Sense

We all imagine how a movie will be before it comes out, the result of some targeted marketing and each of our own preconceptions. When I was a kid and Family Plot came out, Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, I was so excited that I had a dream of the movie, based solely on snippets of the TV advertising (very cool opening with Karen Black in black trenchcoat, black hat and shades drag) and my developing sense of the master of suspense.

With a movie star, we might make projections of their personality based on maybe a TV talk show interview, along with our knowledge of their previous work.

So this weekend V for Vendetta opens and I have a $20M over/under bet going with a certain burgeoning filmmaking talent. He took under, I took over. I've been wrong before, but I just like the intensity I'm seeing in the TV spots, I think we may be hungry for that right now. As long as it's coming with enough dollops of kick-ass.

So far David Poland is aboard and David Denby, a critic I've grown up admiring, is acting the scold. So maybe it sucks, but maybe it's Fight Club, where almost all the mainstream critics got it wrong. Hell, The New York Times even printed the spoiler just a week after it had opened.

But onto star projection. As readers of this blog will know, I was measurably impressed by Natalie Portman's completely committed performance in the Saturday Night Live video from last weekend. Tonight she was on The Daily Show, and she's still impressing the shit out of me.

First Jon Stewart shows this totally insane clip from the movie. It's just shot-reverse-shot, with her all long-haired and frozen in growing terror vs. this silhouetted establishment asshole laying the fascist smackdown on her -- tell us who V. is or we're going medieval on your tokhes. Cut to Natalie getting the Full Metal Jacket barbershop treatment, in a medium-wide lateral dolly, just far enough back for us to see everything happened, but her trapped in the frame.

Then Ms. Portman comes out, maybe the only actress I've ever noticed on the show shorter than Mr. Stewart, very nice for him, and when they sit down to talk she reveals herself to be smart, alert, anchored somewhere in the real world, and with an exceptional sense of humor. I guess it's accepted wisdom that she's good-looking, but she's all the prettier her laugh tells us she gets it, she knows what's going on.

To seal the deal, when he brought up her going to Germany to shoot most of the movie, they joked heartily together about being Jewish and the tensions associated with a first visit to the Fatherland. Then she talked about how amazing Berlin is, very cosmopolitan, and now she's living in beautiful N.Y.C.

So who knows if the movie is any good. Maybe some of our readers can enlighten us, after it opens on Friday. As for me, I'm not going to the theater unless it does over twenty million dollars this weekend. Well, actually, I can't see it until next week at the absolute earliest. I'm just praying like a mantis that the buzz won't be off by then.

Natalie Portman is diminutive in physical stature but far from it in talent or focus, so I'm betting that the movie is at the very least worth watching for her performance. Any way you cut it, that young woman is a star and of the best kind, one whom you imagine will put you in touch with the raw truth and power it up with all the voltage you need for the whole journey.