danny glover, gael garcia bernal Tagged Articles at Cinematical

UPDATE: Here's the trailer in Quicktime quality.

Of all the films I'm looking forward to this fall, Blindness ranks fairly high up there. Canadian distributor Alliance has just made available a full trailer that proves to be fairly intriguing, as an optometrist (Mark Ruffalo) and his seemingly immune wife (Julianne Moore) cope with an inexplicable epidemic of sight loss.

I'm a sucker for most anything vaguely apocalyptic, and while this very well could turn out to be akin to watching the first act of Children of Men through a milk-filled mask (which I've done, mind you), the prestige behind the project* says otherwise. We have acclaimed screenwriter Don McKellar adapting Nobel-Laureate José Saramago's novel, with Academy Award nominee Fernando Meirelles directing a cast that also includes Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, and Sandra Oh.

I must say, going off that taste and last spring's teaser, I still like the look, sound, and feel of this one, especially Moore's little retort (you know the one), and that's not to mention that any trailer which employs John Murphy's underrated score from last year's Sunshine to set a rightfully ominous tone is always fine by me. We'll get to see (sorry) what trials and tribulations await the world on September 19th.

*Not to mention Rocchi's review of the film from its Cannes world premiere.

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Blindness (click to enlarge), which enjoyed its world premiere as the opening night film of this year's Cannes Film Festival back in May. Starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael García Bernal, Blindness tells of a city overcome by a blindness epidemic where its citizens are stricken with instant "white blindness." As folks are quarantined off in an abandoned mental hospital, one woman who remains unaffected pretends to be sick in order to take care of her husband, a doctor, who's now blind. Based on Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel, and directed by the very talented Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener), Blindness definitely looks to bring the creep factor -- and with this outstanding cast, I'm sure it will claim a spot as this fall's first great flick.

Don't close your eyes for too long, because Blindness hits theaters on September 19.

I sat in on a roundtable luncheon for the film Blindness the other day; as far as roundtables go, it was a nice affair; there were four tables of journalists, and they rotated the talent through the tables, giving us about 15 minutes with each set. It's always interesting to me to talk to the actors and filmmaker about a film like this; it gives you a different perspective that you have from just watching the film.

A word of caution: There are spoilers in these interviews about certain aspects of the film, but I'm including them because they provide a good deal of context about the film and the motivations of the characters. If you prefer to go into seeing the film blind, as it were, you'll not want to read this until after you've seen it. If you do want to learn more about the film, the interview writeup is after the jump ...

This morning James and I and a couple thousand other press folks took in a screening of the Opening Film at Cannes 2008, Fernando Meirelles's Blindness, starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal. You can check out James' review here, and tomorrow I'll be attending a luncheon/roundtable for the film. And in related Cannes news, Jack Black arrived at the 2008 Festival de Cannes in style. He's here to promote Kung Fu Panda, which premieres later in the week. Check out our gallery of Black and tons of panda bears down below.

Meantime, though, my take on Blindness is that it's ambitious and good, but falls short of being great. In part, I think, this is because the source material was challenging to adapt to a visual experience, but it's also due to some clunky expositional voiceover that detracts from the experience more than it adds. I don't want to be told how this or that person feels or reacts, I want to see it.

Fernando Meirelles's new film Blindness begins with the rush and push of urban life; traffic, crowds, activity, purpose. And then, one man cries out: "I'm blind." He eventually makes it to an ophthalmologist, but there's nothing physically wrong with his eyes; he simply can't see. "It feels like I'm swimming in milk," he explains, and we see, through his eyes, the blank, empty swirl of what used to be the world. And then another person says they are blind, and then another, and soon those few, frightened voices form a chorus of chaos as "the White Sickness" spreads like wildfire and leaves a ruined world in its wake.

Adapting Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness feels like a curious mix of highbrow literary aspirations and lowbrow genre fiction; as the White Sickness spreads from person to person in a clear chain of connection and things fall apart, it'd be easy to dismiss Blindness as Dawn of the Dead for NPR listeners or Outbreak for grad students. Meirreles has taken a similar two-pronged approach before -- The Constant Gardener is an excellent critique of the failings of modern capitalism that also works as a strong, suspenseful thriller -- and while Blindness may not work as well as that film, it's also a clear case of a film, and filmmaker, failing to hit the mark occasionally only because they've set the bar so high for themselves.