Celebrity
| This excerpt is by Rob Lowing
from the Sun Herald. Celebrity opened just recently in London to again...RAVE reviews for DiCaprio's performance.. Stars and Gripes...Rob Lowing... (Portions of the review *NOT* dealing with Leonardo deleted.) "The biggest casting coup, of course, was snaring Titanic star DiCaprio.
Warning to the fans... he is on screen for barely 20 minutes, with little
dialogue. But, funnily enough, the fans won't be disappointed. DiCaprio's
furious, destructive character (probably deliberately) isn't exactly teen
dream pin-up material - he does drugs and suggests a "swinging" evening. But
DiCaprio offers a blast of energy which gives both the movie and adult viewers
a crucial jolt of adrenalin." Thanks to Bellacia, here's another glowing writeup from a critic in a UK magazine about Celebrity and Leonardo's performance. Rex Reed's review of Celebrity.
Thanks to Gail for finding this article! Here's the excerpt that critiques LD's contribution. David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. (posted Friday, Oct. 9, 1998) "In Celebrity, he gets a lot of mileage out of Davis (playing yet another poetically discombobulated basket case--gorgeously), Winona Ryder (evenmore breathtaking in black-and-white), Mantegna, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Melanie Griffith (giving Lee a blow job), and Leonardo DiCaprio as a hotel room trashing, pretty boy superstar. Allen gets more than he deserves from DiCaprio, whose brief appearance is the highlight of the picture. He's meant to embody everything shallow and psychotic about stardom (the conception is out of tabloid tales of Johnny Depp), but the actor has never looked as beautiful, with the chiseled insolence of a young Elvis Presley and the bearing of a Greek God. Every idea in the sequence is banal, but DiCaprio reminds you why movie stars sometimes deserve to be worshipped." Andrew Sarris's review of Celebrity: 'Meanwhile, Lee, her errant ex-husband, is traumatized in turn by a wild night out with Mr. DiCaprio’s Brandon Darrow, a young punk superstar who trashes hotel rooms, beats up his girlfriend and uses language so foul his teenage Titanic fans might be shocked if they were ever induced to see Celebrity. Mr. DiCaprio is particularly astute in demonstrating the cold-blooded calculation that goes into the temper tantrums that keep making the gossip columns. It is like John McEnroe’s gamesmanship in years past of blowing up at the umpires on the tennis court, more to disrupt the concentration of his opponents than to risk losing his own. He always seemed to win the next few points.'
The reviews..
This film's central situation, involving the post-divorce romances of Lee and his high-strung
ex-wife, Robin (Judy Davis), becomes little more than a pretext for watching fame crop up in the
most peculiar places. There are a handful of fabulous caricatures in Allen's Manhattan
sketchbook, but the film too easily allows these peripheral figures to outshine its central story. Surprise: the most wildly famous figure whom Lee encounters happens also to be this film's
hottest star. In a devilishly satirical sequence midway through the film, Leonardo DiCaprio
(uncannily well cast before the release of "Titanic") bursts into the story while trashing a hotel
room at the Stanhope and slapping around his equally hysterical moll (actually Gretchen Mol).
Just as the police are being summoned, Lee arrives to pitch his screenplay to the bad-boy wonder
and is caught up in the frenzy. Allen's screenplay and the show-stopping DiCaprio are shrewdly perfect when it comes to the
star's whims, the entourage that lives on his borrowed glory, and the cunning flattery with which
this actor keeps Lee dangling. "All you writers are so sensitive!" the young super nova complains when Lee hesitates about
joining him in the druggy orgy that is rendered with especially evil glee. Says the groupie who's been relegated to Lee in quite a crowded bedroom scene: "I wrote some
film scripts. You ever heard of Chekhov? I write like him."
Screaming fans, photographers and autograph hounds outside Lincoln Center nearly knocked
over police barricades when "Titanic" heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio showed up for the premiere
of "Celebrity," which opened the New York Film Festival. Tensions rose when DiCaprio paused long enough to give a few quick sound bites to a TV crew.
Sensing that things might get out of hand, security guards steered Leo toward the door, which
provoked boos from some photographers who'd missed their Leo shot. But the star, who now has a reputation for being aloof after skipping the Oscars, freed himself.
Going back to pose some more, he earned a round of applause That was just the sort of real-life performance that made DiCaprio's co-star, Kenneth Branagh,
think will help the young actor "survive this storm of adulation."
