Richard and Academy Award winning director Ang Lee presented a sneak peak of his new film “Gemini Man” at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto on Wednesday night. They talked about why Lee chose to shoot in 4K digital 3D at 120 frames per second and how Will Smith has changed as an actor in the last thrity years.
Richard speaks with the star of “Aladdin,” Toronto’s Mena Massoud about his breakthrough role.
“I grew up with it,”: he says of the original, animated ‘Aladdin.’ “It was one of the only films I could relate to as a kid. Before I even understood things subconsciously he was a character that looked like me, that I could relate to, that has similar culture. So it meant a lot to me. I have two older sisters who had it on at the house before I was even aware of what was going on.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard Crouse interviews Mena Massoud, the Canadian star of the Disney live action remake of “Aladdin.” They talk about working with Will Smith, why he switched from neuroscience to theatre school and supporting ethnically diverse Canadian artists.
Listen to the interview HERE!
Coming hot on the heels of Disney live action reboots of classics like “Cinderella,” “Beauty and The Beast” and “The Jungle Book” comes “Aladdin,” Guy Ritchie’s reimagining of the all singing, all dancing, all powerful Genie made famous by the late, great Robin Williams.
The story begins when “street rat” and thief Aladdin (Mena Massoud) helps a beautiful woman (Naomi Scott) he believes is a handmaiden to the daughter of the Sultan of Agrabah (Navid Negahban), escape from the police after a misunderstanding in the market. After a wild chase—part musical theatre, part parkour—they spark, bonding over the vagaries of their own circumstances. She’s trapped by palace life, he by a life of poverty. “It’s kind of sad having a monkey as the only parental authority in my life,” he says of Abu, his kleptomaniac pet monkey and constant companion.
She is, of course not the handmaiden, but the Princess Jasmine, a woman who longs to take over for her father but is stymied in her ambition by tradition. The law says she cannot take the throne and must marry a prince. When one royal suitor compliments her on her beauty she says, “We have the same titles but are never described the same way,” before dismissing him.
Meanwhile back at the palace, the Sultan’s power-hungry advisor Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) also has his eye on the throne. Using hypnotism he controls the ruler, but wants more. More, in the form of a magic lamp hidden deep in the Cave of Wonders. “Once that lamp sits in my hand I will sit on the throne,” he cackles. Trouble is, everyone who ventures into the cave dies. Jafar needs someone with serious skills to get in, grab the lamp and get out. When he meets Aladdin, he uses his access to the princess to strike a deal. “Retrieve the lamp from the cave and I will make you rich enough to impress a princess.”
The perilous journey to the lamp reveals the star of the show, a magical blue Genie with the power to grant three wishes to the keeper of the lamp. There are some catches though; he can’t make anyone fall in love with him or raise the dead. He also cautions against wishing for wealth and power the very two things Jafar and Aladdin covet.
Despite all its pomp and circumstance the live action remake of the beloved animated “Aladdin” does not exactly transport us to a whole new world. Ritchie fills the screen with colour and pageantry, staging large scale Bollywood-style dance numbers and, in the case of the Genie’s signature tune “Friend Like Me,” a maximalist CGI orgy that gives Flo Ziegfeld a run for his money. Even when he is more restrained, he isn’t that restrained. The rendering of Princess Jasmine’s big solo “Speechless,” one of the new songs by the “Dear Evan Hansen” composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, plays like a Bonnie Tyler power pop video from the 1980s.
Style has never been Ritchie’s problem. His camera is always in motion, caressing the screen with acrobatic shots and tricky editing. His movies make your eyeballs dance but often at the expense of the characters who get lost in the theatricality of the presentation.
He’s in fine form in “Aladdin” although overcooked CGI overwhelms the finale in a rush of animated imagery. The characters work hard to sparkle but get lost amid the ruckus and with them gores much of the film’s heart. The ending is loud and large but fails to make an emotional impression. Sometimes less is more.
