What Do The Critics Say?

"I thought "Nine" was totally entertaining and offered a lot of really impressive musical performances. This is a contagious spectacle of musical bravado and theatrical brassiness." Brian Tallerico METROMIX "Nine is simply sensational and is indeed a worthy successor to his Best Picture winner, Chicago in every way." Pete Hammond BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE "When it comes to transferring Broadway musicals to the big screen Rob Marshall is the go to man. This film is another triumph for Rob Marshall." Jackie K Cooper HOLLYWOOD "Nine is an enjoyable, well written musical that's worth seeing for the terrific performances." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "When Daniel Day-Lewis's character daydreams, the screen is on fire." Harvey S Karten COMPUSERVE "A movie with oodles of flash, loads of style, and a Penelope Cruz song and dance number that will leave every man in the audience needing a very cold, cold shower." Willie Waffle WAFFLE MOVIES

"Nine has flaws, but I was too busy humming with the energy of this vibrant, eccentric piece of musical entertainment to really care." Brian Tallerico HOLLYWOOD CHICAGO "Rob Marshall's best film yet. A delirious celebration of the musical in all of its glamour and seduction, a total dazzler." David Nort FILM JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL "A sexy, all-singing, all-dancing treat. A cinematic feast. I'm giving it four out of five; almost a NINE out of ten." Alex Zane SUN ONLINE "A smart and classy film which comfortably trumps the stage show." Derek Malcolm THIS IS LONDON "Splashy, glitzy and glamourous, Nine is a raucous, sexy time that brings fun and star power back into the cinemas." Jeffrey M Anderson COMBUSTIBLE CELLULOID "Fergie's deep, rich-throated "Be Italian" with an almost-endless chorus line of tambourine-beating back-up singers is sheer electricity." Nell Minow BELIEFNET

