kodismit-mcphee Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Interview: Viggo Mortensen
Filed under: Fandom », The Weinstein Co. », Interviews »
Viggo Mortensen is a study in contradictions: rugged and undeniably virile, and yet thoroughly and irresistibly sensitive; the kind of man movie stars are made from, but seemingly more satisfied in a more subdued role in a smaller film. Appropriately, his latest film is both a post-apocalyptic epic and a profound character study; The Road is an adaptation of the acclaimed Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and Viggo plays its main character, a father desperately trying to protect his son from an unhospitable world, both physically and emotionally.
Cinematical recently sat down with Mortensen at the film's press day to discuss his work in the film, which was directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition). In addition to talking about navigating an unforgiving landscape, he discussed the challenges of balancing fealty to source material and simply making a fulfilling movie, and revealed a few of his own fears and insecurities when facing the prospect of sustaining a career both as a movie star and character actor, often at the same time.
You can read our interview with director John Hillcoat over here.
Cinematical: Given the richness of the source material and the familiarity that audiences will have with it, do you make an effort to draw upon the text for your character, or do you have to divorce yourself from it and focus on what's in the script?
Interview: 'The Road' Director John Hillcoat
Filed under: The Weinstein Co. », Interviews »
Outside of the established and expanding franchises for book series like Harry Potter and Twilight, there don't seem to be a whole lot of literary works that audiences are just dying to see adapted – except perhaps for The Road. Remarkably, Cormac McCarthy's remarkable 2006 story of a father and son making their way across a post-apocalyptic landscape has been successfully adapted for the screen by director John Hillcoat, who eschewed 2012-style spectacle in favor of a more harrowing and humanistic portrait of two people surviving in the harshest possible environment.
Cinematical recently spoke to Hillcoat at the film's Los Angeles press day, where he was wrapping up a long afternoon of roundtables and one-on-one interviews. Thankfully, he rallied for one more short conversation about The Road, and in addition to talking about the challenges of bringing McCarthy's words to life, he spoke about conceiving the scope of the film, and finding the right faces to fill its damaged landscape.
Cinematical: You obviously began with extremely rich source material when starting to adapt The Road. What was the thing you knew you had to get right and then everything else would sort of fall into place?
Review: The Road
Filed under: Drama », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », New Releases », Theatrical Reviews »
By: Eugene Novikov, reprinted from the Telluride Film Festival '09
Just before the kid was born, the world burned. We don't know why, and the characters don't talk about it -- perhaps they don't quite know themselves, or maybe they've decided that it no longer matters. The Boy's universe is grey, full of ash, dust, and the ruins of a civilization he never saw. This is all he knows. His mother, seeing no point in going on, killed herself shortly after his birth. She was not alone. Many of those who didn't take their own lives were soon murdered by the desperate and hungry.
Skip ahead nine or ten years. The kid and his father wander the barren roadways heading south toward the coast for no clear reason other than that it gives them a tangible goal toward which to strive. (And there's always the hope that the ocean will be something other than gray.) Every day is a knock-down, drag-out fight for survival. They run, hide, starve, and fight off attackers who want their food, or their clothes, or, at one point, their flesh.
I set the stage like this not to horrify you or to gross you out, but to give you a sense of the relentless, pervasive grimness of The Road -- and then to turn around and say that The Road may be the most profoundly optimistic and life-affirming film you will see this year. Those who have read Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name won't be surprised by this. John Hillcoat's faithful, near-perfect adaptation beautifully captures McCarthy's synthesis of all-encompassing darkness and enduring hope.
'Let the Right One In' Remake Gets Its Cast
Filed under: Drama », Foreign Language », Horror », Thrillers », Casting », Celebrities and Controversy », DIY/Filmmaking », Remakes and Sequels »
Overture Films' remake of Sweden's critically acclaimed Let the Right One In has been decried as unnecessary by a lot of critics and film fans. But it's happening no matter how much digital ink we spend complaining about it, and at least they have gone and hired themselves one heck of a cast. In an official press release, Overture has announced that Richard Jenkins, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Chloe Moretz have been cast in Let Me In. The roles are the same, though the names have been Americanized. Smit-McPhee will be playing Owen, the lonely boy who befriends the strange smelling girl who haunts his apartment complex. Moretz will be playing Abby, the immortal with a child's face. Jenkins will play her caretaker, Hakan. (They haven't decided what to change the name to, I guess. I bet you'll see him renamed Hank or Henry before long.) While I haven't seen enough of Moretz to judge her work, I know Smit-McPhee and Jenkins will be fantastic. (If you haven't rented Romulus, My Father, do so! Its a wonderful film, and it'll give you a preview of what you can expect out of Smit-McPhee in The Road.)