As Princess Jasmine, Scott has more to do than in the original and does so in much more modest clothing. No animated bellybuttons here. Massoud gives the social climbing Aladdin a certain impish charm in an energetic performance. More baffling is Kenzari as the monotone villain Jafar. All scowls and surly attitude, he’s the least interesting villain on Ritchie’s resume.
The screen is filled with people but, let’s face it, the character everyone is most interested in is the big blue Genie. He’s the star of the show but in many ways it’s the film’s most thankless role. Robin Williams made the Genie his own in a performance that still sparkles with life more than twenty-five years later. Smith battles against some unfortunate CGI and the memory of Williams to make the character his own. He’s part match-maker, part magic-maker and part mirth-maker. Fortunately for Ritchie Smith’s charisma elevates the performance from merely mimicking his predecessor.
“Aladdin” is not so much a remake but an up-dating for a new generation. Some of the revisions are welcome. Jasmine is a now fully rounded character and some unfortunate lyrics, like “It’s barbaric but hey, it’s home,” have been removed. Other changes don’t work as well. Can someone explain why Iago (voiced by Alan Tudyk), a comedic highlight from the 1992 film, has been reduced to a few squawks and repeated phrases?
Despite the updates and the pomp “Aladdin” feels underwhelming by the time the end credits roll. The songs frequently interrupt the flow of the story, creating a stop-and-go feel that sucks some of the film’s momentum away.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Collateral Beauty had a long Hollywood history before director David Frankel came on board. Hugh Jackman was attached at one point and Rachel McAdams had been approached to play a part.
The long development came to an end when Will Smith signed on to play Howard Inlet, a charismatic advertising kingpin who becomes despondent after the death of his six-year-old daughter.
“When I came on it, it felt like it was written in stone,” says Frankel. “Everybody loved the screenplay and we were going in three months and then people started whispering, ‘I wish we could fix that.’ So it turned out to be a pretty normal development process where we tried a lot of stuff.
“Once the actors got involved, Professor Will Smith, Professor Edward Norton and Professor Kate Winslet, there was a lot more writing. Mostly condensing. Edward had this brilliant vision of the movie as a screwball comedy, which I think was really smart. Will always said, ‘We have to make the first half of the movie as funny as possible so that we don’t kill people.’ We worked on that.”
The changes continued into the shooting. In the story Howard spends his nights practising self-therapy, writing angry letters to the abstractions of Time, Love and Death demanding answers as to why his child was taken. In the original script he met the abstractions, personified by Jacob Latimore, Keira Knightley and Helen Mirren, in a different order than in the finished film.
“It was written where he first ran into Love, then Time then Death,” says Frankel. “We shot them in the order, Death, Time, Love so as we were approaching Love Will and I were still arguing about whether Love should be first or last in the sequence.
“We had prepped for six months up to that moment thinking Love was first. He came to me the day before and said, ‘I think Love should be last.’ I fought him tooth and nail about it because I really thought that moment on the train when he confronts Death was the pivotal moment and then it rained and because of the weather (the shots) wouldn’t have matched. The sequence wouldn’t have made sense.
“Of course Will said, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ But Will Smith got his way. Big surprise.”
The movie details the anguish Howard feels and the steps his friends take to help him reconnect with the world.
“I have seen some pretty profound grief,” says Frankel. “My wife lost her mom six years ago and grief really can distort someone’s connection to the universe. I learned you don’t just get over it. That’s why the line Helen (Mirren) has, I think is the most profound line in the movie. ‘Nothing is really ever dead if you look at it right.’
“That I thought was really beautiful. That is how we all live on, in memory, not in fact.”
It may seem like an odd subject for a Christmas film but Frankel says, “In holiday movies you always want a sense of hope. That’s ultimately what we dreamed of for this movie.
“I know when Will saw it for the first time he ran to hug Willow who was in the audience with him. People want to connect and realize the fragility of our time here.”
“Collateral Beauty” tries desperately to be a feel good movie, but is really a feel bad flick. Or maybe it’s just a bad movie about the intersection where grief and greed cross.
