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Post by Lauryn on Jul 14, 2007 14:07:07 GMT -5
What a scary thought - making The Matador's dialogue Hallmark Channel friendly. You imagine some harrowing experiment where a pale and sweaty Julian is forced to watch their TV line-up with his eyes clamped open like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange."
Hallmark Guard: [aside to Julian] In the sick bucket, please! We're having him viddy this 24 hour program of wholesome family friendly entertainment. He really wants to be cured, you see. We had Ian McShane from "Deadwood" in here last week. Now he sounds like grandpa McFeeley in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
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Post by Lauryn on Jul 14, 2007 14:30:50 GMT -5
True about their past programming. But as you note, the audience is the difference. On cable they've been successful appealing to a more conservative niche market than the broader viewership of a major network that they once courted.
Somwhow I barely noticed the larger point in the article about Hallmark branching out into showing first run films, although so much of the slate is still older films and their original stuff. I think I was just in such shock / denial that SF would be left to such a fate I wasn't paying real attention.
Speaking of nudity being where Hallmark draws the line, it's admittedly far down on my personal list of reasons, but that's at least another argument for why PB should have done that bare-naked scene in the snow. <wink>
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Post by Ace on Jul 14, 2007 16:35:12 GMT -5
Poor poor Julian. For some unfathomable reason the image of Pierce making snow angels naked has just popped into my mind. I think the rationale is that westerns skew older and more traditional and Hallmark has older audience and more traditional audience. Except that it's very much in the realm of revisionist western - more Peckinpah and Leone than Ford and Hawks (except for the cinematography) and that it's obvious by the DVD reviews and IMDB/Flickster comments that it's a film that appeals to young men as well.
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Post by Lauryn on Jul 14, 2007 18:09:56 GMT -5
Poor poor Julian. For some unfathomable reason the image of Pierce making snow angels naked has just popped into my mind. LOL!! I can hear him asking David Von Ancken, "Can we stop filming now? My balls are like bon bons!" You could probably have too much fun doing Julian versions of Westerns. "I look like a mining camp hooker on a Sunday morning after the gold rush has left town!" I've just gotten annoyed at the idea that because of the genre this movie has to be (for want of a better word) ghetto-ized as if that was the only viable marketing reality, never mind a film's broader content or tone. The same sort of thinking helped make SF's theatrical distribution so scattershot and ineffective -- releasing it in odd cities in the west with little to no promotion to a hard to reach audience and no secondary art house strategy or appeal to young males in the marketing. Maybe it's emblematic of the fact that studios don't know quite what to do with Westerns anymore (other than the proven Eastwoods or Costners) but there's also a distinct lack of imagination and effort at work. Despite Seraphim Falls having many classic elements, as you say, it's not John Ford, but closer to Anthony Mann or Leone or any number of more morally ambiguous examples of the genre (and SF is a bit more allegorical and surreal in places). As for the Hallmark Channel, some of their viewership might well enjoy SF if they can get past certain scenes, but a film like Costner's "Open Range," despite also getting a "R" rating for violence, is more in the white hat / black hat tradition and might be the better of their choices to wean their audience off the older classics.
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Post by Lauryn on Jul 15, 2007 11:55:58 GMT -5
BBC Files now has the release date August 17th (moving it against the Bourne Ultimatum -- err) The other film sites, including the Official Icon SF site still have it at Aug 3rd, so either they're behind in the change or the change hasn't happened. There are also differences in several films' dates between schedules. According the The Times, the release date is August 3rd. There's a nice, expansive profile of Liam Neeson here entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2061044.ece
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Post by Ace on Jul 15, 2007 23:45:35 GMT -5
Yes, I saw that earlier. A very good article. I hope that means they'll print another on Pierce maybe next week. Maybe his will have some new quotes. It looks like all of this was written at the TIFF last Sept.
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Post by Ace on Jul 18, 2007 16:19:13 GMT -5
Now Allocine UK has switched the date from Aug 3 to Aug 24th The official site still has it for the 3rd. I wish Icon would get it's act together and if the date is still the 3rd then let all these sites know. If not get all the dates the same day. Then again every film that month seems to be coming out a different week depending on the source. It's like film musical chairs. Ace
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Post by Ace on Jul 19, 2007 10:16:55 GMT -5
Looks like the reporting of the move to Aug 24th is the correct one (Icon still hasn't changed their site though) thecliffedge.com/blog/2007/07/19/uk-coming-attractions-august/In other U.K. changes, the Western “Seraphim Falls,” starring Irishmen Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in a revenge tale, is added to Aug. 24 by Icon. “Nancy Drew,” which opened on June 15 in the U.S., is moved back to October. “License to Wed” is moved ahead to Aug. 10. “Mrs. Ratcliffe’s Revolution” is moved to Aug. 24. And “Big Stan” and “Gardens of Autumn” move out of the month.
