The Devil Wears Prada & The Illusionist

I've seen two films in the last few days - both mainstream entertainment productions. The first was The Devil Wears Prada, my latest Amazon DVD rental. When it was first released I couldn'tn quite justify the cost and effort of going to see it at the cinema, but I knew I'd want to see it at some point, if nothing else because of Meryl Streep. She's my age, for a start, and is simply getting better and better. Well, she thoroughly deserved her Oscar nomination, effortlessly dominating the screen in all her scenes, and looking marvellous at the same time. The film is thoroughly entertaining; slight but well-put-together and excellently acted, not just by Streep. Anne Hathaway was pretty good, acting with sharp-eyed, intelligent innocence. The offices, bars and streets of New York were all convincingly portrayed, and I've strongly recommended the film to all my female relatives, daughter, sister-in-law and niece, with the caveat that their brothers, boyfriends and husbands are likely to run a mile!
I took ny nephew and niece (11 and 14) to see The Illusionist at the cinema. The film seems very popular for some reason; I'm not sure why as there are no major stars in it, and it doesn't exactly leap out at you as a must-see. Much has been made of the fact that the film is supposed to have suffered by the prior release of The Prestige, also about Victorian magicians, but the fact remains that The Prestige is a vastly superior film on every level. Edward Norton isn't a bad actor, but he couldn't quite carry the film. He probably does have the ability to provide a strong centre to a film, didn't manage it here. I knew nothing about the director, Neil Burger (he's directed once prior to this, a low-budget film called Interview with an Assasin, which I'd never heard of). Apparently he's lined up to direct the next-but-one Narnia film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader; I have to wonder what he's actually done to be given such a high-profile job, but he's not the first director to gather himself a reputation without actually having achieved anything substantial.
Anyway - The Illusionist, while having some good moments, also has some long, dull spells, and I have to confess my concentration wandered for much of the first half, and I confess to briefly dozing off a couple of times. The film perked up, though, and improved. The scenes when Eisenhem, the magician, performs his magic tricks in the theatre, are very well done indeed, creating palpable tension, and Norton does very well here. But the female lead, played by an actress I'd never heard of, called Jessica Biel, suffered by not only physically resembling Scarlet Johansen, who plays the female lead in The Prestige, and therefore appears to be SJ-lite, but, seems as insubstantial as one of the wraiths that Norton/Eisenhem conjures up as part of his routime.
My main problem was that, because I kept losing concentration, I couldn't help focusing on Norton's extremely bad wig and poorly-dyed facial hair, a fatal flaw as once you've noticed it, it obscures everything else. The film did pick in the last 45 minutes, but there was rather too much heritage-mingering, with costumes and landscapes taking centre-stage. I'm getting a bit bored with period authenticity and am looking for something a bit different, and again, The Prestige do better here. I really must get the DVD out and see it again and see if my feelings that it's a better film, are justified
I had a look at a few reviews - needless to say, my bete-noir, Peter Bradshaw, preferred it to The Prestige, which he found 'swollen' and 'self-admiring', and described it as 'smart, sharp and economically-achieved'. Philip French, my favourite, agrees with me about TP, calling it 'probably a masterpiece'; 'large, dense and ambitious', though he liked The Illusionist, and, as usual, his comments are perceptive enough to encourage me to take another look at it when it comes out on DVD.
I did find it somewhat muddled and flaccid for the first hour, and, interestingly, my niece, who provided me with an intelligent and succinct critique in the car on the way home, without any prompting, concurred. I encourage her to think about movies, and she's quite a fan. I told her she should get The Prestige out on DVD (she hasn't seen it yet), and tell me what she thinks. It'd be a good exercise in comparing and contrasting - just the sort of thing to do as practice for GCSE English, and much more fun than the usual sort of dull stuff they have to do for homework.
Anyway, it was a fun afternoon, and I'm glad I made the effort to go out. My nephew thought it was 'great' and that was all I got out of him. Some good trailers, including the new Zhang Yimou, The Curse of the Golden Flower, which I shall surely be taking him to see.