ReportWire

Tag: Darren Aronofsky

  • Darren Aronofsky’s New AI Series About the Revolutionary War Looks Like Dogshit

    [ad_1]

    Darren Aronofsky used to be a director who made interesting, if sometimes polarizing, films like Black Swan, Mother!, Noah, and The Wrestler. But it seems like a safe bet that people won’t need to debate whether Aronofsky’s new project is any good. Because anyone with eyes can see that it looks like low-effort AI slop. To put it another way, it looks like absolute dogshit.

    Aronofsky is producing a new short-form series with his AI production company Primordial Soup titled “On This Day… 1776,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. The series uses tech from Google DeepMind to create short videos about the Revolutionary War, published on the YouTube channel for Time magazine. In 2018, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff bought Time, and the cloud software giant is sponsoring this monstrosity of a series.

    The series uses human voice actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which is clearly an attempt to tamp down on the inevitable backlash from both inside and outside Hollywood. Folks inside the movie and TV industry have fiercely pushed back against the use of AI to replace the skilled artists and actors who create the media we watch. That concern obviously comes from a place of self-interest because nobody wants to be pushed out of a job. But they also care about the quality of the work being produced. And there’s also been a revolt among the average consumer, people who’ve been inundated with the lowest-grade AI garbage imaginable. It’s really everywhere now.

    The first episode, titled “The Flag,” is three-and-a-half minutes long and attempts to tell the story of George Washington raising the Continental Union Flag in Somerville, Massachusetts. It offers nothing compelling in the way of narrative. It’s the kind of thing that you’d skip over as a cut-scene in a particularly bad video game.

    Everything has a dead and creepy quality, as the actors’ audio is poorly synced with the lips of the AI concoctions.

    Have you ever seen a Spaghetti Western from the 1960s where the audio just doesn’t seem to match, even though it was clearly shot with actors speaking English, and the “dub” is in English? That happened because the audio was added in post-production, a result of direct sound recording being expensive in Italy during the post-war era. You get the same effect here, though there’s no good reason. Well, no good reason outside of presumably saving a ton of money on hiring human actors.

    The second episode, titled “Common Sense,” tries to tell the story of Thomas Paine writing Common Sense. Benjamin Franklin makes an appearance, though it proves that the most recognizable of the founding fathers in this series are the weirdest to look at.

    The episode jumps around incoherently, much like the first episode, without grounding the viewer in anything we should care about. It’s truly an ugly mess. And if you bother to pause the scenes, you can spot the kind of telltale anomalies that plague other AI-generated video projects, like strangely deformed hands in the background characters. Hands are always giving this stuff away.

    Then there are the words that appear on screen in the trailer, like the pamphlet that’s supposed to include the word “America” but instead reads something closer to “Λamereedd.”

    The series is specifically made for this sestercentennial year of America’s founding, and each episode will reportedly drop on the 250th anniversary of the day it happened, according to the Hollywood Reporter. And that’s certainly a fun concept if the final product were something worth watching. But it’s not. It’s garbage. The people who are making and distributing it obviously don’t think so.

    “This project is a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like — not replacing craft, but expanding what’s possible and allowing storytellers to go places they simply couldn’t before,” Ben Bitonti, president of Time Studios, told the Hollywood Reporter.

    The reaction on social media hasn’t been so kind. “I know my expectations were low but holy fuck Darren Aronofsky producing AI slop wasn’t on my bingo card,” one X user wrote. Over on Bluesky another joked, “Used to be that when Darren Aronofsky wanted to feature a dead-eyed actor, he’d just employ Jared Leto.”

    And other users have been picking apart all the anomalies, with one Bluesky critic writing: “Love the new Aronofsky scene where the colonist takes off his hat to cheer, revealing that underneath it was a second and somehow larger hat.”

    “Nothing represents The End of America after a 250-year run quite like using AI slop to depict the creation of the Declaration of Independence,” another user quipped.

    The videos have been up at Time’s YouTube channel for over 7 hours as of the time of this writing, but they’re not gaining much attention in their original format. The first episode has just 5,000 views. The second episode has a little over 2,000. Social media posts ridiculing the production seem to be faring better, simply because people are making fun of them. One video on Bluesky has over 2,500 quote posts, with almost all seemingly making jokes about how awful it looks.

    Gizmodo reached out to Ken Burns for comment, but didn’t immediately receive a reply.

    [ad_2]

    Matt Novak

    Source link

  • Robert Redford’s Biggest Hollywood Innovation Was to Make Helping Others Seem Cool

    [ad_1]

    In 2012, Robert Redford was meeting with a reporter about a movie he did with Shia LaBeouf when the question of how to do good in Hollywood came up. The actor-director had two answers. The first, he said, was not to take celebrity too seriously. The second was not to live there.

    “By coming and going, by doing the work and leaving, by dropping bombs in enemy territory and getting out,” he said.

    Such an attitude might seem strange for someone who was the quintessential celebrity, an actor with leading-man good looks who was at times such a box office draw that the only release that could unseat a Redford movie was another Redford movie (e.g., The Sting and The Way We Were, c. 1973)

    But Redford’s power to entertain was lapped by — and more importantly often served as a means to the end of — a larger sense of giving. Many tributes since his death Tuesday have been written about his film legacy, and from Sundance to his dozens of polished hits that legacy is boundless. But his greatest gift may have been his most subtle: he made helping people seem cool.

    By now we’re used to seeing George Clooney stand up for human rights, Angelina Jolie advocate for the Global South and Leonardo DiCaprio agitate for the environment, larger-than-life movie stars putting their celebrity to altruistic end. We seldom stop to think how, long before all of them, Redford was casually embracing causes, leveraging his power to help creatures and ecosystems via the NRDC and the Redford Center; protecting Native American rights; and, with his son James, helping to raise awareness for organ transplants.