Branagh, who caught up with DiCaprio at the post-premiere party at Tavern on the Green, told
us: "It's inevitable that there's a transient sadness to this kind of fame... the need for security and
all . . . But I find him very together, able to be funny about what's happened to him." FROM PEOPLE ONLINE : Leonardo DiCaprio didn't disappoint anyone this weekend -- fans, film
festival-goers or even the paparazzi. Attending the opening of the New York Film Festival Friday
for the premiere of Woody Allen's "Celebrity" -- in which Leo's character lampoons bad-boy
movie star behavior by trashing a New York hotel room while beating up his girlfriend (played
by Gretchen Mol) before heading off to a druggy Atlantic City orgy -- DiCaprio posed for
photographers when he arrived at Lincoln Center, stayed throughout the movie and attended the
official fest reception at Tavern on the Green after the screening. All that was more than Woody
Allen did. He was elsewhere in town, shooting a new movie. "Celebrity," which opens to the
public Nov. 13, drew a mixed response. It contains some Allenesque gems, including the entire
DiCaprio sequence, Bebe Neuwirth instructing Judy Davis on how to improve her lovemaking
skills, and Kenneth Branagh (who mimics whiny Woody to perfection) on an ill-fated date with
the luscious ubermodel Charlize Theron. But the film's 114-min. length and its blunted attack on
today's star culture as it retreads over familiar Allen territory -- the adventures of an oversexed,
neurotic loser who mistreats women -- dilute the movie's pleasures. NEW YORK
It was a scene of life imitating art imitating life Friday night at Lincoln Center,
as the New York Film Festival opened in the thrall of Leomania. Pushy paparazzi and
high-pitched fans rushed police barricades as Leonardo DiCaprio arrived for the screening of
Woody Allen's "Celebrity," a black-and-white satire on fame in which the "Titanic" heartthrob
appears as a hotel-smashing young star a la Johnny Depp. DiCaprio gamely followed the bulk of
the film's ensemble cast to the post-screening fete at Tavern on the Green -- and then to a private
after-party at Gabriel's hosted by Miramax, which will release "Celebrity" on Nov. 13. "He's got
this quality about him that's a star," Charlize Theron said. "May he do more films that move us
even more."
There may be only one compelling reason to rush out to see Woody Allen’s Celebrity, but it’s a
corker:this one’s gonna be a smash with the teenage girls! That’s right, because of a brilliant casting coup, which puts post Titanic mega-hearthrob
Leonardo DiCaprio in this satire of Celebrity culture, Allen may pull in his biggest
opening weekend box office yet. And-------here’s the compelling part---------many of the tickets will be purchased by people
entering Woody’s world for the first time-----people who weren’t even bornwhen Annie
Hall went lah de dah.... For us long in the tooth types, Allen has become as surprising as a trip to the loo in the middle of
the night....after a while, you don’t even need the lights on to know exactly where you are going.
Which is why you either love the guy’s movies...or you couldn’t give a tinker’s toss. In Woody’s world, nothing----apart from cast and camera technique------ever changes.Indeed, the
only cinematic universe more hermetically sealed might be George Lucas’, and he had ti create a
whole new galaxy to do the trick! All Allen has to do is walk down Fifth Avenue and presto!------even the most unpredictable city
in the western world is made to knuckle under to his law. Which means...quick as you say..."psychotherapy"....everybody starts peeling offpungent one liners, stunning young women get weak kneed for stunning older writers, literary references pass like gas emissions, and emotional immaturity spreads through the streets like typhus. And increasingly, everybody starts to act like Woody Allen. In this movie, Kenneth Branaugh plays a star struck but frustrated screen writer who is also,
inexplicably but surprisingly, a chick magnet. And he does an eerie impersonationof Allen’s
patented high-strung wise-guy schtick, right down to the plaid and corduroy duds and artfully
constipated patter. The thing about Celebrity---which against the blindingly vacuous backdrop of Manhatten
celebrity culture, chronicles the post-marital fallout of not one but two Allen
act-alikes....Branaugh and Judy Davis...is that much of the movie’s audience, lured there by the
appearance of Leonardo DiCaprio, won’t have had the chance to be jaded by Woody’s world.
Yet.