Of course, the performances will all depend on how the troubling, eerie story is handled by director Matt Reeves. If the nuances of the characters are bungled, then it won't matter how good the cast is. Let Me In begins filming in New Mexico (now there's a departure from the Swedish snow) this fall, and will hit theaters January 15, 2010.
'The Road' Pushed Back to November 25
Filed under: Awards », Distribution », Newsstand »
Days after Jessica Barnes compiled a nice fall schedule for you, the Weinsteins and Dimension Films had to go and mess it up a little. According to Variety, they've pushed the release date of The Road back from October 16 to November 25 -- almost a year to the day when it was supposed to come out in 2008. The delay isn't because Dimension has lost faith in the film -- quite the contrary. The film is playing to rave reviews at Telluride (where our Eugene Novikov saw it and loved it) and Venice Film Festival, and the Weinsteins have realized they have an awards contender on their hands. "We've been getting great audience reaction at Venice and Telluride," Dimension topper Bob Weinstein said. "We feel that this is a commercial film that's worthy of a wide release." Considering Cormac McCarthy's book was a bestseller and won a Pulitzer, you'd think that might have tipped them off, but ah well. What's good about this decision is that it not only puts it into Golden Globe contention, it also promises a wide release. One of the big fears lurking around the film was that audiences wouldn't get it, and the film could vanish into limited release hell.
The Road will now be in direct competition with Nine, Old Dogs, and Ninja Assassin. Something tells me John Hillcoat's bleak adaptation won't top the holiday box office, but it'll make a far bigger impact. I've been saying since the first stills came out that this might be a role that nabs Viggo Mortensen an Oscar, and I'll stand by that.
Telluride Review: The Road
Filed under: Drama », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Telluride », Theatrical Reviews »
Just before the kid was born, the world burned. We don't know why, and the characters don't talk about it -- perhaps they don't quite know themselves, or maybe they've decided that it no longer matters. The Boy's universe is grey, full of ash, dust, and the ruins of a civilization he never saw. This is all he knows. His mother, seeing no point in going on, killed herself shortly after his birth. She was not alone. Many of those who didn't take their own lives were soon murdered by the desperate and hungry.
Skip ahead nine or ten years. The kid and his father wander the barren roadways heading south toward the coast for no clear reason other than that it gives them a tangible goal toward which to strive. (And there's always the hope that the ocean will be something other than gray.) Every day is a knock-down, drag-out fight for survival. They run, hide, starve, and fight off attackers who want their food, or their clothes, or, at one point, their flesh.
I set the stage like this not to horrify you or to gross you out, but to give you a sense of the relentless, pervasive grimness of The Road -- and then to turn around and say that The Road may be the most profoundly optimistic and life-affirming film you will see this year. Those who have read Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name won't be surprised by this. John Hillcoat's faithful, near-perfect adaptation beautifully captures McCarthy's synthesis of all-encompassing darkness and enduring hope.
'The Road' Finally Gets Itself The Trailer
Filed under: Drama », Horror », Independent », Thrillers », Mystery & Suspense », The Weinstein Co. », Newsstand », Movie Marketing », War », Trailers and Clips »
The trailer for The Road (which now has a release date of October 16) has hit the net courtesy of Yahoo! Movies but we've got an embed here thanks to Trailer Addict. For those who read the Cormac McCarthy book (and I haven't, but I was told the entire thing by a "helpful" friend), you're going to notice what looks like a lot of changes to the story. The mysterious disaster is made explicit, Charlize Theron is given a lot more screen time than the wife ever had in the book, and the action is upped ten times over.