    His celebrity wasn’t a distinct enterprise from these causes — his celebrity is what made us want to pursue them. After all, if the Sundance Kid was engaged in such efforts, shouldn’t we want to be too? The artist-as-activist is now so common as to be a type. But it became that way in part because Redford demonstrated the relationship — showed that the two realms could not only be blended but each serve the other.

    Sure, before him you had high-profile moments, of Dalton Trumbo not testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, or Marlon Brando having Sacheen Littlefeather decline the Oscar. But very few Hollywood creatives before Redford ever made doing good such a part of his brand, made advocacy and acting so entwined we could forget where one ended and the other began. He didn’t performatively support causes. He just performed, and it caused so many to feel supported.

    What’s more, he did so not only on a large media-platform-y scale but in small, one-on-one, unheralded ways, expending his effort for the trampled and unknown to be given their shot. Read the homages to Redford and you’ll see one word appear again and again: mentoring.

    Like when he mentored a young Brad Pitt on A River Runs Through It, or when he did the same for people who worked with him on his charities.

    “He was deeply involved with our campaigns to stop the development of Pebble Mine in Alaska, to save huge parts of the American West from fossil fuel development, to address really pressing water issues,” the NRDC’s Daniel Hinerfeld said in an ABC 7 story about Redford’s role as a trustee of the organization. “He really mentored us as media makers, as filmmakers, and he marshaled resources for us to tell our stories,” added Hinerfeld.

    At a moment in American political culture when selfishness abides — when giving is seen as weakness and costly — Redford’s lesson feels timelier than ever. He evenly showed how helping those in need didn’t mean you lost, who effortlessly negated the idea of life as a zero-sum game. The most glamorous act, Redford conveyed over and over, was the one you did for others.

    Even his film work could have this uplifting effect. Doggedly pursuing the truth suddenly became more appealing when Redford’s Bob Woodward was doing it; to watch directorial efforts like Ordinary People, The Milagro Beanfield War and 2011’s slept-on The Conspirator (and even that wobblier 2012 Shia movie The Company You Keep) was to bring on a healthy self-questioning about whether we were listening to our better angels.

    Heck, even when his character was notably indifferent we found ourselves wanting to do more. What was Out of Africa or The Candidate or The Way We Were but a means for Redford to draw us magnetically to the screen so we could realize we could do a lot better than he did (and, often, should be a lot more like the female lead)?

    When actors have been around a long while we can go snowblind to their effects, we can cease to imagine a world that they never entered. But pull Redford out of the last half-century of filmmaking and you have a gaping void of characters and causes that all call on us to do more to help everyone and everything around us. Every actor who wants to use their celebrity to further a charity owes a debt of gratitude to Redford; every activist who ever called a boldfaced name to platform their cause can thank the man who provided the road map.

    Asked how he remembered Redford, Darren Aronofsky — who premiered his debut Pi at Sundance more than a quarter-century ago — emailed this response:

    “I remember so clearly the first time I met him at Sundance ’98, when he spoke to you he completely locked in and focused deep into your soul. He taught me so much in those moments about being present that I still think about often. A few years later he was my advisor at the Institute when I workshopped Requiem for a Dream. I was wondering what his rural, cowboy perspective might be for my inner city drug nightmare. And he surprised me. His main note was to find a way that Harry and Marion could connect in the third act. And it was this inspiration that led to the phone call between the doomed lovers that is one of the most quoted scenes we shot. It would be impossible to quantify the amount of generosity he gave to the filmmaking world.”

    Aronofsky had one last thought. “I’d argue there is no greater mentor in the world of filmmaking.”

    [ad_2]

    Steven Zeitchik

    Source link

  • Caught Stealing: Darren Aronofsky Might Call It a “Love Letter” to New York, But It’s More Like a Requiem (Not for a Dream)

    [ad_1]

    It’s been three years since Darren Aronofsky proceeded to break audiences’ hearts with The Whale (written by Samuel D. Hunter, and based on his 2012 play). In that time, of course, the world has only become a darker place. And so, with that in mind, perhaps there was a reason Aronofsky felt compelled to go “back in time” (that is, to “a simpler time”) via Charlie Huston’s screenplay adaptation of his own novel, Caught Stealing (released in 2004, ergo having a fresher perspective on the 90s after the decade had just ended). For yes, it appears that Aronofsky is actually at his best when directing someone else’s material (in other words, there aren’t many “fans,” per se, of Requiem for a Dream or mother!). Accordingly, Caught Stealing signals a marked tonal shift for Aronofsky.

    For, although the material is still quite, shall we say, heavy at times, Caught Stealing has “probably more jokes in the first ten minutes of this than in my entire body of work,” as Aronofsky told The Guardian. Plus, as a native New Yorker, Aronofsky has a certain kind of nostalgic slant to bring to the distinct period he’s depicting: late 90s on the Lower East Side. And, to immediately indicate this is “B911” (Before 9/11) epoch, a shot of the Twin Towers, in all of its romanticized glory, is proudly displayed at the beginning of the film. This being a seminal downtown view belying the seedy goings-on at a joint like Paul’s Bar (which is actually the Double Down Saloon on Avenue A, near the corner of Houston). The joint where Henry “Hank” Thompson (Austin Butler) makes his way in life as a bartender subjected to such jukebox picks of the day as Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun.” The type of bop (or is it the type of MMMBop, in this case?) that can now put the bar at risk thanks to Rudy Giuliani’s “quality of life” campaign that extended to outlawing dancing in bars without a cabaret license (and, of course, most bars weren’t trying to shell out for something like that). Yes, that’s right, Giuliani “Footloose’d” NYC bars starting in 1997—this being just one of many harbingers of doom that his mayorship heralded. Yet another portent of the unstoppable gentrification that Giuliani further aided in opening the floodgates for.