It’s hard to imagine who, besides Allen and the odd supermodel, might actually be shocked by
Celebrity’s bold assertion that fame sucks, but maybe that’s why the casting of DiCaprio
might be the most brilliant stroke of Allen’s career. Not only could he score big at the box office for the first time in years, but his message might
actually seem fresh to all those first time tourists to Woody’s world, led there by the presence of
their Leo. For two hours, Simon seeks to absorb some of the magic of celebrity as he pitches his screenplay at a succession of celebrities, including Melanie Griffith (looking like she's seen Ivana Trump's plastic surgeon) as actress/legend Nicole Oliver and Leonardo DiCaprio (in an eerily prophetic portrayal shot BEFORE he became the hottest star in the universe) as Hollywood bad-boy actor Brandon Darrow. In a scene clearly derived from Johnny Depp's hotel trashing incidents, he beats up his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol), in a disturbing and ugly scene that may answer once and for all the eternal question "What if Jack Dawson had lived?" After trashing their hotel room, he then invites Lee, who is writing a story about him and pitching a script, to a night of cocaine-and-sex partying in Atlantic City. It's a hilarious, if nasty, portrayal of spoiled Hollywood brats, and the only bit in the film with any energy involving something other than neurotic anxiety. Hate DiCaprio if you must, but hate him for the right reason: because no kid that young has any business making his craft look so damn easy. Jeannie Williams USA Today Neither Branagh nor DiCaprio had to have fame manufactured. Branagh, 37, a top British actor
who was a boy wonder himself, gives Leo high marks for handling teen-idol status. "For a man so thrust into the limelight, I find nothing of the craft of acting diminished with him. . . . He has wisdom about his situation, a very old head on his shoulders. He had a significant career before this, and that's kept him sane. There's no sign (the fuss) has swelled his head in the wrong way, and he retains a sense of humor about it.'' ClaudiaS - 01:01pm Nov 20, 1998 EST (#20024 of 20069) Here are the first two paragraphs of the Celebrity review from my local paper... Di-Captivating DiCaprio nails role with aplomp while Woody whittles on same material Woody Allen gets one thing spectacularly right in Celebrity, and that's the casting of Leonardo
DiCaprio as a spoiled, self-indulgent young actor who trashes hotel rooms and treats his female
groupies only slightly better For all we know, poor Leo could be an Eagle Scout in real life. But it's much more tempting to believe, as the gossip columns do, that he's been a total brat ever since Titanic. Either way, DiCaprio is smart and talented enough to have accepted a part that's a marvelous parody of how craven the celebrity culture can be. (Julie Hinds/SJMN) From Boston Globe, Jay Carr
Chicago Tribune Celebrity Woody Allen's "Celebrity" is unsparing .....By Michael Wilmington Celebrities and the media people who report about them can live in a curious symbiosis --
needing, pursuing, exploiting and sometimes resenting each other -- and that volatile marriage is
the subject of Woody Allen's new movie, "Celebrity." With a blend of sobriety and giddiness,
comedy and trauma, this film draws us into the klieg-lit domain of the famous and their parasites
-- a realm of show business hype machines, junkets, interviews, publicity and instant high life. Allen's new film, from one of his cleverest scripts, lets us feel the claustrophobia, the ephemeral
fame and the glittery, pampered hysteria of this world through the eyes of the people who live in
the camera's eye and the reporters (a.k.a. voyeurs) who would like to crash or worm their way in. At the center of this false, sparkly, hectic world -- with its glamorous hubbub and pumped-up
tension -- is Kenneth Branagh as neurotic celebrity journalist Lee Simon. Much like Marcello
Mastroianni's jet-set writer in the 1960 Federico Fellini classic "La Dolce Vita," Simon is a failed
writer and wannabe artist who lives in the reflected glory of the famous people he follows and
writes about -- until finally he decides, disastrously, to try to enter their world, sexually and
socially. Branagh is playing the natural Woody Allen role here and it's a weird hybrid: Allen's twitchy
psyche seems to be constantly peeking out from Branagh's blunt, blond British face. Simon is a
typical Allen nebbish, and he gets part way to his callow goals of sex or success only to foul up.
Meanwhile, in a brutal irony, the wife Simon callously abandons, Robin (Judy Davis), wins,
without really trying, almost everything her ex-husband wants: true love (with Joe Mantegna as
nice guy TV producer Tony Gardella), money and a high-profile niche in the celebrity world. (As
a TV journalist, she's seen cruising Allen's favorite restaurant, Elaine's, for interviews.) "Celebrity" has a perfect Woody Allen subject. From the beginning, he's played guys who wanted to hang out with movie stars, legends, sports or political heroes and to sleep with beautiful, famous women. In creating glamour grifter Simon, he's sending up himself. And, as usual, he's packed his movie with dozens of familiar faces -- including Leonardo DiCaprio, Wynona Ryder, Charlize Theron amd Melanie Griffith (and even Hornets and ex-Knicks basketball forward Anthony Mason), playing either themselves or exaggerations and travesties of their public personas.
