TheLostCityOfZ Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Greatness in the Making: Director James Gray
Filed under: Drama », New Releases »
It's so exciting -- literally exciting; pulse-quickening -- to watch a monumental new talent emerge and begin to edge toward what will eventually be his rightful place among the filmmaking greats. After watching his fourth film, Two Lovers (which opens this weekend and which I'll just comment on obliquely here) I'm ready to call it: James Gray is the next... well, the next something. I'm tempted to say Scorcese, which seems absurdly hyperbolic, but I'm kind of serious. He's that good: that ambitious, that interesting, that attuned to the details of human behavior. Watch this guy. He's gonna be important.
Almost no one saw The Yards (though you should), even I haven't seen his debut feature Little Odessa, and Two Lovers hasn't seen release yet, so I'll talk about We Own the Night: plot-wise a fairly ordinary cops-and-mobsters drama, but one that's pitched at the emotional wavelength of an epic Greek tragedy and as finely observed as any work of arthouse "naturalism" you can think of (Chop Shop? Flight of the Red Balloon?). Scene after scene, the film teeters on the edge of becoming corny and laughable, but it never quite tips over. Part of it is Gray's total conviction, completely committed to an almost absurdly grandiose screenplay. Even more important is how real the movie feels, how almost tactile: 1988 Brooklyn comes alive in front of you; the club scenes seem populated with hundreds of real human beings, not just extras; there's an important scene in a cavernous church that just deposits you in that church in an extraordinary way I can't quite articulate. It's the attention to detail, the rich sound design, the sense of geography and space -- in other words, skilled filmmaking. And then there's that justly renowned car chase in the pouring rain. Wowza.
Brad Pitt's 'The Lost City of Z' Gets Cooking
Filed under: Action », Casting », Deals », Scripts »
It's been a while since word hit earlier this year that Brad Pitt had picked up the rights to David Grann's upcoming book called The Lost City of Z. But after months of silence, the ball is rolling once again. Variety reports that Paramount has tapped James Gray (We Own the Night) to adapt Grann's work and then helm it with Pitt definitely taking the starring role as British explorer Percy Fawcett.Lost City follows the true story of Fawcett, a man who "left Victorian society" in the '20s to explore the Amazon, obsessed with the legendary, advanced city Z. He made his way into the jungle with his son in search of this legend, and disappeared. Over the years, even Grann himself have tried to retrace Fawcett's steps. There are a number of rumors and possibilities, but as with any expedition many years later -- none have been verified.
There's no word on whether this will stay back in time, or merge Fawcett's quest with Grann's later discoveries. But either way, Fawcett is an icon who not only inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, but is also rumored to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones. That Crystal Skull was a fiasco, so maybe it's time to hand the reigns over to the original explorer and get a whole new taste of archaeology.
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