    To be sure, the late 90s was arguably the last time anyone can remember truly seeing some glimmer of what they call the “old” New York. This being why the fall (to put it mildly) of the Twin Towers in 2001 further demarcates a “before” and “after” period for the city and what it once used to “mean.” Thus, Aronofsky and Huston’s organic wielding of these types of details, like Hank telling customers to stop dancing (lest the bar get shut down and/or fined), lends further insight into this period. And it’s part of what makes Caught Stealing feel authentic to the time. 

    Indeed, this form of Giuliani shade-throwing was used even in the era when his “sweeping changes” (read: implementation of a police state) went into effect. One need look no further than the first season of Sex and the City for proof of that (with Miranda [Cynthia Nixon] being the most prone to insulting Giuliani). In fact, it could be said that the season one “look” (a.k.a. how it actually looked in New York at the time) of SATC served as a kind of “mood board” for cinematographer Matthew Libatique, another New Yorker on the crew who has been with Aronofsky since his 1998 debut, Pi. A film that, per The Guardian, “he says could almost be his parallel-universe first movie, given that it’s set in 1998, around the time he was shooting his actual first film on the same East Side streets” (back when Kim’s Video didn’t have to be added into the set design, because it was still there).

    Caught Stealing, instead, has a much greater sense of “levity,” even amidst all its darkness. That “dark aesthetic” of the city, however, is still there. And further aided by the fact that bartenders (and other assorted “shady” characters) live by night. But, more than anything, it seems that with this dark cinematography, Aronofsky aims to more than just subtly convey how much grittier the city used to be. And, as Caught Stealing makes quite clear, that grittiness was most palatable within the crime and corruption sector. With every “organization” from the Hasids (or Hasidim, if you prefer)—played by none other than Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio—to the Russian mob to the cops to Bad Bunny (playing the Russians’ “Puerto Rican associate,” Colorado) thrown into this blender of “antagonistic forces” who all suddenly have it out for Hank after his British, cantankerous punk rocker of a next-door neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), leaves for London in a hurry. And sticks Hank with his equally surly cat in the process. (On a side note, viewers detecting some major overtones of Quentin Tarantino-meets-Guy Ritchie [the latter being an obvious acolyte of the former] stylings wouldn’t be incorrect in making that comparison.)  

    Needless to say, the greater sense of levity in this particular Aronofsky film is supported almost entirely by the presence of this cat named Bud (played by a Siberian forest cat named Tonic). From the start, Hank makes it known he “prefers dogs for a reason.” Luckily for him, Siberian forest cats are described as having a “dog-like” temperament. But it takes his girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), encouraging Bud’s stay for Hank to fully get on board with the unwanted task. As for Yvonne, a paramedic (hence, her and Hank’s work schedules being perfectly aligned), it’s obvious from the outset that, even apart from her profession, she has a thing for rescuing people.

    And no one is in more need of being saved from himself than Hank, who, much like Henry “Hank” Chinaski (a.k.a. Charles Bukowski), has an alcohol problem. Albeit one that stems from trying to outrun the demons of his past, which, at the time, seemed to foretell an impossibly bright future. Back then, when he was still in high school, Hank thought he would be a shoo-in to play for his favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants (because, as it should go without saying, the title Caught Stealing has a baseball meaning too). This very possibility marveled at as he drunkenly drove through some backwater roads of Stanislaus County while his friend and fellow ball player, Dale (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), rode shotgun, talking up this future before Hank swerved the car at the sight of a cow and wrapped the car around a pole, launching Dale through the windshield and killing him instantaneously. 

    Hank’s own fallout from the accident, apart from a guilty conscience, was injuring his knee so badly it was never going to be good enough for the major leagues. And so, what would a California boy running away from his problems and looking to forget about his past do but move to New York?—the antithesis of his home state on the other side of the country. The irony being, of course, that his beloved Giants moved from NYC to San Francisco (not unlike the Dodgers moving from Brooklyn to LA). In any case, Hank runs as far as he can from the scene of the accidental crime (/car crash) without leaving the country entirely—that will come later. In the meantime, he thinks he’s going about his business, living his life as “minimally” (read: with a disaffected “90s slacker chic” aura) as possible, only to have every heavyweight of every crime organization on his ass in the wake of Russ’ departure. 

    With no one else to harass/beat to a pulp for answers, Hank is left holding the bag. Or rather, the key. A key he finds in a decoy piece of shit in Bud’s litterbox (this after dealing with another human’s shit in his own toilet since, again, the Sex and the City [de facto, And Just Like That…] connections to Caught Stealing abound). Considering his discovery occurs after two scary Russians (always the Russians, n’est-ce pas?) land him in the hospital for two days, Hank is unsure what to do with the newfound item. Worse still, while at the hospital, doctors removed his kidney because the Russians fucked him up so bad that it ruptured. Which means that, now, alcohol—the one thing that was getting him through it all, holding everything together and making New York seem like the nonstop party it really isn’t—must be off the menu. Otherwise, it’s at his own health risk to imbibe. And certainly a risk to do so with same intensity he did before. 

    Alas, all that resolve, all those promises to Yvonne (and the cat, for that matter) that he has it in him to quit cold turkey, go out the window when he walks into Paul’s Bar to show his boss, the eponymous Paul (played by a man considered a “New York institution,” Griffin Dunne) the key. Walking into the bar as Madonna’s “Ray of Light” resounds through the space (because it was the song of ’98), it’s apparent that Hank is doomed to go down a rabbit hole. The kind that happens after he experiences the adage, “One drink is too many and a thousand never enough.” From the looks of it, as the night goes on, Hank does seem to have very well close to a thousand, getting up on the pool table to sing along with another prime tune of the day: Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch.” This moment amounting to his version of Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) in 10 Things I Hate About You drunkenly dancing on the table at Bogey Lowenstein’s (Kyle Cease) party to Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize.” 

