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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

March 6, 2008


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2008-03-06

A tale most modern

The Other Boleyn Girl proves that celebrity obsession dates back further than Britney

(The Other Boleyn Girl, Now playing)

C+

Think about it: were our times medieval, we wouldn't be satisfied with Britney merely chopping off her hair. The quotidian life-banality of most of Western society's masses, and our strange and destructive corollary obsessions with celebrity, would leave us wanting her head, too.

It's not that Brit's really done anything too grievous (do we even have a moral code by which to judge her?). We just seem to have this odd pop-cultural inclination for mob rule from time to time. And in 2008, Brit is simply the target du jour of this misguided interest and energy. In 1536 - as comes across in the newest British monarchy drama, The Other Boleyn Girl - the target was Anne Boleyn.

For those of you whose high school history synapses are firing real hard to place that name, Boleyn was the second wife of portly womanizing monarch Henry VIII. The new film, starring Natalie Portman as Anne - the eldest of the Boleyn girls - should help elucidate some of the intriguing backstory surrounding Henry (Eric Bana) and his voracious proclivity for humping. (Here seems a good time to mention that Scarlett Johansson stars as Mary - the younger, more 'innocent' sis.)

The film's plot focuses on the behind-the-scenes efforts of Boleyn family members (desperate pops, Royal Court appointee uncle and, eventually most spirited of all, sultry and conniving Anne) to shift His Majesty's concentration away from Catherine of Aragon's fruitless loins and onto some Boleyn body.

The film's entire angle - almost to a draggy fault, particularly when all lovemaking is soft-focused into blurred nothingness - is horniness, and the meddling involved therein. Anne and Mary's mother sums up the power struggles that hinge on sexual relations: "Allowing men to believe that they are in charge - that is the art of being a woman." And even though we get to see Portman's convincing vicious side on her climb to the top of the King's castle, Bana comes across as a Bozo and Johansson is annoyingly meek and coy. Not to mention the fact that, as the majority of the film was shot on location at historic sites in jolly olde, everything onscreen is dreary and de-saturated - including the level of excitement during the picture's first hour.

At film's end, an annoying sub-titular explication of the entire historical context - ending with the revelation that, duh, Boleyn's first-born daughter became Elizabeth I - does the most to tell you that this film, like E! Talk Daily, is merely more fodder for royal watchers than anything of consequence.
— Walter Forsberg

When you think you've heard it all...

Documentary offers a whole new look at amputation

(Whole, Mar.7, 9 p.m. & Mar. 9, 7 p.m., Cinematheque)

B+

"It's the most insane thing you can think of, yet it just is."

Those are the words of George, a one-legged Floridian describing what's been termed both 'Apotemnophilia,' and 'Body Integrity Identity Disorder.' Those are fancy words, devoted reader, for people who dream of amputation.

This news comes to me via the 2003 documentary by Minnesotan Melody Gilbert, entitled Whole, which screens this week.

Telling you that George eventually blew his left leg off with a shotgun to achieve his dream of amputation ("I felt absolutely as if transformed. If I die in the next instant, I'm fine because I have realized my true self."), shouldn't ruin any surprises because of this doc's standout, globe-trotting opening sequence, in which we hear all sorts of stories similar to George's.

In Holland, those who haven't got the guts to blow a leg off tie it up instead, pressed to the ass cheek with a Tensor bandage. In Scotland, some lucky people have limbs surgically removed. Others build an airproof container filled with dry ice in order to freeze their limbs off.

Seemingly, the majority have had deep-seated convictions since childhood that one of their body parts (usually a leg) has never really belonged. For them, having the offending limbs removed is liberating.

Frankly, this low-budget doc gets big points for the obscurity of its subject alone. Shot by the director herself, on a non-HD, non-Letterboxing video camera, a lot of the imagery is pretty forgettable. But from the interviews conducted across Europe and North America with persons suffering from the soon-to-be-certifiable psychological disorder, as well as medical experts (including the Scottish surgeon who axes off perfectly good limbs), it's clear that Gilbert has created a video document of authority on the subject. Amazing, incredible, disturbing and nervously kind of hilarious, Whole's stories are sure to knock your sock off
— Walter Forsberg

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