Fall Fashion Spectacular | Justine Waddell models the latest in psychedelic fantasy-sequence women’s wear in Tarsem’s The Fall.
INTENSIVE CARE UNIT!
The Fall
CAST | Lee Pace, Cantinca Untaru
This epic by the auteur known simply as “Tar-sem” is one of the madder movie projects of the decade. (Think Ponette crossed with The Holy Mountain.) It’s the story of a suicidal Hollywood stuntman who amuses a hospitalized little girl with an improvised fantasy story. But that’s just the springboard for a parade of opulent fantasy sequences filmed in a reported 24 different countries, with Tarsem cagily piggybacking his Fall shoots onto his TV commercial assignments. Indeed, the making-of featurettes on the DVD might be even more astonishing than the film itself.
GYNECOLOGIST’S OFFICE!
Baby Mama
CAST | Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear
We 30 Rock fans were kind of hoping that Tina Fey’s first starring vehicle would be a little bit more sharp and subversive than this one turned out to be. But hey — if you have to watch a by-the-numbers baby-fever comedy, the presence of women as funny as Fey and Amy Poehler makes it all go down pretty easy. Plus, you get fun cameos by Sigourney Weaver as the terrifyingly fertile head of an upscale surrogacy film, and Steve Martin as the president of a Whole Foods-like supermarket chain who rewards employees with “five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact.”
PSYCHIATRIST’S COUCH!
In Treatment
CAST | Gabriel Byrne, Melissa George, Blair Underwood, Dianne Wiest, Josh Charles
Gabriel Byrne plays a shrink whose private life keeps leaking into his practice in this underrated TV drama. Maybe its unusual schedule kept people from tuning in: HBO originally aired a new “appointment” every weeknight — on Mondays, Byrne would treat nymphomaniac Melissa George, on Tuesdays, he’d see superachieving soldier Blair Underwood, and so on. The real acting discovery here is a young unknown named Mia Wasikowska, who plays Byrne’s Wednesday patient, a fragile gymnast with a headful of secrets.
