And now you know why I went to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. My interview with “Black Swan” star (and likely Oscar nominee) Natalie Portman is the cover story for the new issue of NOW — and she and director Darren Aronofsky discuss the film in greater detail in the audio clips, so don’t miss those. There’s also this fun little thing about her body of work.
Also in this issue, I interview Yeo Joon Han, writer and director of the very, very entertaining new Malaysian musical “Sell Out!”, which opens tomorrow at the Royal.
Oh, and “Kings of Pastry”, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ documentary about cake bosses, opens at the Lightbox today. I thought it was a pretty fun little trifle when I caught it at Hot Docs earlier this year; Susan was slightly less enthused. You might want to check it out, is all I’m saying.
I liked Black Swan, and I agree that Portman probably deserves an Oscar nomination. The role is perfectly tailored to play against her usual stiffness as an actress. However, I’m not sure that she’ll get a nomination.
My fear is that Black Swan will wind up performing like Let Me In did, and will be the kind of thing that plays great at film festivals but that regular audiences have no interest in ever paying to see. If so, it’ll probably be forgotten by Oscar time.
Hopefully I’m wrong. I guess we’ll know more after it opens this weekend.