Edward Zwick Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I never claimed to have the most refined taste when it comes to movies (and if you need proof, take a look). Sometimes my taste is downright mind-boggling, and no amount of public scorn can stop me from sitting down for multiple viewings of flicks that most of you out there wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. So, on that note, today I'm going to tell you about a movie I love that usually earns me my fair share of some blank stares: About Last Night.

This '80s 'classic' was directed by Edward Zwick (a far cry from his war epics, I know) and was based on the David Mamet play, Sexual Perversion in Chicago. The film starred 80's wunderkinds Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Jim Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins (providing most of the comic relief) in a tale of romantic misadventures among young professionals in Chicago. The film was my first exposure to 'serious' romantic drama, and when I first watched it as an 11-year-old girl, I felt like I was quite the grown-up -- mainly because for once, I understood most of the dirty jokes.

The film may have blunted some of the edge of Mamet's play and provided a happy ending that didn't exist in the original, but as a time piece of pre-AIDS sexual politics, this movie can't be beat. About Last Night was the perfect antidote to the easy and simple romance I had seen up on the big screen, and no matter the time or the place, if I catch this movie on TV, I'm hanging in until the very end.

After the jump: in defense of bad taste, and one of the many reasons I love this movie: obscure 80's love songs....

A lot of the time, watching a movie, we recoil or start at something in it: That's fake, we say, and dismiss the whole film. On many occasions, that impulse is correct because the film is fake, but on rare occasions, we feel that sensation of dislocated wrongness not because the film is fake but because our world is; we can't wrap our heads around the facts and ugly truths of what we see, can't comprehend how such things are possible, and recoil from them out of refusal to believe, not because they aren't believable. This is one of the challenges Defiance, the newest drama from Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) faces as it tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, three Belorussian Jews and outlaw petty criminals who, during World War II's pogroms and purges, protected hundreds of Jews from the Nazis, some surviving and others actively fighting back.

We witness Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) make the decision to kill his horse so it can be eaten, and we cannot imagine such hunger. We watch Zus Bielski (Liev Schrieber) fight alongside Russians who hate him to stop Germans who hate him, and we cannot imagine such a grim choice. We watch Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) fall in love, or a quick quip between two supporting characters, and we cannot imagine love, or laughter, in such a place. But there must have been such hunger; there must have been such anger; there must have been laughter, and love, in the years of exile. It's hard to imagine, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Maybe it's just me, but is it really a good idea to start promoting a Holocaust drama smack dab in the middle of the summer movie season? I guess you can't blame the makers of Defiance for wanting to start their promotions a little early, though. The new poster for Daniel Craig's WWII flick has been released (click image to enlarge), and it is about as dark and sombre as you might expect.

Defiance was written and directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond), and tells the true life story of the Bielski partisans. The Bielskis were three brothers who escaped into the Belarus forests while on the run from the Nazis and banded together to form a resistance group to save other Jews during WWII. Jamie Bell, Liev Schreiber, and Craig (who is the only face that made it to the poster) portray the three brothers, and The Mist's Alexa Davalos also stars as a fellow escapee and love interest for Craig.

Defiance wrapped production back in 2007 (as we all know, Craig has been a tad busy working on a certain spy film ever since) and there hasn't been much hoopla surrounding the film -- with the exception of a small trailer release back in January. So even though the next three months are all about blockbusting fun, we can't forget that Oscar season is merely months away; I'm sure Zwick hasn't.

Defiance will arrive in theaters on December 19th, 2008.

ScreenDaily is reporting today that Daniel Craig has added yet another role to his upcoming slate of projects that already includes Bond 22, The Golden Compass and Blindness. According to them, he's been cast in Defiance, the upcoming Ed Zwick film that will follow four Jewish brothers who leave occupied Poland and join freedom fighters in Belarus. There's not much more information besides that, and I'll be interested to see if this is quickly confirmed by Variety and HR, or if it turns out to be one of those 'castings' that Craig ends up denying at press junkets, like with I, Lucifer. Next up for Craig will, of course, be the much-discussed remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was invaded by the Wachowskis and more or less re-shot, and is now apparently test screening to less than impressive results.

As for Defiance, I personally can't understand what the attraction to working with Ed Zwick would still be at this point -- the guy hasn't made a good film since at least 1998's The Siege, and even that was more weirdly entertaining than just plain good. I have to give credit where credit is due for that scene where the terrorists blow up a Broadway play, though. Zwick's signature, of blending action with bleeding-heart politics, never quite seems to gel on screen, and the less than stellar box office for Blood Diamond and The Last Samurai bear that out. Zwick must bring his pictures in on time with little fuss, though, since he keeps these things greenlit, so bully for him. If the guys from Commanderbond.net read this post, I hope they leave a comment answering this question -- doesn't Craig have to report to work soon on Bond 22? Surely he won't be fronting a big war epic until after that's wrapped.

