Production has begun in the Czech Republic on The Zookeeper’S Wife, adapted from Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book of the same name which was based on the diaries of Antonina Żabiński. Focus Features will release the film domestically; Universal Pictures International has distribution rights to the film in the U.K., France, Germany, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain stars in the title role, as Antonina Żabiński. The Zookeeper’S Wife director Niki Caro’s previous films include Whale Rider and North Country.
The Zookeeper’S Wife dramatizes a real-life story of heroism. The time is 1939. The place is Poland, homeland of Antonina Żabiński (portrayed by Ms. Chastain) and her husband, Dr. Jan Żabiński (Johan Heldenbergh, a European Film Award nominee for the Academy Award-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown). The Warsaw Zoo flourishes under Jan’s stewardship and Antonina’s care. When their...
Two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain stars in the title role, as Antonina Żabiński. The Zookeeper’S Wife director Niki Caro’s previous films include Whale Rider and North Country.
The Zookeeper’S Wife dramatizes a real-life story of heroism. The time is 1939. The place is Poland, homeland of Antonina Żabiński (portrayed by Ms. Chastain) and her husband, Dr. Jan Żabiński (Johan Heldenbergh, a European Film Award nominee for the Academy Award-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown). The Warsaw Zoo flourishes under Jan’s stewardship and Antonina’s care. When their...
- 10/19/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Jessica Chastain is attached to star in an adaptation of Diane Ackerman's WW2-set 2007 novel "The Zookeeper’s Wife" for Panorama.
The true story account follows keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, who helped save hundreds after the Nazi army overran Warsaw.
Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages, along with taking about a dozen Jews into their home.
A mix of humans and surviving animals came together in a one-of-a-kind community that included socializing and a piano concert.
Niki Caro has come aboard to direct the project, while Angela Workman wrote the screenplay. Jeff Abberley, Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin are producing.
Source: THR...
The true story account follows keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, who helped save hundreds after the Nazi army overran Warsaw.
Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages, along with taking about a dozen Jews into their home.
A mix of humans and surviving animals came together in a one-of-a-kind community that included socializing and a piano concert.
Niki Caro has come aboard to direct the project, while Angela Workman wrote the screenplay. Jeff Abberley, Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin are producing.
Source: THR...
- 5/1/2013
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Jessica Chastain has inked a deal to star in Niki Caro's upcoming adaptation The Zookeeper's Wife.
Based on a novel by Diane Ackerman, the film tells the true story of zoo keepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski of the Warsaw Zoo during World War II. The pair saved hundreds of lives during the Nazi invasion of Poland by smuggling Jews into empty cages.
Niki Caro is directing from a script provided by Angela Workman. Jeff Abberley, Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin will be producing.
Jessica Chastain most recently starred in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. She will next be seen in Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak.
The project will likely to hit the market in Cannes.
Based on a novel by Diane Ackerman, the film tells the true story of zoo keepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski of the Warsaw Zoo during World War II. The pair saved hundreds of lives during the Nazi invasion of Poland by smuggling Jews into empty cages.
Niki Caro is directing from a script provided by Angela Workman. Jeff Abberley, Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin will be producing.
Jessica Chastain most recently starred in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. She will next be seen in Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak.
The project will likely to hit the market in Cannes.
- 5/1/2013
- by MovieWeb
- MovieWeb
Jessica Chastain is attached to star in The Zookeeper’s Wife, the adaptation of the novel by Diane Ackerman. Niki Caro has come aboard to direct the World War II story, which Panorama is financing and producing. The project is expected to hit the market in Cannes, according to several sources. Scion’s Jeff Abberley, Tollin Prods’ Mike Tollin and Kim Zubick, and Rowe/Miller’s Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin are producing on the movie. Wife is the true account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, who helped save hundreds during the Nazi invasion. When the Nazi army overran Warsaw, destroying
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- 4/30/2013
- by Borys Kit
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Angela Workman ("Bronte," "War Bride") will adapt Diane Ackerman's acclaimed historical novel "The Zookeeper's Wife" for Scion Films reports Variety.
The true story follows the harrowing plight of zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who, during the German invasion of Poland during World War II, turned the Warsaw zoo into a safe haven for persecuted Jews.
The Zabinskis kept hundreds of Jews hidden away in animal cages and inside their own private home, testing both their strength and will. No director or actors are currently attached.
Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin, Robbie Rowe-Tollin, Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman will produce.
The true story follows the harrowing plight of zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who, during the German invasion of Poland during World War II, turned the Warsaw zoo into a safe haven for persecuted Jews.
The Zabinskis kept hundreds of Jews hidden away in animal cages and inside their own private home, testing both their strength and will. No director or actors are currently attached.
Mike Tollin, Kim Zubick, Diane Miller-Levin, Robbie Rowe-Tollin, Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman will produce.
- 9/23/2010
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Scion to adapt The Zookeeper's WifeAngela Workman has been assigned the task of adapting Diane Ackerman's acclaimed historical novel The Zookeeper's Wife for Scion Films.
According to Variety, Scion's Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman will produce the project alongside Tollin Productions Mike Tollin and Kim Zubick and Rowe/Miller's Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin.
This true story follows the harrowing plight of zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who, during the German invasion of Poland during World War II, turned the Warsaw zoo into a safe haven for persecuted Jews. The Zabinskis kept hundreds of Jews hidden away in animal cages and inside their own private home, testing both their strength and will.
No production date has been set yet, and no director or actors have been announced at this time.
The Zookeeper’s Wife is in development .
According to Variety, Scion's Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman will produce the project alongside Tollin Productions Mike Tollin and Kim Zubick and Rowe/Miller's Diane Miller-Levin and Robbie Rowe-Tollin.
This true story follows the harrowing plight of zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who, during the German invasion of Poland during World War II, turned the Warsaw zoo into a safe haven for persecuted Jews. The Zabinskis kept hundreds of Jews hidden away in animal cages and inside their own private home, testing both their strength and will.
No production date has been set yet, and no director or actors have been announced at this time.
The Zookeeper’s Wife is in development .
- 9/22/2010
- MovieWeb
Film Review: Inconceivable
Taormina Film Festival
TAORMINA, Italy -- A supposedly satirical look at assisted reproduction, the storyline to Mary McGuckian's "Inconceivable" stays true to its title. And its visual concept -- fast-paced editing, fragmented audio and sound superimposition/effects and sped-up and slowed-down images straight from "CSI" -- ensures that the film never loses its television feel.
Although full of biological inaccuracies, the film demands that its underlying drama be taken seriously as it negates the very women that make up its core audience. Nine women go to a renowned Las Vegas fertility clinic run by Doctor Freeman (Colm Feore) and miraculously all but one end up pregnant. The ninth and least fertile (Jennifer Tilly), however, winds up naturally pregnant shortly thereafter.
