![\"Ren\u00e9e](\"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/misspotter.jpg\" "\\"misspotter\\"")
Ren\u00e9e Zellweger as Peter Rabbit's creatrix in "Miss Potter"<\/p><\/div>\n
Color Me Charmed<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n[xrr rating=4\/5]<\/p>\n
Miss Potter.<\/em>\u00a0Ren\u00e9e Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson, Matyelok Gibbs, Lloyd Owen, Anton Lesser, David Bamber, Patricia Kerrigan, and Lucy Boynton. Music by Nigel Westlake. Cinematography by Andrew Dunn, B.S.C. Edited by Robin Sales. Written by Richard Maltby, Jr. Directed by Chris Noonan. (MGM\/Phoenix Pictures, 2006. Prints by Technicolor. 92 minutes, MPAA Rating: PG).<\/strong><\/p>\nThis biopic, starring Ren\u00e9e Zellweger as famed children\u2019s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, is director Chris Noonan\u2019s first feature film since the enchanting\u00a0Babe<\/em>, released eleven years ago. Even though Zellweger\u2019s goofy brand of charm swept me off my feet in movies like\u00a0Nurse Betty<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary<\/em>, I prepared to go on auto-pilot while I watched what I thought would be a benign but sappy \u201cchick flick.\u201d<\/p>\nYet, when the opening credits rolled, I sat straight up as Zellweger dipped her painbrush into a water glass. In the close-up of the stirring brush, the water turns from translucent to a deep royal blue. I was struck with the sense of instant recognition upon seeing the work of a great but forgotten artisan materialize before my eyes.<\/p>\n
No, I\u2019m not referring to Beatrix Potter, but to another woman from the early twentieth century, Natalie Kalmus. From the 1930s through 1950, she was color consultant for Technicolor, the company behind the opulent film process invented by her husband, Herbert Kalmus. For without Technicolor\u2014a process Natalie Kalmus supervised down to the choice of paint and wardrobe fabric colors for such movies as\u00a0Gone With the Wind<\/em>,\u00a0Duel In the Sun<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Red Shoes\u2014Miss Potter<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>director of photography Andrew Dunn would have had difficulty capturing that particularly saturated hue of royal blue.<\/p>\nThis is no small detail. While there have been great advances in multi-channel digital sound, nothing on the visual side has ever topped the warmth and feel of Technicolor\u2019s dye-transfer prints, which the company reintroduced to the screen in 1998 after a twenty-year absence. Although they discontinued that process in 2002, they\u2019ve been able to maintain that trademark \u201clook,\u201d working with filmmakers at every step of production to create lush, vivid final prints with a new proprietary photochemical process. How fitting that this movie chose to honor the work of an artist whose exacting attention and mania for color detail in the printing of her work matched that of another.<\/p>\n
Miss Potter<\/em>\u00a0opens as thirty-two-year-old spinster Beatrix Potter occupies an upstairs bedroom of her upper-crust parents\u2019 London home. While it would seem she leads a charmed life of comfort and security, Beatrix is a veritable child-woman, bereft of both connubial bliss and human companionship outside her family, her life dominated by her snobbish, uptight mother (Barbara Flynn). Having rejected one unsuitable suitor after another (products of her mother\u2019s matchmaking), she has sworn off marriage. It appears that this poor little rich girl is fated to grow old, gray, and barren\u2014as though she\u2019d never lived at all.<\/p>\nBeatrix\u2019s predicament is that she\u2019s a decidedly eccentric personality trapped in a period when the social circles prescribed and proscribed by rigid British formality allow for very little behavioral deviation, particularly from women. She has no friends to speak of, save for the cheeky farm animals that she sketches and paints. In fact, the lonely woman carries on imaginary, though serious, conversations with Peter Rabbit, Hunca Munca, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Benjamin Bunny. In mid-drawing, she stops to scold them for their mischievousness, scrunching her nose, dimpling her cheeks, and squinting at them. In delightful, colorfully animated watercolor sequences, they wink back, oink, and shake their tail feathers. If another American actress affecting an English accent (such as Gwyneth Paltrow) had been cast in this silly role, I\u2019d probably have left the theater straightaway. But Zellweger has such an irrepressible ebullience that her dotty prattle seems whimsical and endearing.<\/p>\n
