Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

Movie Night: "The Martian"

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Wow. What a movie! I’m not a science fiction fan and didn’t love “Gravity,” for example, but “The Martian” isn’t a science fiction movie. It’s a movie about science – big difference. It’s also a movie about hope and ingenuity and it’s such a positive statement about the courage of astronauts undertaking dangerous missions. Go NASA, in other words.

Matt Damon is great as the astronaut who gets inadvertently left behind on Mars during an aborted mission. He’s all alone on the lonely planet while everyone at NASA, including his crew, assumes he’s dead. From here on, the movie could have been a bore like the Robert Redford sailing movie from last year, “All Is Lost.” It could also have been like “Castaway” in which Tom Hanks talks to his volleyball (or was it a soccer ball? a basketball? can’t remember). Instead, it’s a survival story that’s truly about surviving. Damon’s character grows potatoes in his organic, hermetically sealed garden and sustains himself that way. He manages to get his electronics working to the point where he can communicate with his command center and slowly there’s a mission to bring him home.

Ridley Scott of “Alien” fame knows how to shoot a movie for maximum effect. He’s a terrific director and should get an Oscar nom for this one. (Note: Seeing it in 3D was amazing!!!) He makes you feel as if you’re on Mars with Damon and experiencing everything he’s experiencing.

I won’t reveal more about the plot, and will just end by saying “The Martian” is what moviegoing in a theater is supposed to be about: a grand entertainment. This is not one to wait for on TV.

 

 

Movie Night: "Behind the Candelabra"

How director Steven Soderbergh came up with the idea of casting Michael Douglas as Liberace beats me, but it was a stroke of genius. Douglas not only delivers a great performance as the wildly gay-but-closeted piano-playing star but he nails the Midwestern accent too. It’s a shame that the film, although shown at the Cannes Film Festival last week, couldn’t find a studio brave enough to distribute it and it landed on HBO, depriving Douglas of a sure Oscar nomination. Oh well, an Emmy will work too.

Not to be outdone, the very good Matt Damon has the less showy role of Scott, the hapless boyfriend, taken in by Liberace after a life drifting from his loony mother to one foster home after another. Damon plays Scott as sweet and rather innocent, eager to be a part of Liberace’s stable until he realizes he’s been replaced by a newer, younger model and turns to drugs. That he’s the sympathetic character here isn’t surprising, since the film is based in part on his autobiography.

I thought the film could have been edited down; two hours felt long and the story dragged. Many of the same beats played again and again – Liberace and his seductions, Liberace and his adoring public, Liberace and his rings, furs, jewelry, furnishings. I got it the first couple of times. But what stuck with me was that he was such a huge international star – the era’s Michael Jackson – and yet his enthusiastic audience, most of whom were women, had no clue he wasn’t interested in them. Not “that way.”

Couldn’t Somebody Besides Ben Affleck Make A Movie About The Yankees?

From today’s “Page Six” in the New York Post:

Former Yankee Mike Kekich is desperate to block Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s movie “The Trade,” based on the huge scandal when he and fellow pitcher Fritz Peterson swapped wives in the 1970s.

Die-hard Red Sox fan Affleck and his brother, Casey, are rewriting a second version of the script and have hired veteran sportswriters to help reach out to Yankees from that era. But Kekich, who’s believed to have created a completely new life and family in New Mexico, is refusing to participate.

A source tells us, “Kekich is panic-stricken. He has moved away and has a new identity. He is freaked out that those working on the movie found out where he is. He isn’t too keen on having the scandal dredged up again after all this time. Other Yankees from that time have also been really unhelpful with facts and details of what happened. They are stonewalling.”

The amazing drama started in 1972 after the two hurlers, old friends, joked about swapping wives. They followed through on it, although word didn’t get out until the spring of ’73. Marilyn Peterson moved in with Kekich, but it didn’t last. Susanne Kekich and Fritz are still married and live in New Jersey and Colorado. Kekich reportedly remarried and had another daughter.

Actresses being considered include Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz and Rebecca Hall. Ben Affleck recently confirmed he and Casey were rewriting the script, and hinted that Damon may direct. It wasn’t certain that he and Damon would play the pitchers.

Affleck recently told MTV, “I’ve come to have a little more respect for the Yankees. There are some of those guys . . . that look like good guys . . . But as an institution? Disdain. Contempt.” About the movie’s subject matter, he said: “Guys [bleep]ing each others’ wives — that’s those Yankees.”

The script hasn’t yet been shown to Major League Baseball or the Yankees, another source confirmed. Reps for Affleck, Damon and the team declined to comment.

I don’t deny that the Peterson-Kekich scandal would be the basis for an interesting movie. I and other fans of a certain generation remember it vividly. Even in the swingin’ 70s it was shocking stuff, particularly set against the straitlaced world of baseball. And I admire Affleck as a director; I thought “The Town” should have been among the Best Picture Oscar nominees. I just wish somebody would make the film who doesn’t have “disdain” and “contempt” for the Yankees.

Couldn't Somebody Besides Ben Affleck Make A Movie About The Yankees?

From today’s “Page Six” in the New York Post:

Former Yankee Mike Kekich is desperate to block Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s movie “The Trade,” based on the huge scandal when he and fellow pitcher Fritz Peterson swapped wives in the 1970s.

Die-hard Red Sox fan Affleck and his brother, Casey, are rewriting a second version of the script and have hired veteran sportswriters to help reach out to Yankees from that era. But Kekich, who’s believed to have created a completely new life and family in New Mexico, is refusing to participate.

A source tells us, “Kekich is panic-stricken. He has moved away and has a new identity. He is freaked out that those working on the movie found out where he is. He isn’t too keen on having the scandal dredged up again after all this time. Other Yankees from that time have also been really unhelpful with facts and details of what happened. They are stonewalling.”

The amazing drama started in 1972 after the two hurlers, old friends, joked about swapping wives. They followed through on it, although word didn’t get out until the spring of ’73. Marilyn Peterson moved in with Kekich, but it didn’t last. Susanne Kekich and Fritz are still married and live in New Jersey and Colorado. Kekich reportedly remarried and had another daughter.

Actresses being considered include Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz and Rebecca Hall. Ben Affleck recently confirmed he and Casey were rewriting the script, and hinted that Damon may direct. It wasn’t certain that he and Damon would play the pitchers.

Affleck recently told MTV, “I’ve come to have a little more respect for the Yankees. There are some of those guys . . . that look like good guys . . . But as an institution? Disdain. Contempt.” About the movie’s subject matter, he said: “Guys [bleep]ing each others’ wives — that’s those Yankees.”

The script hasn’t yet been shown to Major League Baseball or the Yankees, another source confirmed. Reps for Affleck, Damon and the team declined to comment.

I don’t deny that the Peterson-Kekich scandal would be the basis for an interesting movie. I and other fans of a certain generation remember it vividly. Even in the swingin’ 70s it was shocking stuff, particularly set against the straitlaced world of baseball. And I admire Affleck as a director; I thought “The Town” should have been among the Best Picture Oscar nominees. I just wish somebody would make the film who doesn’t have “disdain” and “contempt” for the Yankees.

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.