Pop Culture Round Up: December 12-18

Portman takes on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies film

Movie stars break the song barrier

A titanic duo: Gibson, DiCaprio join forces for Viking film
I refuse all Vikings that are not Eric.

Hollywood's missing 'Voice'

Are directors overrated? Filmmakers shed light on their real power

Portrait of a Multitasking Mind

Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?

Pop Culture Round Up: November 21 - December 11

Progressive Detective: Am I socially obligated to get the flu shot?
Quick answer: yes.

Hip-Hop’s New Steps - Jerking
I thought jerking had been around for a long time . . .

Philip Glass on His Latest Opera, Kepler, and Where Music Meets Science

Magazine Publishers to Build an Online Newsstand

Thanksgiving box office record blown away despite absence of new hits

How do movie blurbs work?

Rogers launches Hulu clone

Is Loneliness Contagious?
But is it also underrated?

Coronation Street's Maggie Jones dies at 75
Sad! Can't imagine the show without Blanche.

Want To Get Your Audience Out Faster? Put Something In Their Way

Film composers lose luster
Enjoy variety while you can! They are gradually instituting a pay wall as of yesterday.

Dogs vs cats: The great pet showdown
Ooo, science to back up a preference!

Brothers (2009)

Tobey Maguire, Natalie Portman, and Jake Gyllenhaal are some of the best young actors you can working today. It's a shame for them that director Jim Sheridan and writer David Benioff's adaptation of the 2002 Danish source movie gives them so little to go on.

The movie's publicity campaign hasn't helped in the slightest. The trailer and TV spots give away so much of the movie's action and plot that there's little left to see. Of the two things that are left (what goes on between Portman and Gyllenhaal and what Maguire "had to do to get back"), only one of them actually happens.

The one that does happen, what Maguire did, occurs in the second act. You spend the rest of the movie knowing exactly what's going on with him, and it lends the movie exactly zero tension or drama. It's all very well acted and shot: Maguire's skin seems to barely contain a coiled intensity and sublimated grief that previous roles never so much as hinted at, and Sheridan's camera is sometimes so intimate that you feel compelled to look away from the screen.

Non-spoiler alert: nothing happens between Portman and Gyllenhaal. Their affair, if you want to call it that, is similar to the one in Cairo Time: an emotional bond develops, and its existence threatens other bonds. Again, Maguire just knocks it out, flailing against the thing he can see and knows is lost to himself without ever being able to come out and say exactly what it is. And, man, are he and Gyllenhaal phenomenal together on the screen. From the first barely heard interaction to the picnic table confrontation wherein Gyllenhaal can't bring himself to directly answer the questions he's been asked to their final climatic blow out, every note is right. And to see Gyllenhaal play someone so down trodden he can barely get his words out? Wow.

Portman is equally lovely, refusing to stand and gape in her grief, to make it a living thing. Sam Shepard, as the patriarch, and Carey Mulligan, as a fellow war widow, are so vivid in their lamentation that their screen time practically cuts.

All are under-served by a movie where nothing happens. There's a plot, to be sure, but it feels so empty and motionless that it only barely hints at a story. I've seen plenty of movies where nothing or next to nothing happens and that fact doesn't matter (e.g. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset), but Brothers is not one of those movies. It's a fantastic showcase for actors (particularly Shepard) and not much else. B