Little does Beatrix realize that her miniature, imaginary world holds the key that will let her escape the lonely house and make her way in the real world. When she calls upon a publisher, portfolio in hand, the Warne Brothers (Anton Lesser and David Bamber) at first dismiss her children\u2019s book as unprofitable nonsense. But they decide to publish\u00a0The Tale of Peter Rabbit<\/em>\u00a0anyhow, as a sop to their younger Pother, Norman. Acted with spirited resolve by Ewan McGregor, the sissified Norman has tired of \u201cplaying nursemaid\u201d to his elderly mother and finally put his foot down, demanding a position in the family business. He takes Beatrix\u2019s \u201cbunny book\u201d quite seriously and throws himself into its publication.<\/p>\nNow, movies with mama\u2019s boys named Norman usually wind up with female corpses in the bathtub, but this tale\u2019s passions are far more sensible. Norman\u2019s inexperience winds up being a boon to Beatrix, who\u2019s initially skeptical about his business acumen. He allows her to carefully supervise the book\u2019s presentation and printing. Soon, their business partnership blossoms into romance, although Beatrix\u2019s mother disapproves of her whirlwind courtship (as\u00a0<\/em>she intones, aghast) \u201cwith a\u00a0tradesman<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nUnfortunately, in order to give us a glimpse into her furry characters\u2019 origins, the film takes side excursions into Potter\u2019s childhood that almost undermine the movie. Child actress Lucy Boynton\u2019s portrayal of young Beatrix comes off as snotty and petulant. If the movie were merely about Beatrix Potter\u2019s quirky little \u201cdrawrings,\u201d then it would appear that she hasn\u2019t matured at all since childhood, except by no longer being annoying.<\/p>\n
However, the movie\u2019s true drama is about Beatrix\u2019s maturing into a level-headed, business-savvy woman, and the main story arc, as old as Romeo and Juliet, redeems the picture. Norman\u2019s marriage proposal forces Beatrix, for the first time in her life, to make a decision against her parents\u2019 wishes. Upon visiting her banker, she discovers that her books have made her wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. Now having the means to strike out on her own, Beatrix finally chooses independence.<\/p>\n
Richard Maltby\u2019s script also touches upon Potter\u2019s tireless efforts as a conservationist. Here, the Technicolor effect is felt most strongly, conveying breathtaking mountain and waterfront vistas filmed on location in the Isle of Man and Scotland. Another nice touch, I thought, was how the script related Potter\u2019s efforts to preserve her beloved Cumbria from land development and possible ecological despoilment. Although shown silently attending a meeting of local agitators, our Miss Potter\u2019s solution is to attend a real-estate auction and to bid on a foreclosed farm. It\u2019s an uncomplicated (though perhaps unintentional) demonstration of how the free market can provide non-governmental solutions to its own perceived failings. By the time she died, in fact, Beatrix Potter had bequeathed to the National Trust for preservation thousands of acres in England\u2019s scenic Lake District.<\/p>\n
Complementing quietly heart-rending portrayals by Zellweger and McGregor is a poignant one from Bill Paterson, playing Beatrix\u2019s enthusiastically supportive father.\u00a0 When he makes a point of purchasing one of her books, she protests that she could have simply given him a copy. \u201cBut I wanted to\u00a0buy<\/em>\u00a0one, like everyone else,\u201d he replies, beaming with a parent\u2019s pride. Emily Watson also turns in a quirky performance as Norman\u2019s sister, Millie, a proto-feminist who wears neckties and encourages Beatrix\u2019s nonconformist aspirations.<\/p>\nWhile composer Nigel Westlake\u2019s score is treacly during the film\u2019s \u201cfairy tale\u201d moments, he does what any sensible British film composer ought to during scenes depicting Beatrix\u2019s and Norman\u2019s ardor and sorrows: he lifts heavily from Elgar and Vaughan Williams, which is always welcome to my ears.<\/p>\n
And though the story is uneven in its exposition, I nonetheless found a soft spot in my heart for\u00a0Miss Potter<\/em>. It\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>a tender film that transforms the screen into a stunning Technicolor storybook, as is appropriate for this hugely popular children\u2019s author. Projecting a quirky, benevolent sense of life,\u00a0Miss Potter<\/em>\u00a0carries itself with quiet dignity and shows how one woman gained the world by keeping her soul.<\/p>\nRobert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Color Me Charmed [xrr rating=4\/5] Miss Potter.\u00a0Ren\u00e9e Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson, Matyelok Gibbs, Lloyd Owen, Anton Lesser, David Bamber, Patricia Kerrigan, and Lucy Boynton. Music by Nigel Westlake. Cinematography by Andrew Dunn, B.S.C. Edited by Robin Sales. Written by Richard Maltby, Jr. Directed by Chris Noonan. (MGM\/Phoenix Pictures, 2006. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,47,35,45,37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biopics","category-costume-dramas","category-dramas","category-foreign-films","category-independent-films","category-mreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
