Kellams: This is Ozarks at Large with me in the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio. Our culture vulture, April Wallace, welcome back.
Wallace: Thank you.
Kellams: Good to see you. We usually start when you have a question that we can all consider. I do want to tell folks that you've decided, and I like this, this week we're going to talk about Nicole Kidman.
Wallace: Yes, the one and only.
Kellams: The one and only. We'll get to that in a minute. But what's your question this week?
Wallace: Okay, so this week, do you watch the opening credits every time?
Kellams: It depends who has the remote control, and it depends on the program. Obviously, I don't know if this happens anymore, if you're watching live, you don't have a choice.
Wallace: Mm-hmm. But I did notice recently, one of my comfort shows is Parks and Recreation. I'll watch, I love the little opening theme, and the opening is only a few seconds long. But if Laura has the remote, she hits skip. It's such a personal preference. I tend to always watch the opening credits pretty much no matter what show it is, because I think it has a purpose, like it's setting the scene, like they're telling you something about the show. They're reminding you of the world that you're heading into. I always found it a little annoying when like my college buddies would fast forward through the opening credits of like Game of Thrones, or...
Kellams: Oh, no, no, no, no, you can't. No one should skip Game of Thrones because there are little clues sometimes, and the opening is not the same every time. Plus the music is great, and the computer generated building of the... You can't. I don't care who you are, you can't skip that intro.
Wallace: Right.
Kellams: What brought you to Nicole Kidman?
Wallace: Well, my husband and I love to watch movies that one or the other of us have not seen. And so I love '90s movies, and so he pulled out "To Die For" the other day, and it kind of set me on a Nicole Kidman kick. I assume that you have seen "To Die For."
Kellams: It's my favorite Nicole Kidman movie.
Wallace: Is it really?
Kellams: Yes.
Wallace: It's a great place to start. Okay, this came out in 1995, and these days you can watch it on Netflix. I love a movie that is about a reporter, I just do, it was part of what made me want to be a reporter. But, Annette, Nicole Kidman as Suzanne Stone, she's a charming, if misguided, wannabe TV reporter. She's ditzy, but she knows just enough to kind of fake it wherever she is. And she talks her way into a small weather reporting gig at a local TV station, like practically plowing down Ed Grant, who is played by Wayne Knight of Seinfeld, to be let in, and then just positively, like, peppering and bothering him to death with her incessant ideas day after day of like, here's a segment I could do, here's how we could make this station better, here's how I could be a real reporter for you and not just spit out the weather.
She ramps up and up, and she wants to be an investigative reporter, and she somehow gets on this kick for like crafting a documentary-style series on teens in the '90s and trying to craft something for them, by them, sort of thing. And it's a great idea, but at the same time, she's falling into this trap of thinking that her blue-collar husband is the reason she's not progressing in her career, instead of what is probably holding her back, being in the wrong market or not having the right kinds of experience.
Kellams: Training.
Wallace: Right. Yeah, for starters. And she gets enmeshed with one of the teens in particular, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and makes him believe she's in love with him, and kind of manipulates him into, well, you know, this isn't spoilers because it's been 30 years, murdering her husband so that she can get ahead. But it has consequences she doesn't expect.
Kellams: She did not receive an Oscar for this role, I don't know if she was even nominated, but she's just brilliant in this movie.
Kellams: Very, very. And it's on Netflix, you say?
Wallace: It's on Netflix. Highly recommend.
Kellams: What's your favorite Nicole Kidman movie?
Wallace: Fur. It is a movie based on Diane Arbus, the artistic photographer's life. It is not real, it is an imagined portrayal of her. She stars in it across from Robert Downey Jr. In it, she is a photographer's wife, like a commercial photographer's wife. And her role at the beginning is that she is like a studio assistant, but primarily a wife and mother. And she notices one day, in the lobby of their apartment, an unusual person who's a bit secretive. He's moving in upstairs from them, and it's Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Lionel, who has a condition that grows hair all over his body very quickly. And they become friends as he recognizes her artistic talent as a photographer apart from her husband. And he fosters that in her, they become friends and eventually lovers, and he introduces her to this whole alternative set of people, people who have been othered. And she begins to photograph them as a development of what we come to know her for.