A year later, when comparing baby pictures, one of the women, Tutu (Elizabeth McGovern), notices that most of the children could be identical twins. A seasoned journalist, she blows the whistle on their fertility group and an investigation begins. Did Freeman or his assistant (Jordi Molla) give them all the same sperm to bolster his clinic's success rate and continue raking in the dough? Should the beneficiaries even care or just be happy that they finally got the miracle no one else could grant them?
To add to the pathos, the stories run the gamut of the human spectrum -- a gay couple with a surrogate mother, a lesbian couple, a wealthy elderly woman (Geraldine Chaplin) who must produce an heir to keep her husband's trust fund and various middle-aged women (from meek to wild) desperate to become mothers.
The mystery is solved by simply tossing the workings of DNA (children get 50% of their chromosomes from the mother and the other half from the father) to the wayside -- i.e., by the existence of a "super sperm that out-spermed all the other sperm." Thus, women are nothing more than carriers who bear no influence on the physical appearance of their children. With so many valid and complex ethical, emotional and dramatic questions related to artificial insemination, was creating a physiologically impossible situation really necessary?
What is saddest here is that a female cast that further includes Amanda Plummer and Andie McDowell should be so wasted. It would have been more interesting to see these women, now grappling with their own issues of reaching or surpassing middle age, sink their teeth into material on aging and motherhood with much more depth.
Production companies: Pembridge Pictures, Scion Films, Prospero Pictures. Cast: Colm Feore, Jennifer Tilly, Elizabeth McGovern, Andie McDowell, Amanda Plummer, Jordi Molla, Geraldine Chaplin, Lothaire Bluteau. Screenwriter/Director: Mary McGuckian. Producer: McGuckian, Jeff Abberley, Martin Katz. Director of Photography: Mark Wolf. Production designer: Max Gottlieb. Music: Kevin Banks. Costume Designer: Sally O'Sullivan. Editor: David Freemantle. 105 minutes.
TAORMINA, Italy -- A supposedly satirical look at assisted reproduction, the storyline to Mary McGuckian's "Inconceivable" stays true to its title. And its visual concept -- fast-paced editing, fragmented audio and sound superimposition/effects and sped-up and slowed-down images straight from "CSI" -- ensures that the film never loses its television feel.
Although full of biological inaccuracies, the film demands that its underlying drama be taken seriously as it negates the very women that make up its core audience. Nine women go to a renowned Las Vegas fertility clinic run by Doctor Freeman (Colm Feore) and miraculously all but one end up pregnant. The ninth and least fertile (Jennifer Tilly), however, winds up naturally pregnant shortly thereafter.
A year later, when comparing baby pictures, one of the women, Tutu (Elizabeth McGovern), notices that most of the children could be identical twins. A seasoned journalist, she blows the whistle on their fertility group and an investigation begins. Did Freeman or his assistant (Jordi Molla) give them all the same sperm to bolster his clinic's success rate and continue raking in the dough? Should the beneficiaries even care or just be happy that they finally got the miracle no one else could grant them?
To add to the pathos, the stories run the gamut of the human spectrum -- a gay couple with a surrogate mother, a lesbian couple, a wealthy elderly woman (Geraldine Chaplin) who must produce an heir to keep her husband's trust fund and various middle-aged women (from meek to wild) desperate to become mothers.
The mystery is solved by simply tossing the workings of DNA (children get 50% of their chromosomes from the mother and the other half from the father) to the wayside -- i.e., by the existence of a "super sperm that out-spermed all the other sperm." Thus, women are nothing more than carriers who bear no influence on the physical appearance of their children. With so many valid and complex ethical, emotional and dramatic questions related to artificial insemination, was creating a physiologically impossible situation really necessary?
What is saddest here is that a female cast that further includes Amanda Plummer and Andie McDowell should be so wasted. It would have been more interesting to see these women, now grappling with their own issues of reaching or surpassing middle age, sink their teeth into material on aging and motherhood with much more depth.
Production companies: Pembridge Pictures, Scion Films, Prospero Pictures. Cast: Colm Feore, Jennifer Tilly, Elizabeth McGovern, Andie McDowell, Amanda Plummer, Jordi Molla, Geraldine Chaplin, Lothaire Bluteau. Screenwriter/Director: Mary McGuckian. Producer: McGuckian, Jeff Abberley, Martin Katz. Director of Photography: Mark Wolf. Production designer: Max Gottlieb. Music: Kevin Banks. Costume Designer: Sally O'Sullivan. Editor: David Freemantle. 105 minutes.
- 6/24/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Doomsday
If mankind ever indeed does go to hell in the future, it's less likely to be because of alien invasions, natural catastrophes or killer viruses than an overdose of postapocalyptic sci-fi thrillers, the latest example of which is this cheesy entry from director-screenwriter Neil Marshall. Squandering the estimable cinematic credibility the filmmaker garnered with his last effort, the spooky horror film The Descent, Doomsday comes all too close to approximating its title.
Rhona Mitra, channeling such genre predecessors as Sigourney Weaver, Angelina Jolie and Kate Beckinsale, plays the tough-as-nails heroine, the one-eyed Eden Sinclair. Set in the not-too-distant future, the story concerns Eden and her ragtag crew of mercenaries as they are enlisted by the British government to enter a walled-off Scotland that has been quarantined ever since the onset of a deadly plague.
There, they must search for a cure for the disease, which has unfortunately infected the rest of Britain. It presumably lies in the hands of a proverbial mad scientist (Malcolm McDowell, a long way from his Kubrick glory days) ensconced in a remote castle.
Along the way, the team must deal with rampaging gangs of punk-style cannibals led by a Mohawk-haired savage with the unlikely name of Sol (Craig Conway).
The film includes the usual unending series of high-speed chases and brutal fight scenes of every variation imaginable, all filmed in the sort of hyper-kinetic style by now endemic to these witless genre efforts.
The violence is very much of the R-rated variety, with numerous body parts being blown or shot off, several scenes of immolation and cannibalism and, to add insult to injury, a poor bunny rabbit being blown to smithereens.
Perhaps the film's most outlandish sequence depicts a sort of rave enjoyed by the cannibals, seemingly designed by the folks at Cirque du Soleil. (It was a fun touch, admittedly, to have them dancing to a song recorded by Fine Young Cannibals).
Mitra, clad in the requisite tight, sexy outfits, conveys a suitable toughness but little in the way of personality, while such distinguished British actors as Bob Hoskins and Adrian Lester dutifully show up to collect their paychecks.
Catchphrase alert: Two new standards that might possibly emerge if the film is successful are Same shit, different era and "If you're hungry, here's a piece of your friend," both uttered by the stoic heroine.