When we first meet Howard Inlet (Will Smith) he’s a charismatic advertising kingpin giving his employees a pep talk that could raise the dead. He’s an inspiring figure but just three years later, after the death of his six-year-old daughter, he becomes despondent dude who sees his life, his time on the planet, as a prison sentence. He barely says a word, spending his days at work making giant domino mazes. Without his leadership the company hits hard times.
Fortunately his partners, best friend Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña), have a great offer that would see them all make a fortune. Unfortunately Howard, who owns sixty percent of the company, does not want to sell.
Determined to make the deal happen Howard’s three friends and partners conspire against him. When a private investigator discovers Howard spends his nights practising self-therapy, writing angry letters to the abstractions of Time, Love and Death, they concoct a plan to use the notes against him. “Howard is not in a good mental state,” says Whit. “It’s about underlining that fact so others can see it.
To that end they hire three actors, Raffi (Jacob Latimore), Aimee (Keira Knightley) and Brigitte (Helen Mirren) to personify Time, Love and Death. They are to approach Howard as the private eye video tapes them. Later they will digitally remove the actors and use the tapes to prove that Howard is not mentally fit to run the company. Bingo, bango they get their deal while Howard is left tormented by what he thinks must be bereavement hallucinations.
There’s more but that is the conceit fuelling “Collateral Beauty’s” story and therein lies the film’s main problem. It’s a really weird and not very nice idea. Watching Howard’s sad sack friends plotting against him while trying to convince one another—and us—that they are doing this for his own good is a singularly unpleasant experience. A little bit of nastiness at the holidays is never unwelcome. “It’s a Wonderful Life” has an undercurrent of meanness that nicely offsets the saccharine aspects of the story and it works. Here the characters grasp for justification of their awful behaviour and the film allows them to get away with it.
Layer that with a healthy dollop of pop psychology—“Nothing’s ever really dead if you look at it right.”—that rides the line between inane and inaner and you have a film that wants to be inspiring holiday fare but is instead a downer look at some of the worst of human behaviour.
Richard and “Collateral Beauty” director David Frankel spoke in front of an invited audience at a screening of the film in Toronto recently. To hear Frankel (whose other films include “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Marley and Me”) and Richard discuss working with Will Smith, rewriting on the fly and shooting in New York City, keep your ear on the House of Crouse podcast the week of December 16!
Tired of good guys? The Captain Americas, ‘yer Iron Men or Wondrous Women? If their virtuous acts and heroic posing are wearing thin or not to your liking, along comes a crew of anti-heroes willing to bend the rules to protect the planet. “We’re the bad guys,” says Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), “it’s what we do.”
Based on the DC Comic of the same name, the Suicide Squad a.k.a. Task Force X, is a ragtag team of death row villains sprung from jail by a secret government agency run by ruthless bureaucrat Amanda Waller (Viola Davis). “In a world of flying men and monsters,” she says, “this is the only way to protect our country.” Waller’s counter-intuitive idea is to utilize their specific sets of skills—essentially creating mayhem—to quell large-scale threats against humanity. In return they are awarded clemency for their crimes. “I’m fighting fire with fire,” says Waller.
The all-star cast of baddies include assassin Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn, a crazed former psychiatrist with a love of beating people with baseball bats and Joker (Jared Leto), deadly boomerangist Boomerang (Jai Courtney), fire-conjurer El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and the reptilian Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).
To keep the baddies on the straight and narrow they are led into battle by righteous team leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). Also they are implanted with micro-bombs to encourage them to do the right thing. Complicating an already complicated situation is the Joker’s plan to extract Harley from the group and the appearance of Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), an archaeologist possessed by an ancient evil force.
For the first forty minutes or so “Suicide Squad” is loopy fun. Zippy, it rips along setting up the story and the characters in an extended origin sequence that gives us all the information we need to understand the rest of the movie. It’s a catch-up that non comic book lovers will appreciate. It is also the strongest part of the movie.
When it gets down to the nitty-gritty of the team in battle against “non-human entities” the C.G.I. kicks into high gear, covering every inch of the screen, and “Suicide Squad” becomes considerably less interesting. Set to a classic rock soundtrack the large-scale action scenes are muddled, dark and rather generic, especially given the special skills of each of the combatants.
