The Shipping News [HD]

My life as a dog......
Although many recollect CHOCOLAT as Lass Hallstrom's "classic" film, longtime fans are more likely to connect THE SHIPPING NEWS with his earlier film MY LIFE AS A DOG. Hallstrom has a gift for eliciting excellent performances from children and oddballs living in northern climates. Like Ingmar in the older "foreign" film from Sweden, Quoyle has much to learn about being an adult.

THE SHIPPING NEWS is a beautiful psychological study about the transformation of a damaged man into a whole human being. NEWS reinforces the truth most of us already know -- unconditional love can heal. The most telling line of the story is spoken by Juliette Moore when she says that when she was at her lowest point, the people in her Newfoundland village lifted her up with their love.

I read THE SHIPPING NEWS (which one the Pulitzer) and I laughed until I cried. It is probably the most humorous book I have ever read. I took my husband who had not read the book with me to see the film...

Headliner
Rarely does a movie adhere to a book's story as well as Shipping News does to Annie Proulx' sparkling literary masterpiece, a novel about time, place, traditions and love.

The big lump of a main character, Quoyle, a sad, pathetic man (Kevin Spacey) is defined by a metaphor deftly recreated in this film: He cannot swim. As the movie opens, we find that he cannot do much of anything else either.

The inksetter for a Poughkeepsie newspaper drives into a gas station in the pouring rain and witnesses a lovers' quarrel between the driver and passenger in the first car. He doesn't get gas. A split-second courtship instigated by Petal (Cate Blanchett) saddles Quoyle with a disastrous marriage--and his child, Bunny--and ends more disastrously than it began. But Quoyle, lump that he is, unwinds after Petal leaves the picture and his parents die.

Quoyle's Aunt Agnes arrives, ostensibly to pay her respects, but with a caper in mind. Our befuddled man Quoyle leaves with her for his family's...

Quoyle is a man who bravely takes charge of his life
Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) is a middle age man lacking in self esteem who is living a banal and unrewarding existence. One is reminded of Thomas Hobbes' famous aphorism that men often are doomed to endure lives of quiet desperation. He falls in love with Petal Bear (Cate Blanchett) only hours after they meet who does nothing to hide her manipulative dark side. They have a daughter Bunny and this selfish woman proves totally lacking in compassion and loyalty to the both of them. The movie industry has rarely put on the screen a more despicable mother in its entire history. It is regretful that Blanchett will not likely receive an Academy Award nomination for her too short time in this film.

The very promiscuous Petal Bear is ultimately found dead in a car accident with a new boy friend. Quoyle's Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) entices him and Bunny to move back to their ancestral home located in Newfoundland. This is a part of Canada that the tourists make sure they don't visit...

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