Name Stephen Adly—Guirgis Born 1965. New YOrk City Background Guirgis has an Egyptian dad and an Irish American mother. Although brought up in the plush Upper West Side of New York City. he lived in a rent-controlled apartment and went to school in Harlem. He was a terrible student who took seven and a half years to complete a four-year degree course in theatre studies. All he can remember is the parties. After graduating he iOined the actors' workshop LAByrinth and started writing plays because there were no better-qualified writers available. Phillip Seymour Hoffman read them and asked Adly-Guirgis if he COuId try to direct them. His plays Don of Thieves. in Arabia. We 'd All Be Kings and Jesus Hopped the A- Train were so good that New York Time Out called him 'the best writer of his generation'. But Adly- Guirgis always wanted to be an actor and when his friend Brett C Leonard asked him to appear opposite Michael Pitt in Jai/bait in 2003. he jumped at the chance. What’s he up to now? He plays a trucker who is seduced by a baby-obsessed 13-year-old girl in Todd Solondz's Palindromes. What he says about working on Palindromes ‘Todd Solondz phoned me up, and said. “What are you doing tomorrow? I want you to come and be in my film. The actor we've chosen is too high on drugs to play the part." and the next day l was on the train upstate.‘
Interesting fact He got a blow- job off Michael Pitt for a scene in Jailbait, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
I Pa/indromes is on selected release from Fri 6 May. See review, opposite.
4 one of the highsiises on the estate.
With mum away the kids can play —~ and t-1~\eai»old friends Elama iDaniel Miranda] and Moko iDiego Catanoi get the Coke bottle, out. the PlayStation set up. the pixxa oi't‘lered. and prepare toi tlteii moment of utopia. The, only problem is they "re imaded by a 16,- \eaisold neighbour Rita iDanny Pereai. the potter keeps cutting out and the pi.‘.‘a gu\ Ulises «Enrique Arreolai delners the pi;'."a. they belie\ e. .30 seconds late. and there's a consequent stand-off.
48 THE LIST .‘8 Al" 5.1.1.
Withii‘ this farcical pressure itr/ikei environment a tentative friendship and an emotional exploration begins to emerge between the tour characters. With a kind of slacker camera style lJai‘inusch and Keyin Smith are influencesi. .vriter director Eimbcke l‘.'../lRig/illfi'i'lltf/ll offers a low-key comedy that never allows the sensitive emotions of the characters to be outweighed by insensitive gags. Instead [{imbcke tries to find humour in unrlerstatement. oi Just in the nature of the shots training. In one scene the kids start shooting at the various tiinkets in the flat and Ulises (th sses the still fiame and promptly walks back aci< ss it with a picture he particularly likes under his arm. It's a deadpan moment that captures well his own protective instincts towards a sensitivity he sees in the painting. and a great gag on the idea the kids can destroy the flat for all he cares. as long as they leave his own feelings intact. This is lovely, if veiy minor, cinema. (Tony McKibbinl I Film/louse. Edinburgh fro/n Fri 29 Apr (until Thu :3 M'ivi and GFT. Glasgow from Tue l7 Male Thu 75) May only. See interwew. page 46.
l’llSlORlCAL EPIC KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (15) 135min ooo
Bidley Scott returns to the histOrical epic — the genre that gave the director his biggest hit to date in Gladiator — With this visually lawsh action spectacular set during the 12th century Crusades in the Holy Land. The action takes place in and around the city of Jerusalem. where. as the story opens in the year t 186. King BaldWin and his European knights maintain an uneasy truce With the nrnghbouring Arab army, lead by the Saracen general Saladin lGhassan Massoudi. Peaceful co—existence between Christians and Muslims in the so—called 'Kingdom of Heaven'. however. isn't to the liking of the extremist Knights Templar. which plots to begin a religious war.
Into this melting pot of cultures — and boiling cauldron of politics — steps young French knight Balian iOrlando Bloomi.
Kingdom of Heaven follows the formula employ ed by Scott in his Roman Empire epic. mixing hand-to- hand combat seguences and panoramic battles scenes with dramatic political intrigue and a inot necessarily aCCuratel history lesson. Bloom might not have quite the same screen presence as Russell Crowe.
skirmishes (15) 99min 0...
This, the fourth feature film by that failed rabbi and proud New Jersey native, Todd Solondz, was supposed to be a sequel to his 1995 debut film Welcome to the Dollhouse. But Heather Matarazzo, the actress who played the troubled, unattractive schoolgirl Dawn Weiner in that film, understandably refused to have anything to do with it, so humiliated was she by the experience. And so it is that Palindromes uses Dawn‘s funeral to kick off the winding tale of her cousin Aviva (played by several markedly different looking actresses including Sharon Wilkins and Jennifer Jason Leigh). Thirteen-year-old Aviva is forced by her uptight mother Joyce (Ellen Barkin) to have an abortion when she becomes unexpectedly pregnant. Devastated Aviva takes off on the road, determined to get pregnant again. But fate brings her to Mama Sunshine’s freak religious commune, but Mama Sunshine is not all she seems.
Despite the furore it's stirred up in the conservative US press, Palindromes is, in fact, Solondz's least confrontational and most funny film to date. Less hectoring and darkly pessimistic than Happiness and less butchered by the studio than Storytelling, its links to his debut film are palpably, hilariously realised. For Palindromes is as trashy as a John Waters film, as intellectually perverse as early Borowcyck (particularly Goto, Island of Love) and as sinister as Laughton‘s Night of the Hunter. In short, it is manacled into the memory, despite its cheap production values, as the work of a true maverick. As in all his films, here Solondz holds no council: he is happy to offend liberals and reactionaries alike, and he likes to confound expectations even when he is in the broadest of flows. “My mother didn’t believe in mere love,’ Aviva tells one of Mama's brood at one point. ‘She was organic.’ His venomous peculiarity knows no bounds.
Visually, this, like Solondz’s previous films, plays like a Play for Today on suburban mores; there is no showboating, plain static segment brutally follows plain segment but what lies beneath is as humanely silly as anything the Farrelly Brothers have done, and as carnivalesque as Browning’s Freaks. But more than anything Palindromes is a homage to Barbara Loden’s neglected, brilliant, soon to be rereleased 1971 film Wanda and, in that context, this nears perfection. ‘How many more times can I be born again?’ Aviva asks at one point. The answer, as ever with Solondz, is too many and too few. (Paul Dale)
I Selected release from Fri 6 May.
but his lighter tOLich sort of suits his ‘nowce knight‘. and in any event. he's Supponed by a sound cast. best of which are lrons' grizzled veteran Tiberias and Syrian actor Massowj. On the action front. Kingdom of Heaven fails to live up to the precedent Scott set himself With Gladiator. The swordplay between the knights doesn't compare to the far more skilfully choreographed coliseum melees. And though the battle scenes. particularly the climactic Saracen Siege of Jerusalem. are grand enough, they too Suffer by COmparison With Gladiator. but even less fav0urably to
a laudable theme. the power struggle between hawks and doves in the medieval world. which of course holds
the high watermark set by Peter Jackson ‘3 The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Still. Kingdom of Heaven does boast
great contemporary resonance.
(Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 6 May. See Big Picture.