    Saddled with “picking him up” is Yvonne, who quickly loses her patience or sympathy for him when he starts drunkenly ranting about how everything in his life is garbage (by the way, yet another band that gets played on the soundtrack), and that he used to have it all. Everything ahead of him. So much promise, so much potential. The dramatic irony here is that the same can be said of New York, seeing it through the lens of the present as compared with the past. This late 90s past, so evocatively shown in Caught Stealing. 

    Of course, there are literally millions who will swear up and down that the New York of the present remains just as viable, as “vibrant.” More so than ever, they’ll insist. Take, for instance, when Taffy Brodesser-Akner told Vulture, in an article discussing the issues of filming Fleischman Is in Trouble in a manner that would make it look like 2016, “The New York you live in now is the best version of New York. You have to keep out the noise from people like me lest you come to think you missed the whole thing by arriving so late—either by being born or moving here more recently than the person you’re talking to.” But no, she’s wrong…and so are all the others who try to maintain their “positive outlook” (a.k.a. daily application of denial) about “the greatest city in the world.” The New York you live in now is patently not the best version at all. 

    And, perhaps as a testament to how effective a job it does as a “period piece,” Caught Stealing is sure to remind viewers who still cling to, er, live in New York (and even those who never have) that such a statement simply isn’t true. Sometimes, the reality is that it really was better before. This is one of those instances. Even so, it doesn’t stop Regina King (as a cop named Roman), meant to be existing in one of the city’s primes, the 90s, from delivering a beautifully bitter monologue that details how she won’t miss anything about New York other than the black and white cookies once she makes her escape. Because “escape from New York” isn’t just a movie, but a wise person’s motto. Besides (barring that traitor, Joan Didion), Californians like Hank never really commit to New York, eventually turning it into just another base stop on the way home.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • 14 Powerful Genre-Bending Films That Explore Love in Unconventional Ways

    14 Powerful Genre-Bending Films That Explore Love in Unconventional Ways

    [ad_1]

    Explore the world of love through a variety of lenses. Here’s a collection of powerful films that each portray love and romance in a unique way, spanning multiple genres including drama, comedy, fantasy, animation, and sci-fi.

    “Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves.”

    Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu


    Movies give us the opportunity to explore major themes in life in a meaningful and profound way.

    A powerful film can lead to a better understanding of your own experiences. It can communicate thoughts and emotions that may have been challenging to express; and, at times, completely reshape our perspective on life.

    For better or worse, movies play a pivotal role in shaping our beliefs and map of reality. We pick up ideas through films, sometimes absorbed at a very young age, and those ideas find their way into our daily lives influencing our choices and perspectives.

    Filmmakers understand the transformative power of cinema, purposely using it to shake up people’s consciousness. The goal of a solid film is to create an experience that leaves you a different person by the end of it.

    As viewers, it’s essential to be aware of a film’s effects both emotionally and intellectually. Often, the movies that linger in our thoughts long after watching are the most impactful and life-changing.

    Here’s a collection of classic films about love and romance. Each movie has had a lasting influence on audiences in one way or another. It’s an eclectic list that spans multiple genres, including drama, comedy, animation, fantasy, mystery, and sci-fi.

    Titanic (1997)

    James Cameron’s epic tale blends love and tragedy against the historical backdrop of the Titanic’s sinking in 1912. The film weaves a captivating narrative of a forbidden romance blossoming amidst a natural disaster.

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

    In this mind-bending story, a man attempts to erase the memories of a lost love using cutting-edge technology, only to find fate conspiring to bring the couple back together repeatedly. The film explores the complexities of memory, love, and destiny.

    Beauty and the Beast (1991)

    Disney’s classic adaptation of the French fairy tale is celebrated for its beautiful animation and memorable songs. The film goes beyond appearances, illustrating the transformative power of true love.

    Her (2013)

    Set in a near-future world, “Her” tells the unconventional love story of a lonely man who forms a deep connection with his computer’s operating system. The film delves into themes of technology, loneliness, and the nature of human connection.

    Before Sunrise (1995)

    Richard Linklater’s film follows two young tourists who meet on a train in Europe and share an unforgettable night in Vienna. The movie explores the transient nature of connections and the profound impact of brief encounters.

    Lost in Translation (2003)

    Sofia Coppola’s film features a washed-up American celebrity and a young woman forging an unexpected bond in Tokyo. “Lost in Translation” navigates themes of loneliness, connection, and self-discovery.

    Cinema Paradiso (1988)

    An Italian filmmaker reflects on his past and learns how to channel his love in a different and creative way through his art and craftsmanship.

    Past Lives (2023)

    Two childhood friends reconnect after years apart, seeking to unravel the meaning behind their enduring connection. The film explores the complexities of friendship, time, and shared history.

    Check out: In-Yeon: Exploring “Past Lives” and Eternal Connections

    The Lobster (2015)

    Set in a dystopian future, “The Lobster” challenges societal norms by presenting a world where individuals must choose a romantic partner within 45 days or face transformation into an animal. The film satirizes the pressure to conform in matters of love.

    Annie Hall (1977)

    Woody Allen’s classic romantic comedy is a hilarious and heartfelt movie that explores neurotic love and the psychological obstacles we commonly face in marriage and long-term relationships.

    Your Name. (2016)

    A masterful anime that combines elements of science fiction, fantasy, and romance. It centers on a mysterious connection between a boy and girl who swap bodies, learn about each other’s lives, and search to find each other in real life.

