Author Archive
Werner Herzog, Director of ‘Queen of the Desert’, talks vampire movies and mentions Robert Pattinson in his interview with The Playlist.
From The Playlist
Herzog claims that cinema has “a very unique way” of dealing with the vampire myth, and while his high esteem for Kinski’s legacy has barred him from considering most future iterations, a surprising exception is the “Twilight” series of films. His reaction? “Not that bad, I was surprised to find.”
“We have to take it seriously that there are films out there that know how to address a 14 or 15-year-old,” he added. “This is a very special sort of approach and I couldn’t do it, yet these films could. I see that much of it is silly but at the same time I respect these films. And I just worked with one of the actors, Robert Pattinson [in Herzog’s upcoming ‘Queen of the Desert’], and he’s a wonderful, fine actor. He’s clearly stepping out of these roles that make the teenies screech.”
Read the rest of the interview here
Here are some reviews and media reactions from the ‘The Rover’ Press Screening this morning
https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/467618004973658112
From Variety
Tipping its hat to George Miller’s “Mad Max” trilogy while striking a more somber, introspective tone, Michod’s sophomore feature isn’t exactly something we’ve never seen before, but it has a desolate beauty all its own, and a career-redefining performance by Robert Pattinson that reveals untold depths of sensitivity and feeling in the erstwhile “Twilight” star. A commercial challenge due to its mix of explicit violence, measured pacing and narrative abstractions, the pic should earn the warm embrace of discerning genre fans and further establish Michod as one of the most gifted young directors around. Pearce is fiercely impressive here as a man who gave up on the human race even before the latest round of calamities, and if there are occasional glimpses of the kinder, gentler man he might once have been, we are more frequently privy to his savage survival instincts. But it’s Pattinson who turns out to be the film’s greatest surprise, sporting a convincing Southern accent and bringing an understated dignity to a role that might easily have been milked for cheap sentimental effects. With his slurry drawl and wide-eyed, lap-dog stare, Rey initially suggests a latter-day Lennie Small, but he isn’t so much developmentally disabled as socially regressed — an overprotected mama’s boy suddenly cast to the wolves — and Pattinson never forces or overdoes anything, building up an empathy for the character that’s entirely earned. He becomes an oasis of humanity in this stark, forsaken land.
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Here’s a really great article by LA Times – ‘The Rover,’ shot in the scorching outback, chills the heart and soul
Film directors fretting on the set is nothing new, but David Michod, whose “The Rover” will debut at the Festival du Cannes on Saturday, had a concern that was considerably out of the ordinary: “I worried,” he says, “that the actors would die.”
Michod’s first feature since 2010’s knockout “Animal Kingdom,” “The Rover” stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson and was filmed in the South Australian outback, where temperatures in the hottest time of the year are literally inhumane.
“We had a technical scout the week before we started shooting and it felt dangerous, the temperature was 50 degrees Celsius, which is 122 degrees Fahrenheit,” the director recalled while in the cool interior of a posh hotel bar.
“You couldn’t work in that kind of heat, if you stood outside for more than 20 minutes you could start to die. … The producers [and I] had a short conversation about that, it was short because we didn’t want to contemplate that possibility. Fortunately, the temperature during shooting went down to 40 to 45 degrees Celsius [104-113 Fahrenheit.] That sits within the spectrum suitable for human life.”
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In an article from Deadline about the Cannes Film Market, ‘Queen of the Desert’ and ‘Life’ are listed as two of the movies that have the most buzz in the market
Deadline:
QUEEN OF THE DESERT – Director, Writer: Werner Herzog, Cast: James Franco, Robert Pattinson, Nicole Kidman, Damian Lewis. Kidman plays Gertrude Bell, the Lawrence of Arabia of female diplomats and political attaché for the British Empire at the dawn of the 20th century. Sales: Sierra Affinity, CAA, Cassian Elwes.
LIFE – Director: Anton Corbijn. Cast: Robert Pattinson, Dane DeHaan, Ben Kingsley, Joel Edgerton. A photographer for Life Magazine is assigned to shoot pictures of James Dean. Sales: CAA / WME / FilmNation. Based on 15 minutes of footage, this one’s in play and is gonna sell.