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Post by Ace on Jul 20, 2007 12:52:39 GMT -5
And Icon's official site has changed the date to August 24th. So it's official.
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Post by Ace on Jul 28, 2007 20:54:48 GMT -5
July 29, 2007 The Times: The wilder bunchThe western is riding back into town. And, this time, it's probing America's troubled psyche Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson in Seraphim FallsChristopher Goodwin In the summer of 2003, Laramie Street, the western-town studio set that had been on the Warner Bros back-lot since the 1930s, was torn down. The rough wooden cantina, the railroad track and the hotel, with its swing doors and hitching rail, where Errol Flynn, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and other heroes of the Hollywood western of yore had smacked their dusty chaps and tied up their tired horses, were bulldozed to make way for yet another suburban American street. Warner Bros had little choice. With fewer and fewer westerns being produced, the set had been used for only nine days in the previous five years. To many, Laramie Street’s destruction signalled the sad end of what had, since the invention of the moving image, been one of the most important and enduring staples of American culture. More than any other Hollywood genre, the western offered a potent mythology, retold by succeeding generations. As one critic put it, this was nothing less than “the creation of national narratives”. Since then, there have been sporadic attempts at least to get individual westerns off the ground. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Disney put The Alamo, perhaps the most symbolic American myth of all, into production, to capitalise on the sacrifices that a nation under attack was expecting to make. Of course, the sacrifices – except by the soldiers who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan – never came, and the film, which cost $107m to make, took just $22m in the USA. Only a few other westerns have dared to pop their head over the parapet, the most successful being Anthony Minghella’s 2003 adaptation of Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier’s civil-war epic, which won a best supporting actress Oscar for Renée Zellweger and took $95m at the US box office. Yet now, as if galloping into town dusty and bedraggled from a long trail ride, the western is being welcomed by Hollywood again. Just 12 months after HBO’s critically acclaimed series Deadwood finished, the annual Emmy nominations, which reward the best television programmes of the year, were last week dominated by two new western mini-series, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which had 17 nominations, and Broken Trail, which had 16. And the theatrical distributor Lions Gate Films recently announced that it was bringing forward to early September the release of its new western, 3:10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, for which it has big Oscar hopes. It wants to get a jump on other westerns being released before the year’s end that are expected to be in the running for Oscars, including The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which stars Brad Pitt as James, and No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s more contemporary western, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem. Other westerns set for release in the next few months include September Dawn, with Jon Voight and Terence Stamp, and Seraphim Falls, starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan. These films and mini-series seem to fall into two categories: those using the western as an allegory to comment on the existential anxieties facing America today, and those that use western genre conventions – man and the elements – to tell stories of human psychology at its starkest. Broken Trail’s producer, Stanley Brooks, believes that with the right story, there will always be an audience for the western. “It is still the iconic American genre,” he says. “Audiences like visiting a time when good guys were good, bad guys were bad and everyone understood the rules.” Nostalgia for a mythic past is always comforting, but not since the end of the 1950s, and the classics of John Ford and Howard Hawks, have westerns presented goodies and baddies in such clear-cut terms. The ambiguity many Americans, particularly Hollywood liberals, felt about the Vietnam war undermined the brittle edifice of the righteous American hero. By the late 1960s, as the Vietnam war showed no sign of ending, the heroic John Wayne westerns had given way to the appalling, amoral bloodletting of films such as Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch and Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue. By that time, westerns had also begun to question the very heart of the American creation myth: that the settlers and frontiersmen had to defend Christian civilisation against the godless savagery of the American Indian. By then, in the shadow of the horror of Vietnam, it seemed clear that most of the savagery – the brutal destruction of a civilisation, in fact – had been committed by forebears of those who now seemed to be committing similar atrocities in southeast Asia. By no means coincidentally, at the same time, the western had been hijacked by foreign film-makers, most obviously by Sergio Leone, with his so-called spaghetti westerns, starring Clint Eastwood as a pitiless antihero, the negation of