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Review
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And interesting film made by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan
Cumming for themselves and their actor friends, set entirely
in a home in the Hollywood Hills, and with the feel of Mike
Leigh's improvised little odes. Joe (Cumming) and Sally
(Leigh) throw a party for their 6th anniversary, and invite
a number of friends who are all involved in the movie
business, except for their neighbors, Monica and Ryan Rose
(Mina Badie and Denis O'hare) . Joe and Sally are having a
tiff over the fact that Sally doesn't get to play the lead
in Joe's new movie. Gwyneth Paltrow gets that part, though,
visually, she doesn't look all that much more like an
ingenue than Leigh. Kevin Kline faces a similar connundrum:
no longer the obvious leading man, while his wife (Phoebe
Cates) is staying home to raise children. Jerry Adams,
Joe's business manager, and his loudmouth wife (Parker
Posey) show up as well, and everyone settles in for a night
of shocking revelations and emotional epiphanies, lubricated
by ecstasy, and the usual party games. Each character
reveals his or herself to be somewhat less or more than we
think they are, and that's what keeps the movie
interesting-- the acting is so good and the disclosures so
authentic that we don't mind the convention.
Shot on a Sony DSR-500
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