DOOMSDAY
Universal
Rogue Pictures/Intrepid Pictures, Crystal Sky Pictures/Scion Films
Credits:
Director-writer: Neil Marshall
Producers: Steven Paul, Benedict Carver
Executive producers: Peter McAleese, Trevor Macy, Marc D. Evans, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Sam McCurdy
Production designer: Simon Bowles
Music: Tyler Bates
Costume designer: John Norster
Editor: Andrew MacRitchie
Cast:
Eden Sinclair: Rhona Mitra
Bill Nelson: Bob Hoskins
Norton: Adrian Lester
John Hatcher: Alexander Siddig
Michael Canaris: David O'Hara
Kane: Malcolm McDowell
Sol: Craig Conway
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Rhona Mitra, channeling such genre predecessors as Sigourney Weaver, Angelina Jolie and Kate Beckinsale, plays the tough-as-nails heroine, the one-eyed Eden Sinclair. Set in the not-too-distant future, the story concerns Eden and her ragtag crew of mercenaries as they are enlisted by the British government to enter a walled-off Scotland that has been quarantined ever since the onset of a deadly plague.
There, they must search for a cure for the disease, which has unfortunately infected the rest of Britain. It presumably lies in the hands of a proverbial mad scientist (Malcolm McDowell, a long way from his Kubrick glory days) ensconced in a remote castle.
Along the way, the team must deal with rampaging gangs of punk-style cannibals led by a Mohawk-haired savage with the unlikely name of Sol (Craig Conway).
The film includes the usual unending series of high-speed chases and brutal fight scenes of every variation imaginable, all filmed in the sort of hyper-kinetic style by now endemic to these witless genre efforts.
The violence is very much of the R-rated variety, with numerous body parts being blown or shot off, several scenes of immolation and cannibalism and, to add insult to injury, a poor bunny rabbit being blown to smithereens.
Perhaps the film's most outlandish sequence depicts a sort of rave enjoyed by the cannibals, seemingly designed by the folks at Cirque du Soleil. (It was a fun touch, admittedly, to have them dancing to a song recorded by Fine Young Cannibals).
Mitra, clad in the requisite tight, sexy outfits, conveys a suitable toughness but little in the way of personality, while such distinguished British actors as Bob Hoskins and Adrian Lester dutifully show up to collect their paychecks.
Catchphrase alert: Two new standards that might possibly emerge if the film is successful are Same shit, different era and "If you're hungry, here's a piece of your friend," both uttered by the stoic heroine.
DOOMSDAY
Universal
Rogue Pictures/Intrepid Pictures, Crystal Sky Pictures/Scion Films
Credits:
Director-writer: Neil Marshall
Producers: Steven Paul, Benedict Carver
Executive producers: Peter McAleese, Trevor Macy, Marc D. Evans, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Sam McCurdy
Production designer: Simon Bowles
Music: Tyler Bates
Costume designer: John Norster
Editor: Andrew MacRitchie
Cast:
Eden Sinclair: Rhona Mitra
Bill Nelson: Bob Hoskins
Norton: Adrian Lester
John Hatcher: Alexander Siddig
Michael Canaris: David O'Hara
Kane: Malcolm McDowell
Sol: Craig Conway
Running time -- 105 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 3/18/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In Bruges
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Just when you think you've seen every possible variation on the hit-man genre, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in his feature debut has fashioned an audacious combination of Old World grace and modern ultraviolence.
Chock full of wonderful lines delivered by a splendid cast, the film toys with the conventions and mostly transcends the limitations. But generous bloodletting might prove too much for the indie crowd, while artful conceit probably won't play in the multiplex. It's going to be a tough sell for Focus Features.
After a botched killing in London, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) blow into Bruges, Belgium, like a breath of stale air. Ken essentially is baby sitting Ray for mob boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) until the heat cools down or he figures out what to do with him.
The idea of soulful thugs on the lam among the medieval splendor of one of Europe's oldest cities is an inspired bit of storytelling conjured up by McDonagh, author of such pitch-black stage plays as The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West.
While Ken falls under the spell of Bruges and turns philosophical, Ray finds new ways to get in trouble. On the set of a movie shooting in town, he is enchanted by beautiful Chloe (Clemence Poesy), who is not the pure princess she appears to be. A petty grifter herself, she leads Ray into a fateful barroom brawl and later a gruesome showdown with her partner in crime (Jeremie Renier), posing as her jealous boyfriend.
Things really get messy when Ken receives orders to wipe out Ray. Even for a lifelong criminal, this presents a moral dilemma. McDonagh has a fine time balancing the dark and light in what plays out like an absurdist gangster film. Things like Harry consulting a tourist map to find the quickest way to a killing or Ray karate-chopping a racist dwarf (Jordan Prentice) keep the mood from becoming too oppressive.
McDonagh is skilled at leavening the human cruelty with humor. An almost slapstick scene with a couple of overweight American tourists balances the brutal gunplay. Gleeson's girth and Farrell's hangdog sadness makes them feel like the mob version of Laurel and Hardy as they bicker and stew.
As a writer, and now a director, McDonagh understands how to fashion a scene for maximum mileage and gives his actors wonderful words to speak. Playing against type, the usually menacing Gleeson brings a sweetness to the role, while Farrell manages to be ghastly and sympathetic at the same time. And Fiennes is so comically vicious as to be almost unrecognizable.
With its gray canals, brown brick buildings and twinkling lights, there is indeed something magical about the city. But In Bruges is neither a world of fairy-tale gentility nor purely evil deeds. For McDonagh, it all coexists. And assisted by the glowing cinematography of Eigil Bryld and plaintive music of Carter Burwell, it's a life even bad guys find worth living.
IN BRUGES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with Film4 of a Blueprint Pictures production
Credits:
Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenwriter: Martin McDonagh
Producers: Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin
Executive producers: Tessa Ross, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Eigil Bryld
Production designer: Michael Carlin
Music: Carter Burwell
Costume designer: Jany Temime
Editor: Jon Gregory
Cast:
Ray: Colin Farrell
Ken: Brendan Gleeson
Harry: Ralph Fiennes
Chloe: Clemence Poesy
Jimmy: Jordan Prentice
Eirik: Jeremie Renier
Yuri: Eric Godon
Canadian Guy: Eljko Ivanek
Running time -- 107 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
PARK CITY -- Just when you think you've seen every possible variation on the hit-man genre, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh in his feature debut has fashioned an audacious combination of Old World grace and modern ultraviolence.
Chock full of wonderful lines delivered by a splendid cast, the film toys with the conventions and mostly transcends the limitations. But generous bloodletting might prove too much for the indie crowd, while artful conceit probably won't play in the multiplex. It's going to be a tough sell for Focus Features.
After a botched killing in London, Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) blow into Bruges, Belgium, like a breath of stale air. Ken essentially is baby sitting Ray for mob boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) until the heat cools down or he figures out what to do with him.
The idea of soulful thugs on the lam among the medieval splendor of one of Europe's oldest cities is an inspired bit of storytelling conjured up by McDonagh, author of such pitch-black stage plays as The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Lonesome West.
While Ken falls under the spell of Bruges and turns philosophical, Ray finds new ways to get in trouble. On the set of a movie shooting in town, he is enchanted by beautiful Chloe (Clemence Poesy), who is not the pure princess she appears to be. A petty grifter herself, she leads Ray into a fateful barroom brawl and later a gruesome showdown with her partner in crime (Jeremie Renier), posing as her jealous boyfriend.
