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Subscribe RSSLos Angeles for Beginners
Updated June 01, 2011
Beginners not only writes a poignant postcard to contemporary Los Angeles, but maps out a personal landscape for writer/director Mike Mills.
Los Angeles According to Mike Mills
In Mike Mills’ Beginners, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) deals with a new love, Anna (Mélanie Laurent), and the fact that his father, Hal (played by Christopher Plummer), is coming out of the closet at age 75. That all this happens in Los Angeles is not just a coincidence of production. Mills, who lives in Los Angeles, maps out in Beginners a personal geography of the places that define and endear him to LA. But these locations also identify the characters themselves –– where they live, what they like, how they love. To help understand Mike Mills’ Los Angeles a little better, we asked the filmmaker to highlight some of the real spaces in his film and tell us what they mean to him.
The World's End
We Steal Secrets
Closed Circuit
The Deep
The Place Beyond The Pines
Greetings from Tim Buckley
Admission
Promised Land
Anna Karenina
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Brokeback Mountain
Lost in Translation
Pride & Prejudice
The Pianist
Gosford Park