Jump to content

Coming Attractions


Happy Face
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • 3 months later...
  • Replies 70
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

The directorial debut of Oscar–nominated actor Casey Affleck, I’M STILL HERE is a striking portrayal of a tumultuous year in the life of internationally acclaimed actor Joaquin Phoenix. With remarkable access, I’M STILL HERE follows the Oscar–nominee as he announces his retirement from a successful film career in the fall of 2008 and sets off to reinvent himself as a hip hop musician. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and always riveting, the film is a portrait of an artist ...

 

 

:D

Edited by Happy Face
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The directorial debut of Oscar–nominated actor Casey Affleck, I’M STILL HERE is a striking portrayal of a tumultuous year in the life of internationally acclaimed actor Joaquin Phoenix. With remarkable access, I’M STILL HERE follows the Oscar–nominee as he announces his retirement from a successful film career in the fall of 2008 and sets off to reinvent himself as a hip hop musician. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and always riveting, the film is a portrait of an artist ...

 

 

:unsure:

 

CASEY AFFLECK wants to come clean.

 

His new movie, “I’m Still Here,” was performance. Almost every bit of it. Including Joaquin Phoenix’s disturbing appearance on David Letterman’s late-night show in 2009, Mr. Affleck said in a candid interview at a cafe here on Thursday morning.

 

“It’s a terrific performance, it’s the performance of his career,” Mr. Affleck said. He was speaking of Mr. Phoenix’s two-year portrayal of himself — on screen and off — as a bearded, drug-addled aspiring rap star, who, as Mr. Affleck tells it, put his professional life on the line to star in a bit of “gonzo filmmaking” modeled on the reality-bending journalism of Hunter S. Thompson.

 

“I’m Still Here” was released last week by Magnolia Pictures to scathing reviews by a number of critics, including Roger Ebert, who wrote that the film was “a sad and painful documentary that serves little useful purpose other than to pound another nail into the coffin.”

 

“The reviews were so angry,” said Mr. Affleck, who attributed much of the hostility to his own long silence about a film that left more than a few viewers wondering what was real — The drugs? The hookers? The childhood home-movie sequences in the beginning? — and what was not.

 

Virtually none of it was real. Not even the opening shots, supposedly of Mr. Phoenix and his siblings swimming in a water hole in Panama. That, Mr. Affleck said, was actually shot in Hawaii with actors, then run back and forth on top of an old videocassette recording of “Paris, Texas” to degrade the images.

 

“I never intended to trick anybody,” said Mr. Affleck, an intense 35-year-old who spoke over a meat-free, cheese-free vegetable sandwich on Thursday. “The idea of a quote, hoax, unquote, never entered my mind.”

 

Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Letterman was not in on the joke when Mr. Phoenix, on Feb. 11, 2009, seemed to implode his own career by showing up in character as a mumbling, aimless star gone wrong.

 

That was just three years after he had received an Oscar nomination for his spot-on performance as Johnny Cash in “Walk the Line,” and memories of the film were fresh enough to induce shock in the millions who watched him on the show and in later Internet replays.

 

Mr. Letterman summed up the interview: “Joaquin, I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight.”

 

Asked whether Mr. Phoenix would be in character for his return to Mr. Letterman’s program on Wednesday, Mr. Affleck said, “No, no, no.” And Mr. Letterman has not talked with Mr. Phoenix about the coming appearance, he added. Most mockumentaries, in the way of “This Is Spinal Tap,” wear their foolishness on their sleeves, leaving no doubt about their character as fiction. But Mr. Affleck, who is married to Mr. Phoenix’s sister and has been his friend for almost 20 years, said he wanted audiences to experience the film’s narrative, about the disintegration of celebrity, without the clutter of preconceived notions.

 

So he said little in interviews. “We wanted to create a space,” he said. “You believe what’s happening is real.”

 

As the film progresses, Mr. Affleck explained, subtle cues were supposed to provide hints of his real intention. Camera techniques, extremely raw at the beginning, become more sophisticated as the film goes on, for instance.

 

“There were multiple takes, these are performances,” Mr. Affleck said of unsettling sequences in which Mr. Phoenix appears to snort drugs, consort with hookers, and hunt to the ground an assistant who has betrayed him to the press — again, mostly actors.

 

But the movie never quite showed its hand. “There was no wink,” Mr. Affleck said.

 

One of the trickier elements was to win the cooperation of Mr. Phoenix’s agent, Patrick Whitesell, of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. On telling Mr. Whitesell that he planned to make everybody believe that a prized client “has lost his mind and make him as unattractive as possible, you would think he would have me killed immediately,” Mr. Affleck said.

 

But Mr. Whitesell, instead, took a part in the film.

 

Mr. Phoenix’s unconventional background may have helped convince some that the film was true. Now 35, he was one of five children in a free-spirited family that bounced from life in a religious cult through a time when the siblings worked as street performers. Mr. Phoenix’s brother River, also an actor, died of a drug overdose in 1993. His sister Summer eventually married Mr. Affleck.

 

In the film Mr. Phoenix is often called “J. P.,” both an attempt at a rap stage name and the inevitable shorthand of a star’s inner world. At one point in the film Mr. Phoenix howls at his crew in exasperation: “J. P. is all of us.”

 

As Mr. Affleck now makes clear, he is actually none of us — which is something of a relief.

 

But Mr. Phoenix may now have his work cut out for him when it comes to repairing an image that was marred by what Mr. Affleck portrays as his best performance. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Mr. Phoenix, who makes much of abandoning his screen career in the film, is fielding offers for new roles.

 

Mr. Affleck, for his part, will return to acting for a while, probably in a film for Andrew Dominik, who directed “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” for which Mr. Affleck received an Oscar nomination.

 

At least one element in the film was genuine, Mr. Affleck said. That was a snippet of a home movie that showed Mr. Phoenix and his very young siblings performing, Jackson Five style, on the streets of Los Angeles.

 

The rest, Mr. Affleck said, clearly requires a bit more understanding than he has allowed the viewers to date. “It is a hard movie to watch,” he said.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/movies/1...tml?_r=2&hp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

DKR will be good. Nolan although average is good with the Batman.

 

Hobbit will be shit. Cause fat boy Jackson already the wrecking ball of the back catalogue.

 

Prometheus will be the one for me if Lost boy hasn't fucked up the script.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHAm9LUDpA

Edited by Park Life
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

Whassatabouthen?

 

Interstellar is an upcoming science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan.

 

When a wormhole (which hypothetically can connect widely-separated regions of spacetime) is newly discovered, a team of explorers and scientists embark on a voyage through it to transcend previous limitations on human space travel. The Hollywood Reporter said in addition to the official synopsis, "The plot is believed to involve time travel and alternate dimensions, but other details are being kept under wraps."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Interstellar is an upcoming science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan.

 

When a wormhole (which hypothetically can connect widely-separated regions of spacetime) is newly discovered, a team of explorers and scientists embark on a voyage through it to transcend previous limitations on human space travel. The Hollywood Reporter said in addition to the official synopsis, "The plot is believed to involve time travel and alternate dimensions, but other details are being kept under wraps."

 

Sounds good :good:

 

I was confused because, while it features shots of spaceflight and all that, the tone of the teaser made me think it'd be an introspective piece.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.