Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Oden by Jessica Frances FRANCES FARMER PLAYED BY JESSICA LANGE. ''FRANCES'' is based on the sad, profoundly troubled life of Frances Farmer, the golden-bright Seattle high-school girl who had some measure of Hollywood fame in the 1930's, in such films as ''Rhythm on the Range'' and ''Come and Get It,'' and one Broadway triumph in the Group Theater's production of Clifford Odets's ''Golden Boy.'' In the early 1940's Frances Farmer went into a physical and emotional tailspin that, according to this film, was arrested by something that can only be described as ice-pick therapy. Apparently with her mother's consent, she was subjected to a transorbital lobotomy that turned a talented but disturbed woman into an eerily calm humanoid who lived on until 1970. At the age of 56, Frances Farmer died of throat cancer in Indianapolis where, she spent her last years as the hostess of an afternoon television program. ''Frances,'' which today begins a one-week engagement at the Cinema 2 to qualify for 1982 film awards, is such a mixed up movie that it still seems to be unfinished, as if Graeme Clifford, the director, and the writers hadn't yet discovered the real point of the Frances Farmer story. It contains too many show-down scenes, too much raw material that hasn't been refined, and more brutality than either the movie or the audience can make dramatic sense of. Yet it also contains a magnificent performance by Jessica Lange in the title role. Here is a performance so unfaltering, so tough, so intelligent and so humane that it seems as if Miss Lange is just now, at long last, making her motion picture debut. After fooling around in things like ''King Kong,'' ''How to Beat the High Cost of Living'' and even the pretentious ''The Postman Always Rings Twice,'' this stunningly beautiful woman emerges as a major film actress. The excitement of watching her in ''Frances'' goes a long way toward transforming the film, which is a colossal downer, into an experience that is, if not exactly uplifting, genuinely memorable. The screenplay by Eric Bergren and Christopher Devore with Nicholas Kazan, picks up the story of Frances when, as a high-school student, she wins a prize for an essay that was pretty inflamatory for the 1930's, the subject being the death of God. The youthful Frances, the apple of the eye of her ambitious mother Lillian (Kim Stanley) and supported meekly by her father (Bart Burns), goes on to win an acting contest sponsored by a left-wing newspaper. The prize is a trip to Russia and a chance to observe the Moscow Art Theater at work. Though Lillian Farmer is ambitious, she is a daughter of her time and has a horror of Communism. When Frances defies her and goes to Moscow, it is the beginning of a series of mother-daughter confrontations that lead eventually to the surgical destruction of a personality. After making such a point of the importance of the Moscow trip, neither the movie nor Frances ever mentions it again. In about 30 seconds of screen time, Frances has returned from Moscow, worked briefly in New York and gone on to Hollywood as a Paramount Pictures contract player. After another few seconds, she is the acclaimed star of Samuel Goldwyn's ''Come and Get It.'' Frances, however, is restless. She wants to act. She leaves Hollywood to work in summer stock, acts in the Group Theater's ''Golden Boy,'' and has a disastrous affair with the playwright Odets (Jeffrey DeMunn). Then it's back to Hollywood, work in a series of B-movies, and an introduction to amphetemines, which, when taken with booze, turn her into a paranoid monster, land her in jail and then in a succession of mental hospitals that make Bedlam look like Grossinger's. Moving in and out of the film is a fictional character named Harry York, a mysterious, one-man Greek chorus played by playwright-actor Sam Shepard. Just who or what Harry York is supposed to be is difficult to understand. When he first becomes Frances's lover during the early years in Seattle, he appears to be a left-wing political organizer. Later, during Frances's Group Theater days, he is a bookie. Still later, when he rescues Frances from a mental hospital in California, he seems to be nothing more than a figment of the writer's desperation, as well as of Frances's imagination. Mr. Clifford a successful film editor (Nicholas Roeg's ''Don't Look Back''), is awfully good with the actors but he never successfully fixes on a method for the film. At times, it is old-fashioned, romantic, biographical melodrama. At other times ''Frances'' looks almost as stylized as ''Pennies From Heaven.'' Wherever Frances goes in Depression-ridden Seattle, New York or Los Angeles, the landscape appears to be decorated with photogenic bums, as if to certify her social conscience. At one point she must ask significantly, ''How can I go on making movies when people are starving?'' More damaging to the coherence of the movie is its failure to take a stand on whether or not Frances's mental breakdowns are real or