Things really get messy when Ken receives orders to wipe out Ray. Even for a lifelong criminal, this presents a moral dilemma. McDonagh has a fine time balancing the dark and light in what plays out like an absurdist gangster film. Things like Harry consulting a tourist map to find the quickest way to a killing or Ray karate-chopping a racist dwarf (Jordan Prentice) keep the mood from becoming too oppressive.
McDonagh is skilled at leavening the human cruelty with humor. An almost slapstick scene with a couple of overweight American tourists balances the brutal gunplay. Gleeson's girth and Farrell's hangdog sadness makes them feel like the mob version of Laurel and Hardy as they bicker and stew.
As a writer, and now a director, McDonagh understands how to fashion a scene for maximum mileage and gives his actors wonderful words to speak. Playing against type, the usually menacing Gleeson brings a sweetness to the role, while Farrell manages to be ghastly and sympathetic at the same time. And Fiennes is so comically vicious as to be almost unrecognizable.
With its gray canals, brown brick buildings and twinkling lights, there is indeed something magical about the city. But In Bruges is neither a world of fairy-tale gentility nor purely evil deeds. For McDonagh, it all coexists. And assisted by the glowing cinematography of Eigil Bryld and plaintive music of Carter Burwell, it's a life even bad guys find worth living.
IN BRUGES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with Film4 of a Blueprint Pictures production
Credits:
Director: Martin McDonagh
Screenwriter: Martin McDonagh
Producers: Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin
Executive producers: Tessa Ross, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Eigil Bryld
Production designer: Michael Carlin
Music: Carter Burwell
Costume designer: Jany Temime
Editor: Jon Gregory
Cast:
Ray: Colin Farrell
Ken: Brendan Gleeson
Harry: Ralph Fiennes
Chloe: Clemence Poesy
Jimmy: Jordan Prentice
Eirik: Jeremie Renier
Yuri: Eric Godon
Canadian Guy: Eljko Ivanek
Running time -- 107 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 1/21/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Eastern Promises
Toronto International Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ultraviolent, gruesome and riveting, David Cronenberg's trangressive crime drama, "Eastern Promises", may be one of the director's best recent films. Engineering the cliches of the gangster genre for their own purposes, Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London. That tension is maintained is quite a trick given the presence of stock characters and a script that telegraphs where it's going at the midpoint. A mood of pervasive malevolence and performances by Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen certainly make it worth the ride.
Arriving after the success of "A History of Violence", "Promises" will likely cross over and draw audiences beyond the art house crowd. A climactic scene, in which a naked, tattooed Mortensen slugs it out with hit-men in a steam bath and stabs one in the eye, is sure to generate word of mouth.
Like the previous film, this one opens with a casual opera of bloodshed: A man's throat is slashed in a barber shop and a mysterious pregnant girl, Tatiana, collapses in a pharmacy, blood flowing down her legs. At the hospital, she dies giving birth to a baby who comes under the protective care of Anna (a luminous Watts). A naive midwife, Anna begins an ill-advised investigation into Tatiana's origins, thereby putting herself in jeopardy.
Tatiana's diary leads Anna to Russian restaurant owner, Semyon, a silky-voiced, mafia boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing a variation on the grandfatherly Nazi, sadist-in sheep's-clothing he has played before). As she soon learns, the diary implicates Semyon in the rape of the underage Tatiana, an act he committed in front of Kirell (a rabid Vincent Cassel), his vicious, psycho son.
There's a glimmer of attraction between Anna, a Madonna figure, and Nikolai (Mortensen), a sinister mob enforcer, who's rising in the ranks. Speaking in a Russian accent and sleek as an eel in head-to-toe Armani, Nikolai dons black leather gloves, a must-have accessory for snipping off fingertips of murder victims and dispatching them to the murky depths of the Thames.
Mortensen, acting the flip side of his character in "A History of Violence", where he was a seemingly regular guy whose shady past and violent proclivities caught up to him, here, playing an angel of death with an unexpected capacity for mercy, is a better man than he initially appears. The actor, whose natural reserve serves him well in the role, has a plausible if low-key chemistry with Watts.
The main event, though, is graphic brutality. Shot in harsh, unforgiving light in claustrophobic settings, several scenes, including a degrading one in a brothel, where Nikolai is forced to prove his manhood with a young prostitute drugged into submission, are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.
To enjoy "Promises" one has to buy into its artificial, hermetically sealed universe. Perpetually enveloped in darkness, London never looked gloomier. Cronenberg's signature palette of slate grays and artery red, rendered by veteran production designer Carol Spier, and Peter Suschitzky's spooky cinematography enhance the uncanny sensation that the film is unfolding within the confines of a distorted psyche rather than being rooted in a known, tangible reality. And what a foul, menacing terrain it is.
EASTERN PROMISES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with BBC Films of a Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Steve Knight
Producer: Paul Webster, Robert Lantos
Executive producer: Stephen Garrett, David M. Thompson, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky
Production designer: Carol Spier
Music: Howard Shore
Co-producer: Tracey Seaward
Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Cast:
Nikolai: Viggo Mortensen
Anna: Naomi Watts
Kirill: Vincent Cassel
Semyon: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ultraviolent, gruesome and riveting, David Cronenberg's trangressive crime drama, "Eastern Promises", may be one of the director's best recent films. Engineering the cliches of the gangster genre for their own purposes, Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London. That tension is maintained is quite a trick given the presence of stock characters and a script that telegraphs where it's going at the midpoint. A mood of pervasive malevolence and performances by Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen certainly make it worth the ride.
Arriving after the success of "A History of Violence", "Promises" will likely cross over and draw audiences beyond the art house crowd. A climactic scene, in which a naked, tattooed Mortensen slugs it out with hit-men in a steam bath and stabs one in the eye, is sure to generate word of mouth.
Like the previous film, this one opens with a casual opera of bloodshed: A man's throat is slashed in a barber shop and a mysterious pregnant girl, Tatiana, collapses in a pharmacy, blood flowing down her legs. At the hospital, she dies giving birth to a baby who comes under the protective care of Anna (a luminous Watts). A naive midwife, Anna begins an ill-advised investigation into Tatiana's origins, thereby putting herself in jeopardy.
Tatiana's diary leads Anna to Russian restaurant owner, Semyon, a silky-voiced, mafia boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing a variation on the grandfatherly Nazi, sadist-in sheep's-clothing he has played before). As she soon learns, the diary implicates Semyon in the rape of the underage Tatiana, an act he committed in front of Kirell (a rabid Vincent Cassel), his vicious, psycho son.
There's a glimmer of attraction between Anna, a Madonna figure, and Nikolai (Mortensen), a sinister mob enforcer, who's rising in the ranks. Speaking in a Russian accent and sleek as an eel in head-to-toe Armani, Nikolai dons black leather gloves, a must-have accessory for snipping off fingertips of murder victims and dispatching them to the murky depths of the Thames.