    A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

    John Cassavetes’ uncomfortably raw and dramatic portrayal of the profound impact of mental illness on marriage and family, navigating the complexities with unflinching honesty.

    The Fountain (2006)

    Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” explores love and mortality through three interconnected storylines spanning different time periods. The film delves into themes of eternal love and the quest for immortality, providing a visually stunning and emotionally resonant experience.

    Scenes From a Marriage (1974)

    Legendary director Ingmar Bergman’s deeply incisive and detailed chronicle of a rocky marriage’s final days.

    Choose one movie and analyze it

    Each of these films offers a different perspective on love while also pushing the boundaries of cinema and story-telling.

    It’s fun to compare each story: How did the couples meet? What defined “love” for them? What obstacles did they face? Did the relationship work out in the end or not? Why?

    Exercise: Choose one movie from the list that you haven’t seen before and do the Movie Analysis Worksheet (PDF).

    While films are often seen as just a source of entertainment or healthy escapism, they can also be an avenue for self-improvement and growth.

    The “Movie Analysis Worksheet” is designed to make you think about the deeper themes behind a film and extract some lessons from it that you can apply to your life.

    Watch with a friend and discuss

    If you don’t want to do the worksheet, just watch one of the movies with a friend (or loved one) – then discuss it after.

    Watching a film together is an opportunity to share a new experience. It can also spark up interesting conversations. This is one reason why bonding through movies is one of the most common ways we connect with people in today’s world.

    Which film will you check out?


    Enter your email to stay updated on new content on self improvement:

    [ad_2]

    Steven Handel

    Source link

  • NatGeo’s ‘The Territory’, About Indigenous Brazilian Group’s Daring Fight To Protect Their Land, Wins Emmy For Exceptional Merit

    NatGeo’s ‘The Territory’, About Indigenous Brazilian Group’s Daring Fight To Protect Their Land, Wins Emmy For Exceptional Merit

    [ad_1]

    The makers of National Geographic’s The Territory are celebrating their win at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, one of the most prestigious awards in nonfiction.

    The prize, voted on by a special jury, was shared by director-producer Alex Pritz, producers Darren Aronofsky, Sigrid Dyekjær, Will N. Miller, Gabriel Uchida, and Lizzie Gillett, and executive producer Txai Suruí. Their film centers on the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people, who face constant assault as they try to protect their territory within Brazil’s Amazon rainforest from invasion by outsiders. As Deadline previously wrote about the film, those invaders are “engaged in burning down great swaths of the rainforest for mining, logging, clearing land for cattle and homesteading.”

    The film also underscores what’s at stake with each acre of Brazilian rainforest that goes up in smoke — it is the ecological health of the Earth that hangs in the balance.

    Director-producer Alex Pritz and E.P. Txai Suruí

    Courtesy of Alex Pritz

    “To receive the recognition of our peers, alongside such an incredible group of nominees, is an unbelievable honor,” Pritz told Deadline after his Emmy win. “We share this award with communities around the world who are standing up in defense of our planet’s continued habitability and fighting for a better future.”

    Among those who attended the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony Sunday night were Neidinha Bandeira, a defender of the Uru-eu-wau-wau who is one of the main characters in the documentary. She previously told Deadline, “The Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous territory is important for the whole planet, because of its nature and biodiversity and because it’s fighting climate change.”

    Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau, an emerging leader of his Indigenous group, also attended the Emmy ceremony. He participated in the film and has taken an active role teaching his people how to shoot and edit video so that they can be better represented in media narratives about their land.

    Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau in 'The Territory'

    Bitaté Uru-eu-wau-wau in ‘The Territory’

    National Geographic

    In an interview with Deadline last year, Bitaté said of The Territory, “It brings to the forefront the fight of my people. It displays for the world the situation we live in. We know that the challenge that we face — that we have always faced in our territory — is being represented now to the world beyond Brazil. People are talking about it. I feel very good about that.” He added, “We are also calling on the government of Brazil to protect all of our regions and our communities. We need help not only here in my community, but throughout all of our Indigenous territories.”

    The Territory features exceptional photography, both aerials allowing viewers to see how much of the rainforest is being chewed up, and the life that exists under the remaining canopy, down to the almost imperceptible movements of insects.

    A fire lit by local farmers burns in the Amazon rainforest.

    A fire lit by local farmers burns in the Amazon rainforest.

    Alex Pritz/National Geographic/Everett Collection

    “I really wanted visually to be able to move between the big and the small, because this story is about the climate and about the planet and these really huge forces, the rise of populist authoritarianism and these huge themes — manifest destiny,” Pritz told Deadline previously. “But it’s also about the individual characters… and we wanted to make a film that was able to move between the macro level forces and the micro level people and regional conflicts that encapsulates it. Trying to build a visual language where we can move between satellite imagery of the continent where you see, over 30 years, how many trees have been lost and what this really looks like and then go all the way down to like one caterpillar and really just focus on that.”

    Fellow nominees in the Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking category included Last Flight Home, directed and produced by Ondi Timoner and produced by David Turner; The Accused: Damned Or Devoted?, directed and produced by Mohammed Ali Naqvi, and Aftershock, directed and produced by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee.

    According to the TV Academy, the purpose of the Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking Award “is to both honor and encourage profound social impact, significant innovation of form, and remarkable mastery of filmmaking technique.” As the TV Academy’s rules note, “All applicants for candidacy in this juried award [are] required to submit a written statement that expresses the program’s qualifications as a Documentary Film with Exceptional Merit.”

    [ad_2]

    Matthew Carey

    Source link

  • Comedian Elon Musk Is Getting an A24 Biopic

    Comedian Elon Musk Is Getting an A24 Biopic

    [ad_1]

    The richest man in the world is getting the silver screen treatment. Variety has confirmed that a biopic about multibillionaire businessman Elon Musk is in the works at A24, with Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky attached to direct. 

