For whatever reason in the fall of 2005, I had missed out on the initial local press screening of Terrence Malick's latest epic, The New World, and the reactions that followed were decidedly ... less than appreciative. Shortly thereafter, word had come our way that an alternate cut would be opening instead, and so it was this second screening that I did attend.

For the first half of the film, I was fairly fascinated by the tale of John Smith (Colin Farrell) and his conquest of both what is now America and what was then Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher). However, somewhere around when Smith disappeared and John Rolfe (Christian Bale) all but replaced him, I found my interest waning at a considerable rate.

It's difficult to deny that there were those who still thought the film to be one for the ages, even in its 135-minute incarnation. Those who lucked into the earlier screenings or lived in New York or Los Angeles could briefly get a glimpse of the original 150-minute cut, before certain scenes had been abridged, excised, or even replaced. Now, come October 14th, fans will get the chance to devour a DVD release of 172 minutes in length.

Earlier that same year, I'd found myself fairly unimpressed with the theatrical cut of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, only to eat my words once the engrossing three-hour-plus director's cut hit DVD after a similar NY/LA bow. Maybe almost three years after the fact, I can bring myself to give Malick's masterpiece another go. Will you?

[via DVD Active]

After all the comments in reviews about The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford being Terrence Malick-ish, it appears that Brad Pitt wants the real deal. According to Variety, Pitt is in talks to star alongside Sean Penn in Malick's next film, Tree of Life. Already the film has seen cast replacements; first attached were Mel Gibson and Colin Farrell, then Penn and Heath Ledger. Now it's Ledger who is out (perhaps because Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is expected to go long?) with Pitt set to replace him. As Variety points out, Pitt's consideration of the role is interesting after bailing from State of Play, for which he would have made a whole lot more money. The trade also clears up that Penn's part will be fairly minor in comparison to Pitt's.

As I said in my previous post on the film, the plot of Tree of Life is unknown, but it may have something to do with a Minotaur (like in Gilliam's Time Bandits? no probably not like that). And it may be shot in India. Apparently the film has roots in a project Malick began thirty years ago called Q, which originally focused on World War I and eventually became an eon-spanning story. All that is known is that production begins in the Spring. Maybe, just maybe, it can hold on to this cast until then. These actor swaps are making my head spin. Unfortunately, neither Pitt nor Penn are locked into the film yet, so it's very possible we could see more casting coverage of Tree of Life before the cameras are in place.

With a title like Tree of Life, it had sounded like Terrence Malick's next project was to be in line with his last. It even was set to star his lead from The New World, Colin Farrell -- co-starring with Mel Gibson. But Tree of Life doesn't appear to be about Spanish conquistadors and such -- which is good, since The Fountain already covered that territory. Of course, the actual plot of Malick's script is unknown, and despite the fact that it was going to be shot primarily in India two years ago, the same locations might not be used now that the project is up and running once again.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tree of Life could now star Heath Ledger and Sean Penn, who appeared in Malick's The Thin Red Line. The trade states the actors, as well as Malick, are in talks but that shooting is expected to begin in March. River Road Entertainment, which worked with Penn on Into the Wild and with Ledger on Brokeback Mountain is heading the project with the company's founder, William Pohlad, and Sarah Green (The New World) producing.

As I said, little is known about the film. THR mentions the usual "plot is closely guarded" irritant, and to rub in the annoyance tells us an insider could only say that it's a "complex drama." According to a bit of trivia on the IMDb, Tree of Life actually originated in the summer of 1978, when Malick began working on the project, which was then titled Q. Considered his most ambitious project, Q was originally a multi-character story set in the Middle East during World War I, but it also featured a prehistoric prologue with a Minotaur. Then, by the end of the year, the prologue became the whole film. Like The Fountain, it seems like the plot took place over a long, long time. Unfortunately, in 1979 the director and Paramount apparently had a falling out about money; after that Malick disappeared for twenty years.

Anyway, does it really matter what Tree of Life is about? The important thing is that we could get a fifth feature from Malick!

