Word: mcgrath
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There comes a point when, for health reasons, one has to cease getting furious at Hollywood for mangling great novels and instead allow a movie version to stand on its own. This season's Austen fare, "Emma," adapted and directed by Douglas McGrath, borrows the book's social satire, but unwisely replaces its canny ironic bite with what in comparison resembles absurd slapstick. We can enjoy the product of this limited adaptation--funny, outrageously decorated--but it's anything but great Austen...
...youth allows you to forgive Emma," says McGrath, for whom Paltrow was the only choice. "When you think of other actors who are 21, your options aren't promising. You have a grim poster staring you in the face. It's like, 'Shannen Doherty is Emma'? I don't think...
...called class--back to American movie acting. She has shown glimpses of it in earlier work, as Pitt's anxious wife in Seven and as the ultimate prom date in The Pallbearer. But now Paltrow has a movie all her own. She plays, beautifully, the title role in Douglas McGrath's sweet new take on the Jane Austen novel Emma...
...which will air on the A&E Network next February) must wish the release dates had been reversed: their Masterpiece Theatre-style adaptation should have been seen before the MTV-meets-Saturday Night Live parody. Won't audiences now be disappointed if Paltrow doesn't say, "As if"? McGrath, who was nominated for an Oscar writing Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen, has a ready reply: "She does say, 'As if.' But it's in the middle of a sentence. Things like, 'It is not as if I were not displeased with you, Mr. Knightly...
Could two roles be farther apart than Ginnie and Emma? Nonetheless, the first part helped her get the second. "I grew up in Texas," McGrath says, "and my friends and I used to just kill ourselves laughing when movie actors did Texas accents. People always sounded like the Clampetts. But Gwyneth did the most impeccable Texas accent in Flesh and Bone. She has an amazing ear. And, of course, everything else is perfect. Her speaking voice is a beautiful instrument, and she photographs like a dream--all the light goes to her on the set, and she seems to absorb...