After five Harry Potter films, Chris Columbus was the only director to helm back-to-back (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) Potter flicks. However, now that David Yates has officially signed on to direct Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince, he will join Columbus in an exclusive club that may or may not shut its doors for good with only two members. With only one director-less Potter film currently accepting applications (that being the last pic in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), the speculation begins: Who will be chosen to end one of the most ambitious (and well-made) franchises in movie history? Will Yates become the only man to helm three Potter films? Or, will Warner Bros. hand the magic wand to a brand new face?

In a fun little article, MTV caught up with eight of today's most talked-about directors to ask them how they would end the popular franchise, should they be chosen by the studio Gods to finish the job. Those who participated were Rob Zombie (Halloween), Zack Snyder (300), David Fincher (Zodiac), George Miller (Happy Feet), Tom Tykwer (Perfume), Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz), Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth). Here's how a few of them responded (Note: It appears most, if not all, feel Harry should die in the final installment):

• Rob Zombie: "I'd probably be very violent with a lot of nudity. That's what it needs. Harry should say 'f---' a lot. That would spice it up."
• Edgar Wright: "I think I'd like to see Daniel Radcliffe naked and mutilating horses [like he did in the play 'Equus' in London's West End]. It's amazing in the U.K., the poster outside the theater is absolutely enormous. It's crazy. It's three stories high - a picture of Daniel Radcliffe with his shirt off. It's quite distressing."
• David Fincher: "Could I make it darker than Alfonso's? I don't know. [Should Harry die?] As all good teenagers must."
• Guillermo del Toro: After admitting that he was asked to helm the third film before Alfonso Cuaron took over -- then saying that Cuaron should helm the final one -- del Toro said: I would love to do one, but I would love to do one where I can kill off one of the characters. I would love to kill off one of them. I would like to be the guy who ends the franchise - I come in and destroy everything that everyone else has created!"

Head on over to MTV to see how the rest of them responded. If it were up to you, who would you choose to helm the final Harry Potter film?

[via Hollywood Wiretap]

Blood Diamond is the feel-bad epic that director Edward Zwick has been prepping for his entire career. The logline: Africa, unglued. We are dropped into Sierra Leone, sometime in the late 90s, near the tail-end of a decade-long civil war. The situation is bad enough that a rabble of child soldiers with names like "Baby Killer" and "Commander Rambo" can march with impunity down streets that are unlit except for the hazy orange glow of a few burning cars. Various factions are engaged in a hut-to-hut struggle for power, and the screen bounces from one horrifying image to another. We see a toddler being needled with heroin and told "It will make the bullets bounce off of you." We see a beachside nightclub up and running one minute, only to become captured ground the next minute. We see brigands and warlords patrolling the roads in expensive but smashed-up vehicles, looking for other vehicles that can be roadblocked and robbed. We see ... Jennifer Connelly? Talk about a diamond in the rough.

Connelly is a fine specimen of that sentimental movie creation -- the do-gooder journalist -- who hangs around sipping beers in Western-friendly cafes and seems to have no real plan at all until she happens upon Leonardo DiCaprio, a white Zimbabwean who addresses everyone as "broo" and "my man" and makes his living helping an international diamond cartel swindle the "blecks" out of the conflict diamonds that abound in the region. He has a number of minor tricks, including false teeth for smuggling diamonds and the ability to speak a bizarre form of pidgin English to the local shopkeepers that sounds exactly like something you'd hear in a Star Wars film. Connelly quickly goes to work on the emotional center she senses in him. "Good things are done every day. Just not by you," she tells him with a smile. DiCaprio and Connelly are both pushy, in-your-face actors and the film could have worked as either a romance or a cruel, McCabe & Mrs. Miller fable, but as Zwick has proven before, directing actors ain't his strong suit.

Last Tuesday's L.A. Times contained a lavish article detailing the bizarre public relations war that international diamond trader De Beers has launched on the upcoming Edward Zwick film Blood Diamond. The film, starring Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly, deals with the issue of African conflict diamonds, which are mined in war zones and used to fund illicit trade and guerilla wars. It also contains a villainous, Eurotrashy-sounding diamond cartel called Van Der Kaap that is shown clandestinely buying diamonds from rebel armies. De Beers is especially unhappy about that part, probably. According to the article, after director Zwick snubbed De Beers' request to add a disclaimer to the opening of the film stating that it was all fiction, the company hired Sitrick and Co., a top-dollar Hollywood PR firm that specializes in scandal management.

"Can you imagine [the film's] impact on the Christmas-buying audience in America if the message is not carried through?" De Beers head Jonathan Oppenheimer is quoted as saying to a recent audience of diamond retailers, showing that his real concern is for all of those armless children. The most intelligent point made in the Times article is that De Beers is nuts for allowing themselves to be linked with the film in the first place. Now all of the hoi polloi who decide to become self-righteous and not buy that ostrich egg-sized diamond for their mistress this Christmas will know exactly which firm to boycott.

The article also hints at the plans afoot for the film's publicity campaign, including having Amnesty International host screenings at college campuses around the country.

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