almost everything John Wayne had stood for. Colin Callendar, head of HBO Films, which backed Bury My Heart, doesn’t believe there is a committed audience for the western any longer, but thinks people are looking for untold stories that can help them understand their history. Adapted from Dee Brown’s seminal 1970 history of the systematic slaughter of American Indians by the US federal government, Bury My Heart tells the story of the Wounded Knee massacre, the last big armed conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States, from the Native American point of view. “I don’t think it’s about the west,” Callendar says. “There is an abiding interest in looking back at our history and exploring it with an honesty and reality that help us understand the world we live in today.” Some of the new westerns are much more overt in using the past to comment on the present. September Dawn, which will be released in America at the end of August, retells the story of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857. About 140 pioneers from Arkansas were brutally massacred in Utah by a raiding party believed to have been led by Mormons inspired by Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. Known as the “American Moses”, and first governor of the Utah Territory, Young was determined to keep nonbelievers out of the state. “I was most interested in the parallel between the fanatical world at that time and today’s religious-fanatical world, which dominates the news and our lives,” says the films’s director, Christopher Cain. Voight, who plays a rabble-rousing Mormon leader, says: “We have the same problem facing us now, with the Islamic fanatics calling for the destruction of America and all of democracy. It seems there’s always a face of evil putting on a mask of godlike beliefs to destroy true believers of innocence and good.” David Von Ancken, director of Seraphim Falls, which is out in the UK on Friday, says that he wanted to make “a primal, elemental chase film”. Set against the backdrop of the American civil war, the film is about one man’s relentless pursuit of another across the American west. Von Ancken and his co-writer, Abby Everett Jaques, say they deliberately tapped into the mythic nature of the western. “It was really inspired by that,” says Everett Jaques. “The primal, universal power of the landscape and the way it strips away everything but the truth of men’s souls.” Similarly, the Coens’ No Country for Old Men explores the genre-mythologising that the western allows. Set in 1980, as drug-running is becoming a real problem on the Texas-Mexico border, the film is a nihilistic thriller – “an ultraviolent neo-western”, one critic called it – both a powerful psychological study and a homage to the pitiless brutality of the border. “That’s a hallmark of the book, which has an unforgiving landscape and characters, but is also about finding some kind of beauty without being sentimental,” says Ethan Coen. Early internet reviews of the long-delayed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which was shot more than two years ago, also extol its “mythic” qualities. It’s “the closest thing to a Terrence Malick movie that Terrence Malick never directed”, according to one who has seen the film. Von Ancken says that, in Seraphim Falls, his intention was to do something more than delve into the western’s psychological mythologies. He also wanted to use a civil-war backdrop to comment on the wars that America and others fight today. “Our modern world is tragically filled with examples of how, once the killing starts, it breeds more killing, inexorably,” he says. “If you succumb to that, you are destroyed. Whether you were in the right to begin with makes no difference.” It will be fascinating to see how accepting the public is of these westerns that offer a displaced commentary on the events consuming American politics: the post-9/11 world of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the evidence so far is that Americans are not yet ready to confront those events in dramatic form. This year’s most shocking movie failure has been Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, about the kidnapping and beheading of the journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, and the search for him by his wife, Mariane, played by Angelina Jolie. Despite terrific reviews and a huge press campaign that started at the Cannes festival, the film has performed poorly, taking only $9m in the USA. Perhaps the new westerns will allow audiences to face these events obliquely, much as the genre did during the Vietnam war. It wasn’t until some years after that war was over that films such as Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) began to explore the Vietnam tragedy and its consequences head-on. Yet while some see the current resurgence of westerns as a tangential critique of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, others believe the true meaning has always lain elsewhere. “For Americans, westerns were always about paradise lost – a world already gone,” says Adam Simon, a director and cultural critic. “Revivals correspond less to times of war than times of environmental anxiety, when we most fear that a way of life is on the verge of extinction. “The funny thing is that this feeling of a way of life on the edge of extinction was already the point in the first westerns,” he adds. “From its origins, the western was already an elegy. The western always comes after ‘the west’.”