This biopic, starring Ren\u00e9e Zellweger as famed children\u2019s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, is director Chris Noonan\u2019s first feature film since the enchanting\u00a0Babe<\/em>, released eleven years ago. Even though Zellweger\u2019s goofy brand of charm swept me off my feet in movies like\u00a0Nurse Betty<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary<\/em>, I prepared to go on auto-pilot while I watched what I thought would be a benign but sappy \u201cchick flick.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, when the opening credits rolled, I sat straight up as Zellweger dipped her painbrush into a water glass. In the close-up of the stirring brush, the water turns from translucent to a deep royal blue. I was struck with the sense of instant recognition upon seeing the work of a great but forgotten artisan materialize before my eyes.<\/p>\n No, I\u2019m not referring to Beatrix Potter, but to another woman from the early twentieth century, Natalie Kalmus. From the 1930s through 1950, she was color consultant for Technicolor, the company behind the opulent film process invented by her husband, Herbert Kalmus. For without Technicolor\u2014a process Natalie Kalmus supervised down to the choice of paint and wardrobe fabric colors for such movies as\u00a0Gone With the Wind<\/em>,\u00a0Duel In the Sun<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Red Shoes\u2014Miss Potter<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>director of photography Andrew Dunn would have had difficulty capturing that particularly saturated hue of royal blue.<\/p>\n This is no small detail. While there have been great advances in multi-channel digital sound, nothing on the visual side has ever topped the warmth and feel of Technicolor\u2019s dye-transfer prints, which the company reintroduced to the screen in 1998 after a twenty-year absence. Although they discontinued that process in 2002, they\u2019ve been able to maintain that trademark \u201clook,\u201d working with filmmakers at every step of production to create lush, vivid final prints with a new proprietary photochemical process. How fitting that this movie chose to honor the work of an artist whose exacting attention and mania for color detail in the printing of her work matched that of another.<\/p>\n Miss Potter<\/em>\u00a0opens as thirty-two-year-old spinster Beatrix Potter occupies an upstairs bedroom of her upper-crust parents\u2019 London home. While it would seem she leads a charmed life of comfort and security, Beatrix is a veritable child-woman, bereft of both connubial bliss and human companionship outside her family, her life dominated by her snobbish, uptight mother (Barbara Flynn). Having rejected one unsuitable suitor after another (products of her mother\u2019s matchmaking), she has sworn off marriage. It appears that this poor little rich girl is fated to grow old, gray, and barren\u2014as though she\u2019d never lived at all.<\/p>\n Beatrix\u2019s predicament is that she\u2019s a decidedly eccentric personality trapped in a period when the social circles prescribed and proscribed by rigid British formality allow for very little behavioral deviation, particularly from women. She has no friends to speak of, save for the cheeky farm animals that she sketches and paints. In fact, the lonely woman carries on imaginary, though serious, conversations with Peter Rabbit, Hunca Munca, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and Benjamin Bunny. In mid-drawing, she stops to scold them for their mischievousness, scrunching her nose, dimpling her cheeks, and squinting at them. In delightful, colorfully animated watercolor sequences, they wink back, oink, and shake their tail feathers. If another American actress affecting an English accent (such as Gwyneth Paltrow) had been cast in this silly role, I\u2019d probably have left the theater straightaway. But Zellweger has such an irrepressible ebullience that her dotty prattle seems whimsical and endearing.<\/p>\n Little does Beatrix realize that her miniature, imaginary world holds the key that will let her escape the lonely house and make her way in the real world. When she calls upon a publisher, portfolio in hand, the Warne Brothers (Anton Lesser and David Bamber) at first dismiss her children\u2019s book as unprofitable nonsense. But they decide to publish\u00a0The Tale of Peter Rabbit<\/em>\u00a0anyhow, as a sop to their younger Pother, Norman. Acted with spirited resolve by Ewan McGregor, the sissified Norman has tired of \u201cplaying nursemaid\u201d to his elderly mother and finally put his foot down, demanding a position in the family business. He takes Beatrix\u2019s \u201cbunny book\u201d quite seriously and throws himself into its publication.