I, Fellini I know Fellini would have been highly complimented by the choice of Daniel Day-Lewis to play Guido in NINE. Since the character in NINE represents Fellini, I can imagine Federico saying something like, “Such a fine actor, so good-looking…so thin.” Guido, in both 8 ½ and "NINE", while being inspired by Fellini, is only part of the real man. In life, Fellini was rather shy and self-conscious. In his imagination, he could be Guido. As Marcello Mastroiani, and now Daniel Day-Lewis, Fellini was vicariously able to be the character of his imagination without upsetting his less turbulent personal life with his devoted wife and star, Giulietta Masina. “I am her best director, if not her best husband,” he told me. Fellini would have appreciated the actresses chosen to be the women in Guido’s life: Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard and Judi Dench. Fellini was not the Casanova he sometimes was rumored to be, he, himself, having spread the rumor. "I have a playfully adulterous mind," he told me. "In my mind, I never get tired of living out my sexual fantasies. In life, they would interfere with my work." Fellini would have been extremely pleased and certainly rather amused to lean that Sophia Loren was playing his mother. She was his choice to star in "Journey with Anita", a film he never made. Anita was a girl with whom the story’s director has a brief fling. The film eventually was made by another director, with Goldie Hawn playing Anita. In real life, Goldie Hawn is the mother of Kate Hudson, one of the stars of "NINE". Fellini never saw the stage version of "NINE" on Broadway (he hated flying), but he was pleased by the idea that his films were enduring, and that both 8½ and "Nights Of Cabiria" (which became "Sweet Charity") were the basis of musicals delighted him. He had grown up loving the Hollywood musical, particularly those of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, who inspired his film, "Ginger And Fred". I’m certain that Federico would have appreciated that NINE is in the tradition of the great Hollywood musicals without imitating them. Music was always important in Fellini’s films and he would have been thrilled that Rob Marshall was at the helm. His direction is never intrusive and always in control. Rob Marshall has given us the definitive homage to Fellini, always in the spirit of the great Italian director yet never imitating him. I think that Fellini would have been especially pleased by "NINE" because it is not a re-make of 8½, but a true homage, which stands on its own. I can’t speak for Federico, but I can hear him saying, as he often did, "What do you think, Charlottina?" I almost saw 8 ½ with Federico. During one of my visits to Rome, I was told by Fellini that a small theatre was showing the film, many years after its release, and we rushed right over only to find a decrepit cinema, mutilated print, ancient projectors and miserable sound. Except for a snoring man and an attentive dog who seemed to be enjoying the film well enough, the theatre was empty. Fellini rushed out in panic, calling back to me, "You can stay if you wish. I ran out, following him, to Cafe Rosati, to drown our sorrows in coffee and patisserie. That was the day I almost saw 8½ with Federico Fellini. I knew Fellini well enough to know that he would’ve slid down into a theatre seat to see "NINE" and he definitely wouldn’t have left. Sliding down in the seat was left over from his childhood spent at the Fulgar Cinema in Rimini when he saw a film he truly enjoyed and didn’t want his mother to find him, and drag him away. I wish Fellini could have been here to speak for himself about "NINE" and I know all of you wish it, too. I believe Federico would have paid this film of "NINE" his highest compliment. He would’ve called it "Felliniesque". Fellini’s life exceeded even his dreams. "Life is the combination of magic and pasta," he told me, so I believe he would have suggested that after you’ve seen the magic of "NINE", you go out and have a meal of delicious pasta. Charlotte Chandler author of "I, Fellini". From Broadway To The Screen It all began with Federico Fellini. His 1963, Oscar ® winning masterpiece film, 8½, a daringly surreal and magical tale about a director’s creative crisis, became one of the most talked-about, analyzed and influential movies of all time. Overflowing with a carnival of imagery fused from one man’s tantalizing memories, dreams, flights of fancy, nostalgia, humor and demons, it became to many one of the first films that fully exposed what it really feels like to live inside the madness and wonder of the modern human condition. On top of that, along with Fellini’s other movies, it inspired people around the world to aspire to the dream of living inside the sensual world of an Italian movie. Since then, many leading contemporary filmmakers have paid homage to 8½ in their own distinctly individual ways. Bob Fosse spun his own life into the surreal fabric of "All That Jazz", the dance driven story of a brilliant, self-destructive choreographer trying to come to grips with his past, his women and his mortality. Woody Allen took a completely opposite approach with the comic "Stardust Memories", in which he starred as a disillusioned filmmaker plagued by hallucinations and alien visitations as he confronts the meaning of his work and the memories of his greatest loves. Now Rob Marshall ("Chicago") brings his own creative milieu: his savvy for integrating drama, cinema and music, into one seamless fabric, to 8½ via "NINE". The Broadway version of "NINE", with book by Arthur L Kopit and music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, began with another young artist’s Fellini obsession. Yeston had fallen madly in love with 8½ when he first saw it as a teenager. Years later, while teaching music at Yale University in the 1970s, he turned the movie’s image-driven story into a genre-expanding stage musical, ultimately heading to Rome to meet with Fellini and receive his creative blessings. Yeston decided that if he added the extra element of music and dance to the director’s unforgettable vision of a man’s mid-life battles with women, lust, spiritual yearning and creative fulfillment, it would it add up to "NINE". When the production premiered on May 2nd 1982 at the 46th Street Theatre, what it also added up to was a massive hit. Directed by Tommy Tune, "NINE" featured the unusual combination of a singular male lead surrounded by twenty four female actresses representing every facet of feminine power, strength and beauty. The show ran for seven hundred and twenty nine performances and became the 'must-see' of the season, dazzling audiences with its inventive, visually striking, high-style design and arresting musical numbers and sweeping five Tony Awards ® that year. The late Anita Morris was to scheduled to perform "A Call From the Vatican" but the TV censors found her costume too revealing. The allure of the show continued with a Broadway revival garnering another Tony Award ® and countless touring and regional productions. But "NINE" was destined to undergo another artistic transformation back to its original inspirational medium: the movies. The idea emerged as Rob Marshall and Harvey Weinstein began searching for a follow up project to "Chicago", the spectacular story of Prohibition-Era crime that revolutionized the whole concept of merging drama with music and dance, and went on to win six Academy Awards ®, including Best Picture. In the meantime, Marshall made his award-winning adaptation of "Memoirs" Of A Geisha" (winner of three Academy Awards), but in late 2006, he and Weinstein announced that their next project would be "NINE". Just as Fellini