(Almost) midweek film notes

Caught Emily Blunt (left) as Queen Victoria in Jean-Marc Vallee’s The Young Victoria (2009) with Rupert Friend as Prince Albert and Jim Broadbent as King William IV. Blunt is of course beautiful and has a neck like a swan but the character she plays in this flick is one of subtle intelligence, assertiveness and grace. The production’s costumes are amazing.....In Emmanuel Laurent’s Two in the Wave the iconic Jean-Pierre Leaud is appropriately described as the French New Wave’s “child.” Indeed he is, starring as young as 14 years old when he was in Truffaut’s breakout 1959 movie The 400 Blows. Leaud would go on to star from adolescence to adulthood in numerous films of both Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Two in the Wave is about Truffaut and Godard’s early friendship and the start of la Nouvelle Vague (see June 22 post). But there was hardly anyone at the DFT screening I attended Friday night – perhaps 40 people on the floor and in the balcony. Rather depressing for a metropolitan area with supposedly some film sophistication.....Don’t mistake Joan Rivers for a comedian. She’s really an actress. And her entire life has been devoted to being one. It just happens that comedy is the vehicle in which she plies her trade. “It’s all about acting and I play a comedian,” the 75-year-old power mouth says in the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (at the Maple) (June 18 post).....Loved the comment in Tom Walsh’s Free Press column today by Jake Stocker, co-owner with dad Ken of the new Spotlight theatre (formerly AMC Star) in Taylor, which re-opens tonight as a discounted movie palace: “Most of the time in movie theaters, people feel like they’re getting ripped off.” How much was that tub of popcorn anyway?