    The biopic’s screenplay will be based on Elon Musk, the biography by former Time editor Walter Isaacson. Isaacson is no stranger to biographies of powerful men, having written detailed accounts on the life and times of Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs. That last book was adapted into the 2015 Universal film Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender, who earned an Oscar nomination for playing the late Apple cofounder. Per Variety, there was an intense bidding war to option Isaacson’s novel, with indie film studio A24, which produced last year’s best-picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once, coming out on top.

    Aronofsky most recently directed 2022’s The Whale for A24, which earned star Brendan Fraser an Oscar for best actor earlier this year. Prior to The Whale, Aronofsky helmed psychological and surreal character studies including Mother! (2017), starring Jennifer Lawrence, Requiem for a Dream (2000) starring Ellen Burstyn, and Black Swan (2010) starring Natalie Portman, who won the Oscar for best actress. 

    Born in South Africa, Musk became a major player on the world stage when he cofounded a financial company that would eventually merge with Paypal. In 2002, he founded SpaceX, a spacecraft-manufacturing company. Musk went on to become an early investor in Tesla, the electric-car company, eventually becoming its chairman, product architect, and CEO. In 2018, he stepped down as chairman of Tesla after he was sued by the SEC for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. In September of 2021, Musk surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the richest person in the world, with a net worth of over $200 billion. 

    In 2022, he bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion, rebranded it as X, and, arguably, ruined the platform. Since coming under Musk’s control, X has lost approximately 55% of its US ad revenue year-over-year each month, according to Reuters. As of last month was valued at $19 billion—less than half of what he paid for it. Still, Musk’s current net worth is estimated to be worth around $200 billion.

    Financials aside, Musk’s personal life provides more than enough material for a movie. In April of 2022, Vanity Fair revealed that the 52-year-old had a second child, named Exa Dark Sideræl, with his then partner, musician Grimes, that was heretofore unknown to the public. (They’ve since had a third child together.) Musk is the father of 11 children by three different women, most recently twins Strider and Azure with 37-year-old Shivon Zilis, an AI specialist and executive at Neuralink, a company that Musk founded. He’s also quite active on X and particularly fond of posting jokes and memes, many of which are believed to be taken from other accounts. Time will tell if any of Musk’s attempts at comedy will make it into his biopic.

    [ad_2]

    Chris Murphy

    Source link

  • A Uniquely American (The) “Whale” of a Tale

    A Uniquely American (The) “Whale” of a Tale

    [ad_1]

    The Whale wastes no time in cutting to the quick of human desperation and sadness. As most stage plays tend to do. And yes, the film is based on Samuel D. Hunter’s 2012 play of the same name. Hunter, who adapted the script for Darren Aronofsky’s directing pleasure, accordingly leaves the one-location setting intact. A static milieu that is rendered totally believable by Charlie’s (Brendan Fraser) reclusive nature. Not necessarily because it’s a “conscious choice,” so much as a practical one. After all, he’s too morbidly obese to get very far without extreme difficulty and over-exertion. So it is that, with the help of his best friend/enabler, Liz (Hong Chau), Charlie manages to work and live with relative “ease,” at least considering his situation. One that finds him in the John Popper-from-Blues Traveler position of being too obese to masturbate without the risk of a heart attack. Which is where we find him within the first few seconds of the movie, and how the appearance of a missionary named Thomas (Ty Simpkins) at his doorstep is actually welcomed as Charlie tussles with the throes of death.

    To calm and recenter him, Charlie insists that Thomas read from an essay he hands to him about Moby-Dick, one that we later find out was written by his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), and that he has become rather obsessed with for its “honesty.” Having written it in eighth grade (the audience is expected to suspend disbelief on such a book being assigned at that age), the sentence structure is simple and written in the first person, with Charlie most focused on the lines, “…and I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters that were only descriptions of whales, because I knew that the author was just trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while.” That author being Ishmael who “shar[es] a bed with a man named Queequeg,” as Ellie homoerotically phrases it. Indeed, there are a number of scholars who interpret the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg as homoerotic, with one critic, Caleb Crain, noting that the cannibalism portrayed by Herman Melville is meant to be a metaphor for homosexuality. Charlie’s guilt-racked gay relationship and subsequent practice of “eating himself to death” fits in quite nicely with that analysis of Melville’s opus—the subject of which also ties in to the film not just title-wise, but “pursuit”-wise as well. With Captain Ahab easily representing the religious zealots embodied by Thomas and the “New Life Church” he works for seeing “The Whale” as pure evil (in this case, Charlie—because of his homosexuality). Just for existing, for being itself. As Charlie is, obese or not.

    “Working around” the physical limitations of his body, Charlie’s job as an English Composition professor teaching courses for an online university also allows him to conceal the monstrosity he has become. To address the word “monstrosity,” the backlash against The Whale for its portrayal of corpulent people was rebuffed by Aronofsky, who worked with the Obesity Action Coalition not just to help Fraser with the physicality of the role, but to better get into the headspace of the self-destruction and addiction behind overeating. Per Aronofsky, the Coalition “really [feels] this is going to open up people’s eyes. You gotta remember, people in this community, they get judged by doctors when they go to get medical help. They get judged everywhere they go on the planet, by most people. This film shows that, like everyone, we are all human and that we are all good and bad and flawed and hopeful and joyful and sorrowful, and there’s all different colors inside of us.”