had personally given to Maury Yeston full creative liberty to use the elements of 8½ like sculptor’s clay to create his theatrical work, Yeston now granted to Rob Marshall the same freedom to give the play a new life on the screen. "I was absolutely delighted to hear that Harvey Weinstein wanted to make a film of "NINE" and even more excited that Rob Marshall was going to direct it," says Yeston. "I feel very strongly that cinema is a director’s art and I wanted Rob to fell completely free to adapt and transform my stage piece to take full advantage of the very different medium and possibilities of film. I literally told Rob: "make believe I am dead, because you must approach this with radical freedom and bring yourself fully to it. Everyone knows that you can’t just point a camera at a stage and make a movie. It was obligatory for the director to redefine "NINE" in all of its elements, and that is precisely what Rob did." Marshall and Weinstein engaged two screenwriters with a unique perspective to tackle their vision of turning "NINE" into a drama with music: BAFTA Film Award winning writer/director Michael Tolkin ("The Player") and the late, great, 1997 Oscar ® winning writer/director Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient"), himself of Italian heritage and steeped in a profound love of Italian films. Their writing was inspired not only by Fellini, Kopit and Yeston, but by their own personal experiences with moviemaking, imagination and life as lauded filmmakers under pressure. Tragically, Minghella would pass away before the film completed production, making "NINE" his final work. Next, Marshall began auditioning a roster of essentially every leading lady in Hollywood and beyond—because he always believed that the script should be written to the cast, rather than the other way around. Marshall, along with his creative partner John DeLuca, held singing and dancing work sessions with nearly every female star of renown while the screenplay was still being forged. Yeston had told Marshall to "call me when you need me" and three weeks after their initial meeting, he was on the line. Shortly after, Yeston met with Marshall and John DeLuca around a piano to begin the process of adding three entirely new songs to his uniquely expressive score. "It was a chance for me to re-imagine my own work for film," Yeston said. He would write "Guarde La Luna" for 1962 Oscar ® winner Sophia Loren ("La ciociara"); the powerful "Take It All" (originally as a trio for Cotillard, Nicole Kidman and Penélope) which would fall to Oscar ® winner Marion Cotillard ("La Vie En Rose") and finally, the up-tempo number "Cinema Italiano" for 2001 Golden Globe winner Kate Hudson ("Almost Famous"). While a few songs from the original play were cut to enhance cinematic fluidity, as is common with stage to screen transfers, Yeston feels nothing has been lost. "I have not lost any songs because they are still in the stage show. Instead, I have gained a newly transformed version of my work," he explained. "Working on "NINE" with Rob Marshall and John DeLuca was the most life-giving, inspiring and welcoming experience of my creative life. They are meticulous, they are brilliant and the simply inspire changes for the better." The film version of "NINE" is a complete re-invention. It is so wholly unique to the vision of Rob Marshall that it became its own journey creatively," says producer Marc Platt ("Legally Blonde I & II"), a veteran of both film and Broadway. "While it is true in essence to the Broadway musical, "NINE" the movie has become very much its own thing. Rob made it his own. His "NINE" is a wonderful fantasy that deals with real ideas and emotions." Two-time Oscar ® winner Daniel Day-Lewis ("My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown" & "There Will Be Blood") who has been called the most gifted actor of his generation, he has never been seen dancing or singing in a film before. Until he took a part in Rob Marshall's "NINE". Nevertheless, Day-Lewis threw himself into the role of Guido Contini with his prototypical intensity: even learning fluent Italian, in order to inhabit the character completely. "It turns out that Daniel is a gifted singer and always was, but we just never knew it," Yeston noted. "Daniel is one of the best: scary, intimidating, hypnotic, beautiful, magnetic, unforgettable!" says acclaimed actress Sophia Loren. Surrounding Day-Lewis and alternately seducing and unsettling his character is a knock-out ensemble of sexy, strong, glamorous women, each with her own vital role to play in helping Guido find his way through his creative maelstrom. Marion Cotillard takes on the role of Luisa, Guido’s long-devoted and long-suffering wife who is acutely aware there will always be a price to pay for loving a creative artist like Guido. "I think she dedicated her life to him, because their love was stronger at that time, than her ambitions as an actress. Now she feels she has given everything to this man," the 2005 & '08 César Award winner explained. Guido’s irresistibly lusty yet delicately needy mistress, Carla, is played by 2008 Oscar ® winner Penélope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona"). "When she is around him she feels alive, because he makes her feel special, but it’s a real roller coaster with him and he also causes Carla a lot of grief." Another woman who has long been in a slippery, symbiotic relationship with Guido is his inspiration and muse, Claudia Jenssen, played by 2003 Oscar ® winner, Nicole Kidman ("The Hours"). Kidman says "NINE" was the "film everyone wanted to do . Rob Marshall had his pick. He came to me and said, 'Would you play Claudia?' and I said, 'Absolutely.' I was sitting with him in the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, in the middle of a press junket, so it was a very movie star moment!" Another of those women is Guido’s nurturing confidante and costume designer, Lilli, who is played by 1999 Oscar ® winner Judi Dench ("Shakespeare in Love"). "Lilli is obviously older than Guido, and knows him very, very well, has worked with him many, many times and, yet, like the other women in his life, she is utterly bewitched by him. Who wouldn’t be?" A mischievous flirtation for Guido comes in the form of the impeccably fashionable Vogue journalist Stephanie, played by 2001 Academy Award ® nominee Kate Hudson ("Almost Famous"). "I've never had an opportunity to do something like "NINE" before. I’ve taken dance classes and worked with different choreographers, but I had never done a big number with hair and make-up and lights before this. Luckily, Rob prepared us with six weeks of rehearsal which was like a training camp. We sang and danced every day on a mock up stage." Oscar ® winner Sophia Loren, who says she was bowled over when Rob Marshall offered her the role of one of the most important women in Guido’s life: his always influential mother. "He explained it was a small role, but said he would only make the film if I would play Mama," Loren recalls. "So I joked to him that I would do it to save his career because I liked "Chicago" so much." Rounding out the family of women who came together for "NINE" is Grammy winning artist Stacy Ferguson (known universally as Fergie) who embraced the haunting role of Saraghina, the Roman prostitute whose romantic advice had a lasting impact on a very young and impressionable Guido. Ferguson greatly admired her character. "Saraghina is a very earthy, raw woman, in the way she walks and moves. She’s full of life and fire. But there’s subtlety to it. She loves Guido and the boys, and enjoys teaching them, but she’s kind of having a joke with herself as well at the same time." Synopsis

