Wasn't She Lovely?

She also seemed committed and serious when she worked, and a majority of the time, she worked on tough stuff with interesting people. She suggested good humor, but not frivolity, especially not about acting. And every story I've ever read about her personality and habits and extensions of friendship offstage and offscreen has been a beauty. My favorite is about her sending The Hours to Meryl Streep because she thought Meryl would enjoy seeing herself pop up as a cameo character; friends who send books are always good friends. Speaking of books, when her mother wrote about her in her 1990 autobiography, even as she confessed to her own lapses and wavering availability as a mother, she glowed in a believable way about Natasha's goodness, and about watching her talent as an actress emerge.

I always worry that this is meaningless if not verging on the tasteless or presumptuous, but nonetheless, my thoughts are with the Redgraves and Richardsons and with the Neesons and all of their friends.

The End of the New

Am I the last to know that New Line Cinema is officially, as of Thursday, no longer a freestanding entity? Check out A.O. Scott's eulogy at the New York Times, and think a fond thought for the studio behind the Nightmares on Elm Street, the John Waters Hairspray, The Rapture, My Own Private Idaho, Menace II Society, Blink, Se7en, Boogie Nights, Wag the Dog, Dark City, Living Out Loud, American History X, The Astronaut's Wife, Magnolia, The Cell, Bamboozled, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Birth, The New World, the musical Hairspray, and some movies about some blingy elves. Plus, via its late subdivision Fine Line Features, some production or distribution money for An Angel at My Table, Edward II, The Player, The Ballad of Little Jo, Spanking the Monkey, Short Cuts, Hoop Dreams, Once Were Warriors, Barcelona, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Double Happiness, Death and the Maiden, Crash, Gummo, The Sweet Hereafter, The Winter Guest, Passion in the Desert, Hurlyburly, Besieged, Tumbleweeds, Before Night Falls, Dancer in the Dark, The Anniversary Party, The Holy Girl, Vera Drake, Last Days, and Maria Full of Grace. That's a lot to be thankful for.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

Committed, brave, ready to take the leap, forthcoming about his errors, poised to reach a new plane, maybe a little reckless, hard to know (at least on screen), grimly gifted at grueling implosions, closed off by love (Brokeback Mountain), doomed by self-recognition (Monster's Ball), but alluringly goofy even when he was Grimm. A promised slash of color in The Dark Knight, overexposed, ironic, blurry, splotches and shadows where a face should be, only just beginning to come into focus. He was suddenly, recently, out of a "nowhere" of interchangeable actors and out of a "nowhere" of movies he publicly wouldn't or couldn't love, he was suddenly, abruptly good. He was here, to the delight and with the support of so many, and now, with no good explanation, he's not there.

R.I.P. Ismail Merchant

This tribute to Ismail Merchant just appeared at IMDb on the occasion of his death, at the age of 68. I'm a huge fan of Howards End (see also here, of Anthony Hopkins' and Peter Vaughan's performances in The Remains of the Day, of Richard Robbins' scores for lots of their movies (especially Remains), and of so many of the performances and stories they brought to the screen. And when she's on, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a superlative scripter.

One quibble, and I hope this doesn't seem like too nasty a time to mention it: why hasn't the couplehood of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant ever been more openly acknowledged? I totally understand people, gay or straight, who don't want to discuss their sexuality or their relationships, but to not even have the fact on the table, when they are already fixed as a duo in the minds of their public? It's not as though Merchant-Ivory had some enormous, heterocentric fan-base that was going to erode if they came out, and at some point, I think it would have been nice to have this on record. I wonder if Merchant's obituaries will speak to this at all. Even the IMDb capsule alludes to their "career together (both personally and professionally)" in a remarkably oblique way. Ah well. Not to snack on the sour grapes, especially on a sad day. But my heart does goes out to James Ivory—now a widower, even if some PR people wish that I didn't think of him that way.

P.S. The AP report on Merchant's death, just up at the New York Times, concludes: "Merchant was unmarried and had no children." Jackasses.