whether she is the victim of an initially well-meaning, eventually vindictive mother, of the Hollywood establishment and, most provocatively, of the Group Theater's Clifford Odets and Harold Clurman. In spite of the film's very real faults with structure and style, Miss Lange is consistently splendid. She's as fine as the stubborn, sharp-minded teenage girl as she is as the grotesquely misunderstood and frightened woman. One particular highlight: an encounter with a psychiatrist that is so brilliantly over-drawn it could be her own hallucination. It is both funny and heart-breaking. While all of the other actors are good, none of them has a role of any real substance, including Miss Stanley and Mr. Shepard, who are, nevertheless, vivid screen presences. Of special poignancy is the film's penultimate sequence when the now permanently tranquillized Frances is brought out of retirement to appear on Ralph Edwards's ''This Is Your Life.'' Looking still beautiful but removed from all pressures of any sort, she does everything that's required of her. Ralph calls her ''Frances'' and she calls him ''Ralph,'' rather more often than people do in real life, and at the end of the show she is presented with an Edsel. Such is the end of the dream. Bending of a Mind. FRANCES, directed by Graeme Clifford; written by Eric Bergren and Christopher Devore and Nicholas Kazan; director of photography, Laszlo Kovacs; edited by John Wright; music by John Barry; produced by Jonathan Sanger; re- leased by Universal Pictures. At the Cinema 2, Third Avenue and 60th Street. Running time: 139 minutes. This film is rated R. Rakuten Kobo. Not in United States ? Choose your country's store to see books available for purchase. See if you have enough points for this item. Sign in. Synopsis. ODEN (The Invasion Trilogy #3) Mattie: A war is coming. It will not be an Earth bound battle yet humans will have to fight for their survival. This is no longer about fighting to take our planet back, this is a fight for our society, our way of life. However I will not be fighting in this war, I have another I must battle against, to stop him and keep myself, Marduke and our child safe and out of his clutches. I will do anything to protect my family from this evil maniac. Jeprow doesn't know of human’s strengths. He doesn't know how resourceful we are. How brave and cunning and smart we can be. He thinks he’s already won and the battle between us is over, but he has no idea who he’s messing with. Marduke: Oden is under attack and suddenly there is more at risk than just my own life. Mattie and our baby now rely on me and I can’t let them down My new family is trapped in a warzone and I must protect them. But I must still protect my people, my family’s legacy and the leadership that holds it all together. If we lose this war, then the humans lose as well. We are in this fight together and the losses on both sides will be many. Never before have I been under such pressure, never before has the risk of failure been so high. What happens when they end up sacrificing more than they ever intended, if they lose who they are and what they are fighting for? Can they move on from all they have lost, forgive each other for what they have been forced to do? Most importantly, can they ever learn to forgive themselves? Who will win the war and who loses everything? Jessica of "Frances" crossword clue. This crossword clue Jessica of "Frances" was discovered last seen in the July 25 2020 at the Thomas Joseph Crossword. The crossword clue possible answer is available in 5 letters. This answers first letter of which starts with L and can be found at the end of E. We think LANGE is the possible answer on this clue. Crossword clues for Jessica of "Frances" Did you get the correct answer for your Jessica of "Frances" crossword clue? Then check out this Thomas Joseph Crossword July 25 2020 other crossword clue. Recent Post. report this ad Disclaimer. All intellectual property rights in and to Crosswords are owned by The Crossword's Publisher. ‘Nomadland’ Review: Frances McDormand Hits the Road With ‘The Rider’ Director in Tender Ode to American Independence. Director Chloé Zhao adopts the wandering attitude of Jessica Bruder's book, taking Frances McDormand on the road in one of the Oscar winner's richest roles. Peter Debruge. Chief Film Critic. Latest. “If you want to get more out of life,” advised Christopher McCandless, “you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter- skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.” That didn’t work out so well for McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer’s book-length look at the vagabond spirit, “Into the Wild”: He died alone in Alaska at the age of 24. But there are many who thrive by that same philosophy, which imbues every frame of director Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” a romantic portrayal of life on the road that reaches toward the kind of enlightenment McCandless describes, without shying away from the potholes one inevitably hits in