Monday, December 20, 2010

'FRANKIE & ALICE': 'ROLLING STONE' REVIEW

Halle Berry, in her best and most shattering performance since her Oscar-winning Monster's Ball, snagged a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress for this fact-based tale of Frankie Murdock, a 1970s black stripper with a body all her own but a head occupied by at least two other personalities.

One, Genius, is a scared child who still tries to look out for Frankie on her erotically charged forays into the Los Angeles club scene. The other, Alice, is a white racist who looks down on Frankie. When a series of blackouts gets Frankie labeled "crazy as a shithouse rat," Dr. Oz (Skarsgård) uses hypnotism to help Frankie make peace with her dissociative identity disorder, but it's a tough road.

It's tougher for British director Geoffrey Sax, since he is working from a script with its own identity crisis, given the six writers it took to concoct. It helps that Skarsgård and Phylicia Rashad, as Frankie's mother, offer stalwart support. But this movie, with its flashbacks to past sins and traumas, rests squarely on Berry, a mesmerizer who makes every moment count. [Source]

'FRANKIE & ALICE': REVIEW VIA SCREEN DAILY



Halle Berry impresses in both the title roles of Frankie & Alice, a well crafted if slightly soapy seventies period piece about a young woman’s struggle with multiple personality disorder. Given the subject matter and Berry’s recently low profile the independently produced drama seems set to do only modest box office, though it could be boosted if its campaign for awards season recognition pays off.

After an awards-qualifying run this week the film will get a nationwide US opening through Freestyle Releasing in February, when Berry’s mainstream appeal will be tested for the first time since 2007 flop Things We Lost In The Fire. International distributors who bought the film at the European Film Market, Cannes or the AFM should be helped by the presence of Swedish co-star Stellan Skarsgard.

Inspired by real events, the film introduces Berry’s Frankie Murdoch as a popular and smart go-go dancer in early seventies Los Angeles whose life is disrupted by unexplained episodes of psychological fracture.

Checking into a mental institution to avoid jail after one such episode, Frankie meets kindly and open minded psychiatrist Dr Oswald (Skarsgard, Angels and Demons and Mamma Mia!), who begins to explore his patient’s alternative personalities: white southern racist Alice and Genius, a brilliant but scared child.

British director Geoffrey Sax (Stormbreaker and the BBC’s Tipping The Velvet) shows a deft touch in gradually revealing - through flashbacks to her past as the daughter of a servant to a 1950’s southern family - the root of Frankie’s disorder.

Some of the effects employed to illustrate Frankie’s mental state are a bit dated; the film works better when Berry’s acting does most of the work.

While it isn’t as strong as the work in Monster’s Ball that won Berry the 2001 best actress Oscar - and it almost goes over the top as the film reaches its climax - the performance substantially elevates what might otherwise have been a lackluster disease-of-the-week outing. [Source via Screen Daily]

HALLE BERRY COVERS 'THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'

The Hollywood Reporter
80th Anniversary of 'The Hollywood Reporter': The Legend's Issue
First African-American Oscar winners: Best Actress (Berry) and Best Actor (Sidney Poitier)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

HALLE NOMINATED FOR A GOLDEN GLOBE

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE (DRAMA)
Halle Berry, Frankie and Alice
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

HALLE BERRY NAMED 'BEST ACTRESS' BY THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM CRITICS ASSN.


The African-American Film Critics Association, a nationwide group composed of African-American media professionals, named 'The Social Network' as Best Feature Film, but gave its Best Director citation to Christopher Nolan.

Its acting awards went to Halle Berry for 'Frankie and Alice' and Mark Wahlberg for 'The Fighter', while the two supporting prizes went to performers from 'For Colored Girls': actress Kimberly Elise and actor Michael Ealy. [Source]

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION:

Best Feature Film: “The Social Network,” directed by David Fincher
Best Documentary: “Waiting for Superman” directed by Davis Guggenheim
Best Actress: Halle Berry, “Frankie and Alice”
Best Actor: Mark Wahlberg, “The Fighter”
Best Supporting Actress: Kimberly Elise, “For Colored Girls”
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Ealy, “For Colored Girls”
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, “Inception”
Best Screenplay: “Night Catches Us” by Tanya Hamilton
Best Song: “Four Women” composed by N. Simone, “For Colored Girls”
Special Achievement: Lena Horne, Roger Ebert and Melvin Van Peebles.