However, this trailer has caused a lot of controversy already with people who have seen the film. Esquire just published a review this week, and noted that the Weinstein Company was falling prey to the temptation to cut a trailer that looked like a post-apocalyptic action movie. According to Esquire, John Hillcoat's film is (and other reviews have borne this out) as quiet, harrowing, and bleak as the novel is, and may just be "the most important film of the year". Unfortunately, the Weinsteins feel no one will see it unless there's an "explanation" and a hook of kick ass action, even if the film itself lacks the things the trailer sells.
But at least you get a glimpse of the real film underneath, which is enough to cause you to choke up. I think we're promised one hell of a gut-wrenching performance from Viggo Mortensen. Just look at his eyes.
First Listen: Nick Cave's Score for 'The Road'
Filed under: Drama », The Weinstein Co. », Movie Marketing », Trailers and Clips »
Normally when I find out that a feature film is being made from one of my favorite novels, I immediately prepare myself for disappointment. But, when it comes to The Road, I don't know what to tell you -- for once I'm convinced everything is going to work out just fine. Although that's probably the first time that particular sentence was used in conjunction with anything having to do with Cormac McCarthy's novel. BBC4's arts show Today recently profiled the project, and the highlight of the report was the first audio clip of Nick Cave's original score. It's only a short clip, but from what you can hear it's the perfect musical accompaniment to the tale of a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) traveling through an apocalyptic wasteland. So even though most of us probably never pay that much attention to the orchestral score to most of the films we watch, you can't ignore a bad one. For me, one of the most distracting things about a film is a bad score -- some of my more hated examples include The Perfect Storm and The Last Samurai. I know there are plenty of reasons why a film might fail to connect with audiences, and I also know that this film is already going to be a hard sell. But, as a former Goth who wore way too much eyeliner while listening to Mr Cave's Murder Ballads on repeat, I have every faith that if there is anyone that can pick the perfect mood music for a downer, it's him.
The Road has yet to find a solid release date, but will hopefully arrive in theaters this fall.
Go Behind the Scenes on 'The Road'
Filed under: Drama », Horror », Independent », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Thrillers », DIY/Filmmaking », Images »
Our friends over on Quiet Earth snagged a bunch of behind-the-scenes photos from The Road, the much- anticipated adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning novel. They came courtesy of actor Jeremy Ambler, the nice looking fellow to Viggo Mortensen's left. Everyone in the photographs may be smiling (I've never seen cannibal victims look so cheerful!), but I'll be darned if the photo of the Fanker Mansion doesn't send a chill down my spine. We've attached it and a photo of the cannibals in the gallery below -- pretty freaky looks for a very scary scene.
I can't decide if I'm excited for this movie or just plain dreading it. Every glimpse of it makes me go find a puppy and hug it, then watch some YouTube videos of baby pandas for good measure. Get Cute Overload and your Disney DVD's prepped on November 26th -- you're really going to need them.
I can't decide if I'm excited for this movie or just plain dreading it. Every glimpse of it makes me go find a puppy and hug it, then watch some YouTube videos of baby pandas for good measure. Get Cute Overload and your Disney DVD's prepped on November 26th -- you're really going to need them.
New Photos From 'The Road'
Filed under: Drama », MGM », Newsstand », Movie Marketing », Images »
A bunch of new photos from the highly anticipated The Road have premiered over at USA Today. (Check out two more photos in the gallery below, then head on over to USA Today's photo gallery for the rest) They are bone-chillingly bleak and powerful, enough to send a shiver down your spine even in the middle of summer. All of the scenery is real, and the film is employing no CGI to create its post-apocalyptic landscapes.
I don't want to engage in eager hyperbole, but I can't get over the desperate look in Viggo Mortensen's eyes in the second photo. If his performance lives up to the early images (and I can't believe that it won't), I wouldn't be surprised if he garnered another Oscar nomination. We still have such a long wait (it's released November 14th) that I hope we see a trailer soon. In the meantime, I still need to read the book ...
I don't want to engage in eager hyperbole, but I can't get over the desperate look in Viggo Mortensen's eyes in the second photo. If his performance lives up to the early images (and I can't believe that it won't), I wouldn't be surprised if he garnered another Oscar nomination. We still have such a long wait (it's released November 14th) that I hope we see a trailer soon. In the meantime, I still need to read the book ...
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