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Post by Ace on Jul 29, 2007 18:05:30 GMT -5
The Times has gone Western crazy or Icon is really doing it's job. The Times: Western revival looks back to simpler lifeJuly 30, 2007 Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter Like Robert Redford and Paul Newman’s cornered outlaws at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,it looked as if the western had run out of second chances. Despite the successes of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven and Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, the genre that defined American cinema for much of the 20th century has long seemed ready for Boot Hill. Now a posse of major westerns packed with Alist stars is galloping over the horizon towards British cinemas. First to arrive is Seraphim Falls. Opening on August 24, it stars Liam Neeson in grim, near-silent pursuit of Pierce Brosnan across spectacularly inhospitable landscapes. A month later Russell Crowe and Christian Bale saddle up for the remake of the 1957 classic3.10 to Yuma, directed by James Mangold, who made the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Brad Pitt’s long-delayed portrayal of Jesse James as a smiling psychopath in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is showing in competition at next month’s Venice Film Festival, where Quentin Tarantino will also be curating a retrospective of obscure spaghetti westerns. No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s violent modern Wild West tale, arrives in February, by which time Tom Hanks is expected to be deep into filming Boone’s Lick, in which his character escorts Julianne Moore’s mother-of-four on an epic frontier trek from Missouri to the fort in Wyoming where she expects to find her estranged husband. Peter Rainer, a former president of the National Society of Film Critics, believes that the return of the cowboy movie reflects American unease about the world. “Whenever the genre gets revived it generally means that there’s some need in the culture to get back to basics. It’s either used as a code for what’s going on in America and the world or as a shield against it.” Thus High Noon (1952) has been read as a homage to those who stood up to McCarthyism and the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee. Carl Foreman, who wrote the screenplay, was among those blacklisted for alleged communist sympathies. Later, films such as Soldier Blue and Little Big Man (both 1970) were thinly disguised attacks on America’s role in the Vietnam War. Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), which starred Redford as a sheriff hunting an American Indian man, carried an antiracism message during the civil rights struggle, Mr Rainer said. “This time the westerns are more something to retreat behind. They are an escape hatch to take us back to a time when the conflicts were home-grown, the killers were bank robbers not terrorists, and everything was easier for us in America to grasp.” Although the westerns in the pipe-line are gritty and occasionally disquieting to watch, the familiar imagery of the cowboy film is comforting to audiences, said Mr Rainer, of The Christian Science Monitor. “The western is the quintessentially American cinematic form. It’s as American as jazz or the musical.” Its popularity tailed off during the 1970s, undermined by the more contemporary appeal of cop thrillers such as The French Connection. In 1980, the box-office disaster of Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s tale of 1890s Wyoming, dragged not only the studio (United Artists) but also the western to the brink of extinction. Although Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven both won an Oscar for Best Film in the 1990s, they failed to spark a revival. Part of the problem, Mr Rainer said, was that studio bosses were reluctant to back westerns unless they had something demonstrably new to say, such as Brokeback Mountain, which focused on a love affair between two cowboys. Now, 100 years after the birth of John Wayne, the western’s most enduring star, the requirements may be changing. Michael Gubbins, editor of Screen International, said: “Right now, the search is on for films that resonate on a global level, which is why there are so many remakes, sequels and book adaptations being made. The number of images which work in Japan, the UK and Europe as well as the US is quite small, but the western is still a genre that is understood in virtually every country because of its history.” Horse opera fuelled by oats –– The western genre got its start in paperback fiction in the mid-19th century –– The first western was The Great Train Robbery, made in 1903 by Edwin S. Porter –– In 1942 Hollywood churned out 120 westerns –– Only three westerns have won the Academy Award for Best Picture: Cimarron (1931), Dances With Wolves (1990), Unforgiven (1992) –– In the US they are also called “horse operas” or “oaters” after the oats eaten by protagonists’ horses –– In the 1950s and 1960s television westerns such as The Lone Ranger were hits. The modern equivalent is Deadwood, starring Ian McShane –– During the 1960s and 1970s “spaghetti westerns" emerged, low-budget affairs with more action and violence than Hollywood films *Source: Times Database
