Posts Tagged ‘Albert Brooks’

Richard hosted a Q&A with “The Little Prince” director Mark Osborne!

Screen Shot 2015-03-05 at 3.15.16 PMOn Tuesday, March 3rd, two-time Academy Award nominee, director Mark Osborne was in Toronto to give an exclusive presentation at the TIFF Bell Lightbox about the making of “The Little Prince.”

In the presentation followed by a Q&A hosted by Richard, Osborne spoke about the concept of the animated feature, the making-of, completing production n Montreal, and showed some select images, clips and b-roll from production. Osborne also revealed that Orson Welles once planned an adaptation of “The Little Prince” as a follow-up to “Citizen Kane.”

From Entertainment One: With the voices of Rachel McAdams, Jeff Bridges, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Paul Rudd,Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Ricky Gervais, Albert Brooks, Bud Cort and Riley Osborne.

Through an inventive narrative concept, the movie will offer a family experience on a grand scale: the audience will be invited to discover a fantastic, dreamlike universe.

https://youtu.be/NMkjtTPsw1w

 

FINDING NEMO

Marlin-and-Dory-finding-nemo-1003067_1152_864Fish aren’t cuddly. The scales, the smell and the cold blooded nature of the species make them difficult to hug, let alone curl up with. That perception will likely change with the release of Finding Nemo, a film that will do for fish what Babe did for pigs. That is, make them seem like something more than just an accompaniment for French fries.

Pixar, (in co-operation with Disney) the clever animators behind Toy Story and  Monsters Inc, are back with a story about a young clownfish named Nemo (Alexander Gould) who gets separated from Marlin (Albert Brooks), his over protected father. With the help of Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue fish with short term memory loss, Marlin desperately searches for his son. In the process he learns about himself and love while risking life and fin to find his son.

The story is typical Disney claptrap, a tale that hits the same emotional buttons that have marked kid’s films since Bambi was a fawn. But it’s not the story that recommends Finding Nemo and makes it the achievement that it is.

The script is tight and quite funny (although in a more subtle way than previous Pixar creations) but it is the visuals that overwhelm. The computer geeks at Pixar have imbued their undersea world with such feeling and splendour that it is hard to believe it isn’t real, that it is, in fact, nothing more than cleverly arranged binary code. The colours and textures of the sea literally come alive on the screen and show a real eye for detail. Particularly eye-popping is the jelly-fish sequence, a beautifully realized scene in which Marlin and Dory must navigate their way through a school of opaque stinging sea creatures.

Albert Brooks heads the cast as Marlin. He’s neurotic, not unlike many of the characters Brooks has played before, but is charmingly so. This may be his best role since Broadcast News. When he deadpans that, despite the name, clownfish aren’t really all that funny, you know the part was written for him. Ellen DeGeneres brings considerable charm to the scatterbrained Dory, while Willem Dafoe and Geoffrey Rush also contribute voices.

Finding Nemo is more than just a technical marvel; it is a computer animated film that transcends the animation to become a film which will engage the heart as well as the mind.

LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD: 2 STARS

lookingforcomedyAlbert Brooks stars in the movie with the most audacious title of the season. In the film the comedian is called upon to attend a secret State Department meeting regarding the shape of humor in the Muslim world. His mission, should he accept it, is to spend a month in India and Pakistan and then write a 500-page report on what tickles the Muslim funny bone. What seems to be a plum government assignment is soon revealed to be less than ideal as Brooks begins his travels in hospitality class and finds himself stuck in an office behind a large call center in New Delhi.

The premise of this mockumentary is to shatter the idea that Muslim equals terrorist in the post 9/11 world. Brooks attempts this not with sharp satire, but with the loping rhythms of his understated comedy. In the end all we really discover that humor is global even if the things that make North Americans laugh leave Indian audiences straight faced.
Brooks is a legendary comedy writer, and his self-depreciating humor relies on a perfect set-up to really drive the punch line home. Looking for Comedy is a great premise looking for a great way to present the comedy. There are funny lines and several funny situations—such as when Brooks auditions for the lead role in Harvey for director Penny Marshall—but the movie as a whole doesn’t hold together and as a viewer I found myself looking for the comedy in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World.

DRIVE: 4 ½ STARS

ryan-gosling-drive-007The key piece of dialogue in “Drive,” a new thriller starring Ryan Gostling, happens early on before any of the hard core action begins. Bernie Rose, a shady character played by Albert Brooks extends his hand to Gostling. The younger actor stares at the gesture of friendship for a moment before declining to shake. “My hands are a little dirty,” he says. “So are mine,” replies Rose.

That quick conversation tells us that nobody in this movie is above boards and they don’t care who knows it.

