November 21, 2003
Chick Movie Alert: Mona Lisa Smile
As the marketing machine steps into high gear to push the new Julia Roberts movie, Mona Lisa Smile, Gothamist can't help but think it's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie lite, complete with a cheery Cranberries song in the trailer and TV commercials. A one-liner for the movie is "This is the story of a free-spirited Berkeley graduate in 1953 who takes a position as a teacher at the women's college, Wellesley." Add Julia Roberts' signature horse laugh ("BWA HA HA HA!"), some lovely ingenues in the form of Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and it's box office gold. Since resistance is futile (we've clocked in time at one of the Seven Sisters, so we're very familiar with women's college dynamics), the upside is that at least Julia doesn't seem as constipated and hard as she does in Ocean's Eleven.
But what we really want to know is what The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie author Muriel Spark thinks. Read her Slate diaries from July 1996 and December 1996.
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apparently Tori Amos sings a few songs in this movie, standing up at the mic instead of sitting at the piano. for her fans, that should be pretty exciting.. that's my main motivation for going to see it.
My main motivation is to see my street and local restaurant, which were in the filming last winter (though I've no idea if they made the cut).
Has there ever been a more airbrushed photo? (And if so, why couldn't it have been Jacko's putrid Santa Barbara County mug shot?)
Coolfer, I think the film's photographer used soft lighting, a blanket AND Vaseline to get that soft glow effect.
It was filmed up here at Columbia (film crews, the trailers, and female extras in sorta-sexy '50s-style clothing were around campus for a few weeks; never saw Ms. Roberts, though), so Jen may get extra nostalgia effects...