its pursuit. Like Zhao’s previous film, micro-masterpiece “The Rider,” this rich and resonant celebration of the American West straddles the border between fact and fiction, enlisting real people to play poetically embellished versions of themselves in order to reach a deeper truth. It stars Frances McDormand as an invented character, Fern, a 60-something Nevada widow who lost her house when the gypsum mine that had propped up the town of Empire closed for good, scattering the residents to the four winds. She now travels (and lives) in her run-down white van. Fern may be a composite, but Zhao surrounds her with genuine itinerants — a mix of the upbeat eccentrics profiled in Jessica Bruder’s “Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century” and drifters whom Zhao discovered in making the film. The idea was not so much to adapt Bruder’s book as to embrace what she had chronicled: a segment of self-anointed wanderers, many of them past retirement age but still obliged to pick up odd jobs where they can. These free-range loners reject the ideal of family, homeownership and fixed roots that now passes for the American dream. In exchange, they taste independence as few sedentary folks do. The country was built by people who thought just like this, who broke from the comfort of the familiar to take their chance on the frontier — some by choice, others by necessity. In her nonjudgmental way, Zhao invites audiences to decide for themselves what they make of Fern’s lifestyle, which comes with certain dangers: She could freeze to death in her van, food and first aid are sometimes hard to find, and certain aspects of her behavior might suggest mental health issues. Some people need structure, while others abhor complacency. In both cases, we see inertia at play: It can be as hard to escape the hamster wheel of working to pay one’s mortgage as it is to pull off the highway and settle down. Fern hasn’t necessarily decided. She’s still testing the waters of a nomadic existence, so we learn as she does, collecting suggestions from those more experienced. McDormand can be an immensely likable actor, but she plays ornery better than practically anyone (see “Olive Kitteridge” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), and those seemingly contradictory notes — the affectionate old cat who’ll swat if rubbed the wrong way — constitute the heart of her performance, a tricky chord she plays to perfection. What is Fern looking for out there? Does she hope to find something, or is she running away? Will her route lead her home, or is the sky the limit? The answer is, yes, all of the above. “Nomadland” offers us a chance to share in the freedom (round-the-campfire camaraderie, an ever-changing panorama) and frustrations (a flat tire, a busted engine) that come with the territory. And what territory! From the frosty South Dakota town where Fern picks up part-time work at an Amazon fulfillment center to the warmth of Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, a desert haven in Quartzite, Ariz., where she meets itinerant evangelist Bob Wells, the movie retraces the unspeakably scenic path Bruder outlined while remaining open to fresh discoveries. The same goes for the warmhearted humans the production enlisted. Santa-bearded burning man Wells (who plays himself) and mellow fellow travelers Swankie and Linda May were described in the book, while others, like soulful stray Derek (Derek Endres, who resembles a young Sean Penn), were adopted along the way. Among the nomads, one stands out: a man named Dave (David Strathairn) who has a white van of his own and a gentle, welcoming personality. While not overtly flirtatious, he seems open to Fern in a way that complicates their solitary existence. Within this community, people seem to make friends easily, and though a certain amount of fraternization is only human, the movie is mysterious about those dynamics. As the two professional actors in this equation, the two experience an almost magnetic pull toward one another, and yet more than once, Dave or Fern drives off without saying a proper goodbye. As in any social setting, connections are easiest when two people are moving in the same direction at similar speeds, but in this case, Fern is embarking on her roving life, while Dave seems to be eyeing the off-ramp. If this were a love story, it somehow wouldn’t be true to what Zhao has set out to capture, which is the essence of what compels people to abandon a traditional abode and live on the road — squatting in parking lots, crapping in buckets. “I’m not homeless. I’m just houseless. Not the same thing,” Fern tells a teen she once tutored when the young woman recognizes her in a sporting goods store. Being a nomad seems exhausting at times, and McDormand doesn’t make it look glamorous. If anything, she embraces a weathered naturalism uncommon among stars, what with her short, uneven haircut and take-me-as-I-am complexion. This is still a performance, but Zhao’s semi-improvisational method strips away the technique and allows