As Simon, Branagh has amusingly appropriated Allen mannerisms and speech patterns: the
stammering hesitations and ineffectual body English, the darting, guilty eyes and wounded
smiles. But, brilliant as he is, Branagh can't quite make them work comedically. Allen can make
catastrophe and humiliation amusing because of the way he looks: like a daydreamer, a kvetcher,
a loser. Branagh looks like someone who could handle affairs with women in such roles as those
played by Ryder (stage actress), Theron (wild supermodel), Griffith or Famke Janssen (as
girlfriend Bonnie). Better looking than Woody, though much less handsome than Marcello in "La
Dolce Vita," he can't make Simon's plight convincing enough, though he does capture a sense of
loss, overreaching and recklessness. Allen was clearly thinking of "La Dolce Vita" when he planned this movie. But, despite its
Fellini references and plot line, "Celebrity" was shot in black and white by Ingmar Bergman's
cinematographer Sven Nykvist and, as in Allen's other Bergman pastiche-parodies, it's a comedy
saturated in angst and despair, with jokes that draw blood. The targets are many: movie art high and low, media fame on many levels. And, as in 1997's "Deconstructing Harry," it's full of self-knocks. In both "Harry" and "Celebrity" Allen punishes the character who suggests himself, exposing him in "Harry" as a philandering, dishonest, immoral coward and in "Celebrity" as a wormy wannabe, hurting his loved ones and wasting his talent. In "Celebrity," though -- with Branagh in the lead -- he's getting whipped by proxy. A comedy specialist like Robin Williams, Billy Crystal or even Michael Keaton might have gotten the laughs that Branagh misses. Here's what Joanna Connor the reviewer for my local paper the Cleveland Plain Dealer says
about Leo: Syracuse New Times: By Bill DeLapp: Celebrity does reach an emotional epiphany of sorts at the midway point, when Lee attempts to
slip his script to a Hollywood enfant terrible named Brandon (Leonardo DiCaprio), whom we
first meet as the young movie star is tearing up his posh hotel room and slapping around his
girlfriend (Rounders' Gretchen Mol). It's followed by an extended trip to Atlantic City for a
boxing match, craps, cocaine and multiple sex partners, with Lee helplessly dragged along the
way in the hopes that Brandon's fame will cement his script deal. This section is galvanized by
DiCaprio's dazzlingly scary performance (his 10 minutes in Celebrity fare better than his two
separate roles in The Man in the Iron Mask), as his spoiled star clearly revels in his effortless
power to casually humiliate Lee's desperate scribe at every opportunity. |
'The midlife crisis of Mr. Branagh’s character, a travel writer whose screenplays and novels
never quite make it,
leads to a divorce from his drab schoolteacher wife (Judy Davis) and lands him in the middle of
Leonardo
DiCaprio mania. Melanie Griffith, a bad actress, is skillfully cast as a bad actress. And in another
stroke of
inspired casting, Woody has even recruited Leonardo DiCaprio himself, in an obvious expression
of
uninhibited self-deprecation, to make a brief but riotous appearance as a tattooed, coke-sniffing,
pot-smoking,
girlfriend-beating teen movie idol. Mr. DiCaprio’s character trashes a suite at the Stanhope
hotel, threatens to
throw his sex toy (Gretchen Mol) out of a window, talks his way out of a scandal, then drags Mr.
Branagh off to a
prizefight in Atlantic City with his screaming entourage. After a night of tabloid debauchery, the
bedraggled
writer wakes up in bed with Leo and two girls and finds himself owing the crazy actor $6,000.
The reviews are in, the film has opened at the New York Film Festival on Friday, September25th! Leonardo attended the Festival...his first public appearance since The Man in the Iron Mask Premiere in New York back last March. From a live witness...one of the DOLs who was there and saw him...to all the entertainment reports, he looked very spiffy in a black suit with satin lapels, a dark shirt, a black long tie, with his hair cut short and darker than pre Titanic times. Entertainment reporter, Claudia Cohen reported that he looked "absolutely adorable"!
By JANET MASLIN ....of the New York Times...
Premiere Hordes Give Leo a Swarm Welcome 
DiCaprio Rave at N.Y. Festival
"Woody Fizzles while Leo burns" ...by Geoff Pevere...The Toronto Star movie critic...
DiCaprio---who does a hiariously self-lacerating 12 minute turn as a hotel trashing, supermodel
bashing spoiled brat of an actor----is likely to bring more new tourists to Woody’s world than
anything since the lurid Soon-Yi affair. And that ultimately reveals more about the nature of
contemporary celebrity than just about anything in Celebrity’s too-languid two-hour
running time.
Because of this miscalculation, ''Celebrity'' - which has some funny stuff, even some hilarious
stuff in it - never quite jells. Much has been made of Allen's prescient casting of Leonardo
DiCaprio as a rising young star who trashes his hotel room and behaves boorishly - riffs, I'd have
thought, on Johnny Depp's headline-grabbing trashing of an Upper East Side hotel room a few
years ago. DiCaprio brings both subtlety and vividness to the young hotshot Branagh's journalist
self-servingly chases so he can hustle a film script he wrote.
This is a beautiful, funny cast. And, as in Altman's "The Player," Allen uses the celebrity of his
ensemble to amplify his themes. (Celebrity corrupts; absolute celebrity may corrupt absolutely.)
DiCaprio's Brandon Darrow, the boyish, hedonistic superstar, living in a world of hotel orgy and
tumult, is a dead-on satiric character, and so is Griffith as casually lusty movie queen Nicole
Olivier and Andre Gregory as the pretentious Greek art film director Papadakis.