gerry Tagged Articles at Cinematical

According to Us Weekly, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are currently in Hawaii working on a new screenplay. If true, this will be the duo's first script written together since they won Oscars for Good Will Hunting almost ten years ago. In the past decade, neither has done much professional writing. Damon was credited as a co-writer on Gus Van Sant's Gerry and Affleck just co-wrote his feature directorial debut, Gone, Baby, Gone. Obviously no details are given on the script, so we have to just imagine what it will be like. Personally, I'm hoping it's a realization of that sequel to Good Will Hunting (Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season) that we got a hint of in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Actually, I'm sort of kidding, but I can't honestly imagine any other idea would be better for the guys. Nothing else will live up to the anticipation and the definite hype that audiences will endure up until it is released. So, why not just do something silly?

A lot of people, including the editors at Premiere, consider Good Will Hunting to be highly overrated. I'm far from being one of them, though I have to admit I would rather have seen Paul Thomas Anderson get the Oscar in 1998 (others may have favored Academy regulars Woody Allen or James L. Brooks that year). Awards aside, though, I like the 'forced premise' and formulaic structure of the film. However, I probably buy the Will Hunting character and his story because Matt Damon's performance makes him so convincing. I don't think the duo will have as much luck with their next script unless Damon again takes a lead role. Anyway, Us has an amusing photo up of Affleck and Damon taking a surfing break while out in Hawaii. Maybe they're actually doing research for their script. Maybe while in California Will Hunting has become an avid surfer. Maybe we will get a Good Will Hunting sequel after all.

I just caught Philip Gröning's extraordinary documentary Into Great Silence (2 screens and opening wider), about Carthusian monks living in a charterhouse in the French Alps. It runs just past two hours and 45 minutes and I would wager that no more than two hundred words are spoken throughout. The film merely shows the monks going about their daily business: praying, chanting, caring for gardens, shoveling snow, sawing firewood, cooking, eating, etc. I have to admit part of my enthusiasm for the film stems from the fact that it contains no talking heads or clips; I was just about ready to scream if I saw one more documentary shot in that tired old PBS format. But I was also drawn to the film's meditative rhythm.

Or is it just slow? Already some of the reviews have trudged out the word "boring" to describe the film, and certainly it's a hard sell. But why? It's apparent that Gröning doesn't have any particular viewpoint about the monks; he's not trying to sell us on their dignity or righteousness, nor is he trying to uncover some secret, seamy underbelly. He merely wishes to show them to us. And in his great, quiet stretches, a viewer can easily get lost in his or her own thoughts. Indeed, I believe that Gröning actually prefers us to get lost in our own thoughts.