Fall Back!

Summer is finally fading, the nights are getting cold again, and each new day promises a little less daylight than the one before.  While most people are scrambling to fill prescriptions for seasonal depression before the darkness really sets in, I'd like to take a leisurely stroll through the cinematic pumpkin patch for an early peek at this year's harvest. 2009 is sure to have its share of prizewinners, just as others are destined to rot on the vine.

A proper fall movie preview would have begun its coverage last weekend, as tradition dictates that the cinematic season spans the last four months of each year, excepting Labor Day weekend, which which annually suffers from summer's worst skid marks as studios tend to dump low-risk trash en masse.  When "Tyler Perry's" anything is the most promising title of any given weekend's new releases, it's best to move onto the Oscar bait and pretend "Sorority Row" never happened.

"BRIGHT STAR" (September 18)
Apparition, the earnest studio upstart from Picturehouse topper Bob Berney, begins its maiden voyage  this weekend with platforming flagship "Bright Star" appearing in select cities.  Jane Campion has been sorely missed, with "Bright Star" marking a welcome return to form after the six-year break she took to follow "In the Cut" with something more...coherent, perhaps.

"Bright Star" is as coherent as movies get, depicting the notably clothed romance between tubucular poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and gifted, sensible seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) without extending artistic license to bodice-ripping lengths.  In Cannes last May, the film was received with nearly religious devotion, the giddy lot of cinéastes dispatching the rapturous collective acknowledgment of Campion's return to the romantic realm of "The Piano," the 1993 masterpiece that made Campion the first ever woman to win the Palme d'Or.

What "Bright Star" keeps buttoned would have been upstaged by the aesthetic splendor on display in the world of Campion's picture, with ordinary landscapes and interiors sumptuously photographed by Greg Frazier to induce spells of sheer visual bliss that echo the impossibly beautiful feelings shared by Keats and his muse. Sure, he's dying of uncurable disease and will be six feet under in a few short years, but just look at that magnificent meadow of lavender!

Opening Friday in limited release with gradual expansion plans extending well into October, "Bright Star" looks to remain a bright fixture in the specialty market all season long.  Powered by pleasant buzz from amorous audiences to keep it sailing until it gets its second wind from critics' groups and precursory awards attention, Apparition's first feature won't be disappearing until the long winter has passed and spring fever begins anew with Academy accolades.