JohnHillcoat Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In news that is equally rumored and dreaded, it looks like the Weinsteins' haste to get The Reader in the running for this year's awards season might be a matter of John Hillcoat's anticipated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel, The Road, not being ready for its limited release a month from now, let alone year's end.

It's bad enough that neither film was ready for any of the big fall film festivals, but a good friend told me something similar three days ago, and now, Kristopher Tapley at In Contention and Dave Karger's EW Oscar Watch are talking along the same lines. I can't say that I'm the same William who posted the following reaction on Karger's page -- and I quote: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" -- but my own sentiments on the (possible) move aren't all that far off.

For that matter, my feelings on the novel and film themselves are akin to those of our own Eugene Novikov: that the book is merely Damn Good, but could make for a Great movie. We may not have a poster, or a trailer, or a fully functioning website just yet, but for all the Weinsteins' release date shell games, I can't help but think they have more to lose holding off on this than The Reader, which producer Scott Rudin took his name off after it was bumped up to contend with star Kate Winslet's other awards prospect, Revolutionary Road (itself based on an acclaimed novel).

I mean, I'm not exactly wishing that The Reader is Winslet's next All the King's Men or anything, but is this studio not big enough for the both of them? Or is this year merely not long enough?

One of my concerns when I started doing this column was that each forthcoming adaptation I covered would equate to a new movie losing the ability to surprise me. What more effective way to strip oneself of the thrill of cinematic discovery, I thought, than to pore over the source material before watching? Ultimately I decided that the prospect of literary discovery along with the chance to write the column more than compensated for that risk, but here's some evidence that maybe I shouldn't have worried at all: having read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, I'm more excited to see John Hillcoat's adaptation – coming this November -- than I ever would have been otherwise.

Just when it was looking like No Country for Old Men had a monopoly on successful interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's drearily minimalistic prose, production on an adaptation of The Road suggests the possibility of healthy competition. The movie, which recently finished shooting in Pennsylvania and hits theaters in November, remains a wild card until post-production wraps. Nevertheless, if this colorful report from the set in The New York Times offers any indication, The Road appears poised to capture McCarthy's original gloomy lyricism. Reporter Charles McGrath points out the difficulties the filmmakers endured when the weather got too nice and the grass looked too green. In other words, they're working really hard to keep things bleak. The story, about a father and son wandering through desolate landscapes after a cataclysmic event destroys civilization, demands that the dark aura remain intact. However, it wouldn't work without two strong leads, and McGrath implies that with Viggo Mortensen and eleven-year-old Kodi Smit-Mcphee (the next Haley Joel Osment?), that need has been fulfilled.

The best match for The Road, however, is its director, John Hillcoat, whose work on The Proposition proves he's the man for the job. That woefully undervalued western had the intensity of a Sam Peckinpah movie in overdrive, and The Road screams for the same raw, stripped-down approach. It's nice to hear that Hillcoat sees the movie as an antithesis to Mad Max, meaning he wants to eschew cartoony violence in order to create a scarily realistic depiction of post-apocalyptic duress. Bring it on.

[Photo above: Kodi Smit-Mcphee on the set of The Road, courtesy of the New York Times]

I'm about 50 pages away from finishing The Road, and all I think about when I'm reading it (apart from praying the two stumble across another can of peaches -- just one more can of peaches, please!) is what director John Hillcoat is going to do with this sucker. It has the potential to be absolutely amazing, from a visual standpoint, and should make for an interesting comparison to Hillcoat's last film, The Proposition -- which, like The Road, was full of empty land and empty people. Needless to say, I cannot friggin' wait for this film to arrive in the fall.

Which brings us to this first image from The Road, courtesy of Row Three. The photo shows Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the father and son who attempt to head south across a post-apocalyptic United States, toward the coast. Along the way, they'll hide from cannibals, search for more food, clothing -- anything to keep them alive, really. The film, which is due out November 26, is based on the book by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) and also stars Guy Pearce and Charlize Theron.