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Post by Ace on Aug 1, 2007 15:28:57 GMT -5
Upcoming Release Dates:
GREECE: 8/9/2007 UNITED KINGDOM: 8/24/2007 ARGENTINA: 10/25/2007 MEXICO: 10/26/2007 SPAIN: 11/23/2007 (interestingly Butterfly On A Wheel is scheduled for 11/30/07 so one might change)
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Post by Ace on Aug 4, 2007 2:46:21 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Aug 4, 2007 3:12:04 GMT -5
An interview done at the TIFF last fall: The Irish Times: Shooting stars The Ticket August 3rd Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson play hunted and hunter in a new western, Seraphim Falls. Michael Dwyer tracks down the Irish dream team and hears about the Irish in Hollywood, invitations to play Bond, and American accents The handsomely photographed western Seraphim Falls finally brings together two of Ireland's leading actors, who were born within a year of each other: Liam Neeson on June 7th, 1952 in Ballymena, Co Antrim, and Pierce Brosnan on May 16th, 1953 in Navan, Co Meath. Directed by David Von Ancken, the movie is set in the aftermath of the American Civil War and is based around an extended chase involving two men who fought on opposite sides - Brosnan as the prey and Neeson his dogged pursuer. Enemies on screen, the two actors are in the mood for friendly banter when we meet. NORTH AND SOUTH Michael Dwyer: The conflict in the film is between a northerner and a southerner, played by a northerner and a southerner from a different country. Pierce Brosnan: That irony did not escape us. Michael Dwyer: And you, Liam, live on the east coast of America, whereas Pierce's home is on the west coast. Liam Neeson: We're just gypsies, tinkers peddling our craft around the world. Brosnan: It is really like that. The tinkers used to come around to my grandmother's house in Navan, selling pots and sharpening knives. They were very sweet. My grandmother used to always let them camp on her land. Neeson: Look, there's Viggo Mortensen at the bar. We did a picture together about 17 years ago with Andie MacDowell - Ruby Cairo . Nobody ever saw it. Brosnan: Oh, were you playing golf off the pyramids? Neeson: We actually shot it in seven different countries. Brosnan: That's funny, because Beaumarie St Clair, who's my partner in Irish Dreamtime [Brosnan's film production company] - her father, Lloyd Phillips, produced that film. Neeson: Go away! He's a lovely guy. WHEN PIERCE MET LIAM Neeson: My first memory of running into you, Pierce, was an age ago. We were standing by the bar at the Four Seasons [in Los Angeles]. Obviously, you were already a very successful actor, but nobody was bothering you. I remember introducing myself and we had a couple of beers. Brosnan: I remember it well. Neeson: I think we just opened up to each other and shared some thoughts about Hollywood and working as an actor. Then we went our separate ways. Brosnan: I remember we met again very briefly at some Hollywood bash, and that was it until Seraphim Falls. MAKING THE FILM Neeson: I was thrilled to hear they wanted Pierce to play the other guy. It sounded perfect - two Paddys together. You know, thousands of Irish fought on both sides in the American Civil War. Michael Dwyer: Westerns were a staple of Irish cinemas when you guys were growing up in the 1950s. Neeson: Didn't we all play cowboys and Indians back then? My idol was Audie Murphy, who was the most decorated soldier in the second World War. He made dozens of westerns, mostly B-movies, and I saw most of them as a boy. I also liked Randolph Scott a lot. Michael Dwyer: It's a shame there are so few westerns nowadays. This is the first I've seen since Tommy Lee Jones made The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Neeson: I don't know if you saw that, Pierce, but it's kind of like our film. WATCHING MOVIES Brosnan: I put it on one night at home. Being a member of the academy, it's a wonderful luxury to get all those DVDs of the films being put forward, but you get so many that you watch one and then another and another. You have to be very careful they don't all blend into each other. Neeson: I'm very lazy that way, too. I really should make the effort to go out and see more movies in the cinemas. Brosnan: But we're always so busy working, hopefully making a living. Neeson: And you still want to cast your vote in the Oscars. My wife's [actress Natasha Richardson] a voter as well. She gets sent stuff and I get sent the same stuff. Michael Dwyer: Liam, do you and Natasha compare notes? Neeson: We do. We take it very seriously. Michael Dwyer: And Liam, your mother-in-law [Vanessa Redgrave] is a voter, too, and an Oscar winner for Julia. I thought she and Peter O'Toole were radiant in their scenes together in Venus. Brosnan: It's a shame he has never won an Oscar. Neeson: He got the special Academy Award, but said he didn't want it because he wanted to actually win one. A VERY IRISH WESTERN Michael Dwyer: Returning to Seraphim Falls, with both of you in it and Anjelica Huston doing a cameo and an Irishman, David Flynn, producing it, it must be the most Irish western since the heyday of John Ford. Neeson: Yeah, that's pretty wild when you think about it. Brosnan: Anjelica was great when she came on the scene. Liam and I were apart in so many scenes. He would clock in in the morning and I would clock in in the afternoon. We