Update: I earlier wrote that Anton Corbin‘s Life more or less bombed with critics at last Feburary’s Berlinale. What I should have said, more fairly and accurately, is that the reaction was on the mixed or lukewarm side. Pic opens in France on September 9th, and then in Belgium on 9.21, in Germany on 9.24, and in England on 9.25. Cinedigm will reportedly release Life sometime in the fall.
In this morning’s Toronto announcement story (“TIFF vs. Telluride: Intrigue Intensifies, Plot Thickens“) I failed to highlight two films that appear to warrant special attention — Hany Abu-Assad‘s The Idol, which appears to be more of a lighthearted, less melodramatic film than Abu-Assad’s widely praised Omar, and Sebastian Schipper‘s Victoria, which premiered at last February Berlinale and which just popped a trailer.
Otherwise the just-announced Toronto galas and special presentations that nobody is particularly interested in (at least for the time being) are as follows:
GALAS: Beeba Boys (dir. Deepa Mehta, Canada, World Premiere), Forsaken (dir. Jon Cassar, Canada (World Premiere), Hyena Road (dir. Paul Gross, Canada, World Premiere), Lolo (dir. Julie Delpy, France, World Premiere), The Man Who Knew Infinity (dir. Matt Brown, United Kingdom, World Premiere), Remember (dir. Atom Egoyan, Canada, North American Premiere), Septembers of Shiraz (dir. Wayne Blair, USA, World Premiere), The Dressmaker (dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse, Australia, World Premiere).
Whatever happened to Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups? It was screened and, it has to be said, not ecstatically reviewed at last February’s Berlinale, and…well, I haven’t felt anything since. No buzz, no anticipation, no sound of humming engines…zip. What’s to say, right? Another ethereal, rhapsodic dream poem from Mr. Wackadoodle. The distributor is Broad Green Pictures. I’m guessing Cups will turn up at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival prior to a limited theatrical/peek-out VOD opening sometime next year. This is what the Malick cult has boiled down to — peek-outs, escapes, secretions.
When will Malick’s other space-trip movie, Weightless, play to audiences? I realize that principal photography began on this Austin-based musical drama in September 2012 or thereabouts, or a little less than three years ago. But it probably won’t be seen….well, who knows but sometime next year, I’m guessing, and most likely in the late summer or fall, especially if Knight of Cups doesn’t open this year, which wouldn’t surprise me.
If (I say “if”) Weightless doesn’t open until the fall of ’16, a full five years will have transpired between the earliest filming at the September 2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival. That would be a kind of milestone — the first ostensibly commercial film in history to shoot with major stars and not open until they’ve all noticably aged and basically turned into slightly different people.
Variety‘s Scott Foundas has mentioned Margaret and Accidental Love (a.k.a. Nailed) as precedents. Except Accidental Love was delayed by force majeure financial factors and Margaret was held up due to differences between a director (Kenneth Lonergan) and a distributor. Weightless is the first major film to be delayed ad infinitum due to creative dithering, indecision and lettuce-leaf-tossing on the part of the director.
The genius stroke, of course, would be to release Knight of Cups and Weightless either simultaneously or closely in tandem. The fact that Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett costar in both (as either the same or different characters…does it matter?) would lead to a certain intrigue. You can’t see just one, etc.
“Far more at ease in Tehran than England, Gertude Lowthian Bell (Nicole Kidman) allows herself to be politely seduced by embassy secretary Henry Cadogan (James Franco, looking tired but charming, and acting almost entirely with his eyebrows). Their courtship is the stuff of Merchant Ivory movies, complete with scenic marriage proposal and an old Macedonian coin split in two for the lovers to remember one another by, though Bell’s father refuses to give his blessing, spelling tragedy for the couple.
“At the next stop on her travels, she encounters a young T.E. Lawrence (a consternated-looking Robert Pattinson, who, like Franco, elicited laughs in Berlin when he first appeared onscreen). Though she clearly makes a strong impression on every man she meets, he surprises her by asking, ‘Gertie, will you please not marry me?’
At last February’s Berlinale I caught Yann Demange‘s urgent, pulse-pounding ’71, and then promptly reviewed it. A bit later Roadside acquired ’71 but decided to hold it until early ’15, apparently hoping that star Jack O’Connell‘s drawing power would surge after the December ’14 release of Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken, in which he played the late Louis Zamperini. Well, Unbroken was a domestic hit ($115 million) but ’71 isn’t driven by O’Connell’s charisma or star power — it’s really about Demange’s directing skills. You’d think that a violent chase thriller and a suspense film would play fine on its own terms, but the U.S. viewing public can be astonishingly thick and slow to respond to even the best-made films.
In any event ’71 is opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. It has a 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating and 79% on Metacritic.
It’s obvious that Jack Pettibone Riccobono‘s The Seventh Fire, a doc about to screen at the Berlinale, is a cut above. Boilerplate: “A portrait of gang life in rural Minnesota as seen through the eyes of two Native American gangsters — a veteran bad guy named Rob Brown and a 17 year-old up-and-comer named Kevin.” Cinematography by Riccobono and Shane Slattery-Quintanilla. “Presented” by Terrence Malick and produced by too many people to mention, but Chris Eyre and Natalie Portman are among them. Original Music by Nicholas Britell.