[via JoBlo]

Everyone and their (his?) mother loves The Proposition, the Nick Cave-penned Australian western starring Danny Huston as a villain who could give Chigurh a run for his money in sheer badassery. It's hard to blame them, since movies that gritty and tough don't come along very often. (As modern westerns go, I think 3:10 to Yuma is better, but it certainly isn't as awesomely brutal.) Two years after that film became a critical darling and a sleeper hit of sorts, director John Hillcoat -- who is currently in production on Cormac McCarthy's The Road -- has signed with Columbia to direct an adaptation of a not-yet-released novel by Matt Bondurant called The Wettest Country in the World. The book is about a trio of gangsters -- the author's grandfather and grand-uncles -- who ran the moonshine trade at the peak of the Prohibition Era, and the writer who tracked them in search of a scoop.

The new Cyborg movie...sorry... The upcoming post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy adaptation, The Road, has got itself a leading lad. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the son who gets to travel around with Viggo Mortensen is Aussie actor Kodi Smit-McPhee. This is the kid who might be playing the young Logan in the upcoming Wolverine movie, and he played Raimond Gaita in the memoir adaptation Romulus, My Father.

The 11-year-old's role in the film is to travel with Papa Viggo on "a months-long journey across a barren U.S. landscape after a cataclysmic event destroyed most of life on Earth." Somewhere along the way, they remember mom, because Charlize Theron will play the wife and mother in flashbacks. (Bana, Mortensen, Potente, and Theron, aren't bad movie parents to have at the start of your career!) After the success of No Country for Old Men, expectations are pretty high for this feature, and for me especially, since I love director John Hillcoat's The Proposition.

That being said ... I think I should read the book, because I just keep putting Viggo's face over Van Damme's, Theron's over the old, dead love interest, and now Kodi's face over the cyborg he travels with. All we need is Bender, and this new flick is set!

At last count, it looked like Guy Pearce might have been replacing Viggo Mortensen in the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Fortunately (and no offense, Guy) it looks like Viggo is still on board ... plus he just got a gal named Charlize Theron as a co-star. According to Variety, the Oscar-winning blonde will play the main character's wife, a small but important character who will appear mostly through flashbacks.

An admitted fan of the source material, Ms. Theron will be working alongside director John Hillcoat (of the excellent The Proposition) and screenwriter Joe Penhall (of the strangely entertaining Enduring Love). The adaptation, which is being produced by 2929 Entertainment and distributed by the Weinsteins' Dimension Films, tells the story of "a man who embarks on a nightmarish road trip after a nuclear explosion in an attempt to transport his son to safety while fending off cannibals." Awesome.

And thanks also to Variety for the reminder: I need a good book for my Sundance flight -- and The Road is definitely going to be it. I think that will be the first "Oprah's Book Club" selection that I've ever read. (No offense, Oprah.)

It was back in May of last year that news about the next Nick Cave/John Hillcoat collaboration hit the air -- Death of a Ladies' Man, starring Ray Winstone. But then the air went silent, until now. The actor recently talked with MTV about his future projects, and he says that he's still set to star in the film. If you're a Winstone fan, it might please you to know that beyond this, Beowulf, and the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, he's also looking into a role in The Minutemen (the latest indie from the Nee Brothers), and while he said he won't be part of King's X, he is joining Ian McShane, John Hurt, and Tim Roth in 44 Inch Chest -- written by the men behind Sexy Beast.

But back to Death of a Ladies' Man. Yes, it is based on Leonard Cohen's song (Nick Cave is a fan and even performed on Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man), and it's much different than the previous Aussie western. The film focuses on a traveling salesman played by Winstone who is "addicted to sex" and uses "his door-to-door beauty products as a means to meet women." Considering the fact that the song has lines like: "He offered her an orgy in a many-mirrored room," I imagine this'll be a little racy.

Furthermore, this May, an interview with Cave was published in Harp, and he said: "John asked me to come up with another script, something small that he could do quickly. That said, it's now suddenly taking a long time to get going." He goes on to note that it's an English character study, and after a year of struggle, it will get made as soon as Hillcoat finishes a "big American film" -- which I presume is The Road. With Guy Pearce potentially replacing Viggo Mortensen, the film will finally get into production soon, and maybe Guy will follow along to the next. As a huge Proposition fan, I can only hope!