HALLE BERRY: Q&A WITH 'BACK STAGE'

Monday, December 13, 2010

HALLE BERRY TO PRESENT AT THE OSCARS


Academy Awards winners Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Marisa Tomei are among stars appearing on the next Oscar show, along with past nominee Oprah Winfrey. Academy overseers announced Monday that all five will serve as presenters on the Feb. 27 telecast.

At the last Oscars, five-time nominee Bridges won the best-actor prize for "Crazy Heart," while Bullock won best actress for "The Blind Side."

Berry was named best actress for 2001's "Monster's Ball." Three-time nominee Tomei received the supporting-actress Oscar for 1992's "My Cousin Vinny."

Winfrey earned a supporting-actress nomination for 1985's "The Color Purple."

Nominations for the 83rd Oscars are due out Jan. 25. [Source]

Sunday, December 12, 2010

HALLE BERRY: INTERVIEW WITH 'JAY LENO'

'FRANKIE & ALICE': NEW PROMOTIONAL CLIPS

HALLE BERRY: INTERVIEW WITH 'POPCORN'

HALLE BERRY: INTERVIEW WITH 'VARIETY'

'FRANKIE & ALICE': REVIEW VIA 'BACKSTAGE'


A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR BERRY'S PERFORMANCE

The lure for actors in playing a person with a multiple-personality disorder is irresistible. It's the chance to portray three, four, or even 16 characters all in one turn and offers actors the opportunity to stretch. It worked for Joanne Woodward, who won a best actress Oscar for playing "The Three Faces of Eve" in 1957, and for Sally Field, who took home her first serious showbiz award, an Emmy, for displaying all those different facets of "Sybil." Toni Collette picked up an Emmy for doing the same thing, though a bit more comedically, on Showtime's "The United States of Tara." So it is no wonder that Halle Berry was attracted like ducks to water to "Frankie & Alice," the true story of a young woman at battle with her racist alter-ego and trying to regain her life. It's a role that screams, "Oscar! Oscar!"

Berry uses the opportunity not to chew the scenery but to really get under this person's skin. It's nice to report that this fine actor, who is given too few great dramatic opportunities (even after the Oscar for "Monster's Ball"), delivers her finest screen hour here, a personal triumph in every way. Berry is brilliant in this magnetic and emotionally powerful acting tour de force.

Unfortunately, the film itself, directed by Geoffrey Sax and written by no fewer than six credited screenwriters, does not hold the same standard of excellence as its star, and without her there wouldn't be much to say.

Frankie (Berry) is a hot pants–wearing, Afro-sporting cage dancer in a seedy Hollywood club in the 1970s. During a late-night hookup with her club's DJ, she goes ballistic, losing her true self into a trio of disparate personalities quoting Bible passages, flailing arms, and basically freaking out. At one moment she's "Alice," a racist Southern, white woman; the next she's "Genius," a 12-year-old girl. For this, she eventually finds her way to Dr. Oz (not the guy on TV that Oprah likes), played with relish and restraint by Stellan Skarsgård.

He figures out her problems are rooted in memory repression and begins the long psychiatric journey to bring her out of her own darkness and "into the light." The three faces of Frankie have various reasons for their existence in her head, and in fact one deals, of course, with her mother, played beautifully by Phylicia Rashad.

Ultimately, though, this is strictly an acting showcase for Berry.

She seems drawn like a magnet to the challenges of playing these kinds of emotionally overloaded characters, but resists any temptation to take it too far. This is a major achievement in itself with this kind of material that is loaded with land mines a lesser actor might step all over. [Source]

'FRANKIE & ALICE': THEATRICAL TRAILER

'FRANKIE & ALICE': TWO PROMOTIONAL CLIPS