About the Squad. For a group of psychopaths they sure seem to be OK people. The worst thing they do—minus the wholesale carnage the government allows them to create—is go temporarily AWOL for a drink in between battles. Over cocktails they discuss life, love and motivations. There are rom coms with more edge.
Much has been written about Jared Leto’s commitment to the role of Joker, and I’m sure the stories are true—he apparently sent a live rat to Robbie and a dead hog to the crew—but it’s hard to see the payoff in his method. His take on the character is weird but not as wild as you might want, and considerably less present on screen than you might think.
Smith makes more of an impression simply through the sheer strength of his charisma. Like the rest of the team he isn’t given much to do but he makes the most of it. Robbie makes an impression in a dangerous and flirty role but her New York accent comes and goes with the frequency of a rush hour subway train.
The rest are placeholders, not given enough to do to actually be interesting and even when they are in action, it’s so dark it’s hard to tell exactly who is shooting/stabbing/punching who.
On the plus side “Suicide Squad” doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as “Batman v Superman.” On the downside director David Ayer took a premise that gave him permission to go as far overboard as he wanted and yet the movie feels familiar, like it is trying to echo the very movies it should be an antidote to.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
To prepare for his role in Suicide Squad method actor Jared Leto went full Joker.
“I had to be committed beyond belief,” he says. As the third Oscar winner to play The Joker, after Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, he said, “We knew we had to strike new ground. There had been such great work we knew we had to go in a different direction.”
An adaptation of the DC Comics antihero series, Suicide Squad sees supervillains like El Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) as well as Leto’s Harlequin of Hate perform perilous black ops missions in return for clemency. Director David Ayer describes it as a “comic-book version of The Dirty Dozen.”
Leto immersed himself in the role to the point his cast mates didn’t know where the actor ended and the Joker began. Jai Courtney said, “Let’s put it this way. I haven’t seen him, since we started working, out-of-character.” Margot Robbie and Scott Eastwood, who is Leto’s friend in real life, both say the actor’s on-set behaviour scared them.
To create his take on the Clown Prince of Crime he mixed-and-matched influences from the Batman comic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth along with shamans and Mexican cartels. “The Joker is fantastic because there are no rules,” he says.
The only rule Leto subscribed to was to never break out of character, whether he was filming or not. His conduct made headlines when it was reported that he gave the cast and crew some Joker inspired presents.
“He did some bad things, Jared Leto did,” said co-star Viola Davis. “He gave some really horrific gifts.”
Robbie, who plays the baseball bat-wielding villain Harley Quinn, received a love letter and a live rat in a black box. She kept the rodent, which she named Rat Rat, for the duration of the Toronto shoot because, “If Harley got something from Joker, she’d probably cherish it.” When filming was complete Guillermo del Toro adopted the rodent renaming it Vestuniano.
Will Smith, who plays sharpshooter Deadshot, was also sent a letter accompanied by a bullet and Killer Croc portrayer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje received a “used” Playboy magazine.
Leto’s first day of the shoot gift was an eye opener. He missed the first few days of filming, so to let everyone know he was thinking of them he sent over a dead hog and a video of the Joker.
“Basically, what he said was, ‘Guys, I can’t be there but I want you to know I’m doing my work as hard as you guys,'” Adam Beach said. “The video he showed is in character. It blew our minds away. We realized that day, this is real.”
Viola Davis was spared Leto’s twisted gift giving. “I did not receive any personally, or else I would have got my husband, who was called ‘Headache Ball’ when he played football, and I would have said, ‘Take care of the Joker,’” she said.
Did his methods pay off? Seems so. Ben Affleck describes Leto’s performance as “genius” and Ayer declares, “I think it’s going to be hard for anyone to ever imagine anyone else as the Joker.”
Leto thinks his process was worth it. “Other people can show up and are genius but I did what I needed to do to deliver. And we had a good time with it.”