Kellams: Interesting.
Wallace: A more recent one, I don't know if you've seen this, is a series called "The Perfect Couple."
Kellams: No.
Wallace: This is also on Netflix, and it just came out a couple years ago. The funny thing is, the main character that Nicole Kidman plays, Greer Garrison Winbury, is a famous novelist on Nantucket. And before I knew that this was based on an Elin Hilderbrand novel, it made me think of her.
Kellams: Interesting.
Wallace: Because she is also a novelist who lives on Nantucket. Greer is like a famous, long time mystery novelist who just wants to give her son a grand wedding, and Benji and his fiancee, Amelia, arrive for their rehearsal the night before the wedding. And they have all their family friends there. But the wedding doesn't go on as planned, because they find a body in the harbor. So then it becomes an investigative time of the whole family. It's really entertaining, because in the way that you might expect, you have to suspect everybody.
Kellams: Oh, I love a good whodunit.
Wallace: I love a good whodunit. It's so good. So there's three siblings, her three sons of hers, and they each, of course, have their own problems. And we come to appreciate them all, I wouldn't say we love them all, but there's Greer and her husband, Tag, who's played by Liev Schreiber. They've been married for 29 years, and she has a book that's about to come out right after the wedding. And so there's a book launch, and there's all this pressure that, like, media will be paying attention to us anyway because we're a famous couple, but also because the next book in this long time series is about to come out. So there's a lot of pressure to create this picture perfect family on the island. And, you know, a murder really puts a wrench in that.
Kellams: And this was played straight. This was a drama. All right. How many episodes do you remember?
Wallace: It's short, it's six or eight, something like that. And the bride is Amelia, who's played by Eve Hewson. She was Maid Marian in 2018's Robin Hood. I first saw her in Harlan Coben's "Behind Her Eyes," and just fell in love with her from that. So she and Greer are kind of head to head for a good deal of the series, and she has just that enigmatic look that is perfect for that character, because it's her best friend who has died.
Kellams: Ah, and it's self-contained?
Wallace: Yeah, one season.
Kellams: There's no tacked on cliffhanger, that...
Wallace: No, but if you want more, it happens to be number three in a series by Elin Hilderbrand, in the books.
Kellams: In the books, okay.
Wallace: Another one that I fully appreciated recently was "Hemingway & Gellhorn." So Nicole Kidman plays Martha Gellhorn, the American journalist who was a war correspondent, and that's how she met Hemingway. This one had an element, we talked about Spider noir having the option to watch either in color or in black and white. The director of this movie makes that choice for you. It's mostly in color, but the war scenes are in black and white, and I think that bothers some viewers. It didn't particularly bother me, because it's kind of like a tool, you know, you can easily tell your viewer that you are flashing back by doing that, or you're in a different place when you change color.
Kellams: Right.
Wallace: But I liked the storyline. I'm a person who reads about Hemingway for fun, and, you know, he was married four times, he was this enormous personality. We don't know a ton about each one of the wives, and so, like, having a more public wife who was powerful in her own career, makes for a very interesting tug of war with their egos, and to see it play out as a relationship was pretty interesting, because they start out attracted by their mutual aspirations. They're both typing at the typewriter, but it's irritating to her because he can just pound it out and walk away, she just toils for hours before she writes a word. But then we see her become a little more celebrated at times than he is, and his ego is okay, and he begins to... they return to America, he begins to work on a book, and she gets offered a book, and he wants her to be like her and do a book, but she wants to cover more wars. They get married, she convinces him to follow her for once. It's just dynamics you wouldn't normally see in the 1940s.
Kellams: April Wallace, thank you so much.
Wallace: Thank you.
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