Via
Sandy George from SBS Movies sent some questions to David and his responses are as follows:
“Every filmmaker dreams of getting a film into Cannes. Why do you think The Rover did?
Hopefully, it feels like a film they haven’t seen before – it’s tense and unusual – and because the central performances from Guy and Rob are really extraordinary.
You have said that the film is “not a post-apocalyptic film”, that “this is an Australia that has broken down into a kind of resource-rich Third World country.” Can you expand on that?
I didn’t want the world of the movie to feel like we’d been reduced to psychotic apes because of a single cataclysmic event. Rather, I wanted it to feel like the entirely plausible and frighteningly possible result of the world we live in today: economic and environmental collapse, as a product of rampant greed and exploitation, reduce Australia to a dangerous resource-rich third world country. Infrastructure, products, and an economy of sorts still exist – they’re just broken, fragile and the world of the movie as a consequence is dangerous and unpredictable.
For the many people who know and love Animal Kingdom, what would you say to them about how the film is most different from or influenced by or still shows the David Michôd touch.
I think it will feel like it was made by the same guy who made Animal Kingdom. The Rover is much leaner in narrative and more epic in landscape but, like Animal Kingdom, it’s still about the sadness and menace of people trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t make any sense.”
Read the rest of Sandy’s interaction with David at SBS.
Via
Here’s a new BTS picture of Robert Pattinson, Guy Pearce and David Michôd on the set of ‘The Rover’
Source | via | via | Bigger picture | via
The Rover’ review by Studio Ciné Live
A road movie with ironic darkness.
David Michôd likes contrasts. Discovered with ‘Animal Kingdom’, a psychological thriller, almost behind closed doors, visually dark, we find him three years later with a postapocalyptique western located in the australian outtaback, overwhelmed by the sun. But this light is misleading. ‘The Rover’ works in the same tetanizing way as his first feature film. (… Synopsis …) Accompanied by an anxiogenic and intriguing sountrack, this road movie is terribly ironic especially for his darkness. Subtly blowing hot and cold, Michôd manages to create empathetic conditions toward the selfish and monstrous central character in the literal sense. Until a disconcerting final scene, but finalizing the work of a this master of cynicism, so assured that it becomes fascinating. In the main roles, the rough hardness of Guy Pearce goes perfectly with lost innocence brought out by Robert Pattinson. Any resemblance to any existing characters and economic situtations … or about to be are obviously anything but accidental.
Via
Here’s an update of Robert Pattinson’s future movie projects
Director Brady Corbet talks about ‘The Childhood of a Leader’ source
Binoche also stars in Corbet’s The Childhood Of A Leader in late fall with Robert Pattinson and Tim Roth. For Sils Maria, his interaction with the actress created “this kind of meta thing that Olivier appreciates,” he says of his friend.
The WME-repeed Corbet tells me Childhood Of A Leader is about a little boy who relocates to France with his family in 1919. His father is a political advisor to Woodrow Wilson about seven months in the run up to the Treaty of Versailles. He calls it, “My version of a horror film. Instead of being possessed by a demon, the little boy is possessed by notions of the era.”
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From Tribute:
World Film Locations: Toronto by editor/author Tom Ue is the latest in a series of books that focuses on a city that has been the location of a number of well-known films. Tom, who was born in Toronto, now lives in London, England, where he works at Oxford. He did an extensive amount of research for the book and in his opening piece, Toronto: City of the Imagination, he talks about the earliest recorded film footage of Toronto, shot in 1904. The book goes from early Toronto-filmed features right through to the recent Pacific Rim (2013). Favorite shooting locations such as Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto Harbor, Eaton Centre, CN Tower, The Distillery District, Don Jail and more are featured, including photos from each location as well as stills from the movies. Tom, who has previously worked as an accredited journalist at the Toronto International Film Festival, graciously answered our questions about this exciting new book.
How did you choose Robert Pattinson/Cosmopolis for the cover?
Early in the production process, we knew we wanted to showcase David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis both because it is a great Cronenberg film and because it emblemizes some of the key themes about identity and representation that the book explores. Robert Pattinson’s links to Canadian cinema and Toronto as a city are further realized through his starring in Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars (2014) and Anton Corbijn’s Life (2015). He is a fantastic actor with phenomenal range.
Thanks to Tom Ue for sending us the link!
Thinking of Rob 