WireImage and GettyImages, and, if you have a magnifying glass, at PatrickMcMullen.com. (Search for "Jennifer Ehle" in all cases.) This last site has photos from previous events that I don't recall seeing before, so be sure to check those out as well.

The other newsworthy event is that Pride and Glory made its way to the UK on November 7. According to The Guardian, the film did well at the box office during its opening weekend:

[...] In fact, the prize went to New York cop thriller Pride and Glory, starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, which debuted at No 5 with £396,691 from 258 screens. [...]

What follows is an Ehle-centric sample of the UK reviews, which (you'll notice) bear many striking similarities to the US reviews:

• Anthony Quinn of The Independent feels that the movie is on the hackneyed side, but the acting sets it apart. Moreover, he says Norton and Farrell are “fine,” but he asserts that “Emmerich and his ailing wife (a shaven-headed Jennifer Ehle) are considerably more than that.”
• The Evening Standard's Derek Malcolm basically concurs and notes:

  [...] O’Connor paints a dark, dank and gloom-ridden view of New York and his actors, who include the excellent Jennifer Ehle, notable as Francis’s cancer-stricken wife, are certainly no slouches. [...]

• In a discussion of the film's tragic flaw, Stella Papamichael of Digital Spy comments on the underutilization of Ms Ehle's talent:

  [...] Arguably, the fatal flaw is that O'Connor doesn't stick closely enough with Jimmy, to let the story unravel through his eyes and give us the luxury of a few surprises along the way. Instead there are dead-end detours into All The President's Men territory as the editor of The New York Post gets a whiff of the stink, a maudlin sub-plot involving Jennifer Ehle (wasted) as Tierney's cancer-ridden sister, and scenes of a loopy Colin Farrell threatening to iron a baby's face. [...]

Even more catching up

Last week, Michael Kabel reviewed the film for BlueMovieReviews. Like many others, he thought Noah Emmerich and Jennifer Ehle's scenes brought the movie a much-needed breath of fresh (acting) air:

[...] One thin sliver of beauty arrives about halfway through, when Francis presents his dying wife with a Gaelic band promising “love eternal.” It’s a sweet scene, played expertly and without bathos by Emmerich and actress Jennifer Ehle, that detracts from the rote events happening elsewhere in the plot. In fact, coupled with a later scene of Francis defusing a hostage situation, you might wish the movie was about Francis and starred Emmerich’s perfectly-tuned performance, instead of Norton’s and Farrell’s faux macho histrionics. Emmerich (The Truman Show, Beautiful Girls) has made a career of playing non confrontational beta male types; his performance here is a revealing breath of fresh, unmannered air. [...]

Be sure to check out the comments after the review.

Finally, The Optimist at the Two Gays and a Movie blog is also quite complimentary of Jennifer Ehle's performance:

[...] Ehle is exceptionally moving as the dying mother undergoing chemotherapy, who remains strong for her husband, but shows in a poignant scene how devastating it is for her to have to be taken from her child. [...]