Passion, fantasy, lust, love, art, style, delusions, dreams: life has always been a circus for world-famous 1960s movie director Guido Contini. Renowned for his brilliant moviemaking and desired by many, Guido is about to kick off production on his highly anticipated ninth picture, "Italia", when, suddenly, the bottom drops out of both his ample creative powers and his fervid love life, as they simultaneously unravel out of control. Surrounded by a panorama of astonishing women: his tempting mistress Carla, his loving wife Luisa, his muse Claudia, his costume designer and confidante Lilli, a flirty, blonde journalist from Vogue, an instructive prostitute from his childhood and his beloved Mamma; he searches for inspiration and possible salvation amid the free fall. As he does, the historic Stage 5 at Cinecitta Studios in Rome is lit up by Guido’s most evocative desires, memories and dreams. As Italia draws ever closer to the moment, he must overcome his demons and rediscover the boy within. Will he ever call: "Action!"

The Verdict "Despite a full cinema packed with two hundred and fourty guests, you would have heard a cockroach crawling across the carpeted floor when the gorgeous Penelope Cruz appeared on the screen in lingerie and frilly knickers, seducing Guido (I need you to squeeze me here .. and a, here ... and a, here) while he is being examined by a Nurse who observes 'his pulse is racing Doctori.' It's the Vatican, Guido explains. The women in Guido's life are all, to say the bleeding obvious: very seductive. They all want Guido and Guido wants them. Fergie (Black Eyed Peas) gives a stunning performance as Saraghina, the woman whose advice to the young boy Guido is simple: 'Be Italian'. Her scene moves from beach to stage with a flashy performance complete with tamborines crashing and sand flying. And be prepared to see Kate Hudson as you've never seen her before, dancing and singing her way through 'Cinema Italiano'. Guido's muse is Australia's Nicole Kidman who looks lovely and performs 'Usual Way' with style and sincerity. Dame Judi Dench (far removed from her role as 'M') belts out 'Folies Bergere' in a big production number with little Guido and Loren assures Guido 'you will alway be mine' in 'Guardo La Luna'. Then there's the amazing performances of the woman who convinced audiences she was Edith Piaf: Marion Cotillard. Her rendition of 'My Husband Makes Movies' will rip your heart out. In the end she gives Guido a vision of what he really wants from her in 'Take It All'. Performing in a strip where she's mauled by male patron who want to rip her gear off, Luisa tells him: 'come watch the slanky girl and how the pasties twirl. To make your bells all ring fulfilling everything you ever wanted'. And Daniel Day-Lewis? As he was in "My Left Foot" & "There Will Be Blood", he's convincingly magnificent. He puts his heart and soul into every performance and this is no exception. Is there a soundtrack CD? Yes! On the Universal Music label and available in-store now. "NINE" is a stunning, visual experience. Exuberant, exciting and deliciously sexy. 4 1/2 STARS." Who's Who?

Daniel Day-Lewis Marion Cotillard Penélope Cruz Nicole Kidman Judi Dench Kate Hudson Sophia Loren Fergie Ricky Tognazzi Giuseppe Cederna Elio Germano Andrea Di Stefano Roberto Nobile Marcello Magni Anna Maria Everett Remo Remotti

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Guido Contini Luisa Contini Carla Claudia Lilli Stephanie Mamma Saraghina Dante (Producer of 'Italia') Fausto Pierpaolo Benito Jaconelli Doctor Nurse Cardinal

The Crew

Director Screenplay Producers Original Music Cinematography Film Editors Casting Production Designer Art Direction Set Decoration Costume Design

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Rob Marshall Michael Tolkin & Anthony Minghella John DeLuca/Rob Marshall/Marc Platt/Harvey Weinstein Andrea Guerra Dion Beebe Claire Simpson & Wyatt Smith Kate Dowd/Francine Maisler/Razzauti Teresa John Myhre Peter Findley & Phil Harvey Gordon Sim Colleen Atwood

Run Time 118 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2010 - Sony Pictures - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2010 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services. All Rights Reserved. Protected by Australian and International Copyright. Trademark Laws and Intellectual Property Rights apply.