A strange action shot from the Q&A Richard hosted at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Sunday February 9, 2014 with Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
Here’s the info: I hosted a special afternoon with Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain composer Gustavo Santaolalla at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on February 9, 2014.
From TIFF.net: The Grammy-winning singer, guitarist and composer joins us during the world premiere of the dance musical Arrabal (running Feb 4 to April 20 at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre) for a special screening of Ang Lee’s Academy Award-winning drama, for which he received an Oscar for Best Original Score.
This is a hard one to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. It’s a long, strange trip down memory lane with one of the most enigmatic characters of the 20th century.
Director Todd Haynes has assembled an all star cast to embody different segments of the folk singer’s life. When we first meet the Dylan character he is portrayed by a 13-year-old African-American child (Marcus Carl Franklin) obsessed with folk music. Later he’s glimpsed in his Pat Garret and Billy the Kid stage, played in that sequence by Richard Gere. British actor Ben Whishaw punctuates the proceedings, popping up now and again spouting the kind of elliptical nonsense that often make Dylan’s interviews an exercise in frustration.
Cate Blanchett is deservedly being touted for an Oscar nomination—will it be Best Actor or Actress?—for her take on the caustic, amphetamine-fueled Dylan circa 1965. In one of the more literal sequences Batman portrayer Christian Bale is Jack, a folk singer who embraces Christianity, eschewing the life of a music star to become an evangelist.
A bit murkier is Heath Ledger’s story thread featuring him as a chauvinistic movie star with a mysterious French girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
How does it all relate to Dylan, the mumbling superstar who has made a career of keeping people guessing about his personal life? It’s hard to say, because as you may have guessed the movie isn’t a traditional biopic. What Haynes has done here is create a kind of tone poem using different elements from Dylan’s life to create an overall feel for this mysterious and elliptical character.
Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard issue Hollywood biopics, I’m Not There doesn’t offer up an obvious timeline of the man’s life. There is nothing linear here, or even connected in many cases. Using a variety of styles from Warholian Pop Art to Godard’s jump-cuts and cinéma vérité, Haynes has cobbled together a portrait of the essence of Dylan. There is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie. It’s fascinating stuff, and while some may find it frustrating, I felt I knew more about what makes Bob Dylan tick when I walked out of the theatre after I’m Not There than I did for Johnny Cash following Walk the Line or Ray Charles after Ray.
At almost three hours it’s a taxing movie, but for the patient, the adventurous and the curious I’m Not There offers many pleasures from the amazing soundtrack to Cate Blanchett’s superior performance.
As you may have guessed from the title “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is an odd movie. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it is the strange tale of a mysterious immortal who complicates his life by making deals with the devil. Complicating Gilliam’s life during production was the unexpected death of his star Heath Ledger but, the show, as they say, must go on and here we are after the untimely January 2008 passing of the young actor, with a completed film. How did Gilliam finish the movie? A new credit, “A Film from Heath Ledger and Friends” tells the tale. Three of Ledger’s buddies, Johnny Depp (seen dancing on a leaf!), Colin Farrell and Jude Law, stepped in to play “through the looking glass” versions of the late actor.
Set in present day London the film begins with a look at Doctor Parnassus’s (Christopher Plummer) bizarre traveling show which offers people a chance to step through Dr.P’s magical mirror into an alternate reality. He’s selling imagination, but his gift of mind’s eye manipulation came with a heavy price. Eons before he made a trade with the devil (Tom Waits)—remarkable power in exchange for his first born daughter on her sixteenth birthday. That anniversary is now days away but with the help of a mysterious stranger named Tony (played by Ledger, Depp Law and Farrell) and the magic mirror Dr. P just may be able to save her.
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is more a piece of surrealist art than a traditional movie. Imagine watching a Salvador Dali painting come to life and you’ll get the idea. Gilliam, who co-wrote the script as well as directed, has allowed his imagination to run riot. While the story meanders to and fro he fills the screen with unforgettable images; Old Nick dangling Dr. P from the end of a branch or a multi-eyed hot air balloon shaped like a man’s head or the ensemble of skirt wearing, dancing Bobbies. Visually it’ll make your eyeballs do the Watusi.
The story, however, may leave some a bit baffled, but so what if it warps the brain a bit? The film oozes Gilliam’s trademarked anarchic spirit—he might be the only filmmaker who could replace his leading man with three other actors and actually pull it off—and is the most original movie of the year.