Mortensen, acting the flip side of his character in "A History of Violence", where he was a seemingly regular guy whose shady past and violent proclivities caught up to him, here, playing an angel of death with an unexpected capacity for mercy, is a better man than he initially appears. The actor, whose natural reserve serves him well in the role, has a plausible if low-key chemistry with Watts.
The main event, though, is graphic brutality. Shot in harsh, unforgiving light in claustrophobic settings, several scenes, including a degrading one in a brothel, where Nikolai is forced to prove his manhood with a young prostitute drugged into submission, are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.
To enjoy "Promises" one has to buy into its artificial, hermetically sealed universe. Perpetually enveloped in darkness, London never looked gloomier. Cronenberg's signature palette of slate grays and artery red, rendered by veteran production designer Carol Spier, and Peter Suschitzky's spooky cinematography enhance the uncanny sensation that the film is unfolding within the confines of a distorted psyche rather than being rooted in a known, tangible reality. And what a foul, menacing terrain it is.
EASTERN PROMISES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with BBC Films of a Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Steve Knight
Producer: Paul Webster, Robert Lantos
Executive producer: Stephen Garrett, David M. Thompson, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky
Production designer: Carol Spier
Music: Howard Shore
Co-producer: Tracey Seaward
Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Cast:
Nikolai: Viggo Mortensen
Anna: Naomi Watts
Kirill: Vincent Cassel
Semyon: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/10/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Eastern Promises
Toronto International Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ultraviolent, gruesome and riveting, David Cronenberg's trangressive crime drama, Eastern Promises, may be one of the director's best recent films. Engineering the cliches of the gangster genre for their own purposes, Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London. That tension is maintained is quite a trick given the presence of stock characters and a script that telegraphs where it's going at the midpoint. A mood of pervasive malevolence and performances by Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen certainly make it worth the ride.
Arriving after the success of A History of Violence, Promises will likely cross over and draw audiences beyond the art house crowd. A climactic scene, in which a naked, tattooed Mortensen slugs it out with hit-men in a steam bath and stabs one in the eye, is sure to generate word of mouth.
Like the previous film, this one opens with a casual opera of bloodshed: A man's throat is slashed in a barber shop and a mysterious pregnant girl, Tatiana, collapses in a pharmacy, blood flowing down her legs. At the hospital, she dies giving birth to a baby who comes under the protective care of Anna (a luminous Watts). A naive midwife, Anna begins an ill-advised investigation into Tatiana's origins, thereby putting herself in jeopardy.
Tatiana's diary leads Anna to Russian restaurant owner, Semyon, a silky-voiced, mafia boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing a variation on the grandfatherly Nazi, sadist-in sheep's-clothing he has played before). As she soon learns, the diary implicates Semyon in the rape of the underage Tatiana, an act he committed in front of Kirell (a rabid Vincent Cassel), his vicious, psycho son.
There's a glimmer of attraction between Anna, a Madonna figure, and Nikolai (Mortensen), a sinister mob enforcer, who's rising in the ranks. Speaking in a Russian accent and sleek as an eel in head-to-toe Armani, Nikolai dons black leather gloves, a must-have accessory for snipping off fingertips of murder victims and dispatching them to the murky depths of the Thames.
Mortensen, acting the flip side of his character in A History of Violence, where he was a seemingly regular guy whose shady past and violent proclivities caught up to him, here, playing an angel of death with an unexpected capacity for mercy, is a better man than he initially appears. The actor, whose natural reserve serves him well in the role, has a plausible if low-key chemistry with Watts.
The main event, though, is graphic brutality. Shot in harsh, unforgiving light in claustrophobic settings, several scenes, including a degrading one in a brothel, where Nikolai is forced to prove his manhood with a young prostitute drugged into submission, are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.
To enjoy Promises one has to buy into its artificial, hermetically sealed universe. Perpetually enveloped in darkness, London never looked gloomier. Cronenberg's signature palette of slate grays and artery red, rendered by veteran production designer Carol Spier, and Peter Suschitzky's spooky cinematography enhance the uncanny sensation that the film is unfolding within the confines of a distorted psyche rather than being rooted in a known, tangible reality. And what a foul, menacing terrain it is.
EASTERN PROMISES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with BBC Films of a Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Steve Knight
Producer: Paul Webster, Robert Lantos
Executive producer: Stephen Garrett, David M. Thompson, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky
Production designer: Carol Spier
Music: Howard Shore
Co-producer: Tracey Seaward
Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Cast:
Nikolai: Viggo Mortensen
Anna: Naomi Watts
Kirill: Vincent Cassel
Semyon: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ultraviolent, gruesome and riveting, David Cronenberg's trangressive crime drama, Eastern Promises, may be one of the director's best recent films. Engineering the cliches of the gangster genre for their own purposes, Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London. That tension is maintained is quite a trick given the presence of stock characters and a script that telegraphs where it's going at the midpoint. A mood of pervasive malevolence and performances by Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen certainly make it worth the ride.
Arriving after the success of A History of Violence, Promises will likely cross over and draw audiences beyond the art house crowd. A climactic scene, in which a naked, tattooed Mortensen slugs it out with hit-men in a steam bath and stabs one in the eye, is sure to generate word of mouth.
Like the previous film, this one opens with a casual opera of bloodshed: A man's throat is slashed in a barber shop and a mysterious pregnant girl, Tatiana, collapses in a pharmacy, blood flowing down her legs. At the hospital, she dies giving birth to a baby who comes under the protective care of Anna (a luminous Watts). A naive midwife, Anna begins an ill-advised investigation into Tatiana's origins, thereby putting herself in jeopardy.
Tatiana's diary leads Anna to Russian restaurant owner, Semyon, a silky-voiced, mafia boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing a variation on the grandfatherly Nazi, sadist-in sheep's-clothing he has played before). As she soon learns, the diary implicates Semyon in the rape of the underage Tatiana, an act he committed in front of Kirell (a rabid Vincent Cassel), his vicious, psycho son.
There's a glimmer of attraction between Anna, a Madonna figure, and Nikolai (Mortensen), a sinister mob enforcer, who's rising in the ranks. Speaking in a Russian accent and sleek as an eel in head-to-toe Armani, Nikolai dons black leather gloves, a must-have accessory for snipping off fingertips of murder victims and dispatching them to the murky depths of the Thames.
Mortensen, acting the flip side of his character in A History of Violence, where he was a seemingly regular guy whose shady past and violent proclivities caught up to him, here, playing an angel of death with an unexpected capacity for mercy, is a better man than he initially appears. The actor, whose natural reserve serves him well in the role, has a plausible if low-key chemistry with Watts.
The main event, though, is graphic brutality. Shot in harsh, unforgiving light in claustrophobic settings, several scenes, including a degrading one in a brothel, where Nikolai is forced to prove his manhood with a young prostitute drugged into submission, are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.