The first screening of Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups, apparently another “stream-of-consciousness”, tossing-high-the-lettuce-leaves experience with a dessicated Hollywood slant, will happen at the Berlinale this Sunday at 7 pm, or 10 am Los Angeles time. The first tweets should begin to circulate in the early afternoon. Knight of Cups is a kind of time-capsule film as it was mainly shot in 2012. Last year Malick’s editor Billy Weber told The Playlist that Cups is “less experimental and less dialogue-free than To The Wonder“…okay. On 1.29 producer-financier Ken Kao offered a brief synopsis to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Pamela McClintock: “Christian Bale plays Rick, who is a screenwriter and filmmaker living in California. From the outside, it looks like he has everything. Inside, he’s empty in a lot of ways, and this is his journey of figuring out a way to fill the void.” Or, in other words, a plot-free, head-trippy variation on the well-worn theme about vacant or corroded Hollywood — an idea first hatched by Budd Schulberg in What Makes Sammy Run? (’41) and then in Robert Aldrich and Clifford Odets‘ The Big Knife (’55).
Terrence Malick, Christian Bale during the 2012 filming of Knight of Cups.
A little less than five months ago, or more precisely between 9.8 and 9.13, I was in a levitational state over Paul Dano‘s performance as the young Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy. I was certain I’d seen one of the best lead-actor performances of 2014 — hands down, no question — and was savoring the rough and tumble of an award-season campaign. I knew Dano could never win, but he had to at least be nominated, I was telling myself. He was too good, too “miraculous” (in the view of BBC.com’s Owen Gleiberman) to be shunted aside. And then it all came crashing down when I learned that Roadside Attractions had decided to open Love & Mercy in 2015, and not even give it a one-week qualifying run to attract year-end accolades. Pohlad reiterated during a phoner that discussions about the release strategy were “ongoing” but they weren’t — Roadside had decided on a release date of 6.5.15.
Love & Mercy costars John Cusack, Paul Dano to left and right of Brian Wilson prior to 2014 Toronto Film Festival premiere.
Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups appears to be some kind of riff on La Dolce Vita or 8 1/2 or something along those lines. The Christian Bale character is some kind of louche Hollywood guy with too much dough, too many choices, too many women, not a lot of discipline…adrift in corruption, plagued by misgivings. Or something like that. Do the characters (Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman) talk to each other in it? Using words, I mean? Or will they mainly talk to themselves a la Tree of Life and To The Wonder? Is there any kind of (excuse this inexcusably vulgar term) story or is this just another impressionist Malicky meandering? I’m slightly intrigued but until it’s been proven to me that Cups is composed of actual scenes in which (a) characters have goals and demons and interact with each other and (b) a semblance of a story happens due to things actually happening, I’m not paying $2500 to see this puppy at the Berlinale. No way. And don’t call me a Philistine for not wanting to muddle my way through another To The Wonder again. Stories and characters used to manifest in Malickland…really. Doubters need to check out Badlands and Days of Heaven.
Is it worth it to fly to the Berlinale in February and stay at some Airb&b pad for four or five days and shell out at least $2500 so I can be among the first to see and review Terrence Malick‘s Knight of Cups? I think not. You never know with Malick these days. Will Knight contain dialogue or will the actors just whisper and roam around? Will it have a story of any kind? Will it make any sense? The fact that it’s been in the editing room for a couple of years suggests that Malick has been tossing the lettuce leaves pretty high in the air. I’ll wait until it plays at Cannes Film Festival, thanks. I attended the Berlinale last year when the big attraction was the debut of Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel, but that was a Fox Searchlight deal (air fare, hotel for three days). It just seems a bit much to fund a big Berlin thing all on my lonesome. On top of which I didn’t care that much for my Berlinale experience, to be honest.
Christian Bale, Natalie Portman during filming of Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups in 2012.
In a recent Conde Nast Traveller piece called “13 Coolest Movie Theatres Around the World,” Munich’s Filmtheater Sendlinger Tor gets its proper due. I fell in love with what looked like a hand-painted marquee during a walking tour of Munich that journalist Thomas Schultze (of the Munich-based G + J Media Entertainment) treated me to in June 2012. It’s one of the rare single-screen venues let in that town, and one of the few remaining in the world. The top photo is on the Conde Nast page; the bottom photo was taken by yours truly.
Condolences to the family and friends of the late Louis Zamperini, the former Olympic athlete and World War II survivor of a Pacific Ocean plane crash and Japanese prisoner-of-war camp who went to become an inspirational speaker and lived to the ripe old age of 97. Ditto his legions of admirers. Zamperini passed yesterday in Los Angeles. Sorry. Hats off.
Zamperini’s life was turned into a book by Laura Hillenbrand and then adapted into a forthcoming Oscar-bait film, Unbroken (Universal, 12.25), by director Angelina Jolie and screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. Jack O’Connell (whom I admired in ’71 after catching it at the Berlinale last February) portrays Zamperini in the film.
All along the word about Jolie’s Unbroken has been that it’s not so much another survival-at-sea film (a la Life of Pi and All Is Lost) as an inspirational piece about a man’s indomitable spirit. I haven’t read any of the drafts, much less Hillenbrand’s book, but the film may contain a thematic undercurrent that I haven’t paid attention to until now.
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