Hey folks, Harry here with a really great guy. Capone. He's like an evil bastard coated with honey, sugar and flour. He's a sweetie. A swell guy. A wonderful fella - and Austin already misses him, and Chicago is better for having him. As he was reeling from an overstuffed BNAT - he took in a screening of ELLIE PARKER - here ya go...

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, still in a daze at the wonderment of BNAT 7. I've barely had time to reflect in any detail on the offerings this year (at least not enough to write about them), since every spare moment I can find is spend catching up on sleep. As great as I thought KING KONG and V FOR VEDETTA were, the film my mind keep returning to is THE DESCENT. Being that terrified that late at night, fighting off sleep, provided such a primal sensory experience that I don't think I'll dream right for weeks. But on to other things...

If you’re like me and you just can’t get enough of some Naomi Watts, might I offer the slightly annoying but utterly fascinating ELLIE PARKER, essentially a day in the life of Naomi Watts if she wasn’t famous. Taking place in the space of about 24 hours, ELLIE PARKER follows the title character on a grueling series of auditions and encounters that seem fairly believable and typical of life for a struggling actress in Hollywood.

Shot over the course of several years by writer-director-co-star Scott Coffey (whenever Watts’ schedule was open, I’m guessing) and employing the use of in-your-face hand-held camera work, ELLIE PARKER feels like an intrusion into the very private moments of this woman’s life. In the course of a day, she goes through several demoralizing auditions that require her to express emotions and just generally act foolish. She finds her boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino) cheating on her, she meets a promising new man (Coffey), and she questions her worth as an actress (a process, I’m guessing, that is at least a weekly ritual for every struggling actor).

Ellie Parker has its lighter moments as well. Chevy Chase almost totally redeems a movie career from hell with his appearance here as Ellie’s agent. And there’s a priceless sequence in which Ellie and an actress friend have a contest to see who can cry first. (It seems like a draw since, although Ellie generates a tear first, her friend produces much more of a full-on waterworks display.) Some actresses are called “brave” by critics for simply showing their breasts on camera, but Watts’ all-or-nothing performance here is one of the bravest I’ve ever seen. I never doubt for a second that with ELLIE PARKER she’s stripping away every veil she’s ever put on in the name of beauty or a public appearance.

So why did I call ELLIE PARKER slightly annoying? As with any actress, many of Ellie's problems seem like so much self-inflicted drama, and that often bugged the crap out of me. The weeping, the exasperation, the yelling, it's all here in large doses.

Still, this is raw filmmaking used as a platform for a whirlwind performance by Watts that I actually saw a couple of weeks before KING KONG. Not that I needed another reason, but ELLIE PARKER made me all the more excited to see what she would accomplish in KONG, and is the main reason I wasn’t as surprised as many at her range in the bigger-budget offering. The film is playing in some cities now and opens this weekend in Chicago at the Landmark Century Center Cinema.

Capone

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