20 for 2009 - Nine

Number 8 on my list is Nine. Obviously I could have planned this better.

Nine is a film based on a musical, based on Fellini's 8½ which is in part based on his own feelings of directors block. With me so far? You see, the film involves a director struggling to make his next film, struggling because his recent work has been critically hailed and he doesn't want to make a bomb, and struggling because of the state of the various relationships in his life. Including those with his wife, mistress, mother and muse.

Admittedly films about filmmaking and musicals can seem a little daunting at first but 8½ is a comic gem as well as being a deeply personal look at the effects of leading a creative life and of alienation in modern society; and the Broadway adaptation ran for 729 performances and won 5 Tony's back in 1982 including best musical and best original score for Maury Yeston. Overall then this pedigree appears to be pretty good.


In the middle of this picture are a number of women complicating the life of our director. Women, eh?



It doesn't stop there mind. This does indeed sound like an interesting enough prospect but then you add the cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Kate Hudson. That's a combined 17 Academy Award nominations betwen them (6 wins). It's hard to imagine any cast coming close to that sort of pedigree.

They've been brought together under the steady hand of Rob Marshall, who scored big with the academy with Chicago in 2002 but faltered with Memoirs of a Geisha 3 years later. I suspect this is a chance to go back and prove what he can do (Rob's a choreographer by trade).

I know I'll be at the front row when it opens.