This is a hard one to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. It’s a long, strange trip down memory lane with one of the most enigmatic characters of the 20th century.
Director Todd Haynes has assembled an all star cast to embody different segments of the folk singer’s life. When we first meet the Dylan character he is portrayed by a 13-year-old African-American child (Marcus Carl Franklin) obsessed with folk music. Later he’s glimpsed in his Pat Garret and Billy the Kid stage, played in that sequence by Richard Gere. British actor Ben Whishaw punctuates the proceedings, popping up now and again spouting the kind of elliptical nonsense that often make Dylan’s interviews an exercise in frustration.
Cate Blanchett is deservedly being touted for an Oscar nomination—will it be Best Actor or Actress?—for her take on the caustic, amphetamine-fueled Dylan circa 1965. In one of the more literal sequences Batman portrayer Christian Bale is Jack, a folk singer who embraces Christianity, eschewing the life of a music star to become an evangelist.
A bit murkier is Heath Ledger’s story thread featuring him as a chauvinistic movie star with a mysterious French girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg).
How does it all relate to Dylan, the mumbling superstar who has made a career of keeping people guessing about his personal life? It’s hard to say, because as you may have guessed the movie isn’t a traditional biopic. What Haynes has done here is create a kind of tone poem using different elements from Dylan’s life to create an overall feel for this mysterious and elliptical character.
Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard issue Hollywood biopics, I’m Not There doesn’t offer up an obvious timeline of the man’s life. There is nothing linear here, or even connected in many cases. Using a variety of styles from Warholian Pop Art to Godard’s jump-cuts and cinéma vérité, Haynes has cobbled together a portrait of the essence of Dylan. There is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie. It’s fascinating stuff, and while some may find it frustrating, I felt I knew more about what makes Bob Dylan tick when I walked out of the theatre after I’m Not There than I did for Johnny Cash following Walk the Line or Ray Charles after Ray.
At almost three hours it’s a taxing movie, but for the patient, the adventurous and the curious I’m Not There offers many pleasures from the amazing soundtrack to Cate Blanchett’s superior performance.
In my review of the first installment of the revived Caped Crusader franchise I wrote, “I went in to Batman Begins expecting a lot and left wanting less—less psychological babble, a lesser running time and less of Liam Neeson’s ridiculously wispy goatee.” For the new episode, The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan has kept most of the stuff that bugged me about the first movie (except for the wispy goatee part, which is, thankfully, is no where to be seen) but has, this time around, created a tour-de-force that left me running for my thesaurus to find new words for awesome.
Its two-and-a-half running time makes it the longest of the summer blockbusters but, unlike Get Smart or Sex and the City, there isn’t a wasted second or extraneous scene. The film takes off like a turbo charged Batmobile, opening with an exciting bank heist, and doesn’t let up until the end credits.
Following the robbery, in which $68 million dollars of the mob’s money is stolen, the triumvirate of Batman (Christian Bale), Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldham) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) take a broom to the streets of Gotham in an effort to, once and for all, put an end to crime in their city. After mass arrests the crime fighting trio comes up against their greatest foe yet, The Joker (Heath Ledger), a psychopath with a sinister scar in place of a smile, who forces Batman and Dent to push the boundaries of their professional crime fighting ethics.
Since 9/11 the world has spent a great deal of time pondering good and evil, and so does The Dark Knight. It is the first true, post 9/11 superhero movie; one that looks at the use of chaos as a tool of terrorism while exploring the paper thin line between good and evil.
Dispensing with the jocularity of Iron Man, the CGI action of The Incredible Hulk and Hancock’s sense of irony, The Dark Knight is a serious film with a positively Shakespearean exploration of the ethics of good and evil that raises timely questions in these unsettled times. Mainly, to what lengths can heroes go as they fight crime before they stop being heroes and become vigilantes? When is it OK to break the rules to stop evil? Batman and Dent grapple with these questions (more than, say, Rumsfeld or Bush ever did) as the Joker pushes them closer to the edge of their moral boundaries.
The Joker’s biggest question is one for the ages. Can bad guys exist without the good guys?
“I don’t want to kill you,” the Joker tells Batman, by way of an answer. “You complete me.”
But don’t get the idea that The Dark Knight is only a treatise on the nature of villainy. It is that, but the ideas about good and evil are wrapped around a popcorn movie that is packed with great action, thrills and good performances.
