Name Tea Leoni (Elizabeth Tea Pantaleoni)
Born 25 February 1966, New York, New York, US Background Having started studying at the highly respected Sarah Lawrence College in New York majoring in anthropology and psychology, Leoni dropped out and followed in the footsteps of her grandmother, the silent film actress Helenka Adamowska, to embark on an acting career. She got her first break in the TV soap Santa Barbara and has since drawn attention for impressive turns in David O Russell's Flirting with Disaster and the Al Pacino vehicle People / Know. She is married to X-Fi'les star David Duchovny and the couple have two children.
What she up to new? Currently filming Fun with Dick and Jane. with Jim Carrey and Alec Baldwin. an update of Ted First Blood Kotcheff's 1977 comedy about a married couple who turn to robbery to pay the bills. Cameron Diaz was set to play ‘Jane' but the part eventually went to Leoni. She is also in James The Simpsons L Brooks new cross-cultural comedy film Spanglish.
What she says about playing an athlete ln Spanglish ‘I love tennis. I love very aggressive tennis, and I think I‘m quite good. Golf, well, of course you can drink beer when you play that, but I take it pretty seriously, and I’m quite good at that. And I'm a good swimmer, and I used to compete in windsurfing.’ Interesting fact She was going to be one of the new Charlie's Angels in the TV series. Angels 88. but the series never got off the ground. The publicity was enough to get her noticed though and her career took off. I Spanglish is on general release from Fri 25 Feb.
50 THE LIST 17 Feb—3 Mar 2005
CAD MC KOKTEBEL (15) 105min COO
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(Io-directed by two yoqu Rissiarr filmmakers Boris Khlebiriko: aer Aiexei Popogrebsky. this is a lyrical and laconic road movie, which requires the viewer to draw on their own powers of contemplation. There's little in the way of (.ll(tl()(}tl(3 or ‘plot' here: instead the often fixed camera ga/es at the giant landscapes through which the characters traverse. while the unnamed protagonists are frequently shown gazing out into the distance.
Significant details emerge gradually: it transpires that the parent is Widowed. that he has lost his engineering (Ob. and that he is battling a drink problem. His child is obsessed With flight: transfixed by stories about albatrosses. he believes he can see things from a great height. and at his final destination he heads straight for the gliding monument. The two directors have eliCited effectively understated performances from Puskepalis and CherneVich but the film's misfonune is that it is released Just SIX months after Andrei Zvyagintsev's outstanding The Return. a more emotionally compelling account of a father and his sons embarking on an enigmatic i0urney. (Tom Dawson)
I GFT. Glasgow from Fri 78 Feb iunti/ Thu 24 Feb}, Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 25 Feb (until Thu 3 Man.
DYNASTIC DRAMA INHERITANCE (15) 115min 000
Per Fly's Inheritance — the first in a planned trilogy Of films set Within different layers of the Danish class system — wasn't made according to the Dogme ‘Vows of Chastity. but you feel that Thomas Vinterberg or Lars von Trier might have relished its premise. Successful restaurateur Christoffer iUlrich Thomseni is liVing happily in Stockholm With his actress Wife Maria
'Lisa Werlinderi. The suicide of his industrialist father sees the son return to Denmark where the domineering mother iGhita Norhyi insists he's the only man to take over the family's ailing steelworks business.
The set up is that of a Festeri-style reunion drama, ready to skewer the rot at the heart of an established middle— class family. But Fly has other ideas and chooses to explore how power corrupts the soul of his enigrriatic protagonist. Problems, however, he in the schematic nature of the screenplay. On the one hand there's the relaxed llf} that Christoffer enjoys in Sweden with the vibrant. artistic Maria, and on the other there are the upper echelons of the steel industry. where any doubts about the morality of business deCisions have to be stifled. ‘Don't talk ab0ut yOLir emotions," thunders the Lady Macbeth figure of the mother, who later rescues her son from his lowest ebb by the chilling reassurance that: ‘YOu're JUSI like me . . . born to take responSibility.'
Visually the sombre inheritance offers few surprises — littery hand-held digital- Video camerawork and a grainy, monochrome look for the Danish sequences to emphasise the sterility of the emotional and phy5ical enVironment. You're left puzzling over Just why Christoffer accepts his own unhappiness and whether a rape sequence subplot was dramatically necessary. (Tom Dawson)
I Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 78 Feb (until Thu 24 Feb).
DOCUMENTARY WALL (12A) 100min 0000
Within 13 years of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the government of lsrael. ignoring international law. was constructing its own concrete barrier. The purpose was to reduce terrorist attacks on the Israeli people by further separating them from the Palestinians. The so-called 'seCLirity fence' was incorporated onto the lsraeli OCCupied territOry in the West Bank, which had
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make a doctimentar‘y at\ct.t how the we1 impt cted upon it. es in Palestine and lsrae. Gigei‘ the 'eg‘iv‘t (leatl‘ of Yasser Arafat. and the, potentials historic meeting betv.ee" Sharon and Abbas. Its cinematic release as ext'1epticnaily timely
From the opening shots, .n \‘Jlll(‘ll slabs of concrete resembling tomt’istones are llldll()f}tl\.'f0tl into place. Bitton ensures that the wall itself occupies a significant physical and psychological presence Within the frame. There is only one formal interview in the film »- With General Amos Yaron of the Israeli Ministry of Defence. He's a pugnacious figure. who provides an uncomi)roirrising defence of his government's policies. Elsewhere, the filmmaker speaks to those on both sides of this artificial barrier. We tend to hear words 'Wi: love our land so much we enclose it' is one rueful comment ~ rather than see faces, giving the sense of ordinary voices struggling to be heard amidst all the upheavals. And the lengthy tracking shots give us time to look at the natural landscapes. which have been ecologically damaged by this construction, and to observe the humiliation of elderly people forced to clamber over crossing points. As Bitton's psychiatrist friend Eyad in Gaza pOInts Out, it's actually sanity to refuse this wall. (Tom Dawson) I GFT, Glasgow Mon 27 and Tue 22 Feb only.
FUTURISTIC EPIC CASSHERN (15) 142mm eeee
If, as the mantra has it, ‘an optimist is someone who thinks the future is uncertain' then the glass is certainly half full for first time Japanese writer/director Kazuaki Kiriya. ln adapting the classic 708 animated series Shinzo Ningen Casshern Kiriya has produced the most freakish, yet oddly compelling hybrid of live action anime. overblown melodrama, fatalistic adventure you are likely to see this year. In some alternative universe the Fasostic Eastern Federation is trying to annexe and unity the world through a bloody war. ProfeSSOr Azuma (Akira Teraoi, a genetiCist in the employ of the government, is care/mg out body rejuvenation experiments in order to