NINE (2009)

In May of this year the teaser trailer for "NINE" premiered and I nearly had a stroke. Being a fan of Rob Marshall ever since "Chicago", I was very excited. I had heard about Nine way before this though on IMDB and now that I had images to go along with it just made my day! To be honest I was really interested in Kate Hudson's sequence and what it would be like. Then in late October early November I got a peek at that very sequence and it got me even more excited. So excited that I watched the clip over 100 times probably! When I get excited about a film, I get obsessed you see. So I got the soundtrack and everything and told myself that Christmas Day I was going to see it! I didn't see it that day but I did see it the following Sunday. The film was great but the theater experience not so much. I'm disappointed in Cinemark for putting it in a small theater and for the projection of the film. It was fucking slanted on the screen and the sound sucked! I have to see it again the right way. This is why I don't go to Cinemark theaters unless they're new.

So the film was great! Not your typical happy go lucky musical but handled the material well in my opinion. Of course I anticipated Kate Hudson's performance the most because I loved how it was staged and choreographed, but everyone did a fantastic job. The friends I went to see it with hated it. Why? Maybe because it wasn't what they expected and there lies the problem with American audiences today. Our expectations are too fucking high ALL the time. They told me that they were bored and that it put them to sleep. What?!!! Did we see the same film? Maybe I'm just more aware, I don't know. Fuck it, I was intrigued! Maybe it was the subject. Not everyone relates to what it takes to make a film and that's what the film was about. There's probably a lot of people who don't understand that concept and maybe that's why it's considered a flop now. That saddens me. It really does. It's a great movie with a great cast and people shit on it. It struck a chord with me because I know what's it like to not have inspiration or motivation for a film or something or other. At the same time, I connected with the film on another level. A level of reality vs. fantasy. I find that a lot of the time as creative people, we live in our own heads and we live in a fantasy world. I get that and that is the very thing that this film conveyed to me. You have Guido Contini, a famous Italian film director who is trying to do a new film and basically forgetting what matters to him the most. He is really torturing himself throughout the film and that may be a turn off for some people. The performances are oscar worthy in their own right. You can tell Daniel Day Lewis is literally "IN" that role. Penelope Cruz is wonderfully desperate as his mistress and has a very seductive number that made me blush a couple of times. Fergie surprised me with her gut wrenching rendition of "Be Italian" and the physicality that she presented was strong. Nicole Kidman was subtle and brilliant as Claudia and Judi Dench was great as well. Marion Cotillard does a fine job of playing the longing wife. I have to say that I literally felt her sadness and I really felt for her. Sophia Loren was LUMINOUS. I was so happy to see her in a film after all these years. Kate Hudson was fantastic in her performance of "Cinema Italiano". The thing about Kate Hudson's character, Stephanie, is that she wants Guido and loves his films for all the wrong reasons. Even though it was a short part, the thing I liked most about her performance is that she knew what her character wanted and played it up very well in very subtle ways. She didn't overplay it and that's acting in my book! The Cinematography in this film is beyond stellar and I always said that Rob Marshall knows lighting very well. The lighting in his films are always top notch and beautiful and lighting is not an easy thing to do. He's a master of lighting. The flashes between black and white are seamless and the whole style of the film embodies 1960's Italy perfectly. A film student could learn a lot technically from this film.

Considering that the musical sequences in the film were the only "light" thing about the film, most audiences shied away from it. A couple walked out of my theater but that was it. There was an applause at the end though which gave me some hope. This leads me to believe that Nine is one of those films that will merely survive on word of mouth and if that's the case then we might be fucked. Don't pay attention to the reviews people, those fuckers don't know what they're talking about. This isn't Moulin Rouge or Hairspray or even Chicago, this is NINE and it's a fantastic film.