Christian Bale fills out the Batsuit better this time around, skillfully portraying the moral tug of war the character plays with his conscience while ably pulling off Batman’s outrageous feats of physical prowess. Bale may be the only contemporary actor who can convincingly pull off ennui one second and then pilot a supercharged motorcycle up the side of a building the next.
New franchise addition Maggie Gyllenhaal, stepping in for Katie Holmes, brings a feistiness to the character of Bruce Wayne’s oldest friend and soul mate Rachel Dawes. Aaron Eckhart in a dual role does a nice job of playing the transformation from the virtuous DA Dent to the twisted morality of the considerably creepier Harvey-Two Face. Old pros Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, as Bruce Wayne’s trusted butler and equipment designer respectively, round out the cast, both handing in effortless performances.
Of course the cast member everyone wants to see is Heath Ledger as the Joker in his last completed performance. I always felt Batman Begins was marred by the lack of a great villain, but this time around the inclusion of Ledger’s Joker guarantees on-screen fireworks for The Dark Knight.
Whereas Jack Nicholson’s Joker was a pop culture icon for the prosperous 80s and 90s, Ledger’s Joker is a super villain for the new millennium; a terrorist, more interested in creating chaos than in anything else.
He’s a disfigured bad man—“What doesn’t kill you only makes you stranger,” he says—who when he isn’t killing people—his preferred weapon is a knife because it’s up-close-and personal—keeps busy creating elaborate schemes to test the moral fiber of the men who want to put him behind bars. Ledger strips the character of Nicholson’s cartoon persona, re-imagining him as a fiendish lunatic. From the slash of red lipstick where his mouth should be to the caked white make-up that obscures his face Ledger’s Joker is an unhinged creation that will likely inspire nightmares. It’s a bravura performance that sees the late actor working at the top of his game as he creates the definitive version of the character (sorry to any Cesar Romero fans who may disagree).
The Dark Knight is a rare beast. It’s a summer blockbuster with equal parts brain and brawn.
Director: Terry Gilliam
Stars: Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp
Classification: PG
As you may have guessed from the title, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is an odd movie. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it’s the strange tale of a mysterious immortal who complicates his life by making deals with the devil.
Complicating Gilliam’s life during production was the unexpected death of his star, Heath Ledger, but, the show, as they say, must go on and here we are after the untimely January 2008 passing of the young actor with a completed film. How did Gilliam finish the movie? A new credit, A Film from Heath Ledger and Friends tells the tale.
Three of Ledger’s buddies, Johnny Depp (seen dancing on a leaf!), Colin Farrell and Jude Law, stepped in to play “through the looking glass” versions of the late actor.
Set in present day London, the film begins with a look at Doctor Parnassus’ (Christopher Plummer) bizarre travelling show that offers people a chance to step through Dr. P’s magical mirror into an alternate reality. He’s selling imagination, but his gift of mind’s eye manipulation came with a heavy price.
Eons before, he made a trade with the devil (Tom Waits): Remarkable power in exchange for his first born daughter on her sixteenth birthday. That anniversary is now days away but with the help of a mysterious stranger named Tony (played by Ledger, Depp, Law and Farrell) and the magic mirror, Dr. P just may be able to save her.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is more a piece of surrealist art than a traditional movie. Imagine watching a Salvador Dali painting come to life and you’ll get the idea. Gilliam, who co-wrote the script as well as directed, has allowed his imagination to run riot.
While the story meanders to and fro he fills the screen with unforgettable images; Old Nick dangling Dr. P from the end of a branch or a multi-eyed hot air balloon shaped like a man’s head or the ensemble of skirt-wearing, dancing Bobbies. Visually, it’ll make your eyeballs do the Watusi.
The story, however, may leave some a bit baffled, but so what if it warps the brain a bit? The film oozes Gilliam’s trademarked anarchic spirit — he might be the only filmmaker who could replace his leading man with three other actors and actually pull it off — and is the most original movie of the year.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a flight of fancy that was very nearly grounded in mid production. The untimely death of star Heath Ledger in January 2008 almost put the brakes on the film until Terry Gilliam had an idea: Why not continue filming with three of the late actor’s friends taking his place?
“I just started calling friends of Heath,” Gilliam said. “It’s as simple as that. Johnny (Depp), Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) turned up. It was important that they were friends, because I wanted to keep it in the family. I wanted people who were close to him because, as Colin said when he was doing his part, he was channelling Heath part of the time, so Heath was very much still alive in some sense.