To enjoy Promises one has to buy into its artificial, hermetically sealed universe. Perpetually enveloped in darkness, London never looked gloomier. Cronenberg's signature palette of slate grays and artery red, rendered by veteran production designer Carol Spier, and Peter Suschitzky's spooky cinematography enhance the uncanny sensation that the film is unfolding within the confines of a distorted psyche rather than being rooted in a known, tangible reality. And what a foul, menacing terrain it is.
EASTERN PROMISES
Focus Features
A Focus Features presentation in association with BBC Films of a Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: David Cronenberg
Writer: Steve Knight
Producer: Paul Webster, Robert Lantos
Executive producer: Stephen Garrett, David M. Thompson, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky
Production designer: Carol Spier
Music: Howard Shore
Co-producer: Tracey Seaward
Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Cast:
Nikolai: Viggo Mortensen
Anna: Naomi Watts
Kirill: Vincent Cassel
Semyon: Armin Mueller-Stahl
Running time -- 100 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 9/10/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
London fest kicking off with Cronenberg
LONDON -- David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises will open this year's 51st annual London Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.
The London-set thriller, written by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things), reunites Cronenberg with his History of Violence star Viggo Mortensen and also stars Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
The plot centers on mysterious and ruthless Nikolai (Mortensen), who is tied to one of London's most notorious organized Russian crime families. The movie is produced by Paul Webster and Robert Lantos, co-produced by Tracey Seaward and executive produced by Stephen Garret, David Thompson, Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman.
Pathe will release the film in the U.K. in the fall.
"It's hugely exciting that a director who has consistently thrilled and challenged us throughout his career has made a film in our city," festival artistic director Sandra Hebron said. "This gripping, powerfully directed and acted story of lives colliding in contemporary London is the perfect opener for our festival."
Cronenberg said he couldn't wait to be in London, "the scene of the crime" to share his movie.
The London-set thriller, written by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things), reunites Cronenberg with his History of Violence star Viggo Mortensen and also stars Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
The plot centers on mysterious and ruthless Nikolai (Mortensen), who is tied to one of London's most notorious organized Russian crime families. The movie is produced by Paul Webster and Robert Lantos, co-produced by Tracey Seaward and executive produced by Stephen Garret, David Thompson, Jeff Abberley and Julia Blackman.
Pathe will release the film in the U.K. in the fall.
"It's hugely exciting that a director who has consistently thrilled and challenged us throughout his career has made a film in our city," festival artistic director Sandra Hebron said. "This gripping, powerfully directed and acted story of lives colliding in contemporary London is the perfect opener for our festival."
Cronenberg said he couldn't wait to be in London, "the scene of the crime" to share his movie.
- 8/1/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Constant Gardener
John le Carre's densely plotted novels, which revolve around espionage, moral corruption and forces of evil at work around the globe, often flounder when transferred to the screen. Plots gets severely truncated and nuances are lost. Filmmakers try to cherry-pick the "cinematic" bits from the stories -- the cloak-and-dagger maneuvers -- but those separate with difficulty from the texture of his characters' lives and the thorough documentation of how rogues, governments and multinational corporations behave.
"The Constant Gardener" is a happy exception. One reason might be the inspired choice of Fernando Meirelles, the Oscar-nominated Brazilian director of "City of God", to bring the story to the screen. His impressionistic, guerilla style of filmmaking works surprisingly well in capturing the hypnotic urgency of le Carre's fiction. And his viewpoint is less British and more Third World. There are awkward moments, given the need to rush through a convoluted plot, and the peripheral characters that never fully come alive. But "The Constant Gardener" gets the essence of the story.
With Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz toplining a work of clear passion, the film looks set for late summer counterprogramming as well as a competitive run with upcoming prestige offerings for Oscar nominations. Boxoffice should be steady though well short of blockbuster status.
The film, like the novel, opens with the death of a major character. Tessa Quayle (Weisz), a tireless political activist, is discovered brutally murdered in a remote area in northern Kenya. Her older husband is Justin (Fiennes), an ineffectual career diplomat attached to the British High Command in Nairobi, mostly concerned with tending his flower garden and keeping up appearances.
Initially, he takes the news with the apparent sangfroid of a true Etonian. Indeed it is Justin's associate, Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston), who throws up at the sight of Tessa's mutilated body in the morgue, not Justin. Complicating his reaction is an indication that her murder might be a crime of passion: The Kenyan doctor (Hubert Kounde) with whom she was traveling has disappeared and is the chief suspect.
Justin then makes discoveries that could substantiate rumors of other infidelities by his young wife. But what no one in the community of expats in Nairobi counts on is the fierce love this man still has for the woman he scarcely got to know in their brief marriage.
The story moves in a nonlinear way as Justin turns into a mild-mannered bulldog, seeking an explanation for his wife's death. Then, in flashbacks, he examines more closely who his wife was. In the course of his confrontation with things he previously chose not to see, he draws closer to his wife; he understands her point of view, what mattered to her, and comes to love her even more.
This odyssey pulls him into the shady world of multinational pharmaceuticals or "pharmas" as the drug giants are called. These are organizations with enormous resources and economic power, virtual nations onto themselves, who think nothing about testing new drugs in the impoverished Third World.
Justin's investigation into what might have caused someone to order his wife's murder takes him into a scary and sinister terrain, where one feels no safer in the blazing light of day then in the mysterious dark of the night.
He visits Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. In London, the British government confiscates his passport. He travels to Berlin with a fake passport to interview the scared head of a pharma watchdog group. He returns to Kenya to confront those with blood on their hands, then journeys to Sudan, where refugees live in vile conditions. The journey ends at the strangely beautiful site of his wife's murder.
(For all the criticism of the Kenyan government by the book and the film, the same government allowed the film to shoot in that country.)
The major disappointment comes in Justin's encounters with the crooks, thugs, spies, corrupt businessmen and Her Majesty's mendacious civil servants. These are played by such wonderful actors as Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, Nick Reding and Gerard McSorley. Yet they are all too familiar types. No doubt perfectly accurate types but le Carre -- adapted here by Jeffrey Caine -- is capable of creating characters with greater subtlety and dimension.
What distracts us from such things is Meirelles' arresting style that creates a vivid sense of place. Working again with cinematographer Cesar Charlone, the director overexposes some scenes, producing a kind of white on white. Meanwhile, in the slums and villages, as with the favela in "City of God", are a riot of deeply saturated colors. The camera jumps and tries to focus, as if a documentary film crew were shooting the film. Editor Claire Simpson keeps the story rushing forward as Alberto Iglesias' soft music, containing hints of African rock, pulsates in the background.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
Focus Features
Focus Features presents in association with the U.K. Film Council a Potboiler production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Screenwriter: Jeffrey Caine
Based on the novel by: John le Carre
Producer: Simon Channing Williams
Executive producers: Gail Egan, Robert Jones, Donald Ranvaud, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Cesar Charlone
Production designer: Mark Tildesley
Music: Alberto Iglesias
Costumes: Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Editor: Claire Simpson
Cast:
Justin Quayle: Ralph Fiennes
Tessa Quayle: Rachel Weisz
Sandy: Danny Huston
Sir Pellegrin: Bill Nighy
Marcus: Pete Postlethwaite
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 130 minutes...