only met whenever we got a chance to have a drink together. Anjelica arrived to do her scenes in Lordsburg, which is a kind of moonscape very close to the border near El Paso. Neeson: We shared a motel with these very tough border patrol guards. When we were coming in at night, they were leaving to go and check the border. Brosnan: Anjelica would put a little bar on for us. The girl came in and took care of us. Neeson: It was great to have a female presence there after all that time. Brosnan: I'm not great at socialising. I just get on with doing the job. But Anjelica put a full bar outside her room in this anonymous little motel. She was terrific. We were sorry to see her go. SCREEN PRESENCE SECRETS Michael Dwyer: It must have been a physically demanding film with all that horse riding and the action scenes. And there's so little dialogue that it relies heavily on your screen presence. Neeson: That's what attracted me to it. I don't know about you, Pierce. Brosnan: I loved that aspect, working out to convey this guy's whole life cycle. Neeson: You have to trust your director, and to be able to say to yourself, "This is enough. I don't have to act this. Just trust the fact that the camera is coming in on you and if you're out of breath, be out of breath. Don't try and seem heroic." And when there is not much dialogue, you don't have to worry about accents. Brosnan: That's it. Just leave yourself alone. It was tricky. Neeson: Pierce had it much harder physically than I did. I always had my bearskin on to keep me warm at 14,000 feet, but Pierce had to go underwater and roll down through the snow. I got off lightly. Brosnan: David Von Ancken, the director, said he didn't want the audience to breathe for the first 12 minutes of the film. Michael Dwyer: And it is his first film as a director. Brosnan: Yes, and before that I did The Matador, which was Richard Shepard's first film. GOODBYE, MR BOND Michael Dwyer: That was a hoot. The way you played that louche assassin turned your James Bond image on its head. Brosnan: It was a lovely little jewel that came my way. It just fell into my lap. I wasn't trying to dismantle the Bond image, although a lot of people thought that's what I intended. Michael Dwyer: Von Ancken says that The Matador opens a new door for you, but Seraphim Falls pulls the door off the hinges. Brosnan: Oh, you never know. You just keep showing up as an actor. Neeson: I loved that scene in The Matador where you're walking along in your cowboy boots and black Speedos with your gut hanging out. Now that's an actor! You did more than give the finger to the Bond people. That was great. Michael Dwyer: Were you ever in the running to play Bond, Liam? Neeson: I was courted for it, along with a bunch of other actors. That was after I did Schindler's List. But this guy had to do it. He is Bond. Brosnan: Well, it was good while it lasted. I wish Daniel Craig well with it. Neeson: He's a good actor. He wasn't used in Munich at all, I thought. He was like a glorified extra. Michael Dwyer: Pierce, was it all hardball in the end between you and the Bond producers? Brosnan: Not at all. They just said, "That's it". I got a phone call one day from my agents to say negotiations were cut off. TURNING PRODUCER Neeson: How cool it was of you, Pierce, to have your own production company up and running with four or five other films set up then. Brosnan: Ah, the luck of the Irish! Neeson: Connery never got that together. Brosnan: But that was a different time. Neeson: You were very clever, quite brilliant, to set yourself up as a producer and an actor with films like The Thomas Crown Affair . Brosnan: If my first Bond picture, GoldenEye , went down in flames, I had to have something else set up. My way of doing that was to produce my own pictures through Irish Dreamtime. Michael Dwyer: Maybe sometime your company will set up a picture for yourself and Liam - and Gabriel Byrne, whom we met in the lift this afternoon. Neeson: Now that really would be Irish dreamtime. Seraphim Falls opens today. What's next for Neeson and Brosnan? Liam Neeson follows Seraphim Falls with the thriller , as an ex-spy who has to rely on the skills of his former profession to save his daughter (Maggie Grace), who has been forced into the slave trade. Produced and co-scripted by Luc Besson, Taken is directed by Pierre Morel, who made the exhilarating French thriller, District 13 . Neeson follows that with Richard Eyre's The Other Man , playing a man who discovers that his late wife (Juliette Binoche) had an adulterous affair while they were married. He also reprises the role of Aslan the lion in the voice cast of the second Chronicles of Narnia movie, Prince Caspian, which opens next May. And Neeson remains committed to portraying Abraham Lincoln in a biopic Steven Spielberg plans to shoot after he finishes his fourth Indiana Jones adventure. Pierce Brosnan has two films in the can: the kidnapping thriller Butterfly on a Wheel , with Maria Bello and Gerard Butler, and a 1940s-set drama, Married Life , with Patricia Clarkson and Chris Cooper. Brosnan is now co-starring with Meryl Streep in the movie of Mamma Mia! , the stage show based on Abba songs, in which they duet on SOS. After that, he reprises his role as the eponymous wealthy crook of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) in The Topkapi Affair .