“I didn’t know whether this would work until I got back to London. We were working on autopilot. Working because that’s what we decided to do and we got back to London and I showed the first cut to the post-sound guy, who hadn’t been involved in the process, and he just assumed it was written that way. I thought, ‘It works.’”
Co-star Christopher Plummer says he thinks it works better than the original script.
“The audience needs to be rejuvenated at the eleventh hour and they are by the presence of the three guys,” he said. “I think Heath would have thoroughly approved of that and probably have been relieved not to go, ‘OK fellas, it’s time I had a break.’”
One of Heath’s co-stars, however, had a harder time accepting the loss and the replacements. Lily Cole says she cried on the first day of shooting without Ledger, but soon realized that by stepping in Depp, Farrell and Law were doing a “brave and lovely thing” to honor the late actor.
Gilliam agrees, viewing the finished film as homage to Ledger. A credit where the director’s name usually sits is a tribute to the late actor and the respect he earned.
“Contractually, it was supposed to be a Terry Gilliam Film,” he said. “That’s what the lawyers said, but I said, ‘No way it’s going to be that. It’s going to be a film from Heath Ledger and friends.’ The cast sat around one night and that idea came up and I said, ‘This is it. Perfect. That’s how we do it.’”
The TIFF film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is destined to become best known as Heath Ledger’s last movie.
The young actor passed away midway through production, but rather than scrap the film, director Terry Gilliam pressed on, replacing the Aussie actor with three famous faces.
“I just started calling friends of Heath,” Gilliam said. “It’s as simple as that. Johnny (Depp), Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) turned up. It was important that they were friends, because I wanted to keep it in the family. I wanted people who were close to him because, as Colin said when he was doing his part, he was channelling Heath part of the time, so Heath was very much still alive in some sense.
“I didn’t know whether this would work until I got back to London. We were working on autopilot. Working because that’s what we decided to do and we got back to London and I showed the first cut to the post-sound guy, who hadn’t been involved in the process, and he just assumed it was written that way. I thought, ‘It works.’”
It works not because Gilliam changed the script, but because of a quirk of the original story — a mirror that acts as an entry to a magical world of imagination.
“Nothing was changed from the original script after Heath died,” he said. “It was that lucky element of a magic mirror. Once you decide that faces could change as you go through the mirror, we were free. I’m simplifying it, but that’s effectively what happened. There was some kind of movie god, and the problem with gods is that they’re both evil and wondrous. There was one that got it made and one that punished us.”
Gilliam sees the finished film as a tribute to Heath, both as an actor and a man with many friends who stepped in to complete the film. A credit where the director’s name usually sits is a tribute to the late actor and the respect he earned.
“Contractually, it was supposed to be a Terry Gilliam Film,” he said. “That’s what the lawyers said, but I said, ‘No way it’s going to be that. It’s going to be a film from Heath Ledger and friends.’ The cast sat around one night and that idea came up and I said, ‘This is it. Perfect. That’s how we do it.’”
Terry Gilliam, the only American member of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe, likes to create new worlds—places in which the real and the unreal co-exist comfortably. Rent Brazil, 12 Monkeys or The Fisher King and you’ll find fact and fantasy bashing heads, each struggling to stake their territory in the story’s plot. In his first film in seven years, The Brothers Grimm, he walks the same path.
Played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, Will and Jake Grimm are 18th century Ghostbusters, a pair of charlatans who bilk simple country folk out of their money by conducting phony exorcisms of ghosts and demons. Their days as con men come to an abrupt end when they are captured by Napoleon’s Army and sentenced to death. Instead of facing a gruesome execution they agree to rid the forest in a nearby town of its evil spirits. Faced with real supernatural forces their brand of ghostbusting is put to the test.
The script is a mix-and-match pastiche of classic fables such as Jack and the Bean Stalk, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Rapunzel, and while it doesn’t always work—Matt Damon’s accent comes and goes with the frequency of a shuttle bus and why hire someone as beautiful as Monica Bellucci and then cover her with zombie makeup for most of the film—but Gilliam’s sense of wonder and playfulness seeps through and makes The Brothers Grimm a welcome change from the bland remakes and sequels that have cluttered up the multi-plexes this summer.
A strange action shot from the Q&A Richard hosted at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Sunday February 9, 2014 with Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