"The Constant Gardener" is a happy exception. One reason might be the inspired choice of Fernando Meirelles, the Oscar-nominated Brazilian director of "City of God", to bring the story to the screen. His impressionistic, guerilla style of filmmaking works surprisingly well in capturing the hypnotic urgency of le Carre's fiction. And his viewpoint is less British and more Third World. There are awkward moments, given the need to rush through a convoluted plot, and the peripheral characters that never fully come alive. But "The Constant Gardener" gets the essence of the story.
With Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz toplining a work of clear passion, the film looks set for late summer counterprogramming as well as a competitive run with upcoming prestige offerings for Oscar nominations. Boxoffice should be steady though well short of blockbuster status.
The film, like the novel, opens with the death of a major character. Tessa Quayle (Weisz), a tireless political activist, is discovered brutally murdered in a remote area in northern Kenya. Her older husband is Justin (Fiennes), an ineffectual career diplomat attached to the British High Command in Nairobi, mostly concerned with tending his flower garden and keeping up appearances.
Initially, he takes the news with the apparent sangfroid of a true Etonian. Indeed it is Justin's associate, Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston), who throws up at the sight of Tessa's mutilated body in the morgue, not Justin. Complicating his reaction is an indication that her murder might be a crime of passion: The Kenyan doctor (Hubert Kounde) with whom she was traveling has disappeared and is the chief suspect.
Justin then makes discoveries that could substantiate rumors of other infidelities by his young wife. But what no one in the community of expats in Nairobi counts on is the fierce love this man still has for the woman he scarcely got to know in their brief marriage.
The story moves in a nonlinear way as Justin turns into a mild-mannered bulldog, seeking an explanation for his wife's death. Then, in flashbacks, he examines more closely who his wife was. In the course of his confrontation with things he previously chose not to see, he draws closer to his wife; he understands her point of view, what mattered to her, and comes to love her even more.
This odyssey pulls him into the shady world of multinational pharmaceuticals or "pharmas" as the drug giants are called. These are organizations with enormous resources and economic power, virtual nations onto themselves, who think nothing about testing new drugs in the impoverished Third World.
Justin's investigation into what might have caused someone to order his wife's murder takes him into a scary and sinister terrain, where one feels no safer in the blazing light of day then in the mysterious dark of the night.
He visits Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. In London, the British government confiscates his passport. He travels to Berlin with a fake passport to interview the scared head of a pharma watchdog group. He returns to Kenya to confront those with blood on their hands, then journeys to Sudan, where refugees live in vile conditions. The journey ends at the strangely beautiful site of his wife's murder.
(For all the criticism of the Kenyan government by the book and the film, the same government allowed the film to shoot in that country.)
The major disappointment comes in Justin's encounters with the crooks, thugs, spies, corrupt businessmen and Her Majesty's mendacious civil servants. These are played by such wonderful actors as Bill Nighy, Pete Postlethwaite, Nick Reding and Gerard McSorley. Yet they are all too familiar types. No doubt perfectly accurate types but le Carre -- adapted here by Jeffrey Caine -- is capable of creating characters with greater subtlety and dimension.
What distracts us from such things is Meirelles' arresting style that creates a vivid sense of place. Working again with cinematographer Cesar Charlone, the director overexposes some scenes, producing a kind of white on white. Meanwhile, in the slums and villages, as with the favela in "City of God", are a riot of deeply saturated colors. The camera jumps and tries to focus, as if a documentary film crew were shooting the film. Editor Claire Simpson keeps the story rushing forward as Alberto Iglesias' soft music, containing hints of African rock, pulsates in the background.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER
Focus Features
Focus Features presents in association with the U.K. Film Council a Potboiler production in association with Scion Films
Credits:
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Screenwriter: Jeffrey Caine
Based on the novel by: John le Carre
Producer: Simon Channing Williams
Executive producers: Gail Egan, Robert Jones, Donald Ranvaud, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman
Director of photography: Cesar Charlone
Production designer: Mark Tildesley
Music: Alberto Iglesias
Costumes: Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Editor: Claire Simpson
Cast:
Justin Quayle: Ralph Fiennes
Tessa Quayle: Rachel Weisz
Sandy: Danny Huston
Sir Pellegrin: Bill Nighy
Marcus: Pete Postlethwaite
MPAA rating R
Running time -- 130 minutes...
- 9/7/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Phantom of the Opera
The film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical theater powerhouse "The Phantom of the Opera" still contains its memorable lyrics and score, but this "Phantom" is a pale -- dare we say ghostly? -- copy of the original coup de theatre directed by Harold Prince. Part of the problem can be laid to miscasting and an overindulgence in set design. But the element of camp, which admittedly lurked in the wings of the stage musical, explodes into full view here before unforgiving cameras.
A Baz Luhrmann might have found a way to make the film version hip and relevant to younger audiences. But Webber clearly maintained a tight grip on his baby as producer and screenplay collaborator with director Joel Schumacher, so little rethinking of the stage show went into the filmization. Consequently, audiences for the musical skew older, with little to attract young males.
The story from Gaston Leroux's 1911 pulp horror novel tells of a disfigured musical genius who haunts the catacombs of a Paris opera house. He secretly mentors a young female singer, whom he adores, but a hideous face behind a half mask forces him to hide both himself and his love from the woman.
The film opens strongly with a black-and-white prologue in 1919, where the aging Vicompte Raoul de Chagny buys an old music box at auction in a decaying theater. As an organ strikes the Phantom's theme, the movie then flashes back in brilliant color to that theater in full swing in 1870 where singers, costumers, set builders and the ballet corps ready the next grand production.
The film gains further momentum when the brilliant and beautiful Emmy Rossum comes onscreen as the young chorus girl Christine Daae. A classically trained singer who made a dazzling debut in the underrated "Songcatcher" in 2000, Rossum has a crystal-pure voice that conveys the soft innocence of the Phantom's beloved. She also handles the mood shifts well, confused when caught in a romantic tug of war between the Phantom and her lover, Raoul, then later finding the backbone to stand up to her mentor.
Alas, the movie stumbles badly with the appearance of Scottish actor Gerard Butler as the Phantom. The role, so memorably created by Michael Crawford onstage, usually falls to an older actor since the Phantom has supposedly been Christine's "angel of music" since childhood. Yet Butler is nearly the same age as Patrick Wilson, who plays Christine's childhood friend Raoul. The change possibly reflects a misguided notion that a younger Phantom will attract a younger crowd, but it throws off the dynamics of the romantic triangle. Much more damaging is the fact Butler is not a trained singer. He manages to get by but lacks the vocal range and richness to do justice to some of the show's finest songs.
