The Whistleblower
Drama
Director: Larysa Kondracki
Cast: Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci, Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn, Roxana Condurache
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Rachel Weisz possesses this rare quality — she is beautiful without being distractingly gorgeous, the latter being a liability that sometimes prevents actresses from comfortably slipping into the skin of plain-Jane characters. In The Whistleblower, Weisz plays Kathryn Bolkovac, a police officer so dedicated to her job that she loses a husband as well as custody of her teenaged daughter over it. Apart from delivering a powerhouse performance, she also does a credible job of never letting us think of her as a gorgeous movie star.
Not only is she the best thing about Kondracki’s debut feature, but Weisz is also pretty much the only reason The Whistleblower doesn’t turn into a morbid docu-feature. The story, based on actual events involving human trafficking in war-torn Bosnia circa 1999, is extremely compelling. However, the film is emotionally distant, possessing a stubborn reluctance to delve into the emotions and motivations of all its characters. Weisz’s Kathryn, who takes it upon herself to be the eponymous whistleblower, adds a much-needed touch of humanism to this film.
In terms of subject matter, this film reminded me of the underrated Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, which released earlier this year. Watts played a role very similar to what Weisz has done here, and the two performances are comparable in their intensities and overall effectiveness. An Oscar nomination would be well deserved.
There is also a powerful ensemble cast of veteran actresses lending wonderful support here, from Vanessa Redgrave’s dignified portrayal of Madeleine Rees, a hapless UN official, to Roxana Condurache’s heartbreakingly good performance as Raya, a Ukranian teenage girl who becomes Kathryn’s reason to stay in Bosnia. Uprooted from her family, Kathryn’s motivations are clear — she sees in Raya her own daughter, and will do anything in her power to protect her.
Unfortunately, the script, written by Eilis Kirwan and Kondracki herself, doesn’t try and explain the motivations of the perpetrators of the crime (which apparently involves everyone from UN peacekeeping forces to high-ranking diplomats) apart from a throwaway line (“They’re whores of war”). This is just my opinion, but it’s always better when there is at least an attempt to deconstruct evil rather than just painting it all with the same shade of black.
This is not a film that entertains and allows you to slip back into your comfortable reclining multiplex chair while you dig into a large tub of popcorn. The Whistleblower is well paced, but frequently difficult to watch because of the graphic violence that is depicted. It packs a visceral wallop, but ultimately, one is left wishing Kondracki could’ve gone the distance and bundled an emotional wallop along with that as well.

Source: MiD-DAY.com

In horror drama Dream House, English actress Rachel Weisz stars alongside Daniel Craig to play wife and husband respectively whose dream of a perfect home goes up in smoke after discovering its horrific evil past.
Below, Weisz discusses her new role.
Tell us about your character.
I play Libby. I’m married to Will (Daniel Craig). We have two beautiful little girls. When the movie begins we’ve just recently moved to the suburbs — into our dream house. I am an artist and I spend most of my time painting the walls and doing home improvements.
What’s Will’s life like at the start of the film?
Will has been a publisher at a very high-end Manhattan publishing company. He’s basically a workaholic and that’s how he has become so successful. He’s worked incredibly hard, but decided to quit his job and spend more time with his family and fulfil his dream of writing a novel.
Tell us a little about where you moved to.
We moved to a suburb outside Manhattan and in the kind of place that in England we’d call the commuter belt. I don’t know if you say that in America but you know it’s that kind of 40-minute train ride from Manhattan. Before the move, we lived in a little apartment in New York but we sold it and bought a proper family house in the suburbs.

Continue reading…

EDIT: I added another interview. Click here to read it!

Rachel Weisz proves she’s still a yummy mummy after four decades – the British beauty turns 41, today. Starting her career in the drama department of Britain’s posh Cambridge university, Weisz soon caught the eyes of casting directors around the world and has become one of the U.K. most glamorous exports. From action queen to indie dream, Weisz has fought ancient enemies in The Mummy films, proved her comic timing in Fred Claus and provided an Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardner. And as the actress moves into her forties, we have come up with 10 terrific facts to quench your thirst for Rachel.
- Weisz’s film career could have started a lot earlier – she was offered a part in Richard Gere’s movie King David in 1985 when she was just 14 – but her parents wouldn’t let her do it.
- She gets her dark good looks from her mother’s Italian ancestry.
- She’s multi-talented: not only did she gain a degree from Cambridge – one of England’s most revered universities – she is fluent in German.
- For all those who have struggled saying her last name, it’s pronounced Vice.
- She has been linked to Bond star Daniel Craig after splitting from Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky last year. He is the father of her son, Henry.
- Weisz took over from supermodel Kate Moss as the face of Burberry in 2006.
- Gemma Arterton is Rachel’s biggest fan – insisting she’d “love” a career like the actress.
- She was voted the woman most men want as their wife by British magazine Esquire.
- Sienna Miller missed out on Weisz’s Oscar-winning role in The Constant Gardner in 2005 after a home dye disaster left her hair green at the audition.
- She was a radical feminist in her student days.

Source: Contactmusic

Katie Holmes will portray Jackie Kennedy in a new mini-series. The Batman Begins actress will play the legendary First Lady in the eight-hour series The Kennedys on The History Channel. Greg Kinnear will star as President John F. Kennedy in the biographical dramatisation – which focuses on the years of his premiership between 1961 and his assassination in Texas in 1963 – and will be executively produced by Joel Surnow. British star Tom Wilkinson will play family patriarch Joe Kennedy Sr. in the programmes, which are the first time the channel has forayed into making a scripted production. The Kennedy dynasty has proved a popular subject for films recently, with Jeanne Tripplehorn playing Jackie in 2009 TV movie Grey Gardens and Brit actress Rachel Weisz rumoured to be taking the role of the former First Lady in an upcoming big-screen biopic.

Source: Contactmusic