I was poking around blog-diving (digging deep into the blogrolls of film sites I like in search of new blogs to read and perhaps link to from time to time) when I came across this excellently written piece by Adrian Martin on the poetic imagery of Terrence Malick. Whether you're a Malick connoisseur who loves to delve deep into the auteur's work over and over again, or a Malick novice just dipping your toes into the water of his films, you'll likely learn something you didn't know reading this well-researched piece.

While you're over there, check out the rest of Rogue's 10th issue, including a thoughtful review of Bosnian film Grbavica, the Golden Bear winner of the 2006 Berlinale and a transcript of a lecture by Pedro Costa (hey, it's like film school for free!). Costa says in his lecture that, "For me, the primary function of cinema is to make us feel that something isn't right. There is no difference between documentary and fiction here."

If you look at some of the better films of 2006, they fit this mold well: in Little Miss Sunshine, the "something" is the incongruity between Olive's physical features and her dream of being a beauty queen, explored within the microcosm of her bizarrely dysfunctional but loving family. In The Lives of Others, the something that isn't right is the government intruding on the privacy of its citizens, and the abuse of that power. In Pan's Labyrinth, Ofelia is forced to accompany her ailing mother to their new home at a remote military outpost, and a fantasy world that may be even more dangerous than the real one she longs to escape.

Go brew yourself a nice cup of herbal tea, and then go read to your heart's content. There are lots more goodies awaiting you in this issue.

Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye did a bad, bad thing. He showed his movie Summer Palace at Cannes earlier this year, and he did so without permission from the Chinese government. Now the director is not permitted to make another film in his home country for five years. Sure, for some filmmakers (like Terrence Malick and the late Stanley Kubrick, were he alive), this wouldn't be that horrible a punishment, except that the whole consequence part includes the government's confiscation of the film and seizing of any income it has generated. Lou Ye has already been the victim of a filmmaking ban; he made Suzhou River without the authorization to do so in 2000 and then couldn't make another film for two years. The producer of Summer Palace, An Nai, has also been put on a five-year suspension.

Summer Palace is a sexually explicit film set in 1989 amidst that year's pro-democracy demonstrations, which ended with the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre. And, according to Lou, it is somewhat autobiographical. Now, while you may be happy to not be living in a communist country, like Lou Ye, surely there are some directors out there that you wish could be given such a ban. My pick: Shawn Levy.

[via Fark.com]

As his ship of wannabe-settlers approaches Virginia one clear, late afternoon in the fall of 1607, Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) sits shackled below deck. Through the cracks in the wood, he peeks up and out at the land the ship is rapidly approaching and, hands still bound together in chains, throws his head back, and laughs and laughs. Once the Englishmen hit land, the first order of business is to execute the Captain-in-chains. Smith gets as far as the gallows, before his superior, Captain Newport, steps in. Smith, apparently, is a bitch to be around – and we'll soon see plenty of that for ourselves – but he's also the only man on a ship, otherwise padded with bourgie tourists, who can offer any kind of military experience. Newport saves Smith's life, but not without a warning: "You," Newport growls (via the voice and body of the magnificent Christopher Plummer), "Are under a cloud." Smith almost winks in response.

A cloud is right, but oh, what a day to be stuck in the metaphoric rain. The New World is the most gorgeous spiritually overcast epic to hit American screens in some time. Even when he's blinding us with his trademark bursts of sunlight, and further distracting our attention with featherweight monologues that threaten irrelevance, director Terrence Malick knows we're aware of the looming shitstorm that history has waiting for his protagonists and their epoch. With that cloud hanging over the proceedings, Malick's true coup is to seesaw his story's concerns. Famine, assimilation, and I would argue, even the rape of nature are pushed down, whilst a burning star-crossed love story is pushed up. And that love story itself should be the flimsiest of things, a historical footnote of dubious accuracy (many scholars dismiss Smith's claims of a romance with the Indian princess Pocahontas, which are absent from the many monographs he wrote in the years immediately following his journey, as the barroom boasts of a megalomaniac) and very little gravity;  Malick promotes it to life-or-death preponderancy. It would be cruel to call The New World a puppy-love soap opera, but it wouldn't be at all inaccurate. So let's get right down to it: The New World is the best puppy-love soap opera I've ever seen.