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Post by Ace on Sept 19, 2007 11:50:33 GMT -5
www.coulisses-tv.fr/Inédit au cinéma : « Seraphim Falls » en exclusivité sur CANAL+ Plusieurs fois par an, CANAL+ diffuse en prime time des longs métrages récents, inédits en salles, repérés dans les festivals internationaux, les marchés professionnels, ou même sélectionnés dès le tournage. Des films interprétés par de grands noms du cinéma, à découvrir en avant-première sur CANAL+. C'est dans ce cadre que la chaine diffusera le film « Seraphim Falls », un western interprété par Pierce Brosnan et Liam Neeson, inédit en salle, le vendredi 12 octobre à 20h50. « Seraphim Falls » est un film d’action psychologique, une chasse à l’homme épique, et le lieu d’un champ de bataille au coeur des paysages extraordinaires du Grand Ouest américain. La guerre civile est terminée, mais le colonel Morsman Carver (Liam Neeson) s’attaque à sa dernière mission : avoir la peau de Gideon (Pierce Brosnan)... quel qu’en soit le prix à payer. S’ouvrant sur une fusillade, traversée par une haine féroce, cette poursuite impitoyable mènera les deux hommes loin du confort et des us et coutumes du monde civilisé, jusqu’aux confins les plus sanguinaires de leurs propres âmes… ========================================== Even with Altavista I can't figure out whether this is is saying SF is premiering on Canal TV or opening in a one theater on Oct 12. The worse "salle" is throwing me off. But if you watch this film in France on TV or at one theater you can much better understand this news than I can.
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Post by Ace on Oct 13, 2007 13:54:04 GMT -5
Hallmark November Premieres Alone in the wilderness in 1868, a man named Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) finds himself the target of a kill-or-be-killed chase from snowy mountain peaks to barren desert plains, as he is relentlessly hunted by Carver (Liam Neeson). Obsessively driven by the need to avenge a terrible wrong that he blames Gideon for, Carver will not be stopped as long as there is breath in his body. Hallmark Channel proudly plays host to the World Television Premiere of "Seraphim Falls," Saturday, November 17 (9pm/8c). Anjelica Huston also stars in the thrilling Western. Note the "interesting" way they spelled Seraphim on their site page for the film. www.hallmarkchannelpress.com/publish/pr/home/shows/serifim_falls.html
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Post by sparklingblue on Oct 14, 2007 2:21:18 GMT -5
www.coulisses-tv.fr/Inédit au cinéma : « Seraphim Falls » en exclusivité sur CANAL+ Plusieurs fois par an, CANAL+ diffuse en prime time des longs métrages récents, inédits en salles, repérés dans les festivals internationaux, les marchés professionnels, ou même sélectionnés dès le tournage. Des films interprétés par de grands noms du cinéma, à découvrir en avant-première sur CANAL+. C'est dans ce cadre que la chaine diffusera le film « Seraphim Falls », un western interprété par Pierce Brosnan et Liam Neeson, inédit en salle, le vendredi 12 octobre à 20h50. « Seraphim Falls » est un film d’action psychologique, une chasse à l’homme épique, et le lieu d’un champ de bataille au coeur des paysages extraordinaires du Grand Ouest américain. La guerre civile est terminée, mais le colonel Morsman Carver (Liam Neeson) s’attaque à sa dernière mission : avoir la peau de Gideon (Pierce Brosnan)... quel qu’en soit le prix à payer. S’ouvrant sur une fusillade, traversée par une haine féroce, cette poursuite impitoyable mènera les deux hommes loin du confort et des us et coutumes du monde civilisé, jusqu’aux confins les plus sanguinaires de leurs propres âmes… ========================================== Even with Altavista I can't figure out whether this is is saying SF is premiering on Canal TV or opening in a one theater on Oct 12. The worse "salle" is throwing me off. But if you watch this film in France on TV or at one theater you can much better understand this news than I can. The way I understand it, Canal+, a French TV channel, is showing Seraphim Falls as a sort of pre-premiere on October 12 at 8:50 p.m.
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Post by Ace on Oct 15, 2007 11:40:38 GMT -5
Thanks Sparkling. I just read a French review of it complaining that should have been shown in theaters. Canal has a schedule for Seraphim Falls for upcoming showings and they'll be showing it at least 4 more times over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately it looks like all are shown in VF - the French vocal version. Phooey. They can't read subtitles for a a relative handful of lines? I wonder if they overdub all of Pierce's screaming? The UK has also set a release for the DVD there: December 24th. Amazon doesn't have it listed yet but Play.com does.