The role of Raoul is always problematic. Webber and Schumacher invent a ludicrous sword fight between Raoul and the Phantom in a graveyard so his character is a little less wimpy than onstage. Nevertheless, Wilson struggles, as do all Raouls, to give the character color or dimension.
Minnie Driver, as the opera's impossible diva, is terrific fun, hamming things up in a fake Italian accent and raging ego. Miranda Richardson is suitably grave and levelheaded as the ballet mistress who knows more than she pretends.
Simon Callow and Ciaran Hinds give comic zest to the theater's two new managers, but the roles have always been the show's weakest as they require vaudevillian turns at odds with the musical's often horrific tone.
What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger. When the Phantom magically transports Christine through the bowels of the opera to his lair, Schumacher has cinematographer John Mathieson light the passages so brightly -- the better to show off all those expensive sets, apparently -- it feels more like a fun frolic than a journey into the heart of darkness. There is even a horse standing by to help out. What on earth is a horse doing down there?
Similarly, in the scene where Christine visits her father's grave to sing "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," Schumacher has Rossum traipse miles through a grotesque set of towering, campy headstones and monuments before she finally arrives at a sarcophagus befitting an emperor. The only trouble is, her father was a poor violinist.
In the story's one major change, the famous scene in which the Phantom causes a chandelier to crash during a performance has been moved to the end to put more "wow" into the climax. Fine, only the audience now has no idea until the end how far this mad genius will go to claim his love from his rival. Except when Rossum is onscreen, this "Phantom" is but a hallow visual effects show.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Odyssey Entertainment A Really Useful Films/Scion Films production
Credits:
Director: Joel Schumacher
Screenwriters: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joel Schumacher
Based on the novel by: Gaston Leroux
Producer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Executive producers: Austin Shaw, Paul Hitchcock, Louise Goodsill, Ralph Kamp, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman, Keith Cousins
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Anthony Pratt
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: Charles Hart
Additional lyrics: Richard Stilgoe
Choreographer: Peter Darling
Costumes: Alexandra Byrne
Visual effects supervisor: Nathan McGuinness
Editor: Terry Rawlings
Cast:
Phantom: Gerard Butler
Christine: Emmy Rossum
Raoul: Patrick Wilson
Mme. Giry: Miranda Richardson
Andrew: Simon Callow
Firmin: Ciaran Hinds
Carlotta: Minnie Driver
Buquet: Kevin R. McNally
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 140 minutes...
A Baz Luhrmann might have found a way to make the film version hip and relevant to younger audiences. But Webber clearly maintained a tight grip on his baby as producer and screenplay collaborator with director Joel Schumacher, so little rethinking of the stage show went into the filmization. Consequently, audiences for the musical skew older, with little to attract young males.
The story from Gaston Leroux's 1911 pulp horror novel tells of a disfigured musical genius who haunts the catacombs of a Paris opera house. He secretly mentors a young female singer, whom he adores, but a hideous face behind a half mask forces him to hide both himself and his love from the woman.
The film opens strongly with a black-and-white prologue in 1919, where the aging Vicompte Raoul de Chagny buys an old music box at auction in a decaying theater. As an organ strikes the Phantom's theme, the movie then flashes back in brilliant color to that theater in full swing in 1870 where singers, costumers, set builders and the ballet corps ready the next grand production.
The film gains further momentum when the brilliant and beautiful Emmy Rossum comes onscreen as the young chorus girl Christine Daae. A classically trained singer who made a dazzling debut in the underrated "Songcatcher" in 2000, Rossum has a crystal-pure voice that conveys the soft innocence of the Phantom's beloved. She also handles the mood shifts well, confused when caught in a romantic tug of war between the Phantom and her lover, Raoul, then later finding the backbone to stand up to her mentor.
Alas, the movie stumbles badly with the appearance of Scottish actor Gerard Butler as the Phantom. The role, so memorably created by Michael Crawford onstage, usually falls to an older actor since the Phantom has supposedly been Christine's "angel of music" since childhood. Yet Butler is nearly the same age as Patrick Wilson, who plays Christine's childhood friend Raoul. The change possibly reflects a misguided notion that a younger Phantom will attract a younger crowd, but it throws off the dynamics of the romantic triangle. Much more damaging is the fact Butler is not a trained singer. He manages to get by but lacks the vocal range and richness to do justice to some of the show's finest songs.
The role of Raoul is always problematic. Webber and Schumacher invent a ludicrous sword fight between Raoul and the Phantom in a graveyard so his character is a little less wimpy than onstage. Nevertheless, Wilson struggles, as do all Raouls, to give the character color or dimension.
Minnie Driver, as the opera's impossible diva, is terrific fun, hamming things up in a fake Italian accent and raging ego. Miranda Richardson is suitably grave and levelheaded as the ballet mistress who knows more than she pretends.
Simon Callow and Ciaran Hinds give comic zest to the theater's two new managers, but the roles have always been the show's weakest as they require vaudevillian turns at odds with the musical's often horrific tone.
What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger. When the Phantom magically transports Christine through the bowels of the opera to his lair, Schumacher has cinematographer John Mathieson light the passages so brightly -- the better to show off all those expensive sets, apparently -- it feels more like a fun frolic than a journey into the heart of darkness. There is even a horse standing by to help out. What on earth is a horse doing down there?
Similarly, in the scene where Christine visits her father's grave to sing "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," Schumacher has Rossum traipse miles through a grotesque set of towering, campy headstones and monuments before she finally arrives at a sarcophagus befitting an emperor. The only trouble is, her father was a poor violinist.
In the story's one major change, the famous scene in which the Phantom causes a chandelier to crash during a performance has been moved to the end to put more "wow" into the climax. Fine, only the audience now has no idea until the end how far this mad genius will go to claim his love from his rival. Except when Rossum is onscreen, this "Phantom" is but a hallow visual effects show.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Odyssey Entertainment A Really Useful Films/Scion Films production
Credits:
Director: Joel Schumacher
Screenwriters: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joel Schumacher
Based on the novel by: Gaston Leroux
Producer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Executive producers: Austin Shaw, Paul Hitchcock, Louise Goodsill, Ralph Kamp, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman, Keith Cousins
Director of photography: John Mathieson
Production designer: Anthony Pratt
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics: Charles Hart
Additional lyrics: Richard Stilgoe
Choreographer: Peter Darling
Costumes: Alexandra Byrne
Visual effects supervisor: Nathan McGuinness
Editor: Terry Rawlings
Cast:
Phantom: Gerard Butler
Christine: Emmy Rossum
Raoul: Patrick Wilson
Mme. Giry: Miranda Richardson
Andrew: Simon Callow
Firmin: Ciaran Hinds
Carlotta: Minnie Driver
Buquet: Kevin R. McNally
MPAA rating PG-13
Running time -- 140 minutes...
- 1/10/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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