• Tom O’Neil wrangles up perspectives on Justin Timberlake’s Oscar potential for “The Social Network.” [Gold Derby]
• Steven Zeitchik sits down with “Catfish” directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. [Los Angeles Times]
• Debating the ethics of movie spoilage on a user-generated web encyclopedia might be the very definition of futility, but the Gray Lady gives it a shot. [New York Times]
• Jacki Weaver talks “Animal Kingdom” downunder. [New Zealand Herald]
• Rowan Joffe on how he conceived “The American” as “an almost parodic contemporary Western.” [Movieline]
• Mark Romanek on music videos vs. movies. [Wall Street Journal]
• Anne Thompson sits down with Golden Lion winner Sofia Coppola, from Venice. [Thompson on Hollywood]
• Patrick Goldstein on Hollywood’s on-going lover affair with mobster cinema. [The Big Picture]
• Pete Hammond concurs with the Oscar buzz surrounding “The Social Network” after a slew of screenings in New York and Los Angeles. [Deadline]
On the first day of this year’s fest, things are off to an interesting, up and down start. I would bore you with an intro, but it’s late and I’m fading. Let’s get to the reactions…
“Never Let Me Go” (**)
I went back and read Guy’s summation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Never Let Me Go” after seeing the film tonight (I’ve never read it and knew nothing of the story’s plot going in). He wrote of a “discussion of mortality and the human condition” in an emotional context that, for a filmmaker like Mark Romanek (who knows from visual emotional storytelling — just look at the video for Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”), seemed a perfect marriage of material and artist.
Shockingly, however, Romanek’s adaptation kept me at arm’s length from frame one. There is a distance here, a cold sense of removal from what would otherwise be an extremely moving narrative. I wanted desperately to feel for the characters and their plight (I won’t hazard particulars for fear of spoilers). But I felt nothing…at all. I wanted them to rage against their circumstances and show an ounce of the spirit they in one instance even set out to prove they have, but there was, again, nothing.
One of the year’s most mysterious projects for me is Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go.” I haven’t read the book (though I’m wondering whether I should), the trailer left me bewildered, I didn’t read Guy’s Page to Screen column on the source material and I’ve basically just kept my nose out of it for some reason. It’s not that I’m not intrigued. I just haven’t gotten around to investigating. But I know it’s a hotly anticipated film for the readership so the new poster will surely be welcome, so check it out after the jump.
SPOILER ALERT: By necessity, this article must reveal some key plot developments of the novel, though no more than you might have gleaned from the film’s recent trailer.
“(T)hough the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control,” writes Kathy, the young female narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel “Never Let Me Go,” on its final page. She’d certainly be entitled to a good sob: over the course of 31 years and 282 pages, she has had the possibility of real life – with its attendant romance and independence and uncertainty – dangled in front of her, only to be unceremoniously denied at every turn, a Pinocchio figure resigned to eternal wooden form.
That Kathy (to be played by Carey Mulligan in Mark Romanek’s upcoming film) remains so stoic and accepting in the face of even the novel’s most crushing revelations makes her very much of a piece with other Ishiguro protagonists; in many ways, she’s something of a modern-day sister (or daughter) to Stevens, the emotionally stunted butler later played by Anthony Hopkins in “The Remains of the Day,” the only other screen adaptation of the British-Japanese novelist’s work to date.
Stevens denied himself feeling, but the disability of Kathy – and her classmates at Hailsham, the plush private college where they spend their entire childhood – is less autonomous than that: if her responses aren’t entirely human, it’s because she’s not entirely human herself.
You may have heard “Never Let Me Go” described as a work of science fiction, and if you haven’t read it – and, say, are only going on the high-end, contemporary-set romance (albeit with mildly gothic overtones) of the film’s trailer – you could be forgiven for being a bit puzzled by that classification.
I don’t know anything of the book, but this Mark Romanek adaptation is hotly anticipated by many. After a look at the trailer, I’m still not feeling why, but I’m willing to dive in and see given the talent involved. Obviously lead actress potential for Carey Mulligan. I imagine Keira Knightley has something to chew on here and any reason to see Andrew Garfield work is a good one. And is that the score for “The Door in the Floor?”
Click on the image below to see the trailer via Apple. Embed after the jump. (NOTE: Guy will be covering the source material in next week’s installment of Page to Screen.)
Tomorrow’s installment of The Lists is going to be Michael Mann-centric, but I was all set to write up something brief in the way of qualifying Michael Jackson’s contributions to the movie world until I came across this Christopher Campbell posting at Spout Blog. It’d be pretty difficult to go much deeper than he has.
Campbell ranks Jackson’s “filmmaker collaborations,” including music videos directed by the likes of John Singleton, David Fincher, Bob Giraldi and, of course, John Landis and Martin Scorsese. As expected, the Francis Ford Coppola-directed, George Lucas-produced “Captain EO” is in the mix, as well as Sidney Lumet’s “The Wiz.” I had totally forgotten about the Spike Lee production “They Don’t Really Care About Us” until I caught it on MTV or the like yesterday. Campbell places that at #1.
It’s a shame room couldn’t be made for the “Billie Jean” production, from visionary music video (and eventual so-so film) director Steve Barron (A-Ha’s “Take On Me”). Promo News recently caught up with Barron for a brief remembrance of the shoot.
Last week, I mentioned how fully in the tank I am for Lynne Ramsay’s upcoming “We Need To Talk About Kevin.” Today, meanwhile, brings updated news of another British-funded adaptation with a mighty literary source, perfect-on-paper cast and exciting filmmaker who has been quiet for too long.
The film in question is Mark Romanek’s take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 masterpiece, “Never Let Me Go.” Both Fox Searchlight and Film4 (a pairing that previously brought us “Slumdog Millionaire”) have a hand in the project, which started principal shooting today in the UK. Anyone familiar with Ishiguro’s novel will see why it’s a potentially snug fit for Romanek, the music video auteur extraordinaire who hasn’t settled on a feature-length vehicle for his gifts since the mixed bag that was 2002’s “One Hour Photo.”
Ishiguro’s supremely elegant science-fiction tale — a romantic dystopian narrative hard to synopsise without entering spoiler territory — should provide the right balance of elegiac emotional texture to complement Romanek’s sometimes distancing visual sheen. With Alex Garland (“The Beach,” “28 Days Later”) handling script duties, the project promises a very exciting merger of three pristine stylists.
Meanwhile, the cast — a veritable showcase of Britain’s brightest rising talent — isn’t too shabby either: Sally Hawkins has just been added to a roster that already includes Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield (so riveting in “Boy A” and “Red Riding”), with Charlotte Rampling adding veteran class.
Even if you don’t know the source material, you have to admit this sounds pretty exciting on paper. Of course, Ishiguro’s opalescent, china-fragile prose (okay, I’m a long-time devotee) provides numerous opportunities to trip up less delicate filmmakers — but as the Merchant-Ivory team proved back in 1993, it can be done, and with less intrinsically cinematic source material to boot. I’m sensing something special in the works here.