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Post by Ace on Oct 17, 2007 13:38:19 GMT -5
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Post by Ace on Oct 22, 2007 13:35:40 GMT -5
Indiewire: AWARDS WATCH | Zobel, Penn, Baumbach Films Lead Gotham Nominationsby Eugene Hernandez (October 22, 2007) More than four months before Oscar night, the annual awards season essentially got underway this morning as the IFP announced the nominations for its 17th annual Gotham Awards, honoring the best in independent film. Craig Zobel's low budget indie "Great World of Sound" was the biggest single nominee with three nods -- for best feature, breakthrough director and breakthrough actor -- topping a list that included double nominees "Into the Wild" and "Margot at the Wedding," as well as Julia Loktev's "Day Night Day Night." In total, 28 films were nominated in six categories: Best Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You. Embracing the term "independent," the IFP is acknowledging a wide range of movies in announcing this year's nominations. "2007 was an incredibly strong year for independent film," noted IFP executive director Michelle Byrd, in a statement. "Ranging from the small gems produced on micro-budgets to extraordinary films from specialty divisions, the nominees all share the type of creative vision and risk-taking that are a hallmark of independent film." Other honorees to be saluted during the Gothams ceremony -- held at New York City's Steiner Studios on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 -- will be six individuals singled out for the work in the industry, including actor Javier Bardem ("No Country For Old Men," "Love in the Time of Cholera"), film critic Roger Ebert, production designer Mark Friedberg ("Across the Universe," "The Darjeeling Limited"), New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, director Mira Nair ("The Namesake," "Monsoon Wedding," "Mississippi Masala") and Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment. Chatting with indieWIRE this morning, Michelle Byrd reiterated that the Gothams salute the best in independent film, no matter the budget. "It's an acknowledgement that this is the range that people understand (as independent film)," she noted, and laughing, added, "We need to stop feeling guilty about it!" The 17th Annual Gotham Award nominees are: Best Feature Great World of Sound Craig Zobel, director; Melissa Palmer, David Gordon Green, Richard Wright, Craig Zobel, producers (Magnolia Pictures) I'm Not There Todd Haynes, director; Christine Vachon, James D. Stern, John Sloss, John Goldwyn, producers (The Weinstein Company) Into the Wild Sean Penn, director; Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bill Pohlad, producers (Paramount Vantage & River Road Entertainment) Margot at the Wedding Noah Baumbach, director; Scott Rudin, producer (Paramount Vantage) The Namesake Mira Nair, director; Lydia Dean Pilcher, Mira Nair, producers (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Best Documentary The Devil Came on Horseback Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern, directors; Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg, Gretchen Wallace, Jane Wells, producers (International Film Circuit) Jimmy Carter Man from Plains Jonathan Demme, director; Jonathan Demme, Neda Armian, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) My Kid Could Paint That Amir Bar-Lev, producer/director (Sony Pictures Classics) Sicko Michael Moore, director; Michael Moore, Meghan O'Hara, producers (The Weinstein Company) Taxi to the Dark Side Alex Gibney, director; Alex Gibney, Eva Orner, Susannah Shipman, producers (THINKFilm) Best Ensemble Cast Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris, Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brian F. O'Byrne, Amy Ryan, Michael Shannon, Marisa Tomei (THINKFilm) The Last Winter Connie Britton, Kevin Corrigan, Zach Gilford, James LeGros, Ron Perlman (IFC First Take) Margot at the Wedding Jack Black, Flora Cross, Ciarán Hinds, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Zane Pais, John Turturro (Paramount Vantage) The Savages Philip Bosco, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Talk to Me Cedric the Entertainer, Don Cheadle, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mike Epps, Vondie Curtis Hall, Taraji P. Henson, Martin Sheen (Focus Features) Breakthrough DirectorLee Isaac Chung for "Munyurangabo" Stephane Gauger for "Owl and the Sparrow" Julia Loktev for "Day Night Day Night" (IFC First Take) David Von Ancken for "Seraphim Falls" (Samuel Goldwyn Films)Craig Zobel for "Great World of Sound" (Magnolia Pictures) Breakthrough Actor Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild (Paramount Vantage) Kene Holliday in "Great World of Sound" (Magnolia Pictures) Ellen Page in "Juno" (Fox Searchlight Pictures) Jess Weixler in "Teeth" (Roadside Attractions) Luisa Williams in "Day Night Day Night" (IFC First Take) Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You August the First Lanre Olabisi, director; Shawn Alexander, Gabriel "Swede" Sedgwick, Nicky Arzeu Akmal, Lanre Olabisi, producers Frownland Ronald Bronstein, director; Marc Raybin, producer Loren Cass Chris Fuller, director; Chris Fuller, Frank Craft, Kayla Tabish, producers Mississippi Chicken John Fiege, director; John Fiege, Anita Grabowski, Victor Moyers, producers Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa Jeremy Stulberg & Randy Stulberg, directors; Eric Juhola, Jeremy Stulberg, Randy Stulberg, producers
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