The financial woes that KO’ed Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But The Truth last month were briefly forgotten when this incontestably fine film, which I called “Lurie’s best, hands down” in my 8.18.08 review, was honored last night as the opening attraction at the 2009 Santa Barbara Film Festival.
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Nothing But The Truth costar Noah Wyle, director-writer Rod Lurie at last night’s after-party in downtown Santa Barbara.
The Bob Yari Chapter 11 tragedy, announced on 12.13.08, turned Nothing But The Truth into an instant dead horse — no bookings, no ads, no nothin’.
I praised NBTT “because it’s feels smoother and crisper and more confidently dug into the soil than The Contender or Resurrecting The Champ or The Last Castle. It’s a growth-spurt thing, a movie that says, almost with a kind of shrug, ‘Okay, now I really know what I’m doing.’ And because each and every actor nails what they’ve been hired to do like the pros they are, and I don’t just mean the leads — Kate Beckinsale, Vera Farmiga, Alan Alda and Matt Dillon, all of whom hit triples and homers.
“I also mean costars Noah Wyle and David Schwimmer and even the homie-girl actresses who play Beckinsale’s cellmates when she goes to the pound for refusing to give up a source. I mean everyone up and down. Everybody delivers , nobody ‘acts.’
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“Yes, I know and am friendly with Lurie, but I know good craft and good material when I see it, and I’m sure as hell not going to sit on what I know and feel because of a reverse-blowjob concern.”
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