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Tag: Frances McDormand

Women Talking–In the Name of Religion

Directed by Sarah Polley, based on the titular novel by Miriam Toews, Women Talking is inspired by a true story of horrific mass rapes in a small Mennonite community.  Intentionally ambiguous with regard to time and place, the religious colony in Women Talking is cut off from the modern world:  any place in America full of barns, overalls and horse-drawn-carts will do. Women Talking  explores the wide-ranging  challenges and obstacles faced by women when their bodies and dignity have been ravaged. Co-produced  by Frances McDormand (“Macbeth”....

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“The Tragedy of Macbeth”—“Blood will have blood.”

In perhaps one of the most famous plays of William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, produced by Joel Coen and Frances McDormand, gives us another interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s shortest and bloodiest tragedies. In the opening scene three witches make a horrific prediction as Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and Banquo (Bertie Carvel) approach: “Double, double, toil and trouble.”  They predict that Macbeth will become King of Scotland.  Although Macbeth has earned a reputation as a brave Scottish general who has just won a major battle against the Danes for King Duncan,...

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: A BOLO for Justice

Guest blogger extraordinaire Bill Clark Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s film, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), takes us along Mildred Hayes’ journey as she deals with the unsolved murder-rape of her teenage daughter. Brilliantly played by Frances McDormand, bereaved mother, Mildred, decides to take on the avuncular police chief Bill Willoughby  (played by Woody Harrelson), after a year of apparent police inattention). She pays for three road-side billboards with provocative Burma Shave-like titles asking for justice from Chief Willoughby. The billboards trigger a chain of...

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“Olive Kitteridge”—Scenes from a Marriage, or A Bitter Edge

The HBO mini-series based on Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Olive Kitteridge” delivers big time! With a stellar cast led by the astounding Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins, we see the two main characters Olive and Henry vacillate between love and despair, kindness and absence of human connection. Scenes from a marriage with a bitter edge. The main character, Olive Kitteridge, is intentionally the most puzzling and difficult to empathize with. She is more an anti-hero than a protagonist you identify with and hope for. There are glimmers of her compassion as the story winds...

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