    Aronofsky also added of the decision to cast a “thin person in a fat suit” (see also: Weird Al’s “Fat” video), “…actors have been using makeup since the beginning of acting—that’s one of their tools. And the lengths we went to portray the realism of the makeup has never been done before.” Those lengths furnished by makeup artist Adrien Morot, who was rightly nominated for an Oscar for her part in bringing the character of Charlie to (large) life. His “girth,” of course, serves as the pronounced metaphor regarding how self-flagellation comes in all forms—“shapes and sizes,” if one prefers a more overt pun. And Charlie’s has been to eat himself into oblivion as punishment. Not just because he feels partly responsible for the suicide of his long-time partner, Alan, but because he left his wife, Mary (Samantha Morton), and then eight-year-old daughter to be with him. At the time of their meeting—when Alan was a student of his at night school—Charlie was still “robust” in build, but obviously not morbidly obese. And whatever Alan saw in Charlie was less about looks and more about his personality. His essential “goodness.” For it’s true what they say about the person who loves you being able to see past certain physical “flaws” that others might deem “grotesque.” But Charlie is bound to live forever with the guilt of abandoning his daughter. Something he’s determined to make right as best as he can.

    This is spurred by the imminence of his demise, as the film commences on Monday to show us the short lifespan of a week Charlie has left after being told by Liz (who is, conveniently, also a nurse) that he has congestive heart failure. Rather than seeking medical treatment—which plays into not only a lack of health insurance, but the aforementioned fear of judgment by a medical professional—he decides to “get his ducks in a row,” as it were. And at the top of that list is getting to know Ellie and trying to help her. When she refuses to stay after being summoned over, he offers to pay her all the money he has—roughly $120,000 in his bank account (all of which he has saved up specifically to give to her). By this point, the “uniquely American” nature of the tale has been accented not only by the out-of-control overweightness that a person can allow to flourish in their dissatisfaction paired with endless access to processed foods, but by the fact that only in America would someone rather die than go to a hospital and incur the inevitable hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt as a consequence. This always occurring when one doesn’t pay the monthly baseline cost of health insurance (itself an extreme expense for those who can’t get it at least partially covered by their workplace). What’s more, only in America would someone be so concerned with expressing their love through money. And know full well that love can be “bought.” Or at least the feigning of love. Which Ellie does little to convey through her surly, enraged aura.

    An anger that has led her to alienate others from being her friend at school, as well as any teachers who might want to keep her from failing out of it. To that end, part of the deal to get Ellie to keep coming around while he still has time is that he’ll rewrite some of her essays for her. In exchange (as he’s convinced of her brilliance), Charlie asks Ellie to write whatever she wants in the notebook he provides for her while she comes over to his apartment. After the first “session,” he finds that all she has written is: “His apartment stinks/This notebook is retarded/I hate everyone.” But yes, it’s a haiku. So she isn’t the incompetent git that her teachers say she is.

    Taking into account the religious and faith-based overtones of the movie, the biblical narrative of Jonah and The Whale provides an additional symbolic context. For Jonah was saved from drowning by a “whale” (or big fish), which one can argue Charlie has done for Ellie by reminding her of her greatness. That she’s “perfect”—just as she is, as Mark Darcy would say. And as it’s the last meaningful thing he can do as a human being on this Earth, he’s made it his mission to not be foiled by her armor. Her dogged determination to be as mean and vicious as possible. For he knows, in the end, that people are “incapable of not caring” (save for, you know, people like Putin). That belief certainly holds true for Ellie.

    As for Liz, who learned long ago by trying to “save” her brother, Alan (hence her deep connection with Charlie), she does not believe a person can ultimately be “saved” by anyone but themselves (going inherently against everything Christians stand for). This being what keeps her from intervening in what Charlie truly wants: the long punishment on his body he’s given himself, followed by death. What Thomas believes Alan was striving for in order to make himself “clean” again for God, citing a scripture Alan had highlighted in his own bible about separating the spirit from the flesh—flesh, in all its meanings, being at the very center of The Whale. But so is strength. The ability for the mind to overpower the body in ways both harmful and beneficial. This being why it was so appropriate for Fraser to note of the part, “I learned quickly that it takes an incredibly strong person inside that body to be that person. That seemed fitting and poetic and practical to me, all at once.”

    A whale isn’t the only symbolic creature in the movie though. There’s also the unacknowledged bird that Charlie keeps luring back to his window by setting food out for it on a plate. By the third act, that plate is broken into shards and the bird seems nowhere to be found. Charlie’s own proverbial plate has been broken now, too, as there’s nothing left to figuratively eat. He’s swallowed life whole and it has spat him back into the abyss. In other words, this bird has flown.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Brendan Fraser is back. But to him, ‘I was never far away’

    Brendan Fraser is back. But to him, ‘I was never far away’

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — In a darkened hotel room in New York’s Soho neighborhood, Brendan Fraser kindly greets a reporter with an open plastic bag in his hand. “Would you like a gummy bear?”

    Fraser, the 54-year-old actor, is in many ways an extremely familiar face to encounter. Here is the once ubiquitous ’90s presence and action star of “The Mummy” and “George of the Jungle,” whose warm, earnest disposition has made him beloved, still, many years later.

    But Fraser, little seen on the big screen for much of the last decade, is also not quite as you might remember him. His voice is softer. He’s more sensitive, almost intensely so. He seems to bear some bruises from an up-and-down life. If Fraser seems both as he was once was but also someone markedly different, that’s appropriate. In Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” he gives a performance unlike any he’s given before. And it may well win him an Academy Award.

    Fraser’s performance been hailed as his comeback — a word, he says, that “doesn’t hurt my feelings.” But it’s not the one he’d choose.

    “If anything, this is a reintroduction more than a comeback,” Fraser says. “It’s an opportunity to reintroduce myself to an industry, who I do not believe forgot me as is being perpetrated. I’ve just never been that far away.”