McDormand to be herself in character, reacting to moments in unrehearsed ways. That also helps with the nonprofessionals, whose delivery may sound slightly stilted when in fact, what we’re hearing is the absence of acting. “Nomadland” doesn’t simply repeat what the director did on “The Rider” — a story she discovered and subsequently reconstructed on a Native American reservation. But it benefits from Zhao’s instinctive curiosity and identification with outsiders, reminiscent of French filmmaker Agnès Varda, who turned her empathetic camera on vagabonds and gleaners in her innovative docu-fiction features (the French title of “Vagabond,” which translates to “With no roof or rules,” could be a nomad mantra). Here, for instance, Zhao accentuates the characters’ ever-changing employment situation, offering humanizing glimpses into unusual jobs, whether it’s hosting campers at Badlands National Park or working behind the counter of the Wall Drug tourist stop near Dubuque, with its iconic 80-foot dinosaur. The nomads go where the gigs are, dictating migratory patterns not unlike those of part-time agricultural workers who follow the cycle of crops. Zhao is clearly influenced by Terrence Malick as well, and though she may have subconsciously stolen those weightless shots of McDormand feeding chickens or caressing the trunk of a giant redwood, the rhythm of her editing is distinctly hers. Zhao finds her own flow, such that watching “Nomadland” feels like gazing out on one long, gorgeous sunset. If that’s not your thing, so be it, but for those on Zhao’s wavelength, the movie is a marvel of empathy and introspection. In Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, she has chosen the ideal musical accomplice, relying on his rolling piano pieces to open our minds to whatever introspective peregrinations we might find alongside Fern’s. If road movies have an intrinsic weakness, it’s the episodic nature of their narratives, but “Nomadland” solves that beautifully, creating a pattern in which the path is more circular than linear, and impactful characters come back around to more deeply enrich Fern’s journey. The result goes deeper than “Into the Wild” — or Reese Witherspoon’s off-the-beaten-path movie “Wild,” for that matter — although McCandless surely would have approved. Here’s that rare movie that embodies his belief that “there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” Jayla Oden scores 26 points to lift McDonogh girls basketball to 60-58 victory over St. Frances. McDonogh girls basketball senior guard Jayla Oden needed to give her all against St. Frances on Thursday evening. She played with a sore ankle and was hit in the stomach during the game. Nevertheless, she persisted, scoring a game-high 26 points and providing a much-needed spark in the fourth quarter in a 60-58 victory over the Eagles’ Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland rival. “I’m the senior; it’s my last year,” said Oden, an Illinois commit. “So, I think I’ve proved my point over the past three years that I’ve been here and I have to be a leader for my team and an example. That way, in the next 2-3 years that they have, they’ll know what the expectations are as a high Division I player. Having mental toughness and just showing that on the court with my team I’ll pass it on to them eventually and they’ll understand.” The Eagles (4-0) have gotten off to a strong start with a young team. Sophomore Mikaela Quimby stepped up to score 15 points, and freshman Tatum Greene and junior Nekhu Mitchell sunk two free throws to seal the victory. While they had their ultimate triumph in the fourth quarter, the Eagles struggled in the second and third quarters. In a season in which coach Brad Rees has needed to get his team to jell in a short period of time, he’s content with his players showing enough fortitude to pull out the win. “That’s the way it’s going to be, and if we were having a full season, that’s what we expected,” Rees said. “They’re very young and it’s one senior on the court. There were ups and downs. We haven’t had enough games or practices, so we couldn’t really do the things that we wanted to do. We’re still learning and still getting better, but I’m really proud how they gutted out that last quarter.” Oden began the game with 11 points in eight minutes, while St. Frances guard Aniya Gourdine scored five in the first quarter as McDonogh took a 25-14 lead. Gourdine, a Temple commit, had a strong performance in the second quarter, hitting two 3-pointers and knocking down a midrange jumper to give the Panthers a 30-29 lead with 2:51 to go before halftime. St. Frances’ Jalyn Brown was a sparkplug during the middle quarters, scoring nine points in the second and seven in the third. She made four 3- pointers overall, giving the Panthers a 48-44 lead in the third. It was McDonogh that finished strong, however, with Oden scoring nine of her 26 points in the fourth quarter. It came down to Mitchell hitting two free throws with just seconds left, but the game wasn’t quite over.