Kyra Sedgwick would be more realistic casting. Winslet is much too young to have a teenage daughter even in 1931 or whenever it was. But Winslet's the It Girl after her performance in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. Personally I think Leonardo DeCaprio was robbed in that movie. It was really his movie. His performance was powerful, well-considered, and very difficult, still he lost both the Golden Globe and the Oscar. I suppose they'll give him an oscar five years from now for a performance in a movie about a rogue cop who is thrown from a window, lands on a police car and is only bruised when the camera catches up to him. Sure, Sean Penn was great in MILK, but how many oscars are they going to give the guy now that they've finally stopped ignoring him.
A new MILDRED PIERCE is really a pretty good idea if they throw away the Crawford script and rewrite from the original manuscript. MP is perhaps my favorite Cain story, or a toss-up with SERENADE, but the movie, as good as it was, missed the bigger point of the story... and it's a point that should resonate with modern parents, too, as the US has become a nation of Mildred Pierces. A mini-series might actually be able to do the story justice.
It was not a popular book until the movie came out. Cain said he wrote two type of books, character driven, and plot driven stories. He says he always made money with plot driven books, but never, at least initially, with the character driven. MILDRED PIERCE is a character study and so, less popular than THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, or DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Very successful movie, though, because they added a murder to it. At least that was Cain's take. Mildred is one of my favorite heroines. I suspect Dagny Taggart owes a lot to her.
Patrick King
--- On Mon, 8/17/09, Eric Chambers <nqexile@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
From: Eric Chambers <nqexile@yahoo.com.au>
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Mildred Pierce
To: rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, August 17, 2009, 2:05 AM
Any thoughts on the projected remake of 'Mildred Pierce' as a TV mini-series with Director and Script-writer Todd Haynes and Kate Winslet in the Joan Crawford role?
http://www.cinemati cal.com/2009/ 08/16/kate- winslet-heads- for-tv-in- mildred-pierce- remake
Eric
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