<\/p>\n Now, movies with mama\u2019s boys named Norman usually wind up with female corpses in the bathtub, but this tale\u2019s passions are far more sensible. Norman\u2019s inexperience winds up being a boon to Beatrix, who\u2019s initially skeptical about his business acumen. He allows her to carefully supervise the book\u2019s presentation and printing. Soon, their business partnership blossoms into romance, although Beatrix\u2019s mother disapproves of her whirlwind courtship (as\u00a0<\/em>she intones, aghast) \u201cwith a\u00a0tradesman<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, in order to give us a glimpse into her furry characters\u2019 origins, the film takes side excursions into Potter\u2019s childhood that almost undermine the movie. Child actress Lucy Boynton\u2019s portrayal of young Beatrix comes off as snotty and petulant. If the movie were merely about Beatrix Potter\u2019s quirky little \u201cdrawrings,\u201d then it would appear that she hasn\u2019t matured at all since childhood, except by no longer being annoying.<\/p>\n However, the movie\u2019s true drama is about Beatrix\u2019s maturing into a level-headed, business-savvy woman, and the main story arc, as old as Romeo and Juliet, redeems the picture. Norman\u2019s marriage proposal forces Beatrix, for the first time in her life, to make a decision against her parents\u2019 wishes. Upon visiting her banker, she discovers that her books have made her wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. Now having the means to strike out on her own, Beatrix finally chooses independence.<\/p>\n Richard Maltby\u2019s script also touches upon Potter\u2019s tireless efforts as a conservationist. Here, the Technicolor effect is felt most strongly, conveying breathtaking mountain and waterfront vistas filmed on location in the Isle of Man and Scotland. Another nice touch, I thought, was how the script related Potter\u2019s efforts to preserve her beloved Cumbria from land development and possible ecological despoilment. Although shown silently attending a meeting of local agitators, our Miss Potter\u2019s solution is to attend a real-estate auction and to bid on a foreclosed farm. It\u2019s an uncomplicated (though perhaps unintentional) demonstration of how the free market can provide non-governmental solutions to its own perceived failings. By the time she died, in fact, Beatrix Potter had bequeathed to the National Trust for preservation thousands of acres in England\u2019s scenic Lake District.<\/p>\n Complementing quietly heart-rending portrayals by Zellweger and McGregor is a poignant one from Bill Paterson, playing Beatrix\u2019s enthusiastically supportive father.\u00a0 When he makes a point of purchasing one of her books, she protests that she could have simply given him a copy. \u201cBut I wanted to\u00a0buy<\/em>\u00a0one, like everyone else,\u201d he replies, beaming with a parent\u2019s pride. Emily Watson also turns in a quirky performance as Norman\u2019s sister, Millie, a proto-feminist who wears neckties and encourages Beatrix\u2019s nonconformist aspirations.<\/p>\n While composer Nigel Westlake\u2019s score is treacly during the film\u2019s \u201cfairy tale\u201d moments, he does what any sensible British film composer ought to during scenes depicting Beatrix\u2019s and Norman\u2019s ardor and sorrows: he lifts heavily from Elgar and Vaughan Williams, which is always welcome to my ears.<\/p>\n And though the story is uneven in its exposition, I nonetheless found a soft spot in my heart for\u00a0Miss Potter<\/em>. It\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>a tender film that transforms the screen into a stunning Technicolor storybook, as is appropriate for this hugely popular children\u2019s author. Projecting a quirky, benevolent sense of life,\u00a0Miss Potter<\/em>\u00a0carries itself with quiet dignity and shows how one woman gained the world by keeping her soul.<\/p>\n Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Color Me Charmed [xrr rating=4\/5] Miss Potter.\u00a0Ren\u00e9e Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson, Matyelok Gibbs, Lloyd Owen, Anton Lesser, David Bamber, Patricia Kerrigan, and Lucy Boynton. Music by Nigel Westlake. Cinematography by Andrew Dunn, B.S.C. Edited by Robin Sales. Written by Richard Maltby, Jr. Directed by Chris Noonan. (MGM\/Phoenix Pictures, 2006. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,47,35,45,37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biopics","category-costume-dramas","category-dramas","category-foreign-films","category-independent-films","category-mreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}