Gostling is a man with no name, simply known as Driver, a movie stunt driver/grease monkey by day and get-a-way wheelman by night. Befriending his neighbors Irene (Carey Mulligan) and young son Benicio (Kaden Leos, who dials the cute kid factor way up) he makes a deal to drive get-a-way for some criminals to square a debt Irene’s husband ran up and safeguard the mother and child. When the deal goes bad he unwittingly becomes involved in a treacherous situation involving Irene’s recently paroled husband, one million dollars in cash and some angry mobsters.

“Drive” is an art house thriller. It’s stylized, with lighting effects, lots of slow motion and interesting camera angles that create a sense of unease that permeates every scene. For every instance of brutal violence director Nicolas Winding Refn (“Valhalla Rising,” “Bronson”) also escalates the movie’s sense of heightened reality. Very long pauses punctuate most every exchange of dialogue and how is it that no one seems to notice that the Driver is drenched in blood as he walks through a tony Chinese restaurant? “Drive” exists in its own world, and it is a fascinating place.

Here Gostling isn’t the easy charmer of “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” he plays Driver like a coiled spring. There hasn’t been a leading man this close-mouthed since Rudolph Valentino was the king of the silent screen. He’s a man of very few words, but his silence hints at an active inner life and his actions certainly speak to having a past. It’s a brave and strange performance, either emotionally shut down, or simply cool-as-a-cucumber, take your pick.

As for his co-stars, Mulligan isn’t given much to do except use her subtly expressive face to make physical whatever is going on in her head, but Albert Brooks, cast against type as a mobster and Bryan Cranston as an unlucky garage owner are stellar. Refn clearly loves his actors, stroking them in long close-ups, allowing the camera to luxuriate on their faces. It’s the exact opposite of what we usually find in thrillers, but here it adds atmosphere and star power.

“Drive” is long-on silence and big on anti-heroes, and is one of the most intriguing movies of the year so far.

Albert Brooks Is All A-Twitter zoomermag.com PEOPLE Wednesday, September 14, 2011 By Richard Crouse

657207626b73157ffff89b7ffffe415Albert Brooks has a new obsession. “I hate to say I put more thought into it than it deserves,” he says.

His new hobby? Twitter, that one-hundred-and-forty-character microblog has captivated the actor since the release of his last book, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America, in April of this year.

“I started for real practical reasons,” he says. “Like trying to say, ‘Hey, I’ll be at a bookstore in Manhattan, come and say hello,’ and then I found it was an interesting way to see a headline and have a feeling about it and make a comment on the Republican debate. I used to call my friends and do these lines.”

He muses on his everyday life, with a comic twist. “Great time in Toronto,” he tweeted about his recent trip to the Toronto International Film Festival. “Great people. If you can make it here you can make it….well, in most parts of Canada.” Short and sardonic, the tweets are worth a read, but their short form goes against his usual style.

“As I said in one of my early tweets, ‘Twitter is turning us all into Bob Hope,” because my whole comedy career was as the anti-Hope. I liked to take seven minutes to tell you something and now I’m back to, ‘Liz looked out the door!’ “My shoes are wet!’ The real test of twitter will be to see if I can ever write in long form again. If it’s killed me, it’s been the devil.”

One thing he’ll certainly be tweeting about this weekend is Drive, the new film he co-stars in with Hollywood it-boy Ryan Gosling.

Unlike his best known roles—like Aaron Altman in Broadcast News or Marlin the clownfish in Finding Nemo—he’s not playing it for laughs this time. In this stylish crime drama he is a shady character named Bernie Rose. In an early scene Gosling declines a handshake from Rose. The younger actor stares at the gesture of friendship for a moment before declining to shake. “My hands are a little dirty,” he says. “So are mine,” replies Rose.

It’s a great scene which tells us that nobody in this movie is above boards and it’s something different for the actor.

“The same twelve people play all the roles,” he says. “Even though you may like an actor, there’s no surprise anymore. When Edward G. Robinson came on-screen you knew what he was going to do. So the fact that [director] Nicolas [Winding Refn] thought this was a good idea worked for everybody. I wanted to try something different. It doesn’t let the audience know one hundred percent just because they see me. As a matter of fact, they might even think something different. It’s always a good thing in movies if you can do that and pull it off.”

His performance is getting great buzz—he even manages to upstage Gosling—and says it is a movie that sticks with you. After seeing it for the first time he couldn’t get it out of his head.

“Both my wife and I, like four days later, said, ‘Are you still thinking about this?’ I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to figure it out. I said to Nicolas, ‘I felt like I’ve had a dream. The movie started and ended and where did I go?’ Nicolas consciously talks about movies like that. He says dreams are 94 minutes in length, and has all sorts of theories, but whatever it is, it sticks there.”

Want to know more about the movie? Check out his twitter feed at @AlbertBrooks.