In Contention

Tag: Christopher McQuarrie

  • December welcomes ‘The Tourist’

    It’s difficult to know how to interpret the news that “The Tourist,” the first English-language feature from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, has been yanked forward into the 2010 release calendar, following a reportedly well-received screening for studio bosses. The film will now hit US theaters on December 10, a release date it shares with the latest “Chronicles of Narnia” instalment and, more pertinently, David O. Russell’s Oscar hopeful “The Fighter.”

    Why difficult? Well, the buzz on the film has heretofore been so quiet that we have little idea what manner of beast it is. I haven’t seen “Anthony Zimmer,” Jérôme Salle’s well-regarded but underexposed 2005 French espionage thriller from which von Donnersmarck’s film is adapted, but it appears to be a lightweight genre effort.

    While many will assume that the rescheduling positions “The Tourist” as a serious awards prospect, it could just be that Sony sees the film as a commercial winner for adult audiences in the pre-Christmas rush. (We only need look back at last year’s brutal holiday season to be reminded that a December release is no guarantee of awards gold.)

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  • That dude who wrote ‘The Usual Suspects’ makes the rounds

    Christopher McQuarrieAlright, I’m only joshing Christopher McQuarrie with the “that dude” quip.  Count me in the “Usual Suspects” boat, a film I’ve been in the tank for ever since it sparked something in me 13 years ago (along with Michael Mann’s “Heat”).  Both movies played a serious part in forging the film lover before you.

    McQuarrie’s latest project is another Bryan Singer effort, the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie.”  AP writer Jake Coyle cornered the scribe recently to discuss McQuarrie’s Oscar-winning work over a decade later as he and Singer make the press rounds on their somewhat under-reported reunion.

    In an interesting anecdote toward the end of the piece, McQuarrie notes that only after finishing production on “Suspects” did he and Singer realize they had completely different conceptions of the film’s narrative:

    “I pulled Bryan aside the night before press began and I said, ‘We need to get our stories straight because people are starting to ask what happened and what didn’t,’” recalls McQuarrie. “And we got into the biggest argument we’ve ever had in our lives.”

    He continues: “One of us believed that the story was all lies, peppered with little bits of the truth. And the other one believed it was all true, peppered with tiny, little lies. … We each thought we were making a movie that was completely different from what the other one thought.”

    So who believed what?

    With a broad grin, McQuarrie responds: “I’ll never tell.”

    Meanwhile, over at Cinematical, James Rocchi speaks with McQuarrie from New York concerning the project at hand, “working alongside the German government, how producing a mega-million [dollar] war film was like ‘drinking from a firehose,’ forgoing German accents, his possible future take on superheroic franchise ‘The Champions’ and much more.”  Listen to Rocchi’s podcast here.

  • PAGE TO SCREEN: “Valkyrie” by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander

    Page to Screen at In Contention“God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find just ten righteous men. I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.”

    So what has Christopher McQuarrie, the man responsible for creating Keyser Soze, been up to since “The Usual Suspects” (and the oft-forgotten “The Way of the Gun”)? The answer is “Valkyrie,” an original screenplay of the true story about the men who set out to assassinate Hitler and end his regime.

    History tells us (so please, no spoiler whining) that they lose, but McQuarrie and co-writer Nathan Alexader’s script uses this to build tension and dread rather than render a yarn completely neutered. Spending time on plot seems redundant as the film is entirely plot and, naturally, there are dozens of previous films and PBS specials telling this very story.

    The script is thankfully a fairly tight one (thankfully so after the indulgence of “Superman Returns.”  It’s almost entirely dedicated to the German’s rebellious mission to kill Hitler. Only a handful of pages are focus on life outside of the plot and mission, and naturally those are given to the hero of the piece, Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, to be played by Tom Cruise.

    Stauffenberg, a German war hero (with the scars to prove it) joins the plot to kill Hitler well after it’s begun, but it’s his influence and skills that bring it to it’s true potential. The scenes that aren’t dedicated to the mission follow Stauffenberg at home with his four children, and more importantly, his wife Nina (“Black Book” breakout Carice van Houten will take up the role).

    My favorite scene, an elegantly played out wordless “conversation” between Stauffenberg and Nina, almost fails simply because it’s a shooting star in the script. It’s so good, so connectable and tells so much about these two characters and their marriage that it frustrated me to not see more of this.

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  • ‘Valkyrie’ changes tack

    Well, I’ll be. In what appears to be Tom Cruise Week in showbiz newsland, the most surprising development is the return of the long-suffering “Valkyrie” to the 2008 release slate. Bryan Singer’s WWII thriller, a project that has been maligned virtually from the get-go, will now bow on US screens on 26 December.

    That will go some way towards raising public and critical expectations for the film – which honestly couldn’t have been any lower after MGM shifted it to the February graveyard shift months ago. However, I wonder whether it can be saved. As Kris has pointed out before, the script isn’t much to write home about (regrettably so, since Chris McQuarrie can be a hell of a writer) and that trailer that mysteriously started doing the rounds in April or so didn’t really set many pulses racing.

    Most of all, I think Tom Cruise may ironically be the film’s trickiest selling-point – I simply have no idea how many people out there will pay to see him carry a film these days. There’s no denying he’s a massive media presence (as the “Tropic Thunder” hoopla has made abundantly clear), but there comes a point sometimes where the roles of celebrity and movie star are no longer synonymous. Of course, he could turn it all around if he and the film are actually – gasp – good, but he could just as easily be on the cusp of becoming the Michael Jackson of screen acting. “Valkyrie” will be an interesting litmus test to see if audiences still want to see him as someone else.

    Why the scheduling change, incidentally? The studio seems to be playing the gosh-darn-ingenuous card there, with sources saying it’s a “purely commercial” decision made after positive test screenings. The awards season is “not a factor,” apparently. Actually, I believe them – though I wonder if that isn’t a hint of an admission that the film isn’t award-worthy. We shall see.

    Finally, I had to chuckle at the other stated motivation for the move: that MGM believes the film to be a “holiday pic.” Nothing says Christmas like Nazis, right?

  • No Oscar for ‘Valkyrie’ in 2008

    I have to admit, I was looking forward to “Valkyrie,” Bryan Singer’s film about the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Yes, I’m aware that the film stars Tom Cruise, but the remaining cast, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson was intriguing. The film also re-united Singer with Christopher McQuarrie, his screenwriter from “The Usual Suspects.”

    The Sunday Times now reports that the film has been pushed to 2009. Originally scheduled for a summer 2008 release, the film received its first push-back to the fall earlier this year. The paper cites a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains who says, “I know there have been all sorts of problems with this production and we will not be screening it at all this year.” The article also notes, ” The quality of Cruise’s German accent was widely commented on. The film has also had to have reshoots after footage was damaged in labs.”