    Fraser is very close at hand, indeed, in “The Whale.” In the adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s play, which A24 releases in theaters Friday, Fraser is in virtually every scene. He plays a reclusive, obese English teacher named Charlie whose overeating stems from past trauma. As health woes shrink the time he has left, the 600-pound Charlie struggles to reacquaint himself to his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink).

    Fraser’s performance, widely celebrated since the film’s Venice Film Festival premiere, has two Oscar-friendly traits going it for: A comeback narrative and a physical metamorphosis. For the role, Fraser wore a massive body suit and prosthetics crafted by makeup artist Adrian Morot that required hours in makeup each morning.

    But regardless of all the role’s transformation trappings, Fraser’s performance resides in his sad, soulful eyes and compassionate interactions with the characters that come in and out of his home. (Hong Chau plays a friend and nurse.) It adds up to Fraser’s most empathetic performance, one that has returned him to the spotlight after years making quickly forgotten films like “Hair Brained” (2013) and the straight-to-DVD “Breakout” (2013). On stages now from London to Toronto, standing ovations have trailed Fraser — a leading man reborn — wherever he goes.

    For Fraser, who spent much of his previous heyday in Hollywood swinging on vines and racing through pyramids, playing Charlie in “The Whale” has a cosmic symmetry. He could identify with him, Fraser says, “in ways that might surprise you.” When he was in his late 20s trying to be as fit as he could be for “George of the Jungle,” Fraser encountered his own body-image issues.

    “All I knew is that I never felt like it was enough. I questioned myself. I felt scrutinized, judged, objectified, often humiliated,” Fraser says. “It did play with my head. It did play with my confidence.”

    Some have questioned whether Fraser’s role in “The Whale” ought to have gone to someone who was authentically heavy. But Fraser, who collaborated with the Obesity Action Coalition in building the performance, says he intimately understands a different kind of appearance-based judgment.

    “The term was ‘himbo,’” he says. “I wasn’t sure if I appreciated it or not. I know that’s bimbo, which is a derogatory term, except it’s a dude. It just left me with a feeling of profound insecurity. What do I have to do to please you?”

    “It didn’t matter, really, because life took over. I did other things. I now arrive at a place where I see the flip side of the coin.”

    After seeing the play 10 years ago at Playwrights Horizon, Aronofsky, the director of “Pi,” “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan,” spent years contemplating different actors who could play the protagonist of “The Whale” without any success. Then he had Fraser come in and read for the part.

    “It wasn’t like I went into this with a calculation: Oh, a forgotten American-Canadian treasure,” says Aronofsky. “He was the right guy for the right role at the right time. If anything, I was wondering would people think it was a silly choice or something. There wasn’t any cool factor that I could see.”

    Aronofsky instead depended on his gut and an old axiom: “Once a movie star, always a movie star.” Plus, Fraser was hungry. He wanted the part desperately and was ready to put in all the work, all the time in the make-up chair. Still, Aronofsky would later marvel, watching a clip reel of Fraser at an awards ceremony, at the juxtaposition of “The Whale” with movies like “Encino Man,” “Bedazzled” and “Airheads.”

    “He plays this kind of very present, truthful, innocent goofus kind of guy,” says Aronofsky. “Then you intercut it with ‘The Whale.’ It was kind of jaw-dropping to me that this was one human being. There’s a gap in between of a lot of years.”

    Fraser never stopped working, but his movie star days mostly dried up in the years after his 2008 films “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” and the 3D “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Around that time, he and his wife, Afton Smith, with whom he has three sons, divorced.

    “I took some personal time. It was important,” says Fraser. “Mostly connecting with my life as a father. It gave me an appreciation for my capacity to love. What I learned informs the latter half of my professional life now.”

    “Now I know my purpose. Take everything I’ve learned. Own it. And, if possible, let if fuel the work that comes before me,” adds Fraser. “It’s a nice idea, but what work will come before me?”

    At a Beverly Hills, California, luncheon in 2003, Fraser was groped by Hollywood Foreign Press Association member Philip Berk, Fraser said in 2018. (Berk disputed Fraser’s account.) The experience, Fraser told GQ, made him feel like “something had been taken away from me” and “made me retreat.”

    Last month, Fraser announced he won’t attend the Golden Globes in January, whether he’s nominated or not. “My mother didn’t raise a hypocrite,” Fraser said. Still, the nature of awards campaigns will likely keep Fraser in the public eye through the Oscars in March. Is he at all trepidatious about being back in the spotlight?

    “I think it’s going to be for the rest of my career,” Fraser replies. “No. I have an obligation to do this. I feel duty bound to, as politely as a I can, to use that casual prejudice to describe this character, to remind them that there’s a better way of doing that. Obesity is the last domain of accepted, casual bigotry that we still abide.”

    During shooting on a sound stage in Newburgh, New York, Chau was often impressed by how Fraser worked steadily with a hundred pounds of cumbersome prosthetics on him and crew members buzzing around him before every take.

    “I just thought Brendan was such an angel and so gracious in the way he managed that and compartmentalized all that was going on around him,” says Chau. “I naturally felt like taking care of him on set. Making sure his water bottle was someplace close by. Holding his hand and making sure he got up off the couch OK.”

    Little about the film, or Fraser’s journey with it, was inevitable. His first meeting with Aronofsky was in February 2020. The pandemic nearly led to the production’s cancellation.

    “I gave it everything I had every day,” he says. “We lived under existential threat of COVID. An actor’s job is to approach everything like it’s the first time. I did but also as if it might be the last time.”

    Instead, Fraser’s performance opened an entire new chapter for him as an actor. He recently shot a supporting role in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Pondering what comes next, though, will have to wait until another day. When the time for the interview is through, Fraser stands up and graciously pulls a bag out of his pocket.

    “Gummy bear for the road?” Fraser asks. “I recommend pineapple.”

    ———

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link