Pitt's Jesse James Gets A Full Trailer In HD

A new, high-definition trailer for Andrew Dominik's gloriously titled western The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford recently went up at Moviefone.com and it is a real thing of beauty. The film stars Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck in the titular roles, and some who have seen the film in its myriad early forms have touted this film as a real breakthrough for Affleck, considering his performance Oscar worthy.


More interesting though, are the reports of the post-production difficulties Warner Brothers has had with Dominik's film, which was first slated for a winter 2006 release, pushed back to an early 2007 release, and pushed back once more to it's current winter 2007 release. The initial cut reportedly ran over three hours long, with Dominik attempting a more languidly paced, visually poetic, Terrence Malick styled western. Since then, the film has gone through various permutations, with some preview screening cuts running around two hours long. According to the official website of the 64th Venice Film Festival, where the film is slated to play in competition, the final run time is 155 minutes. Hopefully Dominik and Warner Brothers were able to find a happy medium between the extreme variations in runtime that have been reported. The film opens in limited release on September 21.

Miike Goes Sci-Fi With "God's Puzzle"

Variety Asia is reporting that the prolific Takashi Miike will make God's Puzzle (Kamisama No Puzzle) his next project. The film, based on a bestselling novel by Shinji Kimoto, centers on twin brothers, one an industrious student, the other an aimless drifter, who join forces with a beautiful, brilliant dropout and attempt "to unlock the secrets of the universe and build one of their own." The project is described as a sci-fi romantic comedy. Though Miike will undoubtedly bring his unique touch to the film, I'm still hoping that he eventually tries his hand at pure science fiction. Filming on God's Puzzle is set to start on August 22 in Tokyo with a summer 2008 release planned.

Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)

The decision of director Edgar Wright and star/co-writer Simon Pegg to save the most prominent and overt instances of parody for the hilarious climax of Hot Fuzz is revealing of their intentions for the film, and is also the key to understanding the film’s success as a comedy. Of course, Hot Fuzz is a witty, often times laugh out loud funny, comedic primer on action cinema, densely peppered throughout with references to everything from (most blatantly) modern American action films, to Italian Poliziotteschi, to Hong Kong action films. However, it is more than this. The real pleasure of the film, the reason it succeeds in a manner above and beyond films of this ilk, is that the hilarity stems from a true knowledge and appreciation of the action film, but it doesn’t depend on it. Wright and Pegg play with their references intelligently, weaving them seamlessly into a coherent, freestanding narrative, utilizing them not to carry the film, but rather to enrich it. Thus, Hot Fuzz succeeds in its own right and never degenerates into a patchwork assemblage of parody and homage.

Rescue Dawn (Herzog, 2006)

Many have called Rescue Dawn Werner Herzog's attempt at making a Hollywood film, and though it hems closer to the conventional Hollywood formula than any previous Herzog film, that statement is tinged by a bitter sense of reductivism. Herzog isn't simply aping Hollywood techniques, but rather slyly subverting them. The established three-act story arc is thrown out in favor of a more stream of events structure, and though they may be employed more sparingly, the Herzogian touches are still present, namely in the rhapsodic opening scene and the film's second half, which touches upon the theme of man versus nature, a theme Herzog knows all too well. This is an exceptional film, one of the best of the summer, and possibly even the year. Once again, Christian Bale is spectacular as Dieter Dengler, showcasing maybe his finest performance yet and Steve Zahn's performance is a revelation, especially considering his past body of work.

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007

Not yet another day, and already another lion of the cinema has left us. The news is almost too sad to bear. Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the true cinematic artists, died Monday at his home in Rome according to various Italian news media outlets. This news hits me particularly hard, as Antonioni is a filmmaker whose work, whose visual style, has influenced my own creative process and aesthetic taste immeasurably. There are many who consider the films of Antonioni cold, vague exercises. Pure examples of art house pretension. I strongly disagree. Of course, his films are works of true beauty. Blow-Up, L'Avventura, L'Eclisse, The Passenger, each of these I would rank as amongst the most hauntingly beautiful, meticulously composed films ever made, and also amongst my personal favorite films of all time.

Yet Antonioni, for all who would condemn him as a simple aesthete, truly understood, more so than any other filmmaker, human alienation. It courses, like a haunted, disembodied soul, through his films. I will write no more, as I am truly at a loss for words. I need some more time to come to terms with this. In the meantime, if you have never seen an Antonioni film, what better time than now to introduce yourself to one of the most pure artist of the film form. Antonioni, you will be deeply missed.

Obituary @ New York Times
An Analysis of Antonioni's Career (Senses Of Cinema)
Critical Analysis of Selected Film Works (Strictly Film School)

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

Ingmar Bergman, one of the true pillars of cinema, passed away today at his home on the Swedish island of Faro. He was 89 years old. There is an extensive obituary over at the New York Times. Although Bergman certainly lived a long and full life, this is still extremely saddening news. One of the true giants, a pillar of the cinema, has left us, and I believe I am safe in proclaiming that there will never be another filmmaker quite like Ingmar Bergman. One glimpse at the Swedish auteur's filmography is enough to confirm both that statement and his indisputable genius. Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander, and my personal favorite, the metaphysical, enigmatic Persona, the list goes on and on. In his work, he combined an intense intellectual, formalist rigor with a passionate, probing religiosity (though he denounced religion in his own life). In the hands of a lesser talent, such a combination could have easily resulted in works dramatically stale and overwrought. In the hands of Bergman, the cinematic landscape was forever altered. Bergman will be missed dearly, but thankfully, he has left behind a tremendous body of work that can continue to be explored and discovered.

"Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."*
-Ingmar Bergman

*as quoted in "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" by John Berger, Sight and Sound (June 1991)

Obituary @ The Washington Post
The Radical Intimacy Of Bergman (Senses Of Cinema)
An Analysis of Selected Film Works (Strictly Film School)

Haneke's Next Is Teacher's Tale

Michael Haneke, the Austrian auteur behind the brutal, confrontational Funny Games (he just recently wrapped work on the English language remake starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth), and Caché, my second favorite film of 2005, has announced his next film. According to Variety, Haneke will film The White Tape or the Teacher's Tale, a film to be set just before World War I in a Northern German village. The Variety story doesn't go into any more detail regarding the film's plot, but a search of the IMDb boards sheds a bit more light on the film, describing it as being "story centered in a school in a little village around [the] beginning of World War I."