Word: screening
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...sexuality. He said of the African bishops: "They've moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They've yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein[!] that we've had to face in the developing world. That's just not on their radar screen." (Of course, Spong never explained--because it is unexplainable--how heliocentricity and general relativity could possibly affect traditional Christian beliefs regarding sexuality...
...Vortex in London's West End, English actor Rupert Everett responded to a audience member's nasty critique of his acting by mailing her several of his pubic hairs. Luckily, current reviewers can rest assured, because his newest collaboration with Madonna, The Next Best Thing, is a sweet screenful of love and friendship that gives the real life friends a chance to play characters similar to themselves on the big screen. As Abbie and Robert, however, the duo fail to stretch their acting ranges as they tackle roles that prove to be too similar, if not parallel, to their...
Much like her off-screen persona, Madonna plays Abbie, a single yoga instructor with a long history of unsuccessful relationships. Abbie's Rock of Gibraltar is her best friend Robert (Everett), a gay landscape architect who has not been so lucky in love himself. The two are best friends in every sense of the word-in times of crisis, they rely on one another for solace, comfort and companionship. However, their platonic relationship is soon threatened by the death of a close friend-they consequently drown their sorrows away by indulging in an afternoon of cocktails, dancing and inebriated revelry...
...little character episode speeds through the film, providing transitions before quickly returning to the center of attention: Madonna and Everett sparring, making up, or simply conversing. It is as if the audience has secretly slipped into their private sphere and is now covertly spying on what their personal off-screen lives must be like. Schlesinger appears more comfortable towards the end of the film, when the movie makes an irreversible turn from comedy to drama. This dramatic shift of tone in the last third of the film follows the arrival of Ben Cooper and the complications his romance with Abbie...
...scenes, the interactions between Madonna and Everett are entertaining. Especially in the drunken dance sequence, when Robert and Abbie frolic about the house of one of Robert's employers in the graceful style of Astaire and Rogers, one cannot help but get a sense of voyeurism. Because their on screen and off screen personas are so similar, it is often difficult to see when the movie begins, and where reality settles in the picture...