Anywhere But Here

Starring: Natalie Portman, Susan Sarandon Director: Wayne Wang Original UK Premiere: 1999 Dvd Release: 1st March, 2004 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish

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Anywhere But Here is a 1999 film by Wayne Wang starring Susan Sarandon & Natalie Portman, based on the novel by Mona Simpson. Adele August is eccentric woman, who leaves her husband in a small Wisconsin town & goes to Beverly Hills to realize her dreams, even though she may not know what those dreams are herself. She takes her daughter, Ann with herself, though she would like to stay. When living in Beverly Hills, Adele improvises from day to day, often being unable to pay the bills. She wants her daughter to become an actress, but Ann is much more interested in going away to college. After Adele fails in many respects, she accepts her daughters plans & decides to help her. The story by Mona Simpson, bears some similarities to Simpsons own youth, as young Wisconsin girl who moves west to California with her divorcee mother, Joanne, although Simpson denies any literal ties. Anywhere But Here is the first album recorded in 1996 & released in 1997 by a punk band, The Ataris.

This film deals with a theme with which almost all mothers of teenage daughters are familiar. This is a coming of age story which sees Natalie Thompson play the teenage daughter of a loud, flighty, impractical dreamer, wonderfully portrayed by Susan Sarandon.

Sarandon is on her second marriage, living in Wisconsin with her teenage daughter. She is bored by her nice, dull, skating instructor, second husband. She is tired of living among her complacent, middle class relatives. She dreams of riches, stardom for her daughter, & a more exciting life. She has dreams, big ones, but really lacks the wherewithal to make them happen.

Her daughter is a bit of a mouse, who likes all that Sarandon seems to abhor. She likes Wisconsin, her family, & what she views as relative normalcy. Unlike her mother, she does not feel called upon to explore new horizons. Naturally, given the divergence of their dreams, they inevitably clash, & the daughter, given her youth, must go where her mother decides to wander. Here, it turns out to be Beverly Hills, the land of milk & honey, or so Sarandon thinks.

While living on the fringes in Beverly Hills, Sarandon sees that her daughter attends a good school. Yet, they live like vagabonds, moving from apartment to apartment as the rent becomes due & cannot be paid, & the lights are turned off for non-payment of bills. The mother, a holly go lightly, wants to live well & meet the exciting man of her dreams who will enable her to live out her fantasy life. She is, at times, desperately pathetic, looking for love in all the wrong places. Her daughter, while responsible & a good student, can be an insufferable little prig who, when the chips are down, however, remains loyal to her errant mother.

Their differences in style cause them to clash & misunderstand each other with resultant angst over the years. As time goes on, their life does seem to stabilize. It is not until the daughter is ready for college, however, that Sarandon fully realizes that her dreams are not necessarily those of her daughter. It is then, that they both realize just how much each loves the other, as Sarandon finally steps up to home plate. This is an enjoyable mother/daughter flick.

Natalie Portman is an Israeli - American actress. Portman is a stage name taken from her grandmothers maiden name. Her ethnic background is Polish-Jewish. She was born in Jerusalem but her family soon relocated to Maryland, then Connecticut, before settling down on Long Island. She was discovered in a pizza parlor at the age of eleven by an agent for Revlon, who wanted her to model. After being introduced to acting agents, she made her movie debut at the age of twelve, playing a child who befriends a much older assassin in Luc Besson s Léon. That role began a pattern of portraying characters that are unusually smart, mature, and/or grown-up for their ages. Portman went on to charm critics & viewers alike in Beautiful Girls & played a minor part in Everyone Says I Love You. She is known among Star Wars fans for her role as Padmé Amidala in the prequels, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones & Revenge of the Sith. She is one of dozens of celebrities who played themselves in a cameo appearance in the 2001 comedy Zoolander. Posters Of Natalie Portman

Editors Choice: Revenge Of The Sith, V For Vendetta, Attack Of The Clones, Star Wars, Garden State, Where The Heart Is, Anywhere But Here, Star Wars Episode Iii: Revenge Of The Sith, View DVDology

Susan Sarandon is an Academy Award winning American actress. Born Susan Abigail Tomalin in New York, New York, she attended The Catholic University of America in 1964, where she met & married fellow student Chris Sarandon, whom she would divorce fifteen years later while still retaining her married name as her stage name. In 1970 she went to a cattle call for the film Joe with Chris and, although he did not get a part, Susan received the major role of the disaffected teen who disappears into the seedy underworld. She did not follow up on the success of that movie, taking roles in lesser films such as Lovin Molly ; it was five more years before she appeared in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the cult classic. That same year, she also played the female lead in The Great Waldo Pepper, opposite Robert Redford. She was nominated for an Oscar in 1980 for Atlantic City, but was still not a household name until the 1988 film Bull Durham. It was while filming that movie that she met actor Tim Robbins, with whom she established a relationship that continues to this day. Posters Of Alfie

Editors Choice: Alfie, The Banger Sisters, Anywhere But Here, Dead Man Walking, Earthly Possessions, Stepmom, Bull Durham, Lorenzos Oil, View DVDology

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